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I read this years ago on http://www.alwaysblack.com/?p=54 Just reposting it so its somewhere on the interwebs.
EQ Chronicles 21: Guilds and The Meaning of Life - by Ken Williamson
Posted in Everquest Chronicles, _blackbox by Administrator on the October 19th, 2005
Originally published at http://www.bigkid.com.au/ on 16th April 2003
Guilds. Love them or hate them, they are an unavoidable part of EverQuest. My Bard ran the gamut of them recently, and during the process I learned a lot about human nature, the online environment, and rubbed shoulders with the meaning of life itself. I kid you not: The Meaning Of Life.
The great majority of high end content in EverQuest has been designed around the idea of guilds, and there is no way to experience that content outside of them. The strength of guilds is their grouping of likeminded players under a shared banner in order to achieve common goals. That is the idea, anyway. What cannot be overcome alone, can be gloriously overcome as a coordinated group. But of course, wherever you have a group of people you have politics. The more people, the deeper the intrigue can run. So begins my little fable.
In EQ there are generally two sorts of guilds: family, and pure raiding or “uber” guilds. Family guilds are nice. The people in them play to enjoy themselves, and help each other out. They are bound together by a joy of playing and a sense of decency. Pure raiding guilds are bound together by a desire to play at the top end and, unfortunately more often than not, the love of personal gain and high end gear, or as it is known in EQ vernacular: phat lewt! “Uber” raiding guilds generally are filled with people who have committed obscene amounts of time to online gaming, and expect the same of everyone else they play with. They are there to win, and to beat whatever other guilds are competing with them for the top end encounters. You can be sure that almost without exception, the people populating these guilds have pulled dirty tricks to get there and stay there. It is part of the territory.
My guild was a family guild that kept losing good players who wanted to raid at the top end. I and a few others believed it didn’t have to be that way. We wanted a guild with family values and yet a core of committed players who could tackle the top end together. We could see no reason why we couldn’t have both. So we started agitating for more and higher level raids. There was initial trouble and disagreement, but with lots of talking and lots of listening, we started making headway. Eventually, at a critical point in our journey, a player from one of the Uber guilds who had a character in our guild as well offered to lead our raids. Knowledge is everything in EQ, and this player knew the things necessary to get us to where we wanted to go, so we accepted upon the condition that we adhered to the family ideals. There were some forebodings that it wasn’t such a good idea, but we decided the benefits outweighed the possible detriments.
We made excellent progress immediately. But just as we had worked our way past the necessary intermediary equipping stage, and were ready to take on some truly high end encounters, real trouble started. For some time strange high level characters had been appearing in our guild, invited by the raid leader. While they helped on our raids a great deal, they had been attracted by our increasing power and were adversely affecting the tone of the guild. They were exclusive and selfish, while we were fighting to maintain an inclusive feel for all members at all levels. They were noisy and nasty when provoked. They began disrespecting and then actively alienating other members. The one thing they held in common was a singular interest in the top end of the game, and not our guild. The guild was just their means to an end. They initially paid lip service to our ideals. Then they began resisting them. Finally they declared outright disagreement.
Inevitably, the guild split. We fought long and hard for the ideals we had started with, and those we believed made up the body of the guild. We maintained we could do both; keep a family atmosphere and still raid. But in the end, the raid leader broke away and formed his own raiding guild. Those of us who had begun the journey and fought several bitter battles to save the guild we believed in then watched in disbelief as the majority of the guild went with him. We were gutted. Eight months of hard work and careful planning fell apart in a week.
The one thing we comforted ourselves with was the assurance that the bad behaviour that had torn apart our guild had left with the people who left, and it would inevitably resurface in the new guild to trouble the usurpers. For the most part that was what happened, and many of those who left our guild subsequently left the game because it stopped being fun for them. It was sad, and ironic.
And all my Bard wanted to do was sing higher.
My story would perhaps be meaningless if the same plot had not been played out countless times, and in countless ways. But the online world is filled with a legacy of similar stories, and there is something real worth learning from it all.
I have witnessed the worst kind of behaviour exhibited by unknown people hiding behind the anonymity of the online world. All forms of dishonesty, psychological brutality, and deception are utilized in the interests of making a virtual character more powerful. Surreal stories of sexual favours being exchanged in and out of game for ingame gain are not uncommon. It is heartbreaking to spend many real time hours in an honest attempt to gain a prize only to have it snatched dishonestly at the end, yet it happens all the time.
I have also witnessed touching acts of generosity and selflessness. I’ve seen people spend literal months in the pursuit of a goal, only to concede it graciously to another when it was there for the taking. Others have consistently spent their time and effort helping other players, lacing their play with humour and kindness, when they could have been helping themselves. It is fascinating to me that the same people who recognise how ridiculous it is to put the imagined value of some ingame item over the well-being of a real person on the other side of a computer, are the same people who generally behave decently in real life.
I’ve come to the conclusion that online games are microcosms of wider human psychology. And that’s no surprise really, because games are played by people. Someone once said that if you want to know what a person is really like, watch what they do when they think noone is watching. The same holds true for the online environment where there is apparently no consequence to actions. The irony is that the anonymity is a two edged sword. You cannot be judged by the way you look, because everyone looks as they have chosen to appear. All that people know of you is a how you behave. As a result, all anyone ever knows is who you really are. In the end, the anonymity doesn’t conceal you, it reveals you.
One day Sony is going to pull the plug on EverQuest. No doubt with a certain amount of fanfaire and ceremony, the executive producer of EQ at the time is going to walk sombrely along the line of servers and one by one switch them off. All the fabulous items and riches so earnestly sought and visciously competed for over the years, will be gone. All the intimately known zones that formed the backdrop to countless shared adventures, all the bitter adversaries and guild structures so covetously guarded at the expense of friendships real and imagined, will disappear in the dying pin-prick glow of fading monitor screens. It will all turn back to nothing, which, of course, is all it ever was. It was bits and bytes, pixels and texels. An illusory dance of electrons, none of it real.
What will survive is how people behaved, how they treated others who shared the same virtual space with them. The dirty deeds and the grubby motivations, along with the acts of kindness will be reduced simply and purely to themselves. All that will endure will be the residue of the treatment of others when dealing with things which ultimately held no lasting value. Their only use was to inexorably reveal the true nature of those who, for a time, held them and thought them important.
Don’t tell me that’s not exactly like real life.
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