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Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Guild Gathering #5 - Fondest Memory
LieutenantToast
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Glorious Ashes community - we're excited to continue our new series called Guild Gatherings! Guild Gathering topics are a "reverse Q&A" similar to our Dev Discussions, where we ask you about your thoughts on everything related to guilds.
Our team has compiled a list of questions we'd love to get your feedback on regarding guild tools, gameplay, your previous experiences, and more. Join in on our Guild Gatherings and share how your gaming family is special to you!
Guild Gathering #5 - Fondest Memory
Share your fondest guild memory from your history of gaming. Bonus points for sharing pictures and/or videos!
Keep an eye out for our next Guild Gathering topic regarding internal conflict!
Hi again friends! Thank you all for taking the time to stop by and share some of your fondest guild memories
we had a blast reading through them all! Check out some of the top notes you shared with us below:- Many highlighted the moments when guild collaboration and coordination made all the difference
- Others shared stories of epic battles where their guild may have been outnumbered, but still managed to hold their own and have fun
- Several shared memories of their more social experiences, from emotes to role playing to guild-run events and beyond
All in all, we thought this quote summed up many of your sentiments quite well
ThePeacekeeper wrote: »fun>win
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Comments
Stomping around early game areas just to figure out what went into it, and what little details we missed while questing.
The high-stakes moments with friends and corporate activity. Those will always been the stand out.
I have to say though, our time on Gustin in Lineage 2 was some of my favorite MMORPG memories (we started in Planetside which is the first true MMOFPS).
So, Lineage 2. we started on Kain, and then decided to go stealth on Gustin when we all decided to re-roll as a crew with a specific team structure (2 groups: archer squad, and AoE squad, each having 1 Overlord, 1 sword singer, 1 bd, and an Elven Elder). Then once we all reached lvl 45-50, we started going to war with all the major alliances on the server. Many of which out leveled and geared us by a lot, not to mention being severely outnumbered. Yet, we never lost a war, every single clan we went to war with surrendered.
We also introduced Koga Lines™ to the folks of Gustin (you see it at the start of the below first video) which allowed our buffers to more quickly single target buff everyone quickly.
A compilation/recruitment video:
A seige we registered as attackers for some pvp fun
Formerly T-Elf
One of them was a wholesome more mature guild, the other one it was basically a degenerates guild lol. Crazy people. I've made some friends along during the RP sessions with whom I've talked in TeamSpeak.
One time, which imo is one of the most fun events, the leaders needed some item that could only be gotten from officers/high level NPCs from enemy bases. Yes, you're reading correctly. So, of course they had this amazing idea of gathering a giant raid group and making an assault on the Republic's bases in Tatooine. It was a coordination of like double full (20-25) raid groups, lead by screaming and insults, as it should be done obviously and we just killed everything and everyone there. It was really really fun.
3 guilds teamed up against my guild and we were constantly under pressure from all sides for 2 hours.
We lost at the end but was the most fun mass pvp I ever had, not a dull moment passed.
I personally had 150 kills during that node war and didnt even care that we lost.
fun>win
The battle itself I don't remember much of, but by throwing myself at the monster I delayed it from destroying a town just enough till more people could arrive.
The story was for my best friend's alt to be a new challenger in our Iron man challenge which would let someone fight the weakest to strongest one after the other until they lost or had defeated the other fighters. The first fight was planned to be a blow out, though it may have seemed a bit closer than we intended. However the next fight ended up being an absolutely brilliant fight. All of the talking came to a near stop and people were just reading. Their description quality faded a bit and got shorter, but they were simple enough that you could picture it in your head. So the challenger eventually wins in spectacular fashion and we kind of had a panic moment because we didn't know how to follow that up. The crowd was cheering and it was really exciting, but it was a mix of nerves as well since we usually try to leave the best for last.
Another guildy says that we should cut the fight short with the best fighter showing respect and challenging him right then and there. They were down and it was the single coolest fight I've yet to read. They tried to continue the style, but it turned into the fight from Sherlock Holmes where he and Moriarty have a constant back and forth.
Challenger: Downward slash
Champion: Parry and step forward to stab
Challenger: Leaps back falling off balance to the ground
Champion: Lunges forward sword stopped just before the foes chest then tosses his weapon to the ground and raises his fists
It was beautiful! Behind the scenes it eventually turned into several of us in voice just shouting ideas as fast as we could so they had could write something to keep the pace. Obviously we let the champion be in control, but a few smart moves from the challenger let him hold his ground. It ended with the challenger losing, but it was such a cool fight (and we used it to advertise for the next event *evil laugh*).
That event doubled our attendance for like two months and we ended up changing the writing style for it, because everyone loved it. The fighters got a ton of messages from people praising em, and a few people mentioned they'd heard from friends to come watch at the following events. It was the proudest moment I've had and just seeing everyone love it and working with everyone to frantically write a good fight was the most fun I'd had in years of playing games.
One day we were tipped off that said coalition was planning a trading run to an island. Their alliance gathered a few dozen ships ranging from galleons to sloops, merchant vessels and whatever else they could throw together to fend off pirates. Our guild mustered up what we could which was just 2 galleons and several sloops. We sailed out to meet them.
We eventually came in contact and the carnage ensued. Their combined fleet was so disorganized that we were easily able to pick up their ships with concentrated fire one at a time. On top of the many warships we were able to sink we also took out a lot of their merchant vessels whose goods sank to the bottom of the ocean. We were eventually overwhelmed by their numbers but we caused so much damage that the amount of drama that took place amongst their leadership caused the coalition to disband.
Here's one pic I still have after all these years. The big guy is our galleon that i was somehow able to escape from while being surrounded by their boarding ships.
Together we grouped up in stranglethorn vale to do some pvp there since we had people leveling in the area. For a while we fought on the outskirts, and we never really made it into the city. It was just fun running around and killing players for the sake of it and not for any in-game reward. It was also the first time I had used an infernal as a warlock so that made it extra special.
The other fond memory I have I didn't record, but I was playing the classic beta and really enjoyed trying to do quests that were above the level cap of 15. We had to spend quite a bit of time fighting a monster who wasn't even marked as an elite, but he summons demons during the fight. I have had a bit of trouble actually fighting him solo at an appropriate level (although it is solo-able at the correct level). I remember beating him and it being such a cool event since it was one of the only ways to get a good ring at level 15. I had watched a lot of videos about vanilla WoW leading up to Classic and so I knew a lot about the end-game, but doing that felt special, like we had discovered a hidden gem of content that few know about.
For those interested, the quest was Tower of Althalaxx and the quest mob was Ilkrud Magthrull.
I have always loved the blue mage's ability to learn a spell from a monster. Ninja was the perfect subclass. I actually miss old chick Cobricaurelie (because automatic name generation fail...lol) (what?? I didn't know lol). I wish I had a picture of her.
The one memory that stands out though is the epiphanous moment where the party is balanced and shredding and you have a perfect hate volley with the tank. Everyone is working together in harmony and mobs are melting like butter over hot bread. You can't seem to pull them fast enough and you never want it to end.
When you are a party and rockin it together, that is just a fantastic moment.
The private server removed the level limit, so you could level to infinity - and so an economy developed around the buying and selling of exp multiplier coupons. The normal way to get an exp coupon was to log in daily and claim points that you would exchange for a 30min 2x exp coupon - this would sell for about 1mil.
So I'm playing normally with my bro, and we're just bumming around when this really sketchy noob (level 20) walks up to us and demands that we help him do a guild quest - he'll pay us 500k each per run. He obviously is smurfing, and 500k for 30 mins of our time sounds amazing, so we agree. We get added to a guild that seems really normal and gather outside the guild quest ruins (minimum 6 members) to begin the quest.
So the noob, Mondue (I still remember his name HAHAHA), is really greedy and butts heads with the guild leader, Jess. After they bicker for a while in another language, they tell us: "Mondue and Jess are going to split the bonus stage, NOBODY TOUCH ANYTHING or else you get kicked and we don't pay you." No questions.
So we run the guild quest, and we're there mostly as extra bodies to meet the minimum requirement of 6 members to begin the quest - but we end up helping out on the platforming jump puzzles to speed things up, and also defeating the quest boss. We all get tele'd to the bonus stage and it's full of boxes that explode with random rewards - a few skillbooks, consumables, etc. and occasionally an exp coupon! So that's what made the run profitable - but it seemed like so much work for a mediocre profit margin. Anyway, true to their word they paid us our money and wanted to do another run - pay was good so everyone agreed and so we did a few more runs.
After around 4 runs, Mondue says he has to go and logs out before anyone can blink. Jess yells a few expletives and then asks if we can help cover Mondue's responsibilities. We agree and so Jess ends up teaching the guild how to do the run (and all the shortcuts on this private server). After a few more runs Jess gets tired of paying everyone, and she's feeling nice so instead she tells us to "break 1 box each and that's your pay". A few people don't like this idea, but my bro and I are curious - so we agree, but the others want pay. So Jess is like, only the two of us get ONE box each, and everyone else gets paid as per usual. First run, my bro gets an exp coupon from his box and he's like, "Wait. This isn't a normal exp coupon." and then Jess starts whispering him "SHHH don't tell anyone." I'm like "what is going on?" and go to my bro's room to see. It's a 3x exp coupon that sells for 10m. These guys are scamming the dummy members. Not wanting to rock the boat, we keep it to ourselves and do 3 more runs before the party falls apart and we call it a day.
We cash in our 2 coupons and get 20mil, which would normally take 20 dailies to collect. We check the market and notice that Mondue and Jess are only selling 3-4 at a time, but they definitely have way more in storage. They're upholding artificial scarcity of the coupons.
About a week later, Jess and Mondue are doing runs again, by this time most of the guild has found out, so everyone gets 1 box (much to Mondue's protests), Jess and Mondue split the rest and the guild is sworn to secrecy. Halfway through a run, someone announces that they're auctioning a godly-rolled endgame chest piece - starting bid 400m. Jess comments that the item is pretty good, she wants it. Mondue bids on the item. Jess gets pissed and they basically bid against each other until the item hits 850m (crazy), Mondue lost and starts sulking so he logs off. Jess basically rolls her eyes and we go back to the "when Mondue's not here" strategy. Fast-forward about a week and Jess and Mondue have had a fallout, Mondue's been kicked from the guild "he was just too greedy". So everyone in the guild is doing pretty well and we're lining our pockets. A few super-high level characters contact us privately and purchase from us in bulk, but the price remains stable - even the price of 2x exp coupons is rising to 1.2 mil.
Thats when my brother and I get a whisper from Mondue - he's started his own guild and wants us to join him. We feel really awkward about it, but we agree to join on smurfs. However, our true allegiance is to the original guild so we can't always switch characters to help Mondue do runs. Because of this, Mondue teaches people in his guild how to do runs. But Mondue is a stubborn person, and most people don't know how to get along with him, so the guild breaks up - but now multiple guilds are forming to do guild quest runs. In the first week after his guild broke up, 3x exp coupons started flooding the market and the price dropped to 8mil. Sensing the collapse, Mondue put a stack of 99 coupons on the market for 7mil ea and a few days later, prices had plummeted to 2mil. This forced the price of standard 2x coupons down to a 100k, so completely destroyed the daily-income of new players
By this time, my brother and I were so sick of doing guild quest runs - we'd managed to get them down to ~15minutes, so we were somewhat relieved to finally stop doing them. Shortly after, I think the damage to the economy was too great and the devs shut down the server. *sigh* good times.
TLDR: guild found a niche in the economy to get rich fast, guild drama --> niche goes public, collateral damage destroys the server's daily reward system.
The guild mission system in this game could have been awesome if they updated it (ArenaNet #1 problem, doing cool things but never updating/improving them).
Once a week the guild gathered in voice chat to do the missions. Those missions were not very hard but asked for a bit of synchronisation and offered few interesting rewards. It was a fun moment where we all played together regardless of classes and levels to finish mini dungeon, puzzle, race or a boss. It helped A LOT the guild to stay active and very social. Unlike things like raids, it was not hard but more fun oriented. Many people were coming and laughting while doing them until we got bored after about a year because it was never updated with new content and rewards.
I've also organized few guild events like treasure hunting. Guild mates had to find me, hidden in the map while I was slowly giving hints. It was some very fun social moments.
I hope AoC will give us some tools to create social events like this. Raids and dungeons are cool, but sometime we just want to chill together and have fun with simple (but still interesting) activities.
Then tragedy struck, while in another biolab conflict, one of our rear territories had been taken, then another, and suddenly we have very few resources to work with compared to the New Conglomerate. Soon we would have our backs to our enemies as well as face them in the front and much like Hitler's two front war, this would not end well.
My outfit called everyone back to sanctuary and loaded up dropships and lodestars, Planetside 1 was a game of scale and it took time to prepare things like this. Finally we were all lined up, it felt like hundreds of us, and we shipped out in a real military fashion. Our return to Oshur was akin to a thunderstorm rolling over the land and soaking everything in red. I, being a dirtbag at heart, broke off from the main force after we re-established ourselves. Myself and the strike force then landed on the opposite side of the map and began hacking our way into facilities and taking everything. At first just a couple of enemies arrived to stop us which we swiftly dealt with, but then an army. We spent at least an hour holding them off with a small team until the cavalry arrived. Looking out into the battlefield, suddenly our enemies were bombarded by artillery and then air strikes, and finally a ground war in which we rejoined our outfit to kick the scum off the continent. The Vanu managed to hang onto a few towers until the cleanup crew got rid of them but the New Conglomerate fully evacuated.
A combination of the scale, organization, and the outcome made this super memorable for me. Our outfit (guild) made the biggest impact you can make in the game.
I forgot what we were doing but we got back to our city after doing something and were screwing around. One of our guildmates with a thick accent said calmly "There's a roft." We were all asked what and he repeated. Kind of confused, i climb up on our back walls and a raft packed with ~20 people on top of it was sailing towards our city. We called for people to return to the city and started to fight.
Here's the video my gm posted:
*starts at 4:47
There wasn't that much to it. Had many fights like this and some with much higher stakes but for some reason this one sticks with me.
One night we broke our raid into two smaller teams and a one large force. Midgard often rolled with 150 odd players taking keep after keep. The two smaller teams kept going behind the Midgard forces and taking back their keeps while the other small team would scout and take pot shots at keeps to keep the Mid's in a forward direction we wanted them to take.
About 30-40 of us were at a keep, crouched down and on the top floor. Waiting. the two smaller teams finally ticked off the Midgard's enough they stop taking back keeps and started to peruse them. They bolted to the keep we were hiding at.
The two teams defended the keep till the last moment and as they broke down the gate, the two teams ran up the stairs to where we were waiting. The Midgard's were so emboldened, thinking they finally would put an end to these pesky Avalonian's, they just run without looking, thinking they knew the size of the army they faced, Most of our larger group was AoE ready and waiting. In a short few min, we took down all 150 of them.
I loved these experiences with high-level monsters on your road to deliver a quest and not how players get catered with equal level monsters through the entire leveling to max level.
Actually, when I think back through the various games, it's always the PvP that comes to mind. Group or large scale specifically. On the PvE side, yeah sure I remember downing raid bosses and what-not with the guild, and it was cool, but it was never on the same level of memory-inducing fun.
So yeah, unpredictable group PvP where coordination and adaptability matters. Those are the ones that stand out.
Well, I've also gotten a couple of RL girlfriends from among the women in the guilds over the years, but I don't think those are the fond memories you want described
Participating in Slegg's little machinimas.
My other fondest memory from MMO gaming, while not related to my guild was related to another guild on the server. My guild in WoW at this time wasn't the greatest and we couldn't clear a raid in time for a special mount to drop(ZA and the amani war bear) that i really wanted. But the top guild on our server at the time, Fusion, was selling these mounts. They would clear it in time and invite you in at the last moment to claim the mount. So I saved up for quite a while until I could afford it and bought this rare mount from them. It may not seem like much, but for me at that time, it was a big deal and that memory has stuck with me all this time.
If we're talking about guilds specifically, in Final Fantasy 14, I was recruited by a playboy male Miqote to join a guild that eventually became my home for several years purely because he liked the way I looked. He left the guild eventually, because he couldn't play anymore for a while, and I had become super good friends with everyone at that point to where we were hanging out so often that I eventually made it to pretty much the end point of the game at the time, including all the end game raids and stuff. I never really did stuff like that before so it was pretty interesting, but definitely not my fondest memory overall, that definitely goes to my time in Final Fantasy 11.
They made the mistake of rushing to our platform, which meant they had a heavy train of NPC's after them (this back in 2009, when NPC's in the moors were still kind of a threat to freeps) Once they realised they had too much agro on their healers, they started to panic and their raid split off in several directions. Most of them scattered once they reached the upper platforms, and were attempting to avoid being killed off by the pursuing creeps and NPC's.
Due to the circular nature of the platforms leading down to Gaergoth, and the way they had split up when they retreated, we ended up with some clusters of them running past other clusters, and various creeps and NPC's changing their targets along the way. It basically looked like a very messy rendition of a Benny Hill skit.
Half of us didn't even bother joining the chase, we were too busy standing down below with out camera angles tilted up, just so we could watch the show
The guild I played with in the Moors was the perfect example of why a strong player community, and a healthy player base is so important to MMO's. The balance for PvP in the moors has basically always been horrible, and most of the time it heavily favoured freeps. This didn't really matter to us, even on the nights when we were heavily outnumbered and knew we were going to be slaughtered. We had fun playing together, regardless of how the evening turned out, we always had laughs along the way., and that's what kept us coming back.
Please feel free to keep reliving your fondest guild memories here, and we'll see ya around for our next topic on internal conflict!