The high-end game is its own culture that most of us never have the chance to participate in. I think most casual players (and me included) conceive of high-end guilds as consisting of dedicated players who simply have more time to play. They are successful because they are willing to spend double or triple the amount of time that we spend. What follows is a perspective of the high-end culture from an insider who has led a high-end guild for about 3-4 years. The material presented is not meant as a description of all high-end guilds or the only way to succeed as a high-end guild, but rather as an example of how one high-end guild is structured and the experiences of their leader. What emerges from the interviews is a sense that the high-end game has its own culture that isn’t merely quantitatively different from casual play. It’s not simply that high-end guild members play more than casual guild members, but rather that they conceive of the game in an entirely different way.

All names given in this article have been altered to protect the identities of those involved. Talon has been the leader of a high-end guild for the past 3-4 years. The guild began in EverQuest and although it was not one of the earliest guilds to have formed on the server, it gained power quickly and was consistently the first guild on the server to kill many of the major named mobs after Shadows of Luclin was released (e.g., Tunare, Arch Lich, Avatar of War, High Priest of Ssra). Recently, they were the first to kill Ragnaros on their server in World of Warcraft. On that same day, Talon graduated with a master’s degree in telecommunication management.