The closest I've come to real 'loot drama' is when a couple of my guildies and I (they a Shaman and a Warrior, I a Priest) all rolled on a particularly sweet mace from one instance. Initially, the other two objected to my rolling; after all, I mostly do the healing rather than melee, so they thought that they could put it to better use. I pointed out that, when I either run out of mana or am soloing with no one to keep the mobs off me, I need a good melee weapon as a backup. While it's true that my melee DPS is less critical than theirs, it's still important; furthermore, both of them can wield other, better weapons, whereas I'm stuck with maces, staves, and daggers. I won the item, by the way. [WoW, M, 23]

In World of Warcraft, there's a crafting profession called Enchanting. Whereas other professions require gathering resources like metal or plants or leather, Enchanting 'disenchants' found items into elemental parts, and uses those parts to imbue other items with better powers. The better the disenchanted item, the better the elemental parts they receive. I've been in 'roll if you can use it' groups with Enchanters, and often they will roll for everything, including items not usable by their class, arguing that they can disenchant those items for their crafting profession. This can cause some hard feelings when the Mage Enchanter keeps winning two-handed axes and mail armor that could be well used by other characters in the group. If asked, some Enchanters will agree to only roll on class usable items, but some will get obstinate and claim they have the right to roll on everything. I tend to either boot that player if I'm leading the group, or leave the group myself in those cases. [WoW, M, 21]

My Anarchy Online guild got into the habit of raiding 'Pocket Bosses' when the Shadowlands expansion came along. Bosses were spawned if you found their 'pattern', which were made up of multiple components and took several players to assemble. Howver, it was often one person who would find the individual pieces through hours of single-minded hunting. Being highly ranked in the guild, I wrote a cursory loot policy on our forums, encouraging the distribution of loot in the most equal way possible, giving priority to those who would benefit the most from a drop. Feedback was encouraging, and I cheerily anticipated our first Pocket Boss raid; patterns on this occasion were being supplied by a single dedicated player, Bas.

Upon distributing the first of the raid's drops, my initial enthusiasm quickly melted away when Bas became noticeably upset with the looting policy. Pocket Boss loot sold for very appreciable sums of credits, and Bas wanted more than a few of the drops in return for his hard work. This idea was at odds with the loot policy that had been discussed, and our gathering immediately became uncomfortably tense. I hurriedly attempted to reach a compromise, but something had broken between us. For the rest of the evening, Bas would grudgingly and hesitantly voice his desired portion after several requests, and I would attempt to distribute the remaining loot to those who could use them. The guild eventually created a more polished plan that incorporated what had been learned, but the tension between Bas, and I, the creator of the original draft, never fully eased. This event showed me that loot problems are inevitable- I encouraged feedback for the loot policy before the raid, but many did not respond. Dilemmas like these will always be with us, so I've became more tolerant towards such events, and try to sooth them when they do arise. [AO, M, 18]

There was one time though where I did a raid and a rogue set item dropped. I was a level 58 rogue at the time playing WoW. The level cap is 60. It was a guild raid. There were 2 other rogues there who were eligible to roll on the item. Another rogue had won a blue item already. I rolled the highest out of us three but the other two rogues were level 60. I had just joined the guild a few days prior and many of the rogues were claiming seniority over such a drop. I didn't say anything and left it up to the guild leader to decide. After much talk on vent (or so I was told after by a friend of mine.) The guild leader decided I should receive the item. Apparently almost everyone except the guild leader was against me but the leader stuck to the rules and said until they established seniority loot rules he would have to go by the current rules they were using which was just a roll. Many of the rogues were angered by this decision because they had been in the guild for a couple months and all of a sudden I was in for a couple days and got an item they have been trying to get for a long while. [WoW, M, 16]

I often play (WoW) with a close RL friend of mine and we often share horror stories of groupings gone bad. He told me of a raid on the Scarlet Monastery--an instanced dungeon for middling high players. He was together with his fiancée and her parents, who all play the game, as well as a guild mate. Now, my friend is a paladin and uses melee weapons; his father-in-law-to-be is also a paladin. His intended's mother, however, is a hunter who uses primarily ranged weapons. Going through the instance, they were following the traditional and understood policy of taking turns looting (game-enforced) and rolling on green (magical) or better items.

One thing to understand is that my friend tends to be an honorable person, and perhaps a bit too giving for his own good. That said, one thing that will piss him off is for a person to roll on an item (bind-on-pickup in particular) that they can't use. That night, his fiancée’s mother, the hunter, rolled on every single BoP melee weapon she could find, and won a good portion of them. Her reasoning was that since my friend already had a weapon (it was quite crappy) he couldn't possibly need any of those, while she, however, needed the money.

In the days afterwards, I got to listen to much ranting about that. My friend tried to state the problem politely to her, and his fiancée, who understood the problem, tried to talk to her mother, but she wouldn't listen. My friend (who was highest level and the party leader) could very well kick his future mother-in-law from the group but with some serious RL complications. So, he put up with it and grumbled for the next week and resolved to in the future not go on raids with her (he's already broken this--he can't refuse when his girl asks him to join them). His fiancée talked to her mother about looting and apparently she seems to be a bit better, but I know that it is a source of stress for my friend. [anon]

I regularly play online games with my husband. I find that playing with someone nearby (in voice range) is a great asset for online gaming. Knowing my husbands play style and him knowing mine, makes all the difference in our game enjoyment. We know what to expect from each other and rely on those things. Being able to play together keeps our relationship strong and playful, both in game and in real life. We always have something to talk about...the day to day RL grind and that ugly monster we had to deal with in game. =D [ATITD, F, 44]

When my best RL friend started playing EQ, the game suddenly became a whole lot more enjoyable. We knew each other pretty well, so we already had a really trusting relationship. We really worked well, he as an ogre warrior, I as a dark-elven cleric. We played together all the time, though eventually he started to outlevel me. Since we saw each other all the time in real life, though, it wasn't a big deal. He would just make new a character, get them high enough level to group up with me again, outlevel me, and start all over again. We went through four characters like that, hehe. Warrior, rogue, druid, shadowknight... I remember grouping with all of them with my cleric, and it was always a lot of fun. I've had some good online friends in EQ, some of whom I still chat with, but grouping with my RL buddy was always the most fun I'd had in it. [EQ, M, 23]

At first playing with people I knew in real life was fun, but it soon became an issue of me being the higher level player coming to the help of my friends. It grew to the point where I couldn't play my high level character half the time because I had to help them all the time. It even stressed the friendship so much that I have very little contact with some of them, and absolutely no contact with others. [EQ, M, 25]

I briefly played with my little cousin in the beta for Lineage many years ago. It was terrible, because I always felt as if it were my duty to make sure he was always getting adena, and the right weapons, and the right spells, and on and on. I don't want to play games to just have another outlet for the responsibilities i have in real life with the same people. [CoH, M, 19]

I've played online with a few friends I've known in real life on many separate occasions, mostly in high school, when some fellow students and I would get together online after school. Most recently, I've been getting together in a MMORPG with a very close friend of mine who moved recently. It gives us an opportunity to still 'see' each other and be able to do things together, unlike just chatting (either on the phone or online) where we can't interact on the same level. Being able to 'see' one another and then go hunting or hang around town feels much closer to getting together in real life than talking on the phone or e-mailing one another does. [Realm Online, M, 23]

the playing experience was a lot more fun. my friend and i live far apart, so the ability to contribute to a 'project' together was a great way to reinforce our relationship. working together was easy and the play experience more fun because we both know what the other likes, finds amusing, etc. what did happen was that our real life relationship was strengthened somewhat because we had a shared experience. notably, the same used to happen to us when we were younger and would 'terrorize' IRC chat rooms. [Vendetta, M, 26]

I play MMO's with my fiancée. I'm a graduate student on the west coast, and he lives on the east coast. It's a way for us to do things together. In game, we were much the same as out of the game. I think it helped the relationship, because it was more 'personal' contact than through phone calls, email, or some sort of instant messaging program. [DAoC, F, 29]

I play almost every day with my real life boyfriend (soon to be husband). We work very well together in game and it makes for a great playing experience. Knowing each other (as well as being in the same room together) makes it easier to play an MMO because you know how each other speaks, and this means less typing in game, which can slow you down sometimes. No in game experiences have changed our relationship, if anything we are closer because we share something together that we both enjoy. [UO, F, 22]

I play with my boyfriend. We 'dork out' together, side by side on our respective computers. Gaming is considered to be quality 'us' time. During game play, there's a lot of high emotions, yelling and screaming. But we value the game time because it brings us closer together. And it's a lot more fun if you can coordinate efforts verbally (instead of through the chat window). It's important for couples to have a common activity that they participate in on a regular basis. Our common interest is gaming. Actually, I don't think I would play if it weren't for him, but he plays regardless. [AO, F, 23]

I've played with a work colleague, that I sat beside most days and enjoyed that. Probably bought us closer together and we are good friends rather than colleagues now. Also played with my wife for a while, which was very enjoyable as I was partaking in something I enjoyed with the person I most wanted to be with. [EQ2, M, 39]

Gaming with my boyfriend in an MMO was a really enjoyable and enlightening experience. Knowing each other very well in real life made it easier in my opinion to play together. The two relationships were seperate (real and virtual). I noticed many of the ways we're different when playing together. I for example love to help others and be part of a team, he'd rather just get xp and levels and items and very much enjoyed player killing and was usually rude or mean to others in the game. It was a different side of him I had never seen, he's very different online. He has quit playing and I continued, it sometimes puts a strain on our relationship, but usually we're fine. He plays other games now, even though we're gaming a lot we're always in the same room and talk and laugh a lot, and still love each other very much. [EQ, F, 20]

I currently play with an ex-colleague. My colleague and I lost contact with each other after I left my job because our lives had taken different directions. I started up and account on EverQuest II and called my colleague and told him about it. That day he signed up and now we play together almost every night and even talk on the phone again. I'd say we're as close now as we were when we were working together. Since he always needs to be the best at everything, playing with him can be difficult at times. He plays often and is motivated by gaining experience and levels. His goal is always to be the highest level character in the game. I like to play multiple characters and find enjoyment in doing quests, helping others, chatting, role-playing, etc. His character (he concentrates on one at a time) will surpass mine in levels and we end up splitting up in the game. He doesn't care to slow down to wait for my character to catch up to his unless he needs my character to help his character with something. [EQ2, F, 28]

My boyfriend and I have played many MMORPGS together and, in my opinion, the experience is always a poor one. We each have different playing styles: I get frustrated by how he always wants to group with me (sometimes I like to play alone), and he gets annoyed when I recreate my character (which I tend to do frequently), causing him to lose an equal-leveled partner. [CoH, M, 22]

I play with my husband and many of my old high school friends often. My relationship with my husband has made it a lot easier to play together--we get along really well both in game and out of game. However, the game has brought out conflicts within my group of friends. The conflicts--mostly having to do with social class and monetary status--have continued into the game, amplified and reflected within the game. One member of our group of friends, for example, stumbled largely by luck into a high-end raiding guild that helped him get a lot of very nice loot. This became a real sore point for some of my friends, and it became clear that they had always seen this person as having unfair class advantages from his family all our lives. So I would say gaming didn't change our relationships at all (except make it possible to play together scattered all over the world), but it added a new, symbolic way for us to play out the psychological dramas always lurking in our real lives too. [EQ, F, 35]

Often my character would get more loot and/or responsibility than my husband during raids. This would cause a rift between us in real life. Also, I would often find myself getting on to my husband for not being very skillful. He would break mez, run up on the puller etc. It would embarrass me in front of my guild mates...resulting in either me silently resenting him or me giving him a good tongue thrashing about not paying attention. [EQ, F, 27]

In some respects playing with my roommate was excellent. We ran a guild and between us were able to talk about things inside and outside the game. Unfortunately the bad side was that disagreements didn't always end in the game, and often carried through to affect the atmosphere in the house. He would do some utterly stupid things sometimes, and I’m sure vice versa. [AO, F, 25]

I started playing EQ in order to spend time with my then boyfriend (who I lived with) Initially, it was a good experience, but as time went on and my characters leveled faster than his, playing together was more irritating than anything else. He was intensely jealous that I excelled more than he in a game that he had been playing much longer. We had separate friends in EQ and he grew jealous of my online friends. Ultimately the game that I had started playing to spend time with him became a huge downfall in our relationship. He began to accuse me of spending more time with my EQ buddies than with him, that I cared more about them, etc.. [EQ, F, 29]

I had a real life friend playing on the same server as I did on EverQuest. It was neither good or bad, but we had a lot of arguments. He didn't know the game as well as I did, even though he started first, so he disagreed with me a lot. I also lend him money every so often, but he did not focus on repaying back to me. In a way, it loosened the relationship [DAoC, M, 18]

At first, my wife and I started to play SWG to do something together. Unfortunately we only opened one account, so she had a toon on one server and I had one on another, therefore this rarely happened. Furthermore, with her being more outgoing and social than I, she developed friendships more rapidly and was invited to do more interesting things, thus leveling her toon much faster than I did mine. This led to her getting more and more of the playtime, until I hardly played at all and she played VERY frequently. It has caused strain on our marriage and I have since developed a resentment for something I initially really enjoyed playing. [SWG, M, 34]

A co-worker of mine drew me in to playing Asheron's Call. Since we sat next to each other at work and both became intensely absorbed in the game rules, mechanics and adventures we actually spent a good portion of our work days discussing, creating charts, planning quests, and mapping out careers for the game. In-game we enjoyed a lot of teamwork, we pooled our resources together and both became experts on the game. His real life bipolar personality and high stress level drove him to take the game a little too seriously, and it carried over to our work environment, which turned very sour. Although he quit the game, I still had to deal with him at work and my only escape from him was when we were all laid off. This story is odd to me because normally you can just squelch a grief player in-game or move to a different server, but in this case the caustic 'virtual' personality plagued me in real life. [EQ2, M, 36]

I was introduced to EverQuest by a co-worker. I was the Director of the department in which he worked, but we had become friends. I became very interested in EQ and took time outside of the game to research quests, skills, and the like. After a few months my own knowledge of EQ was greater than that of my friend, and my main character had surpassed his highest level toon.

The EQ world can be social or solitary depending on how you choose to play, and I had developed an in-game reputation for being knowledgeable of my class, and a reliable player all around. That reputation resulted in my being invited to join a well-respected guild. This created tension in the real life relationship with my co-worker. I couldn't invite him to the guild, and while I liked him as a RL friend, I wasn't fond of his play style. Eventually we stopped hanging out much in RL, and he started alternate characters to avoid interacting with me in-game. There was a definite, tangible effect on my real life friendship with that person based on how we choose to play a video game. [EQ, M, 33]

2 of my friends where basically really sucky at playing games and thus I had them removed from the guild. This obviously caused some friction IRL but luckily not so much as our friendship ended. I used the analogy of 'Michael Jordan doesn't have all of his RL friends playing on the same team as them' to justify this. I guess it boils down to whether or not you think that a RL friendship is enough of a reason to make your OL gaming experience less fun that it could be. [WoW, M, 30]

I played the game with a romantic partner who has since become just a friend. In fact, we were romantically involved for only a short time, our friendship is more significant. We have played together now for 3-4 years. For the first couple of years (as both romantic partners and friends) we fought in-game CONSTANTLY, in a way that we did not fight in real life. It was so maddening.

He had played the game since creation date, I started two years in. He knew everything and he was very bossy and controlling and it made me insane. (Not to mention how many times he lead me to my death.) I would get more furious playing the game with him then I think I had ever gotten in real life. I am typically very mild, but he made me feel like a piece of luggage and I would get so mad that my eyes would water and I would have to log out. Often when I logged in I hoped he wasn't on.

I kept making chars and not giving the names to him. It baffled me. 'It's only a game,' I would tell myself. But I felt like a puppet. Or a disgruntled 50s housewife. I felt like I did not have a char, I was just an extension of his char. It speaks to the immersion level of the game, because I was truly upset on a personal-identity level. What is interesting, is that we don't fight at all anymore. We still fought for some time after ceasing to be romantically involved and only being friends, so I don't think that was it.

I honestly believe that we both changed in RL because of this experience. I learned not to get so upset if I'm not in complete control and don't always know everything about what is going on. And he learned how to be co-operative and not controlling, and how to communicate rather than dictate. Now there is no one I'd rather game with, and I don't have as much fun playing when he isn't on. I think the in-game arguing, though it never occurred to the same level outside of the game, was an intense version of something that existed in real life, but was not as clearly seen in real life. The game situation heightened tensions that were more muted in real life. Mild communication problems in real life became extreme in the game. [EQ, F, 34]

I play with 3 other family members. It is a BLAST! The advantages in having all of us in the same room when we are all playing together are numerous. Outside of the game it is a fun topic of conversation and very much like having a hobby we all do together. It has also given me the opportunity to see my family members in different roles from those one usually sees around the dinner table. [EQ, F, 49]

In the real world my grandson is a fairly silent, somewhat withdrawn, boy who acts much younger than his 12 years; inside the game his characters are outgoing and verbose. In the real world he hides his intelligence and asserts that he is uninterested in most things most of the time; his ingame attitude is one of immense curiosity -- he's discovered things about some of the zones within hours of his first visit to them that some long time players don't know. In game he values loyalty and fair play very highly; out of game he seems unaware of the concepts. He regularly tries to help characters who are lower level than he is by communicating either out of character or using tells. e.g. he said to me during one game, 'you med for a while Nana' and went zipping off, up the hilll and out of sight; on returning he explained that he'd seen another character that was 'green' going somewhere 'over his head'. [EQ, F, 58]

I used to play online MMORPGs with my wife. I found that while she tended to be more restrained and submissive in real life, out in the virtual world she was a good deal more confident in herself and in what her character could do; it was as though all the concerns she had regarding her abilities in the real world were left behind and she was free to be more like her real self.

It's perhaps a little sad to admit, but prior to seeing her express those traits, I had considered her personality quite limited due to her shyness and lack of confidence. My role as a husband was part equal and part superior; I made the decisions for our relationship, I decided what we would do for dinner, I took care of things and acted as much parent as spouse.

When I saw her start to show confidence in-game I started giving her real world reminders of her other personality. In retrospect I could have taken steps to build her confidence and help change her personality around without the game as a motivating factor and sandbox, but sadly I probably would not have tried -- it was knowing that she had the potential that in turn caused my change in approach.

She gained a lot of confidence in herself. Instead of being a quiet and uncertain woman, she now goes out with friends, enjoys karaoke, has worked a couple of jobs (previously she was afraid to go to interviews!). [FFXI, M, 25]

People playing LOTS are no good. Super hardcore people are useless. What happens is they play loads and loads, then they gain lots of items. Then within 8-16 months, they take a look in the mirror and don’t like what they see (someone who hasn’t left the house for those months) and then they quit. They just plain vanish with all the gear they got.

So we’re actually very suspicious of people that play too much. Stable people who play enough are the best. It’s the best from a purely selfish point of view too - no wasted loot. We had such crash and burn people go through us, fleeing from state to state when debtors were catching up (we lost one hardcore because he had to flee the cops … I mean come on).

If I said something, people needed to do it instantly and they did. You never argued, especially on raids. Like I said, the organization was military style. To be successful you have to be organized.

Yes and no. We did vote on everything. Loot distribution was communistic really. Points were [given] for time spent but the guild leader got same amount of points per time as the newest recruit. So dictatorial like, say, a US military unit in a war, cut off from communications. If shit hits the fan, yes, they WILL follow the commands of the captain, but mostly because they know that if they don’t act in a cohesive fashion, they will lose. In other words, the power is given democratically, but wielded in a dictatorial way.

I mean to be realistic I’m a nobody in the greater scheme of things. No matter how good gear I have, people still won’t know. If I paint out some magelo or whatever, it’s meaningless really, but what people DO know are the guilds - “oh shit, the guild that first killed Ragnaros / Onyxia / Quarm / whatever”.

They do not mind at all playing other characters. Their own character is nearly meaningless.

Coming from a VERY equal society and a family with a really strong mother in it, I found the whole situation with women strange. Well, women seem to like attachment more in the online environment and for all intents and purposes, an uber guild resembles military more than anything else.

Now there’s a reason why military doesn’t like relationships in it. The same reason applies to militaristic uberguilds - the suspicions of favouritism etc., not to mention women practically always aim for the top. This is not a critique as such. I mean it’s quite understandable. In a healthy guild, the most charismatic, outgoing and smart people are leaders. I sure as hell would prefer them.

They start wanting “protection” from whoever they’re with. So typical of me to get tells like “she thinks you’re being mean, and I agree with her (yeah sure you do)”. Just made me sigh every time. Frankly, I prefer people who don’t do that. Male students are the best.

The interesting difference between me and the original 35 year old guild leader was that he always spent hours upon hours talking with people. He always made a point of "understanding" people's issues. I, on the other hand, was usually extremely direct with people. If you were talking nonsense I just told it to you, and ended up saying that if they didn't like it, there was nothing forcing them to be in the guild... but that I had to focus on the guild, and couldn't afford to play shrink to their teenage/middle-aged angst.

Frankly the whole thing drove me a great deal to the right. Coddling people gets you nowhere, except having to coddle them even more. If you just tell them to figure things out for themselves and be honest with them, you are likely to get quite a bit further than you'd get with coddling.

Pretty much every older leader started playing shrink when they should have confined themselves to the role of the leader. People started demanding more and more of their time, while I always made it clear that if you wanted answers from me, you should probably ask yes/no questions.

1. Thick skin. There'll be a lot of harsh language thrown around, and critique will be honest and sometimes even excessive. If you can't take it, just go away already. Crying about criticism will be the fastest way to get voted out.

2. Attendance. If you aren't there, what use are you supposed to be?

3. Attitude. If you can't adapt to the "guild comes first" thinking, you have a potential of ebaying, simply being less useful or theoretically even causing drama. This is basically a sliding scale from "extremely good" to "drama". This is often tested by having them take a lot mild abuse/neglect originally. We're not courting them, they are courting us, and they should be aware of this. If they stick to it for a month of being nearly ignored, they are the type of material we will like. Never giving up is the quality we find most appealing.

4.Skill. Usually people who fit the above criteria do pretty well here. Yet sometimes there are phenomenally skilled people who don't do that well in #2 and #3. For example right now we have one player who does really well in #1, #2 and #4, but has an attitude problem. This is sufficient for us to try to work on the attitude some, but our patience is not unlimited.

Each one of my characters has a story, each one of them have different motivations. I've played everything from a fratricidal zealot to an elf who trades in human slaves to machiavellian manipulators. I always enjoy creating characters, because coming up with something different is such an enjoyable challenge. [DAoC, F, 23]

My tauren druid, Jionania, is quite a complex character as the main idea of her story is that she was born into a tribe of druids, but is fascinated by engineering to the point where engineering is more like her class now than druid is. The important details to the following event are that Odelisque is a Undead girl who was my character's best friend and that Toorsk is the tauren she planned on marrying. Since Toorsk wasn't a druid, Jio needed to take him to Moonglade to meet her tribe. Since we were nowhere near strong enough to make the journey, Toorsk went out into the wilderness to train, while Jio continued her studies in engineering. A week passed and Jio began to worry, constantly sending letters to him. All she got in the mail was a letter from Odelisque saying that she was feeling the call of the scourge and that Jio best stay away from her since she had no idea what would become of her. Needless to say Jio broke down. Toorsk still hadn't written (it seems he just stopped playing the game) and it wasn't long before she went out to search for him and ending up dieing alot. It eventually an orc named Morkris calmed her down, and she is beginning to get over Toorsk and is falling for a guy who she just found up is already married. This is also making her worry that she is just addicted to attention and will fall for whatever Tauren is giving her attention at the moment. She has a lot of issues she needs to work out so she's a bit messed up emotionally. [WoW, M, 17]

I'm not a hard-core role-player or on a role-playing server, but the two characters I play now have very distinct personalities. It's important for me to have backstories for my characters before I really enjoy playing them. For example, I know that Trigger, my dwarven rogue, is the younger sister of my husband's character's (Hawthorne) best friend. Thus when Trigger plays, it's with a great deal of enthusiasm and not necessarily a great deal of sense. When Trig and Hawthorne group together, there's a great deal of friendly bickering and /bonk going on. I think it's a replacement for the acting I did in school, which is so hard to fit into my life as an adult. [WoW, F, 36]

When we first started, I voted for an RP server, but was outvoted by the rest of my friends, who didn't want to have to deal with the RP snob types, and were willing to put up with more b-net kiddies not to. At the earliest opportunity, however, I started an alt on one of the RP servers to play when my main server was down or I just wanted to get away from the dumbasses. This has been a lot of fun; I've been playing as a Night Elf Druid who's older than dirt, but has been hibernating for milennia. It's been fun to play out her first encounters with humans, gnomes, and orcs, none of whom existed when she went to sleep. I've been playing her as the type that's incredibly wise, formerly very powerful, but somewhat confused about the modern world. Combined with some friends of mine, playing VERY different characters (an innocent, childlike priest and a bloodthirsty, sarcastic rogue), it's been a blast, and made me wish we'd rolled on one from the start; I know my holy undead priest would be a lot of fun to RP. [WoW, M, 23]

I love the stories around the new Everquest. I went from zone to zone talking to people trying to figure out how we arrived where we are in the story - 500 years later and the moon of Luclin now gone. Where are those frogloks? I am anxious about getting through certain zones because I want to see/do more. You can 'mark' items in the game that lets people know you were there, so I'm always deeply envious when someone beats me to the punch. I've yet to get my name on an item whereas my boyfriend has. I think I'll trip him next time he's racing off to mark something. [EQ, F, 37]

I'll almost always shy away from classes without some sort of improved method of travel because I love to travel, explore, and learn the story, not necessarily so that I can be a part of it, but so that I have a grip on the story and where it's going. This area ties in greatly with roleplaying if you choose to explore for story rather than explore for superiority. I guess I focus on mechanics over roleplaying, but I do explore more for roleplaying reasons than I do for achievement. [WoW, M, 20]

Of the reasons you give, this best fits why I enjoy playing....but not exactly. I do enjoy exploring, but what I enjoy even more is the creation and participation in a story. Exploring the world is a large part of that. I'm a big reader....fantasy, sci-fi, and interesting biography. When I'm having my 'best times' in game is when I'm pursuing a quest or participating in some grand adventure. Grinding, as a whole, doesn't interest me one bit. And I don't need to be the central figure in the storyline, like you are in Single Player RPG's. [EQ2, M, 30]

I love to role play. Not so much in a group (as good roleplay groups are hard to come by) but when I play solo I love to put myself in the game. I really immerse myself into the quest that I am doing. Listening/reading the text and story line and really feel like I am doing something for the world or someone in game. It's a great way to tune out the real world and de-stress. To simply play the game and let a story come out of the actions I am doing, is the best way of playing in my experience. [EQ2, F, 22]

I absolutely love exploring the world. I'm playing World of Warcraft and will often complete quests in which I'll get no experience simply because I enjoy the story. [WoW, M, 27]

A web of friends and friends of friends, we often come up with a concept and build a small team of coordinated characters and costumes and play together in character. Often this will last only a week or two, but usually at least one player becomes enamored of a particular concept and keeps playing, even as the group will move on. This is in addition to playing our mains. All my cross gender characters come from this setup. I do have character concept for every character, and they do act differently, according to their nature. I generally have a set of characteristics I decide at character generation. In COH it involves which Hero to initially visit, which travel power to take, whether the character dances or not, rp social style, etc. [CoH, M, 50]

We created a clan named 'The Party', and we roleplayed this silly mix of communist/totalitarian/fascist regime, we talked about how we must do 'Father's' bidding, and it was quite fun. We killed members of our own faction who were not part of 'The Party' citing them as unloyal and guilty of putting The Party in jeopardy. It was a laugh and we ended up getting fairly organized and powerful. Before the coming of The Party, the faction was full of in-fighting anyway. [WoW, M, 19]

If I didn't roleplay, I probably wouldn't still be playing UO. RP has been the chief source of enjoyment for the last two years. My main character isn't really too much different from me, but the world is very different, and RP really sucks you in. It's very seductive. I know a lot of RPers who have had problems during their lives - physical illness, depression, family troubles - and in-depth roleplay is very good way of not dealing with the real world for a while. It's as dangerous and addictive as any drug, in all honesty. But I enjoy it, so I will continue to do it. [UO, F, 37]

I'm a casual role-player but enjoy trying out new roles with my characters, especially exploring aspects of my personality that are not dominant in real life. I tend to be more out-going and adventurous than I generally am in real life. At the same time, I'm not really interested in escaping from the real world. [WoW, F, 25]

I don't use MMORPG's to try out 'new' identities, but to indulge the parts of my identity that I want to spend more time with. Largely this is an exploration of my desire to be useful, to be helpful, and above all, to be competent at what I do. As an EQ enchanter, this equated not to getting uber drops, but to being the person who understood mezzing and aggro well enough to save the group when things got bad. [CoH, F, 35]

I also tend to play MMORPGs simply to be someone else. Whether it's an athletic warrior (which I'm not in RL), studious wizard (I have been called 'smart' but never 'studious'), or even going so far as to try playing a female character, each one gives me different perspective on how the virtual world and our own operate. [WoW, M, 29]

I read a lot about the games i play, love to go to sites and places no one visits. I enjoy playing alone while i am exploring new horizons. Its great to feel the atmosphere the game builders put into a game when there is no rush on my character. [EQ, M, 51]

Just walking in a direction and seeing where it will lead and what is around is something I have done in nearly every MMORPG. Even when traveling between two points I have been to often, I sometimes walk instead of using whatever instant travel option there is. It's not the destination, but the journey that makes things interesting. Many game designers have put little 'gems' in the environment, sometimes just pretty locations begging for a screenshot but often you can also find little inside jokes or homage to other games or things from television or even history. [UO, F, 30]

I detest games that limit where I can go. Don't make an island that I can see on my screen but that my char can't get to. Well, if it is a level restriction, that is different. But I am talking scenery. And I want to be able to go where ever I want. If it is too hard for my char and my char dies, well, then it is a learning experience. I won't play games that will not allow me to explore every nook and cranny. [AC1, F, 54]

I have always loved exploring the world around me. I love to search through everything just to see what's out there. I wish that I could just run off and explore as easilly as it is done in EverQuest or anything else like it. I just like the feeling of finding the small cave entrance or narrow corridor that you never noticed before, what's in it? where does it go? The sense of adventure truly lies in exploration. [EQ, M, 26]

I have walked off of hundreds or thousands of cliffs looking for hidden ledges. [WoW, M, 35]

I like to search every corner and stairwell. I greet every NPC that I can. I read the text for the quest givers. I try to start and finish every quest available to me at a given level. I voraciously gather knowledge, tips, facts, and seek to unlock that which no one has found to date. I take my time when others rush through. I like to cover as much of an area as possible. My inquisitive nature has earned me several deaths, but you can never know what lurks around the corner! I have spent up to an hour just running around, looking, observing, noticing, collecting, harvesting. A bit neurotic? I wholeheartedly agree. [EQ2, F, 25]

I enjoy finding the 'easter eggs' in a game. Recently on WoW I was in Booty Bay and was checking out the rings one of the vendors was selling, I had to replace my keyboard because I sprayed coke all over the damn thing when I read the descriptions. For instance one was for a cubic zirconia gem, and it said 'Trust us, she'll know'. The other was for a 'tiny diamond ring' and the write up said something like, 'Hey, at least it's a diamond'. [WoW, M, 26]

I take pride in knowing places and things, having a good knowledge of what level mobs in this area where, what they where weak against, strong against, good dropps that could come off of them. In fact i was even promoted to officer in a guild i was in simply because i was always telling people where they should solo or where their party should go to. This sort of thing requires alot of work and play, people who just go to the highest levle miss alot of the game. Only people who take several characters through can really understand the entire game world. [WoW, M, 20]

I am honestly a knowledge seeker. I love reading the in-game letters, books, manuals and other written materials and listening to NPCs go on about their lives. The more I know about the world, the better the picture I get of it and it's inhabitants' motivations. Exploring is, for me, much like gathering other knowlege and also is important when seeking it. Exploring the world around my character is also practical -- if there is an attack on the area, or someone needs help, I would know where to find them and the best route to get there. [WoW, M, 22]

I like recognition - not for being the most powerful player, not for having the most money or the best equipment, but simply for being the best at what I do. I am a research-monkey at heart and enjoy finding new things, cataloging them, and discovering the unknown. Even more than that, I like writing about the things I've found, creating guides and FAQs to help other players learn, and trying to make knowledge freely accessible. That such things bring me a measure of fame and name-recognition plays no small part in why I enjoy this work; I like being stroked as much as any other person. I'm very good at what I do, and I like being known for it. I participate in online communities where I can share information, both on a server level (our default 'world' unit) and on the universal forums for my game. I suppose I just like being well-thought-of. [FFXI, M, 25]

I like to explore. I love learning things that weren't previously known -- where an enemy spawns, where an item drops, what the actual underlying mechanics of a game effect are. I like writing guides and FAQs to help other players; exploring helps me satisfy that particular aim. I get a kick out of being weeks or months ahead of the latest published gaming guides, and a bigger kick when I'm rapidly making them dated and irrelevant. [FFXI, M, 25]

I was playing World of Warcraft and puttering around Brill (still my favorite Undead city at level 30). I glanced at the clock and it was just coming up on 8pm. I heard an odd, rhythmic clanging sound. I hadn't noticed the sound before so I did some investigating. The sound was loudest closer to the Town Hall. When it stopped, I realized that it had sounded eight times and it was Brill's clock tower chiming the hour. The quality of the sound absolutely perfect for an Undead town ; disjointed, clangy and broken. And the attention to detail! Someone made the effort to get that in to the game. I found that absolutely delighted. [WoW, F, 26]

Immersion is an important part as far as feeling like I'm really part of the game world. I don't necessarily Role-Play a lot, but feeling like I'm 'in' the game is really fun. For example, in EQ, I felt like I was just playing a random computer game. Whereas with WoW I really feel like I'm involved because there's a rich history and I know a lot of the history about it. WoW has more depth and immersion than EQ in my opinion because of this. My friend and I agree that Everquest should be renamed Elfquest because the 'plot/history' seems to revolve around being an elf, or not being an elf. [WoW, M, 18]

Escape is the main reason I got into these games in the first place. An argument at home or a problem with a girl or difficult school work, for me, can be easily forgotten or put aside if I can log into my character for a while and perform whatever that characters job is with finesse. It feels good to succeed, and for some people like myself it feels good to succeed in a virtual world too. [EQ2, M, 22]

I have a high-stress technical job. I've been a gamer since I was five years old (thanks to my dad being an arcade manager for awhile). Gaming has always, /always/ been a source of stress-relief for me. It was when I was young and it has continued as I've grown older. I have used gaming to avoid thinking about real-life problems before, but that's just an avoidant behavior - putting things off doesn't make a problem go away. In many ways it's the same kind of escapism that alcoholics engage in, albeit without the propensity for chemical dependancy (though perhaps a very similar addictive effect). More often than not, I will still game when I've got a lot on my mind -- at the least I can ask my social network of fellow gamers to help me work out a problem that I may not be able to handle on my own. [FFXI, M, 25]

i started playing mmorpg games (primairly FFXI) as an escape.. a way to deal with the stress i was having. I don't do drugs, i don't smoke, i don't drink... so gaming was my method of escape... i loved being immersed in the virtual world and playing a role (i was a white mage ... level 67). i loved playing the role of a magician/healer ... working together as a team and having everyone involved play the very best they could.... it was so much fun! [WoW, F, 30]

I enjoy playing the game, but it is not any more of an escape than a good book or watching the Discovery channel. I don't have the time nor the energy for role-playing. [WoW, M, 27]

I never really 'immerse' myself in the game. I do not role play, and I play my character the same way I act in real life. I am not the type of person who feels comfortable with 'roles' and am best at being myself. [EQ, F, 22]

Meh. Its more a number crunching game to me. How can you roleplay when its on the internet? It pales in comparison to real roleplaying with friends. [WoW, M, 25]

Making friends and having people to chat with is so important to me. When I was in the WoW beta, I didn't play much because none of my friends were in it, and when I did play, I was always looking for someone to chit chat with. In fact, the only thing lacking for me in the release of WoW is that so many of my guildies from EQ didn't make the switch. I miss them literally every day, everytime I logon, I wish that I could have moved my guild as a whole over to WoW. We all still keep in touch through the message boards, and people who have left the guild have even asked to be requilded in the Iksarian Broods (my guild) before they quit the game. My guild has had several RL meets, and many of the guildies are close, close friends now that talk on the phones etc. [WoW, F, 26]

I like interacting with other people, chatting, etc., but for me the game world is a game world and I have a pretty low desire to make what I consider 'good friends' as that would involve a real-life component I'd rather keep separate from my game playing. [EQ2, M, 39]

I love to talk to people, all of the time. I generally am talking to several people at a time, and feel slightly uncomfortable in silent groups. My friends list grows often. When I played EQ1, I maxed my friends list (100 players) at one point and had to delete a few alts of friends. [EQ2, M, 17]

I greatly enjoy socializing in-game. One of my on-line pals says that I see Everquest/Everquest2 as my pretty little chat room with avatars, which is an accurate description. I have cultivated a group of online friends that I greatly enjoy talking to and have even gone so far as to meet them at the Everquest conventions where I found I still greatly enjoyed their company. The down side of these online relationships is that on the one hand, where people who may have social or physical difficulties can express themselves in an unprejudiced environment, you still don't 'know' a person until you meet them. I have found that while most people are seemingly fairly stable, there are still those that desperately need help.

For whatever reason, people really open up to me (or my avatar as it were) and there have been a few occasions where someone has expressed suicidal urges or told a story that is deeply disturbing. While I can 'listen', I am not trained in counseling and in that regard online relationships can be difficult if not emotionally draining. So, while I can say I deeply enjoy many of my relationships, for the most part I prefer my relationships to be a bit shallow or superficial. It's the only way I can protect myself emotionally.

I want to get on these games and have fun not play pseudo-counselor to folks who have big problems - bigger than I'm equipped to deal with and that I'm definitely not trained to deal with. I wish them all the best, but I like it when our conversations are limited to joking, light stories and accomplishing things. Apologies for the ramblings. [EQ, F, 37]

I probably play mostly to meet new people and make new friends. It's fun having friends all over the world, you can learn from the way they live and do things.. That’s what i mostly enjoy about meeting others in game.. To befriend people and get to know them, hopefully building a lasting friendship even when one of us does end up giving up on whatever game we're playing [EQ2, F, 19]

I'm currently sitting in Las Vegas typing this using the network of a friend I met via EQ... we met IRL last summer when she had reason to visit Boston (I live in Connecticut), and now I'm visiting her for several days. My dearest female friend I also met via EQ; she and her husband and my then signif other (also met via EQ then continued IRL) and two other people (Now also RL friends of mine with whom I exchange visits periodically) grouped every night for about a year before she finally convinced us all to visit her IRL. Since then I not only spend every Xmas with her and her husband (4 times so far) but also visit her for a week every couple of months. They don't even EQ any more but the friendship continues strong and growing :) Via Guild of course I have a world of virtual friends and comrades. We help each other and help each other's friends. [EQ, F, 61]

When i was playing SWG I met a group of ex UO players in a forum and they all knew each other. I jumped in and got to know them quite well and within a matter of a few weeks we had our own player town, guild, in-game chat channel and had even arranged to meet up in real-life. A year later I am still in touch with these guys and consider them to be good friends, meeting up with many of them at least every month. I even went to the wedding of one of them. I also have a very good 'friend' that I met from SWG and have now converted her to an EQ2 player. I helped her out one night and we have been inseparable in game ever since. There is even a bit of a romance blossoming IRL. I have been over to Greece to meet her and her family last October, and she is coming to England to stay with me at Easter. I initially was always Mr Cynical when I read or heard about internet based romance, but I have been pleasantly surprised ;) [EQ2, M, 33]

I believe I am a lucky man, as I married a woman who also has a great love of gaming. We met from different countries in an online gaming guild, played together, and eventually fell in love. I obtained a spousal visa and we have been happily married for 5 years now. We game side-by-side, literally, on new machines at a desk custom-built by my dad. Just goes to show: there are real people behind their own monitors out there and this is certainly a viable medium of communication. Our old guild had gone too far into the realm of powergaming, we felt. The guild leaders loosened their admission policy and allowed obnoxious and rude players into the guild. We felt this compromised the spirit of our guild, so we broke off with our friends and formed our own guild once Everquest II was launched. There is very little structure to our current guild and we do not censor topics nor bad language. The only exception is the need to respect your fellow guildmates. [EQ, M, 27]

i just started playing warcraft, prior to that i played FFXI for nearly a year. the thing i enjoyed most about mmorpg games is the socialization ... the friends you make on line. i have met many people on line, especially when i played FFXI. In fact, that is where i met my fiancee ... we gamed together and spent hours upon hours together for nearly six months. i ended up moving from california to indiana after being constantly together for six months so we could be together in real life. We are very much in love and have plans to get married in real life this summer. [WoW, F, 30]

Socializing is my favorite part of the game. I have played EQ for about 3 years, and in the course of that time I have met many good people, a few of whom I still talk to through email. I met my RL fiance in EQ, we spent 2 years adventuring together in the game, and that in-game relationship led to our RL romance and eventually we moved in together and plan to marry. Some people don't understand how I could meet someone in a game and end up loving them and trusting them RL, to them I can only smile and know they are not gamers. Because gamers know that the characters are real people and in general most people play their characters as a reflection of their RL personalities. Anyways, in EQ my most enjoyable times were socializing. I was always part of a guild for this reason, to have a constant network of friends and comrades. I led a guild for about 1 year, and it was fairly successful, though small, we were all very good friends. Often in the game I spend time and money helping new players just because I want to. [EQ, F, 22]

years back, when i was playing the Beta of Neocron and was one of the 5 best players on the server, i stood in an area where a lot of people met. At that point i had played for 54 Hours straight and was pretty much exhausted. All i did was 'poking' other people (helping them to insert there implants). So in other words i just helped some fellow players and my only reward for doing so was there thanks. But i found that experience to be very rewarding and did that again on several occasions. I would call that socializing just for the fun of it, not for any other measurable reward! [WoW, M, 28]

I am always helpful to new players when I have the time and help protect them when fighting or by making armour for them when I have that skill. Often I keep some of my old equipment around just so I can give it to a new player, and I don't accept money for it in return. Sometimes I will ask for resources they can easily gather, but mostly I just ask that when they outgrow the equipment to do the same and give it to another. Sometimes I have seen people I have helped many levels later and many remember me. Just hearing a 'Hey, you're the nice lady who helped me out as a newb. Thanks a lot.' is enough to make my day. My choice in guilds is along the same lines. I look for friends who are willing to help each other out where they can (with tradeskills, equipment, or hints and tips on how to do things). I don't care about uber equipment or fighting special mobs. I prefer a friendly guildchat where the people don't compare their equipment just like they compare cars in real life. [UO, F, 30]

I have many real life and Online friends, and they are my main reason for continuing to play the game. I enjoy helping others and having help. I enjoy talking about in game and real life happenings. I am still in contact with friends I made over a year ago. [FFXI, F, 23]

I play to have fun with my RL friends who play with me. I rarely group with people I don't know...in fact, I usually despise doing so. But now and then I'll meet someone and become online friends with them. I don't discuss deeply personal things with them, like I would with my RL friends online. I do enjoy levelling, getting good equipment/items, becoming more powerful...but that's not the 'be all, end all' of my reason for gaming. Often, I'm behind my friends in level/experience. I also love exploring or finding that quest that some don't know about. But again, it's not the raison d'etre of my play. It's a combination of all of this. I currently play WoW, instead of CoH, because the majority of my RL friends play it. We move from MMO to MMO with each other. Rarely do we have some playing one and others playing another. We started in EQ. For a small time, many went to DAoC, but they quickly returned to EQ. Many years passed, and then we moved to CoH. We were all in CoH until WoW came out. I hadn't expected to change from CoH to WoW with my friends, mainly because I usually don't like Blizzard products. But w/o my friends, MMOs just aren't as much fun. So I tried WoW and loved it instantly. So, once again, we are all together...in WoW. [WoW, M, 30]

My husband, son and I play. It's a wonderful family experience that we can share all the exciting moments with each other...even if we don't actually group together. Sometimes we play more than we should, but to me it's no different than going out and partying more than you should. I find it nice that I can stay safely at home, with my family and enjoy our time together. [WoW, F, 45]

My girlfriend lives some distance away, and due to flight costs, we do not get to spend a lot of time together. We speak on the phone everyday for hours, and we found an MMORPG is just another great way to spend time together. I think it is much more social than people give credit. Neither of us are adjusting our glasses and are sitting on the edge of our seats when we play, she's normally a swimmer and i'm a bass player--we just enjoy spending time together. [WoW, M, 18]

Making part in a guild will most definitely enhance the experience for any player I think. The social part of the game itself is often (at least for me) almost as big as the gaming part. It has become a substitute for those late-night D&D times with a couple of friends around a table in someone’s dirty basement. I often find myself being way more honest and open to players over the net cause I can relate to them in a way that i mostly cannot IRL. [AO, M, 18]

As in my case, many members of my guild have known each other online for well over 9 years of gaming and it adds a certain flavor to everything. It's more like a 2nd family. We have new grandfathers, newlyweds, college students, a handful of high schoolers (we're 18yrs+ minimum), and many in between. For us, it's more than just a club to go hang out at, it's a comfortable environment wherein we can be who we want to be. We can be ourselves, we can be our characters, or we can blend the two, and any way we go, we'll always be accepted. We're all friends here. [WoW, M, 25]

Due to my experience with guilding in this and one other MMORPG (DAOC), I can't imagine playing without the support of a guild. In fact, that is the main reason why I left DAOC for WOW. The members of my guild on DAOC migrated to WOW. We have reestablished the guild in WOW and very often play together again. It gives me a sense of belonging, and I enjoy the interaction during the game. I still mourn lost friends that have left the MMORPG arena. [WoW, M, 52]

I'm playing World of Warcraft with a guild I've played with for a couple years, starting with Planetside. I like a lot of the guys, the structure, and the focus of the guild. Over-all my guild is a very important part of my gaming experience, and others would agree as well. Many of us planned ahead of time to all play on the same server so that we could open a WoW chapter. [WoW, M, 19]

When World of Warcraft came out we were absolutely thrilled to have something besides EQ to play. We were fed up with EQ and the way it treated its players and the way the game had become completely unbalanced in areas. So, we moved into WoW with several friends from EQ and it's worked well. The skills we developed in EQ and the teamwork and group dynamic transferred well to WoW and has allowed us to do some hard stuff we would have been hard pressed to accomplish otherwise. [WoW, M, 30]

While i enjoy all of the above, that is strictly a byproduct of the fact that thats really what mmorpgs are designed to do, and thus doing anything in an mmorpg would result in one of the above things being done. A strong motivation for me, and what has most likely contributed the most to my addiction is working with other people and existing within a perfect and efficient group. The aims of this group are not important, we could be grinding or camping a spawn to get an item for someone, when everything goes perfect, no communication is needed, and everyone just does what they should exactly as it should be done, i just feel great. While i would much prefer to follow a good group leader, most the time, as i usually play classes that are able to control the flow of a fight and thus require greater situational awareness to even play than more straight forward classes(that is, a bad warrior can still kinda function in their role if played badly), i end up being the leader. It just makes me feel wonderful when my group does something other groups are not able to do. Back when i was playing daoc me and my friend had made a pally/minstrel duo and took out things that most people said you couldn’t do with even a full group... it made me feel good. This has been a great source of joy and frustration for me, because even if things go well when a group member is not doing something right i get agitated and an argument is likely to break out... people just don’t understand what im upset about. Conversely if we wipe but everyone was playing at the best of their ability and every little trick had been done, while im sitting there waiting for a rez i still feel just grand. Interacting with people and being able to depend on them, and be depended on by them... that’s why i play. [WoW, M, 20]

Making friends is great, you meet people from all over with whom you would normally have no contact, as I am disabled and am stuck at home most of the time, the ability to get out and meet people and have fun together goes a long way in lessening the trapped in stuck 24/7 feeling that people expect you to feel [EQ2, M, 36]

In real life I'm very shy, but behind a computer screen I feel I can talk freely, partially because of the fact that I don't have any personal connections and obligations to people. Also, I feel more secure talking to in-game friends about personal problems than people I know in real life. [FFXI, M, 18]

I like meeting new people and socializing - at least, I do in game. Socialization has always been something I felt I was terrible at in real life. Inside the game all the visual cues handed down through society are lost - we're reduced to verbal communication only - I've found that medium far easier to handle. I feel far less afraid when I'm dealing with people in this kind of environment. When I was younger, I was very quiet and reserved. Games like these helped me learn how to talk to people and how to interact -- more importantly, they've also helped me learn how to be a leader. I've grown up playing games where social interaction was a major component. At 15 I would have been shy and awkward, unable to speak around people I didn't know well. At 25, I'm in command of a team at work and I have no difficulty talking to new people. I still feel shy, but I've learned to hide it better. Making friends has always been something I loved to do, but due to my difficulty being comfortable with socialization it was something I could not do easily. Gaming has helped me learn what goes into making friends, and some of my best I first met in-game. In addition to being a team lead out in real life, I run a guild of approximately 80 people in-game. In the game I feel like one of the popular kids must have in high school; everyone knows me, people are happy to see me, I have a community that is happy when I'm around. I have these things offline, now, also, but the online communities are there 24/7. I can't explain why it's so nice. [FFXI, M, 25]

I started playing DAOC while I was recovering from two devastating years of depression. I was once a very confident and social person, but I felt like I'd forgotten how to interact normally with others, and had lost a lot of my social self-confidence. I thought that role-playing a character would be a good way to 'practice' my social skills. It worked very well! My DAOC character met a wonderful guild of people, and I became very popular with other people in the game just by being the friendly and fun-loving person I am. Being one step removed from my 'real' self gave me the distance I needed to discover who I actually am again, and helped me recover my confidence ('People do like me!') and my sense of humor. [WoW, F, 28]

I generally don't talk to people I don't know. I play with random people but I am not focused on meeting people. [Guild Wars, M, 14]

I don't play well with others. I tend to stick to killing the highest leveled monsters with my pets, by myself and ONE dragon/hiryu/white wyrm, vetting all the way. It gives me pleasure being able to solo otherwise almost unkillable monsters to others, and many times to others attempting the same thing I am. When in my guild (which I rejoined recently after being out of it for 2 YEARS!!) I help others, resurrect when needed, but otherwise I just mope and complain and donate all my gold to the guild fund. [UO, F, 23]

I don't socialize well voluntarily in MMORPGs. I will usually only form a group if necessary for a quest or if a real life personal friend is playing also. That said, I do enjoy most of the groups (and the guild) I am part of. Socialization can be an enjoyable part of the game for me, but I don't normally initiate it. [WoW, M, 28]

It gives me the illusion of progress, I know that. I hate the level of frustrated progress in the r/w so I play the game and lvl up instead. It is *crack* for the achievement center of the brain, like cocaine affects the pleasure center. They need to regulate this industry, or many frustrated children will ruin their school progress. [WoW, M, 34]

As soon as the effort required by the treadmill from me no longer is rewarded with and equally significant reward, I lose interest and stop playing. Thus I rarely hit the max level because when I get close the cost/benefit ratio usually takes a nosedive and it feels like work. [WoW, M, 25]

Also, it is difficult to stop playing if I am very near the next character level. I feel achievement is my greatest motivation for playing. I can't wait to level again and get that new ability or skill or awesome weapon, but I never want to hit max level ... World of Warcraft does provide a lot of interesting 'end game' content that max level players can enjoy and I look forward to that. [WoW, M, 28]

It's encouraging because in an MMORPG you can see a consistent progression of development in your skills...you are getting better at a steady rate...In RL you don't level up when you get ahead, it isn't as obvious. [WoW, M, 31]

Part of the reason I play online games is to experience a sense of achievement. When I put a good deal of time and effort into an in-game task, I am rewarded in a way that's meaningful and measurable: I gain a new item, I finish a difficult quest and get experience points or money, I gain a higher level of proficiency in a skill or ability, or I gain notoriety in the virtual game community. The real world isn't like that. In the real world, there are few quantitative rewards for the effort one puts out merely 'to live'. In the real world, you have to run errands, shop at the grocery store, clean your house, do your taxes, keep all your papers organized, do the laundry, etc. etc.. There is no sense of 'achievement' or forward progression in these things -- they are merely daily must do's. There is no sparkly new item or new skill waiting for me after I do my 6th load of laundry in a week.

Then there's work: you go to work and do your job. You may be lucky and have a job that's incredibly rewarding and offers you a sense of achievment, but I'd bet that most folks do what they do out of necessity for an income, and not because the work fulfills them in a spiritual or emotional sense. Your reward for doing your job well is the occaisional promotion or raise. But it's never guaranteed. There are many factors involved in progressing in a career that make it much more complicated than 'to achieve y, I have to do x'.

As children, we are taught to 'achieve' by being given milestones with specific goals. 'If you eat your green beans, you can have ice cream.' 'If you get an A in biology, you can get your driver's license.' 'If you work hard at school, you will get into a good college.' 'If you get a 90 on a test, that is an A-'. We are graded in school, critiqued by coaches, evaluated by theatre and musical directors, sized up by our peers and family: we are always being judged both quantitatively and qualitatively as we make our way slowly and methodically to 'adulthood'. There are direct relationships between 'doing' and 'accomplishing' that I think disappear to an extent after we enter the 'real world'. Achieving becomes much harder, especially if you're not sure what goals you want to set for yourself to begin with. There is no structure anymore - the world is more freeform, and less supportive. There are no rewards hanging out there waiting for you to pluck them. You have to go out and create them, then strive to achieve them, and it takes a lot of effort, and a lot of time. While I personally own and run a successful small business, and have enjoyed reaching milestones and goals I've set for myself, they come fewer and farther between than i NEED, and so, playing online games allows me to find a positive outlet for that need to achieve on a regular basis. [WoW, F, 37]

When I became GM taming, after 7 months of constant taming (we're talking about several hours a day.. 10+ hours every single day almost 5 years ago). After I finally Grandmastered my animal taming, I was clueless as to what to do. I wound up creating a second tamer just to GM the skill over again (which I did). Now I'm working with a power scroll to become level 120 taming. [UO, F, 23]

There's a certain satisfaction to be had from levelling, I find. While there ARE things much more enriching and rewarding than mindless levelling, there's a certain.... feeling of zen to be found in the grind. I've spent hours on end in the same area, doing the same thing over and over, watching the exp bar creep slowly upwards... Just soloing, just me and the monsters. Strangely, it can be a nice way to unwind after a long day at work. Stock up on potions, set up the hotkeys, plan out the route you'll take, and go at it. A lot of people complain about hitting that bar to get the pellet, and I've done my share of complaining, too. I sometimes wish I could go faster, to get to the skills and areas and accolades that come with a high level... But the voyage is often just as important as the journey, no? And not every step is going to be fun and games. One has to make the most of it. [CoH, F 22]

I hate leveling. That’s why getting to the top is probably the most important factor. It's not that I enjoy being higher than everyone else, I just hate leveling. In WOW, the leveling is just training for post-level cap PVP, which is a great Idea. Quick Leveling and END GAME CONTENT! I also like to be able to play a good/niche roll in groups, but I like to be able solo as well. If I can't do both reasonably well, there's no point in playing. [WoW, M, 18]

I do level fast. When my guild played SWG I was known as the master power-leveler. It actually has little to do with my need to be Uber or powerful, I think it has almost nothing to do with being Uber. I most enjoy the Endgame. I rather hate grinding so I try and grind out as fast as possible so I can enjoy my character fully at its highest level. WoW is the first game I have found where 'leveling' has been enjoyable. In SWG I was a huge collector. I even manage a Loot Drop fan-site www.questloot.com in WoW collecting is not that important to me as there is no house to decor. [WoW, M, 31]

I basically play these games to become the most powerful force the game can allow. I want the best of the best items and people to truly respect my play style. I want to become a legend among players within the virtual mmorpg world! [DAoC, M, 25]

My primary goal is to be competitive in player vs. player combat; this doesn't include griefing, though I'm not afraid to use such tactics to dispense justice as I see fit. My desire to stay competitive drives me to want to level fast, min-max, and gain rare drops. Those things in themselves aren't important to me, and I'd really rather it weren't important to the game, but if I intend to be competitive I've got to do the work to have the fun. [WoW, M, 19]

People sometimes mention it's just a game and the point of it is to have fun, I reply that to me being the best is most fun. I have always been extremely competitive, i grew up with a brother who is very competitive, so i have been used to competition since birth. I am also a sportsman, i train Judo for a local club which pays me to keep training as long as I am winning. I have learned to find satisfaction in winning and love all games, board, sports and electronic games, because in all games u have winners and losers, when i win I have lots of fun, when i lose i am motivated to improve myself, and when i improve myself i have a lot of fun too. [WoW, M, 18]

I don't like to be powerful, so much as self-sufficient/independent. I find the main drive of my leveling is so that I can go anywhere in the game, anytime I see fit, and not be too weak to survive there. That way my ability to hang with friends, or to explore the worlds, is not limited by my weakness. [Other, F, 26]

The important aspect of achievement to me is being able to complete tasks on my own when I so choose. I like to be able to complete a quest or gather raw materials without having to ask my guildmates for help all the time. I don't really care how fast I level but it is very important to me to have a large degree of self-sufficiency with regard to task completion, problem solving and resource gathering. [WoW, F, 25]

Well, when you prefer to solo, like I do, since I play at odd hours of the day, you need to get your character to minimize their weaknesses. So, min/maxing and getting good armor/weapons/spells is a big part of solo play. [EQ2, M, 19]

It took me forever to get my Shadowblade to 50 in DAOC. Over years of playing because the class was so gimpy. However I never gave up and I wound up with a really great template. Rare drops and leveling fast were never important to me - but making sure I found myself at the endgame with a playable character - that was everything. I had created 30+ templates and spent literally 40+ spare hours creating templates at catacombs and other sites to make sure I had the best build. Then when I finally got there and it all fit into place - that made it all worth it. [WoW, M, 25]

At lower levels, I didn't get too caught up in min-maxing. Spending lots of money or time to get the absolute best armor and jewelry seemed a bit pointless since the levels went by so quickly anyway. But as I got to the higher levels, I found myself getting more careful with optimizing my character - because whatever I went with I'd be stuck with for quite a while, and also to give myself as much of an advantage as possible in PvP. Just recently, I spent three days working out a jewelry/armor template that would allow me to max as many things as possible for my last set of armor when I hit max level. [DAoC, F, 23]

For me, I play one main character. I have been playing her for years, and am still only level 25. Level isn't important to me, nor are riches. I feel a sense of achievement when I develop all the skills that are available to her. I like to be able to kick some serious butt, make some absolutely adorable armor, make a nice dinner, etc. Sometimes I will go on just to practice trade skills, and not do anything but, for example, buy batwings from newbies and make batwing crunchies, then give the food away to people who want it. [EQ, F, 34]

I'm not much of the achiever, I'm usually one of the middle to low levels in guilds/pas that I play with, because I' prefer to enjoy the game itself, instead of mindlessly leveling. I don't understand the desire to powergame where every little trick and location are mapped out so that you can run from a to b to c, but never take a second to read what the mission is or listen to what the NPCs say after you deliver whatever it was you stole, killed for, found, delivered. [WoW, M, 26]

It's not important to me at all, I just play to have fun. For example, it took me to 6 months to master pistols in Star Wars Galaxies, which can take only a few days for a determined person. [SWG, M, 37]

Well, this drama was not only within my old guild, but also involved a guild we had been allied with at one time. Actually there were no problems in the alliance between the members, but the leadership of both guilds definitely collided on many different occasions. These were always petty arguments over trade skill items, and other trivial things such as that, brought up by our allied guild's leader.

Eventually the allied guild's leader broke off the alliance pretending it was because we could not see eye to eye on many issues. Really the reason, or what we were almost 99% sure was true, was that once we broke into a certain point in the game through flags and keys and such the allied guild's leadership saw no reason to raid with us anymore, and caused conflicts to hide the truth. Our guild was smaller than theirs, much of the time making up only a third of the raid force, which sometimes exceeded 80 people.

What we lacked in numbers we made up for in skill and talent. Our guild was much more experienced, had better equipment, and all around had better players. We had knowledge of all the raids we were doing, but the other guild had the numbers, so it was a symbiotic relationship, they needed us, we needed them. Apparently they felt they no longer needed us and ended up dropping us like a bad habit, and not surprisingly recruiting some of our members, which is funny now as that guild has for the most part stagnated at the point where they left us.

Now, a lot of the people from our guild were, needless to say, angry at this turn of events. I myself had a strong disliking for the other guild's leader to begin with and this just fueled my dislike even more. So, eventually a little while after our alliance was dissolved I took it upon myself, although others did join in, to exact my revenge upon said guild leader. This guild leader tended to AFK for long periods of time close to water, and in EverQuest you can 'push' characters that are levitating over water, and when the levitation wears off they drown.

So, one night I decided to take some time, about 2 hours, and push his character over the water and drown him. A few people did help me, and I got screen shots of the events as they unfolded. Well, I wasn't satisfied with just that, I felt the need to display this and make it known why it was done. So, I got the pictures hosted and posted them over many guild boards on my server with a nasty little message about the guild leader and in turn causing some massive drama between guilds. Now, this was coupled with tension already between the guilds because our new alliance clashed with their guild many times when we headed for the same target. In fact in a few instances they did steal our targets, but we never resorted to their level stealing their targets.

So, the whole server found out what happened, or at least anybody within the higher level raiding guilds, and on the guild's website there was a huge argument with me about what I had done. Basically everybody from the guild attacked me for attacking their guild leader, which obviously would happen because guilds tend to be fiercely loyal. Well, so as to save face my guild issued a warning to me and I was put on probation for what I had done, but that was just on the surface, behind that mask most everyone congratulated me and the other members involved for doing this. [EQ, M, 19]

My RL boyfriend and I were founding members of a guild that we belonged to for about a year and a half. The guild largely consisted of people that were in a former guild together and broke off from it to start our own guild. We were all online 'friends' and in the beginning things went very well. Over time, however, there began to be conflicts over the rules of the guild, especially regarding recruitment. I felt (as well as a few of the other founders) that the recruitment rules were too lax, and the guild was letting in anybody as long as they met the minimum level requirements, even if they were not good players, were using us to gain equipment, etc.

Over time the more senior guild members and skilled players seemed to slowly begin leaving for one reason or another and the newer members kind of 'took over'. Our dissatisfaction began to slowly grow, yet we still had a few good friends in the guild and we still wanted to stand behind the Guild Leader, whom we also considered a good friend. Eventually it all came to a head on one raid however, when a good friend of ours (also a senior member/officer) was put in a position of having to random roll on a piece of loot against a much newer member.

It ended up in a large debate, with people taking sides.... one side believing that no one deserved loot more than anyone else irregardless of time put into the guild, status, seniority, etc and the other side angry that after all we had put into the guild we were being called 'loot whores' for feeling that we deserved more than having to /random against some new member. The girl involved, her boyfriend (also a very good friend), myself, and my boyfriend left over this incident. I was very upset by the way the entire thing was blown out of proportion in the end and the fact that people I considered 'friends' later stabbed me in the back with their accusations.

We were all players that rarely asked for anything, yet the one time one of us did it ended up in world war 3. At any rate, more people left shortly afterwards. It was an indirect fallout, caused by the lack of high level skilled players in the guild that could get things done. The guild is still hanging on but seems more and more people leave now every day and it's only a matter of time before they dissolve. A shame really, the guild started out with some very talented players and could have made it's mark in my opinion. [EQ, F, 40]

(The names of characters in the following narrative have been altered to protect the identities of those involved)

Well, here's a story of guild drama that spilled over into real life. For a while, there was a person in the guild that went by the name of Vixen. She (and yes, it's a female playing a female, as I have met her in real life) was incredibly flirtatious on-line, even going so far as to apparently engage in cyber sex with some of the other guys in the guild (from what was relayed unto me).

Now, she was apparently paying extra attention to one fellow in the guild by the name of Ash. They sort of became an on-line item in a way. The real life component enters with the fact that the guild leader and his wife (this being the guild I was leader of for a good bit, but had since turned it over to a close real life friend when I got tired of dealing with all of the whining) regularly threw real life get-togethers for the guild at their house. Usually about once every six months, usually centering around the Super Bowl or 4th of July.

So, at their last party, thrown at this past Super Bowl (2004), Vixen and Ash met in person. According to the scuttlebutt, they had agreed to maybe 'hook up' if they hit it off upon meeting 'for real.' It should be noted that she was supposed to have engaged in 'cyber' with him in the game prior to this, as well as having phone sex with him. Now, these parties generally run all weekend, with some people sleeping at the host's house, some at hotels, some at homes of others of us that live in town, etc.

Vixen was staying at a local hotel. The first night of the party, a Friday, Ash was supposed to drive Vixen to the hotel at the end of the evening, because she planned on getting quite drunk. I and another guild member arrived around 10 o'clock, and there was a mass guys huddled in the foyer of the house. Apparently, Vixen was quite drunk, and was going around hugging and kissing every guy that crossed her path. Most of the guys were trying to avoid her, because they got tired of her being over affectionate with everyone. Some of them even resorted to fleeing upstairs when she got too close to the foyer. I myself managed to avoid her for most of the evening, but she finally sort of snuck up behind me and grabbed me. She asked who I was, I introduced myself, she replied she knew my character, and then she proceeded to grab me and kiss/bite me on the neck while squeezing the crap out of me. Then we talked for a few minutes before she wandered off to harass someone else.

Now, I could tell she was definitely drunk, but not falling down drunk, so to speak. Her words weren't slurred, she didn't have any problem standing or walking, and she could carry on a conversation without any trouble. Well, about 10 minutes after she accosted me, she and Ash decided to leave, so he drove her to her hotel. They both came back (he was staying at another hotel) Saturday and Sunday and both left town Monday.

Well, the drama part flared up a few months later when Vixen posted on the server message board in a thread about sex that she had been raped at a RL EQ party she had attended. She went on to say that a person she met at the party had taken her back to her hotel room and had sex with her, even though she was too drunk to consent. That after she had returned home, she had had to get a prescription for the 'morning after' pill, and had had medical problems as a result thereof. She also took shots at the party's hosts by saying that they turned their back on her.

She claimed this because she said she called them after returning home the day after the party to tell them she had been raped by someone in the guild, and as guild leader(s) what did they intend to do about it. They of course told her it wasn't a matter for 'the guild' and that if she was really raped, she should call the police if she wanted to press charges. They did express sympathy, but they told her they only had her word and that they didn't really see what they could do. I know them in real life (and have known them for, oh, about 15 years now, and I don't see them as being as harsh with her as she claimed).

So, to her, they turned their backs on her. Now, in her post on the server message board, she didn't mention any names, but for anyone that had been at the party, or knew of it through the game, it was pretty obvious who she was talking about, going by what she said and the descriptions she used.

The drama flared up because another close friend of the guild leaders that lives here in town saw the post, and then basically went off on Vixen in /tells in the game, accusing her of lying and making the whole thing up for attention. No one other than Vixen, the guild leaders, Ash, and one or two of her friends knew about it before that. This person, who goes by Khalon, didn't believe Vixen's story at all, and to be honest, neither did I or most of the others I discussed it with. Khalon was most upset because what Vixen said in her post made the guild leaders look uncompassionate and downright mean (once again, not by name, but it wasn't hard to figure out). So, when Vixen and Khalon got into it in /tells, Vixen of course, being a consummate drama queen (sorry if I didn't mention that before, but she was always a drama queen in guild chat, even before this incident) took it out into guild chat, which caused a flare up of people for and against her. This led to fights on the guild message boards, and Vixen calling for Khalon to be booted from the guild. When she wasn't immediately (though she was chastised and told to leave Vixen alone), Vixen took it upon herself to quit the guild and accuse the guild leaders and other officers of all sorts of things on the way out the door (which seems to be a common theme for a lot of people quitting guilds in the game, take pot shots on the way out the door).

Now, the reasons we don't believe her are quite numerous. For one thing, Vixen claimed she was so drunk she passed out in the car on the ride to the hotel and doesn't even remember getting into the room. Well, Vixen is a big lady, weighing in at a good 250 or so easy I would think. Ash isn't a big fellow, I'd guess he weighs maybe 140-160 or so, and not much of it is muscle. There's simply no way he could have gotten her out of the car and up into her room without her being awake to walk.

Another thing is, when she left the party, sure, she was drunk, but not nearly enough to immediately pass out in the car (at least not considering all of the energy she displayed running around trying to kiss guys goodbye), and the hotel she was staying at was only about 10 minutes away. Having experienced drunkeness myself, and seen it in others quite often, I don't think she would've come down that hard and that fast. I met Ash myself at the party, and he didn't seem like the sort to do it. I know, kind of cursory overview into his personality, but he just didn't give off that creepy sort of vibe. Add to that the fact that Vixen herself claimed that 'he probably didn't realize what he was doing was rape' and that he 'didn't have much experience with women' (those both said by her in her post about it on the server boards) leads myself (and the others in the guild that didn't believe her) to think he wouldn't have 'taken advantage' of her without her at least encouraging him in some way.

There's also the fact that she came back to the party the following two days and hung out around him. Granted, I've read about rape victims doing some strange things while being in shock, but going back to a place she didn't have to, and hanging around her attacker? Not once, but twice? That just doesn't sound like the behavior of a rape victim. Add to that the fact that she didn't call the police, or tell anyone in her real life family.

She did call Ash, and with a friend of hers in the guild listening in, she accused him over the phone, and the two of them more or less badgered him into admitting that 'maybe she hadn't said yes.' Then, she told him that if he quit the guild and the game, she wouldn't press charges. He did quit (not that anyone knew why other than the few in the know at the time).

When she posted about the rape and folks that knew him figured it out, there were more than a few that knew him quite well and didn't believe that he did it. Most of us don't really see him as quitting like that as a admission of guilt. To be honest, I think most guys might opt that way if they got to avoid being accused of rape and having the cops pay them a visit. Basically, to a good many of us, it seemed like you could call it bad judgment on both their parts, and then she was hit with 'buyer's remorse' and didn't want him around after that (especially given that she claimed to like playing the field in guild chat more than once, and Ash, according to others at the party, seemed like he wanted to hover around her at the party).

Sounds a bit callous I know, but if you'd interacted with her as much as I have, you'd understand what I mean by that. So, anyway, when she quit, a couple others went with her, saying that they didn't like the fact that Khalon could 'attack' her and not get booted from the guild. There was the usual whining and moaning on the boards for a few days, Vixen tried to act like the guild leaders/officers had screwed her over by saying some nasty things on the server boards, but it eventually died down. [CoH, M, 32]

Our guild has been around for approximately 11 months. Around 4 months ago our leader (one of the guild founders) had to quit the game due to RL issues. This left us in the position of choosing a new leader for the guild. Due to game mechanics it took 2 months to finally get a new leader voted on and in place. During that time another guild founder returned to the game after being away for 6 months. This returned founder would have been the natural choice to have as leader but both himself and the guild knew that he had been away for too long to take the role of leader.

I was officially the new leader of the guild with all the headaches that come from trying to lead an 80+ person guild with 40+ active members. The guild wasn't in bad shape but it had lost some of its cohesion during the period between leaders. Under consultation of some of the more active members I set about to correct the known problems with the guild. That is when the returned founder became an issue. He had helped create the guild with a set of ideals in mind. The changes I was busy trying to get pushed through did not conform to the original ideals of the guild. The returned founder did not hesitate to let his dissatisfaction be known to myself or the rest of the guild.

On multiple occasions I spoke with him in private concerning his issues with the direction I was taking the guild. The biggest complaint, it seemed to me, was that the guild was not the same as he had left it 6 months previously. We still held the same ideals but could no longer implement them as we had originally. I think he understood that but just couldn't accept it. What made it worse for him was that the guild sided with me on most matters that he took issue with. I continued to hear his complaints and address them. If it was a reasonable complaint I would do something about it. If it were simply a nostalgic complaint I would tell him it was and not address it further.

He began to find problems with guild members and citizens of the town in which we are based. Most of these problems were the result of sale prices on vendors. It was his belief that guild members should get stuff either free or for a greatly reduced price. We all share that opinion but leave it up to the individual to decide what they want to do concerning sales to guild members. The returned founder did not understand that vendor prices were for the public and that if you spoke to them, guild members would provide a discount and reimburse a portion of your money or give it to you for free and reimburse all of your money. Even after this was explained to him and he was reimbursed his money by at least one of the 'offenders' he continued to 'bad-mouth' the individuals. The drama in the guild had started.

While this was going on we were also getting a council put together to provide guidelines and policies for the guild. Now instead of just me, he had 5 new people to complain to and about. I had been trying to handle his complaints in a private setting as to not worry the guild with the drama and as diplomatically as possible to avoid it getting any worse. Like myself, all of the council knew him fairly well from the days prior to his departure from the game. They didn't all try to handle him as diplomatically as I tried. The guild started to become flooded by guild mail between the returned founder and those that had a problem with him.

Knowing that nothing good would come of it I continued to try to keep myself from sending out guild mails concerning the returned founder. This went on for a week or two. None of us were having any fun and both the council and myself were having serious problems having to deal with such drama during what was supposed to be our 'free time' to game and have fun. We were now losing up to 4 members a week over the situation. I decided that it was in the best interest of the guild to have him removed. I would not ask the council about it since I was going to do it whether they agreed or not. I also did not want the new council to have a black mark on their record for kicking a member that was opposed to their decisions.

That's when I lucked out. I escaped a black mark on my record as well. The day I logged on to remove him from the guild, I was greeted with an email that stated that the returned founder was recruiting for a new guild. I did not care if he wanted to start a new guild and recruit any of our members that might wish to follow him. I did care that he was doing it in secrecy. My line of thinking is that he was committing treason against the guild. Not only because he was recruiting but he was bad-mouthing the guild and causing internal strife in order to recruit and gather members so that he could make a stand and leave with some followers. That would have brought a nice dramatic end to his drama but luckily our members are loyal and made sure that we knew before he got very far.

He was not online when I removed him so I didn't get to hear his side of the story. I mailed him to explain his removal and to let him know that if he could prove his innocence he might be allowed to return. The reply I received inferred his guilt without blatantly accepting responsibility. After two days the guild was back to normal having fun and enjoying each other. We still have work to do but it is much easier without a 'drama-king' holding us all back. That's my story of how drama turned a guild-founder into an kicked-member within a month or so. [SWG, M, 27]

Oh yes, i have been in a few guild-dramas ... like when a friendly clan declares war on you because of a misunderstanding. this resulted in a 5 hour long discussion between the two opposing clan-leaders, their subordinates (each had one) and me ... because the subordinate of the opposing clan was only able to talk English and all the others involved were native German talkers so the discussion was held in German ... and i translated for him on a word for word basis ... for 5 hours ... wow :) That's one memorable moment for me ... [Neocron, M, 26]

One very strange one was a small guild I was once in that had only 9 people in. There was the Guild Leader, his online wife, and 6 others of varying age and sex besides myself. The guild was a living soap opera of colorful characters constantly in shifting internal alliances with romantic affairs, strong interpersonal conflicts. It was all very intense and wonderful. The guild constantly out raided guilds twice it size. After 5 months I accidentally discovered that the guild was actually me and one person (unknown sex) who was actually 8-boxing (using 8 accounts on eight different computers) all the other members of the guild! At the time it was a shattering experience to me as I had formed deep relationships with several of the 'guildies'. Often I had gone through exhausting emotional effort negotiating peace between two or more feuding members and all that time I as being HAD!!! It had quite an impact on me and I have never looked at a guildie the same since. [EQ, M, 58]

Me and a couple of friends put together a guild. After a while we got a couple people to join us. We had trouble with two people in our guild who said they were brothers. They donated a weapon to the guild. We kicked them out for their behavior and such, and they wanted their weapon back. We told them 'No, its the guilds. You donated it to the guild. Sorry' Him and his brother made a bog deal about it, and we put a bounty on them both. Secretly of course.

About the next day after we kicked them out of the guild, we decided we wanted to decorate the guild to show off our 'Donated weapon.' So we hired someone who decorates houses for other people. Well, we gave her admin, and the next time I logged in I guess she gave some people admin to the guild hall and banned everyone from it. Well I called my friend who was the leader of the guild, he hoped on and gave us admin back. We took a look inside, and everything was gone . But a backpack in the middle of the hall had a little message . 'Thanks for the Weapon back' We then realized it was the two brothers who wanted our weapon back.

Well we got pissed. I know a lot of people in the game, so I was able to find some people who knew them, I told them my story and they showed sympathy. So with some money out of my own pocket book (In Game Money) I was able to locate what they did with the weapon and all the contents of the guild hall . I then gave them a list of what we were missing and some credits 'half now and half later' sort of deal .

About a week and a half later I get word from the person I hired to get the stuff back for us. She said she had everything at such and such location, and she wanted me to deposit the rest of the money to her by via bank (In Game Money ). I did so and we got everything and a little more, witch I was surprised.

The next day I get word from one of the brothers to meet him in the cantina (Bar) in game. So I head over there and he told me that everything in his house was gone, and he blamed our guild for it. I simply told him we only got the weapon back, and the rest was just payment for the person we hired. I refused to give him a name. It turns out he had many people on his admin list to his house, so he couldn't pinpoint anyone who would have done it. I then told him I had a little info about him and his brother that they should know. he tiped me 1 mill (In game money) for the info. I told him Our guild has a bounty placed on you and your brother. Even SOE took our side after the two brothers reported us. Vengeance was ours and no one was able to do a thing about it. [SWG, M 18]

When I played EQ (which I did for over 5 years - I have only recently left), my husband and I often led raids to the old Plane of Hate. Before raid groups were introduced into EQ and Hate was revamped to its present state, organizing a raid to Hate was no simple task. The zone itself was a challenge. Raids that contained people that did not follow instructions often spelled disaster in the form of many hours of frustrating character corpse retrieval.

After observing how other leaders went about running raids, I learned a good deal about what worked and what did not. First thing I learned was that it was a nearly impossible task to run alone. Between my husband or my best friend, both of whom played with me, I almost always had someone who was able to help me. As we began running the raids we quickly fell into a pattern. I would announce the raids on the boards, and lay out the rules that always stipulated that while we liked to have fun, we wouldn't put up with any crap. We made groups beforehand, as best we could, from people who had signed up for the raid. It gave us a framework to work with.

We demanded that people arrive early so that we could port into Hate on time. (Timing was an important factor. If you ported up far later than the posted time, you could screw up later raids. The static mobs would spawn roughly every 8 hours, so there were often raids scheduled about 10 hours apart. While some raid leaders didn't care, we did.) I was generally the more vocal one, always in view.

I was the organizer, and sometimes the enforcer. I would announce the preliminary groups, and appoint a leader for each group - often someone who was taken aside and chosen before the groups were formed. We picked people who we knew, who were trustworthy and who could command some amount of respect if things were to go badly. We took folks who didn't get as many opportunities to raid, or who were passed over for being lower level. We took folks who wanted to go but whose guilds often were far beyond the level of the older Plains and were into other things.

Once those groups were formed, we filled in the remaining spots with people who showed up on the fly, starting with guild mates, friends and alliance members. If there were still open spots, we would fill in with other interested people and necessary classes. We learned very quickly that it was detrimental to take more than 7 groups, and that 6 was optimal, due to lag issues and just for the ability to manage people. Once the groups were formed, the rules of the raid were laid out, the main tanks were announced, the chat lines were sorted out.

Once any questions and last minute problems were dealt with, we had the groups buff up, drop a person so that the wizard porting could get them up to the zone and took up two to three groups at a time - depending on how many teleporters were available to us. My husband always went up with the first wave of people, so that he could control what was going on. The first few minutes were crucial because roaming monster aggro could destroy a raid before it began. Once in place, we would continue bringing the rest of the groups up, and I was always in the last group, making sure everyone who was supposed to go had ported up safely.

Groups then reassembled and if the wizards were not staying to play, they left the zone. When all the groups were in place the fun began. The tactical side of the raid became my husband's domain. He would scout, or send folks to scout, figure out the targets and determine what we were doing in what order. He kept track of what loot dropped and who it was distributed to as the raid progressed. I dealt with questions, announcements, problems and the overall order of things. We were among the few raid leaders who would venture to the second floor of Hate, or otherwise leave the port in room, and our raids were almost always a lot of fun.

We never put up with any crap from people. There was at least two occasions where someone in the raid caused excessive problems and we removed them from the raid, with little hesitation. We always made sure that we kept the people who raided with us as safe as we could within our abilities. We gained a reputation for that, and people respected it. Some signs that we were successful raid leaders: People wanted to raid with us just to raid with -us-. These were people that had nothing to gain from the encounters. People who had long finished with the Plane and any possible items from it came back to help us with pullers, porters, ressers, tanks. They came with us because the raids were often filled with laughter and fun. They weren't always productive - sometimes we had been 'sniped' (another group/raid goes up before a scheduled raid to kill the static spawns for the good drops), but we often went up anyway, even at a monetary loss to ourselves (The item that would allow us to port into Hate was originally very expensive and we were always careful to have many extras onhand in case of emergencies).

It didn't matter. It was about having fun, not about loot. We led more than 20 raids - at one point running 2 a month for 4 or 5 months in a row - over the course of a year or so. Compared to a raid guild or raid club, that's not a lot. But I never wanted to be a part of a raid guild, nor did a lot of the people who chose to come with us when we led. We ran raids with almost no gain for ourselves, other than the fun of it all and the desire to help other people enjoy themselves. I learned a lot through all of this. It was an activity done in a virtual world that have had many real world implications for me. It led to a lot of insights about the type of leader I was and that I could be. You have to be firm, and you have to stand your ground over important things, but you have to remember to let the unimportant things slide or you stress uselessly. You have to really -listen- to the people that follow you, especially if someone has a voice of greater experience. It's important to lay out the rules beforehand, and not change things just to benefit yourself, else people become resentful. And most important of all - If you treat people with respect, remember to thank them for their contributions and encourage them, everyone wins. -Niki AKA Lyrissa Stormraven EverQuest - Tunare Server [EQ, F, 30]

I was the Commanding Lord (elected leader) of the True Britannians faction in UO. One of the objectives of factions is to capture various 'sigils', small gems that represent control of a given city. If you can keep a sigil on its pedestal for 24 hours straight (in theory), the sigil becomes 'corrupt', meaning you can take it to the corresponding city and place it on the pedestal there to take control of the city's finances and security. Other factions try to achieve the same goals, and when one faction has one or more sigils squirreled away in its stronghold, it's a good bet other factions are going to launch a raid to come and take the sigils. Or, they may try a sneakier approach, sending in stealthy thieves.

Only faction members can handle sigils, and only faction members can enter a faction HQ, so anyone inside an HQ is either your friend or your enemy. Through sneakiness and exploitation of enemy laziness, my faction had captured the sigils for all 8 contested cities. We'd held them all in our base for quite some time, constantly expecting an attack and trying to arrange a sufficient force to guard the base against enemy faction raids around the clock... 24 hours continuous is the requirement.

But it was difficult because people had distractions. Adults had real life responsibilities creep up and had to attend to them, kids got bored just sitting there, and were easily distracted by enemy feints in other locations. We had never taken the cities before, and the most powerful of the factions, Minax, had held the cities for literally months on end without interruption. As it became almost time for some of the sigils to start corrupting, we grew more and more nervous and started really working hard to keep our troops in place to defend.

Eventually, the expected attack came, and not one of the sigils had yet corrupted at that point. The sigil room inside the TB headquarters is a ways back from the main gate in the outer wall, and it was there that my troops had assembled their defense and dug in. When the attack came, everyone in the sigil room rushed out to the front lines to hold the fort, while I sat listening to the battle reports and waiting for the sigils to corrupt. Finally, even as our defenses were being breached and our last warrior fell dead, the sigil for the city of Trinsic became corrupted. I shouted via the party chat system for support and a distraction, and I siezed the sigil and sprinted out the front--I was going to have to run right through the front line to get out and into the countryside.

No magic can be used in transporting a sigil, so even if I made it through the line, I'd have a long ride ahead, with my enemies nipping at my heels. When a person grabs a sigil, he and his clothing are flushed with a brilliant purple color. As I rushed out the front door of our castle, two enemy raiders ran in past me. Because I was glowing purple, they mistook me for one of their comrades who'd gotten to the prize first, and kept right on going to grab sigils of their own.

When i came to our fortifications, witnessing the aftermath of a massive battle with many TB casualties and only a few dead Minax troops, I realized I hadn't participated in the construction of a barrier which had been erected specifically to make it hard to see how to get to the other side, to slow or stop the enemy advance. Unfortunately, it also slowed and stopped me, and I was trapped there unable to go forward. I wasn't about to go backwards, and it wasn't long before the Minax streaming through some other hole in the fortifications realized I wasn't one of them. I was slain, and the sigil fell into enemy hands.

But once a sigil is corrupted, it stays corrupted until it is used to seize its city, or until another faction corrupts it for their own use.... meaning they'd have to secure it for 24 hours in THEIR base. And that is just what Minax tried to do. Hours after our defeat, weary from the long night but energized by adrenaline because of coming so close to our goal which was not yet out of reach, I led three other warriors--only four of us, total-- into the Minax base. Two sentries were posted there, and no fortifications had been erected. They apparently believed they'd broken our will to fight. They were wrong. The guards were not experts at player versus player combat, and they were outnumbered 2 to 1. One of them died, and the other ran for his life.

We made off with four of the coveted sigils, most importantly the corrupted Trinsic sigil. Long before Minax reinforcements arrived on the scene, my comrades and I were gone with our prizes. I made a beeline to Trinsic with two allies in tow. When I arrived, I discovered that four of Minax's fiercest fighters (any of whom was more than a match for me) were waiting, and they had hired at least 20 NPC faction guards. They were all patrolling the area surrounding the pedestal on which I had to place the corrupted sigil to seize the city. I realized that they had not been leaving their base undefended so much due to underestimating my people, as it was due to the fact that they were making preparations to defend the Trinsic pedestal in case the sigil WERE stolen.

We made a valiant effort at distraction and a mad rush to the pedestal, but the players weren't biting on our bait and the NPCs were literally unable to do anything but guard where they had been ordered to guard. So we three died. But we were not finished yet. Remember, we had 24 hours again until Minax could corrupt the sigil for themselves. Taking it from them at any point in that window would start the timer over, giving us another 24 hours. And as long as it was corrupted in our favor, all we had to do was get it to Trinsic.

The next morning, I organized a massive assault on the Minax fortifications I rallied all available troops (about 10 or 15 of us), made sure everyone had every scrap of gear they could possibly need, gave the pep talks, and led them to the wall of the Minax stronghold. This time, Minax was literally ready and waiting. Once we got there, a tremendous battle ensued. The largest, most involved, and longest lasting PvP battle I've ever seen, participated in, or even heard of. We laid siege to their castle. Archers and mages stood atop their parapets, flinging death and destruction down at us as we huddled for cover behind earthworks and ridges near the front of their base. My people returned fire, hurling exploding potions and arrows and spells of our own. Tamed dragons were brought in, and daemons and elementals were summoned. The coordination of the Minax defenses was somewhat shaky, but there were at least as many of them holed up in there as there were of us outside.

For a long time, we slaughtered any Minax reinforcements who tried to make it in their front gate, but we weren't making any more progress at that same task ourselves. Traps had been laid and barriers placed, overlapping fields of fire and the chokepoint of the fortress gateway were murder on any of my people who attempted a breach. Gradually, we worked our way forward, destroying or removing various barriers, but we paid a terrible price in casualties. We had set up an aid station about a screen away from the front line, where our ghosts would run for resurrection and healing, but we couldn't res as fast as Minax would kill us whenever we go too close to the gateway.

Eventually our supplies began to run low, and it was hard to get anyone with a surplus to part with it for others of our team in need, unless they volunteered it themselves. Despite Minax's fortified positions, we had killed more than half the defenders, and their ability to resurrect was limited by their own supplies trapped inside with them. Attrition was beginning to work for us, but for every time we killed a Minax defender, three or four of us would go down.

I had difficulty coordinating any strategy more complex than the impromptu aid station, because when the chips are down and a person's life (and loot) are at stake, folks have a tendency to run for cover and heal up before they do ANYTHING else. A very understandable tendency, and it would take a much more experienced team of folks used to working with each other in order to overcome that natural panic reaction. On top of that, many of my peole got discouraged after a few deaths and not much progress, and several of these left and went to do other things, or logged off UO altogether. The base was too well-defended, and eventually our battle was lost after many hours (I myself had had time to go and have dinner with my family and come back home and rejoin the fight, it lasted that long). All this happened at least three years ago, but as you can tell, it was a very memorable experience for me, and I'm sure for many others. [UO, M, 29]

In the world of ShadowBane sieges were a part of daily life. The Siege can put all your time and effort put forth into building a city to waste. Upsetting for most people i imagine and for this reason, emotional. Through emotion we lose focus and our troops lose focus. Never a good thing when your leader is complaining or crying about mistakes, the peons just end up losing respect for you.

The Guild i was in was at War with someone new everyday, it never mattered who, it just mattered that we were enjoying a good fight. Team 3 was my squad. 8 mages , 1 scout and myself, the Barbarian. Our objective was simple, Support support support. Follow team 1 and 2 and make sure no one made it near them. We traveled in box formation with myself in the center so that my run and damage modifiers would affect all my men/women. As we approached our destination I dispatched the scout to get me a head count and check their organization. Stealthers can cause a nice bit of chaos.

Our summoners from team 4 were doing their job swiftly by calling out names in order of the people who are to be summoned to war, their secondary job was to summon the dead back to the fight, so they had their hands full and were not to be asked any favors at this time. Our Warlord is reminding people to not scatter and hold the lines 'never go off without your group' he would say. Your group without and you without your group is weaker, don't stray.

Once everyone was summoned in we moved forward with a slow pace chatting about this and that, nothing about the war, making sure people don't take it to seriously cause if they do they may not return after they die. Keep the spirits high, don't talk people down, that's the enemies job. Needless to say our arrival wasn't a surprise to the enemy, my scout had arrived a little late with a head count but that's fine, I got the info elsewhere.

Now he has to make sure no stealthers Back Stab my mages he may let one or to slip by but i wasn't worried, very few rogues escape my axe. As we approached to combat range the enemy and our allies quickly began dancing to the tune of chaos, just made our lives easier. The battle was won and the Tree was destroyed. But the Threat isn't over, now we have become targets for appearing at that war like any other, expect This war, we turned on an ally. The Panther Moderns, my guild at the time used ventrillo to communicate targets and other details for sieges and for smaller scale combat. Since the use of this type of communication at game play i cant imagine going into a group fight without it. the group not using such a tool would be the one to fall for sure. [SB, M, 26]

We were attempting to get a relic back from the Mids (this is in DAoC) and the raid was going to be very, very complex. There were about 100 people involved. The mechanics of DAoC are such that if you take down smaller keeps, it reduces the power of the main keep you are assaulting. However, if you take down the smaller keeps slowly, the other side will have more time to get wind of something being amiss and mount a defense. So, the plan was for about 30 people to branch out to 3 different keeps and take them down in a matter of minutes. Then make sail for the main keep before the baddies could get there. Well, if anything can go wrong....

The raid began very smoothly (as they are wont to do) and then a zone crashed, tossing about half of the players out of game. Small keeps one and two were down, three was having issues and not many people were left. As we were regrouping to take three and the main keep, we were ambushed by the defenders well away from their main keep. So, dejected, we went home. However, our failed assault was apparently a diversionary tactic cause about 20 minutes after our defeat, we got the message that we had in fact taken the main keep! I still don't know what happened with that. I think we were sent to slaughter to draw the main defenders away from the keep while a second group took the big keep. Hard to imagine that many players working like that though. [DAOC, M, 27]

The one thing that needs to be taken care of first and foremost is making sure that everybody involved understands the goals and rules. If you all need to have a specific item in your inventory, you'd better make damn sure that EVERY LAST PERSON checks to see if they have it. Otherwise, someone will inevitably have not been paying attention and will set the entire event back by not having the item. This was doubly demonstrated during a Conquest attempt I participated in recently.

You'd think it wouldn't be that difficult to go and talk to a guard, then talk to him again once everybody else has talked to him the first time. Heck, we even had a system set up so that everybody would confirm when they'd talked to him. Somehow, three people STILL got left behind because they didn't talk to him the first time, yet reported that they were ready. Thank god for those complementary warp tabs. Okay, so after warping back and retrieving our errants, we were ready to begin. The 'leader' of this rather half-assed expedition had been on ONE Conquest mission before this (and not even a successful one), and apparently hadn't understood the rules even then.

The way he explained it was that there would be six fights, and we had to locate the triggers for each in turn. Great, in theory. Unfortunately, that has nothing to do with the ACTUAL way the system works. Here, let's give a quick rundown of the process of Conquest: 1. Find the beastman flag. There are dozens of possible locations all across the zone. So split up in teams and find it. This is easy and we had it down pat. 2. Assemble everybody at the flag, and rest/buff up for the fight. We had a few coordination issues here, but it wasn't bad. 3. Somebody tag the flag and trigger the fight. Okay, these fights are a pain in the butt. We had some problems with these, but I'll go into more detail later. 4. After the fight, somebody tag the flag AGAIN to remove the curse. Yeah, this would have been a good thing to know early on. Unfortunately, as stated before, our leader was somewhat uninformed and didn't know about this. 5. Go to #1 and start hunting again. Okay, that's the process of Conquest in a nutshell.

Supposedly, there were only to be six fights. Unfortunately, the number of fights isn't static. You fight until your conquest rating for that zone is #1. Apparently this took 6 fights for our leader's previous group. I'm going to skip describing every fight just to skip to immediately after the 6th. Supposedly after this point, something was supposed to happen. Some grand fanfare, crowds cheering our glory, masses worshiping us as gods... that sort of thing. And that's exactly the sort of thing that didn't happen. I tag the flag after the fight (we'd figured out that we had to do that by this time), and exactly nothing happens.

Well at this point people are starting to wonder, and a few (including the 'leader') bug out. Apparently somewhere along the line, I'd distinguished myself (I still haven't a clue how. I'm a red-mage, which isn't a class suited to heroics) enough to have the departing leader stick me with alliance leadership. So now I'm stuck coordinating the remaining 2/3 of our force in continuing this fight. Okay, so now flag #7 is located and we assemble and buff/rest for the fight. *tag* and we're off, and getting royally beat down.

The fight started off bad as one of our groups targets the beastman paladin en-masse and all fail to notice that he's tossed 'Invincible' and they're not doing jack squat to him. Meanwhile, the beast-Blackmage is tossing area-effect spells like they're going out of style. I manage to rally enough force to take him down while I'm Chainspell-nuking the hell out of the still-invincible Paladin. It's about this time that whitemage #1 bit the dust because of the paladin. I still have a bit of time left on chainspell so I spamcure that group up to full. Not like I'm surviving a suicidal act like that, so I'm facedown in the dirt shortly thereafter.

Anyway, half our force was eating sand at the end of that fight, but we were victorious! ... And still no fanfare. Two members more bug out while we're raising our fallen. We're now down to two parties. Again we take up the search and again the flag is located. Now we sit and rest/buff up again. You'd think this would be understood since this is our 8th time doing it, right? Apparently not. We're still prepping with most of our mages below 1/2 mp, when our idiotic thief tags the flag. We don't stand a chance and eat dirt rather rapidly. All that is to illustrate one simple point. Before you leave, make sure EVERYBODY has a complete understanding of ALL the rules and knows every step of the plan along the way. This includes, very importantly, the leader of the expedition. It can't be stressed enough that an unformed leader WILL bring about failure. So please please PLEASE make sure you know what you're about before planning a huge event like any sort of raid. Your alliance and nation will thank you for it. [FFXI, M, 21]

The hardest part about a raid is getting a good leader and preparing for it. My guild was going to take on the 'Corellian Corvette' in SWG. This 'dungeon' restricts you to a max of 10 players, but is un-godly tough, and most groups of even 10 fully prepared combat characters fail it. It's fairly foolish to attempt without a full group of 10 though, and this was the first difficulty: we had eight. I was going to be the leader and go-to guy for the raid because I was the only one who had done it before.

We met in the guild hall and prepared, passing out food items, drink items, spice (combat drugs), weapon powerups (100 use each weapon boosters), healing kits to those who used them, etc... This took about an hour. Then, as I started to explain the raid to my guildmates and frantically searched for 2 more participants, they grew very impatient.

We don't use a Voice program like Teamspeak, but it would have been invaluable here. Communications, having to type everything is TERRIBLY ineffective, especially in a battle situation. Likewise, the interfaces to trade things is terribly slow. What should have been a 'Ok everyone, take one of these' became a 'trade with person 1.... slide item1 over, finish trade.... repeat for 6 other players, repeat for 5 other items that other players need to trade off' Needless to say, as I tried to find two more needed players to prevent this from becomming a complete waste of buffs, items, time and effort, my guild took off to go to the 'zone'. In transit, as I chased after their impatient selves, I did find two more people to go with us.

I've been on this raid now about 6 times, and have never completed it. It has an hour time limit and simply fighting everything in the dungeon takes far longer. Your objective is not to 'kill all' though, but is in the style of: 'throw all the switches'. Of course, it's nearly impossible to even reach some of the switches without taking on some very, nasty mobs. You cannot run by them because they will chase you down and never let up until either you or they are dead. If you die in the Corellian Corvette dungeon, you start over at beginning (which isn't so bad if you've cleared out most of the passageways to get back to your group) but you have wounds which can't be healed in the dungeon, and have lost your buffs, which makes you worthless as a fighter, since an unbuffed player won't last 5 hits there.

Like healing wounds, it's impossible to re-apply buffs in the dungeon as well (they prevent medical droids from operating, and thus, re-buffing and healing). That time my guild went, we actually did a fair amount of damage. What killed us were these totally ugly mobs that SOE felt were needed called Super Battle Droids, which for some reason can kill and deathblow a fully buffed, fully powered character in one or two hits. Only a few combat 'templates' can take more than a couple hits, and if you don't have constant healing. they die as well. Our guild is slightly less combat oriented than some of these 'uber-combat' guilds, with many members having skill points divided into crafting and adventuring skill professions.

Granted, just about all of us had at least ONE 'Master' combat profession, but this means nothing in the Corellian Corvette, since in order to have the defenses to survive, only the top armor must be worn, and you must have multiple, 'stacked' combat professions. What have I learned? I learned I *HATE* large group raids. I don't want anything to do with them anymore. Most of my guild have also expressed their hatred for them, and are displeased SOE constantly thinks all higher level content must be taken on by groups of 10 to 30. [SWG, M, 30]

Getting everyone where they need to be, at the right time, is quite possibly the hardest part of a large scale raid. There will always be late comers, and not many on time. Making judgment calls - even when people are saying that they are incoming - on when to leave can be tricky. Leaving too soon will leave some people behind - and not likely give them a good impression of your raids (meaning they'll not likely go on another one of yours, and possibly speak out against raids you do). However, leaving too late will cause frustration to those that were actually on time, and want to get the event going. Most inexperienced raids have a few issues. If the leader isn't well known - a good turnout can be hard to come by, weakening the group even more. Inexperienced raids will often attempt to do things they aren't capable of doing, or go about doing them wrong - leading to their demise. An unsuccessful raid for a relatively unknown leader doesn't do much to help his or her 'status' as a leader. [UO, M, 18]

The main problem with raids is that they never start on time. Would love to attend one that started around when it should instead of an hour later. [EQ, F, 42]

In the mud I played, I was a member of the strongest guild (we were commonly accused of cheating, but we were all very honest). When we did equipment runs through high level areas, the hardest part was arranging a time when everyone could be there and had time devoted to the run. Sometimes there were miscellaneous things that needed to be done beforehand that one or two players could accomplish (retrieving wands of shadow form from another high level zone, for example), but the biggest thing was getting everyone on at the same time. [M, 25]

Hardest part is having everyone there on time, buffed, ammoed up, pets ready etc. Even if you set a meet time 1/2 hour before the raid/battle, people still trickle in, 'Bob is still logging in, let's wait 2 mins for him...ack Bob isn't buffed, lets wait 5 mins for him to get buffed, oh wait now Fred is logging in let's wait for him...' If people know the meet time is 1/2 hour before the event, they see the 1/2 hour as a buffer, able to be ignored, based on the 'real' start time. People will always want to wait for someone late, after all it isn't much fun getting left behind, and we don't want to leave our friends... [SWG, M, 33]

Set-up and mobilization issues are raid killers. If a raid can be quickly massed, buffed and moved to the target it is usually successful. Raids where it takes hours to set-up are often failures, even against trivial targets as people quickly begin to lose focus when they are just sitting around waiting to start. [EQ, M, 30]

The most successful large raids tend to consists of experienced raiders who are completely focused on the task at hand, know exactly where to find the key information, and follow instructions without question during the active raid times. When I first started leading raids, the hardest things to accomplish were to help new raiders understand the importance of focus. A lot of problems are caused by new raiders that struggle with the quick 'get down to business NOW' that happens when the raid activity starts. [EQ, F, 40]

While player attendance sums to the total number of players, logistics is an exponential curve. Getting people to the meeting point, buffed, grouped properly (every group with a heavy healer, proper damage curve, proper tanking ability for each group), and moving to the action itself becomes harder and harder with each additional person...unless, of course this additional person has the veteran experience, the patience, and the maturity to overcome the additional logistics load. [EQ, M, 29]

We learned very quickly that it was detrimental to take more than 7 groups, and that 6 was optimal, due to lag issues and just for the ability to manage people. Once the groups were formed, the rules of the raid were laid out, the main tanks were announced, the chat lines were sorted out. [EQ, F, 30]

The Guild I was in was at War with someone new everyday, it never mattered who, it just mattered that we were enjoying a good fight. Team 3 was my squad.. 8 mages , 1 scout and myself, the Barbarian. Our objective was simple, Support support support. Follow team 1 and 2 and make sure no one made it near them. We travelled in box formation with myself in the center so that my run and damage modifiers would affect all my men/women. As we approached our destination I dispatched the scout to get me a head count and check their organization. Stealthers can cause a nice bit of chaos. Our summoners from team 4 were doing their job swiftly by calling out names in order of the people who are to be summoned to war, their secondary job was to summon the dead back to the fight, so they had their hands full and were not to be asked any favors at this time. [SB, M, 26]

In DAoC i led a few relic raid - the hardest part was to get everyone to do their part. We solved that by making a leader in each group, 8 commanders had a officer. I then made a chat group with the officers, who made separate chat groups with group leaders, who was in the group chat with their individual group. positive: important msg's didn't get lost in spam, so everyone knew what to do Negative: i had 3 officers - they had to relay commands to 8 group leaders each, and the group leaders should then tell their group what to do - a LONG chain of command that could slow down time from giving an order until it was carried out. the first raid i was leader of was a big disappointment since i tried to tell everyone what to do. and everyone was yelling their ideas of how it should be done. so my commands was lost in spam which got us all killed (stopper groups weren't in place when we started the assault) [Lineage2, M, 29]

The problem with a complex raid is always the same.. Communication. That is the one key factor in an effective. Not only the ability to communicate with others but having others listen to and understand what they are supposed to do. The most important lesson I have learned in running large scale raids is to get other player to be quiet and follow orders. Once this is established then the raid goes smoothly. I was able to stop the raid at any point and get players to listen to specific instruction before continuing. One raid in particular was well orchestrated using a Comamnd Chat which had only the group leaders participating. They then relayed the information to their respective groups and followed orders. Anyone who went rogue on the raid was immediately removed from the command chat and left to die. It was a harsh punishment but only rarely happened more than once. [M, 30]

One difficult attribute of a guild raid is communication, especially in games that limit the number of players in a group or team. My friends and i have been able to bridge that a couple different ways. The first is having 3 or 4 of us in the same room (LAN party!) and using each of is separate groups typing the concerns of the other groups to stay communicating (very tiresome). The other way is to use a third party program like (TeamSpeak) that allows people to talk to each other via microphones, handy but setting up and getting everyone involved in that it's tedious (some people don't want to, don't have the gear, ect) [Eve Online, M, 24]

The hardest part is definitely to get people to listen to instructions from the raid leader. I'll take the most recent dragon raid I was at as an example. While running there after assembling the needed amount of players, the raid leader explained the rules of engagement on the way. And other participants commented on in other channels that he knew what he was talking about. One of the rules was to stay very very close to the dragon, as it would otherwise be able to 'single you out' if you ran a certain distance away from it, and would breathe fire on you, killing you and the people within a small radius of you. We get to the dragon and people seemed to forget quickly about that rule, especially 'support classes' who apparently preferred to heal from a distance, thus getting killed first. [DAOC, M, 31]

Sometimes people just get too caught up in the fight to remember specific timing or a specific plan, after more experience people are able to strategize better because the novelty will have worn off. A perfect example of both these cases is one particular raid in EverQuest: Online Adventures my guild teamed up with another guild to take down one of the dragons. Pre-raid instructions were given on the strategy we'd use and tells to look for to avoid AOE's and other attacks. We had about 40 people show up to take down a relatively easy high end mob but because of people not listening and dieing our healers would need to waste mana and time healing/raising these people who didn't listen. After several tries we finally took him down and even with the problems it was still a blast. [EQOA, M, 22]

The hardest part of a raid is getting everyone to cooperate and work together, especially if it isn't a guild raid. One raid that I remember is a raid of The Deep in EverQuest. We had come to this invisible bridge, with a fake visible one next to it. A few people ran ahead and just ran across the fake bridge and feel off before the raid leader explained what we needed to do. After everyone started following the beast lord pets across the invisible bridge people did not follow correctly and fell off. It is mistakes like this that slow down the raid and make it less fun for all the people doing this correctly. [EQ, M, 16]

I was the GM in a large guild in the realm of Midgard, Midgard have the smallest population on the server Excalibur and we have to plan our raids and relic Raids very good. And we have good experienced players that are natural leaders we assign different GM's and officers from various guilds on specific posts. We plan and scout the enemy realms alot to find weaknesses in there defenses. We use all the stealth capable races to scout and get info. We divide our force to certain tasks and assign them to attack specific targets. And we place stealthed players on the roads to intercept the forces from the enemy realms. To weaken the strength of the defenders. And we have assigned players that are masters on the usage of siege equipment. And assigned players to carry the siege machines to the places were we need them. Logistics are a large issue, and to synchronize 180-230 players in an attack is the hardest thing. [DAoC, M, 33]

We were attempting to get a relic back from the Mids (this is in DAoC) and the raid was going to be very, very complex. There were about 100 people involved. The mechanics of DAoC are such that if you take down smaller keeps, it reduces the power of the main keep you are assulting. However, if you take down the smaller keeps slowly, the other side will have more time to get wind of something being amiss and mount a defense. So, the plan was for about 30 people to branch out to 3 different keeps and take them down in a matter of minutes. Then make sail for the main keep before the baddies could get there. [DAOC, M, 27]

Then there are the contingency plans: what happens when things go south? Who is expendable (I played a wizard...trust me, it's wizards first [burn all you can before you go down to try to save the raid])? What happens when the primary tank goes linkdead? When do you suspend the raid and when do you charge on? And you have to deal with rewards: who gets the loot and why? What if half your damage dealers will 'brb...dinner' and, 20 minutes later, is still not back? ... [EQ, M, 29]

A common reason for raids to have trouble is players not listening. When you get to a raid, sit down and shut up for a while. Listen to the raid leader. If your running around in circles, or killing the near by mobs or in general doing things that cause spam in other players channels/windows then your not going to get all the info you need to do your job in the raid. Its always the same, when I do a raid of 30+ people, 5-10 of them chat with each other, duel each other, and 5 minutes into the raid ask how we are going to handle something I just covered 5 minutes before the raid began. If you think you run raids better, or know more about the game then the Raid leader does, Disband and run your own raid another time. DO NOT tell the Raid Leader how he/she should run their raid. When a Raid Leader says do this or don't do that, then do as he/she says, there is a reason even if you can not think of one. [SWG, M, 30]

I have led many raids myself. What makes the raid difficult is people who don't listen to the raid leader. It's important to listen to directions. The raid leader (if they are a good one) has done research on the zone and knows the in's and out's of it. Also it's important for every one to know their job during a raid. One person doing the wrong thing can cause the whole raid to wipe out. Also, it's very annoying for people to show up late for a raid and expect the whole party to wait for them. The best raid I ever went on was one that I was not leading. [EQ, F, 49]

The hardest part of organizing a strong raid is getting everyone on the same page.. Getting everyone to follow the orders of the raid leader and not to chatter in team speak about other things. Sometimes players wander off by themselves and then that makes the group more vulnerable. Sometimes people don't pay attention and go to the wrong city and that makes the group more vulnerable. I remember one time this guy on teamspeak wasn't paying attention to the raid leader and he kept wandering off... dueling people and going to the wrong cities.. We ended up kicking him from the guild because he wasn't a team player. It kind of sucks but the guild I'm in is a player versus player oriented guild.. It wasn't anything personal. It is just hard to get everyone to cooperate with the raid leader (especially if I am leading the raid - I am a girl and I notice that people don't pay attention or follow my orders as much as other raid leaders). [SWG, F, 21]

In EQ, major raids are usually controlled by a monk; The monk specifically leads the pull team, and the raid itself follows his/her lead in general. The single largest obstacle in a large raid is, in my experience, the same as in a small group: People who would rather burn themselves alive than take orders. An attitude I've frequently encountered is 'How DARE he tell me what to do!?! He's not my boss! I'll do the opposite to prove it!' That attitude is very common (in my experience, about 80% of the people who I've encountered with that attitude were apparently female) and one person with that attitude can get 40 characters killed almost effortlessly. When I'm leading a group or raid, I have a tendency to be a bit terse; As things go wrong, I get more and more terse, which makes the conflict with the rabid individualists worse. Some people will do absolutely anything to 'punish' me for giving them orders; If it means their death and the deaths of all their friends, so be it. The most extreme example of this attitude even went so far as to blame ME for the wipeout...after all, if I hadn't given her an order (in my capacity as raid leader) she wouldn't have been compelled to disobey it and cause a total wipeout. Managing a raid is much like managing a group, except you're managing up to nine of them at once; You have to make sure each group is properly balanced, and that each group member knows their role both within the group and in the overall raid force. Experienced raiders don't have to have these roles explained, you just tell them the name of the role (puller, main assist, second assist, main tank, cleric mommy, main healer, etc) and they simply do it. [EQ, M, 29]

Raids can be entertaining whether you succeed or fail, but if you spend more time waiting to go it soon mars the experience. You have so many random factors to deal with, and the larger the raid of course the worse it gets, the random factors are of course the other players... Unpredictable, impatient, chaotic, abusive, disruptive. These are traits exhibited by the worse players in such situations, and characteristics we are all capable of lowering ourselves to if suitably bored... [SWG, M, 29]

The hardest part of a large raid is the patience factor. A large raid will require alot of waiting. The actual traveling and fighting are very short compared to how long you may need to wait during certain steps. The initial step of gathering all the groups together for the raid takes the longest. The sorting of loot afterwards takes just as long- these are the two parts that require the most patience, and the parts where there will be the most complaining. Another part of a raid that can be difficult is communicating the leader's directions to the entire raid. There can be a tendency to 'horse around' in the chat group while the leader is really trying to communicate important directions to everyone. Again, this is the patience factor, as people will relieve the stress of having to wait by joking or making snide comments. Unfortunately, as each person does this they only compound the problem. People on raids should realize that what may seem very funny and clever to one person at the spur of the moment may not go over as well to an audience of sixty or seventy other players that are patiently waiting quietly for further instructions. [DAOC, M, 34]

Sometimes the hardest parts of pulling off a raid is getting the more impatient players to hold back prior to the actual invasion, so that the enemy does not gain knowledge of the attack and prepare defenses, and then controlling the players amassed so that the invasion does not falter, due to the forces spreading too far apart, or not being able to react quickly enough to new threats. One memorable raid that failed for the exact reasons I mentioned happened a few months ago between the Terran Republic and the Vanu Sovereignty over the continent of Oshur, a very small desert landmass. The Terran commanders were very interested in pulling this raid off smoothly and quickly, to give the Vanu forces as little time as possible to prepare and counterattack before a 'beachhead' could be secured. A very, very large force of about 100 players was rallying in the Terran Sanctuary, but were told to hold until the order was given. Unfortunately, some 10-20 players would not listen to the commanders and headed into the warpgate leading to the continent. By the time the raid was ready and arrived at the first base, Dahaka, a valuable Technology Plant that would give the Terran forces access to tanks, a large force of Vanu defenders had already entrenched themselves and were attacking the players who had attacked before the order was given. While the Terrans were able to capture Dahaka, the Vanu were able to stall the Terran offensive long enough to call in reinforcements. The reinforcements were able to keep the Terran troops confined in Dahaka and, after assembling a large amount of tanks, finally pushed them out of the continent. [M, 22]

The second hardest part is dealing with the loot distribution. I've been to very few raids, even guild raids, where there were no disputes over loot. Some people want a point system, some prefer randomness, while others seem to feel cheated if anyone else gets anything. There are always disputes about whether it is legal to bid for an item for an alt, whether higher level players get first pick, etc. Even when the rules are explained in advance or are guild policy, some people will argue about it. [AO, M, 29]

Distribution of loot is another big point. EQ is a very loot-centric game, so it was quite important for us to hand out goods fairly and without bias. The way we handled it was pretty simple. The same few people (myself included) attended most raids and knew what items were given out to what people, as well as the level of attendance guildmates had. So if a nice item dropped, it would go to the person with the best attendance who hadn't received anything lately. When they have the best attendance, we knew it would benefit the guild because the item would be used more often in subsequent raids. [EQ, M, 22]

In addition, loot is always an issue. If it's not a guild raid, loot arrangements must be clearly stated and agreed to in advance. So many players argue that 'it shouldn't be about loot', but they tend to overlook one very important point: Loot is not just for the player in question. As a healer, my mana pool does not impact me personally to anywhere near the extent that is does the guild's raids. Therefore, any 'loot' I earn that increases my mana pool (or various other attributes) is really contributing more towards the guild's efforts than to my personal ability. [EQ, F, 40]

I've been on some medium raids. Never as leader. I'm most impressed the with organizational skills of the raid leaders. They form balanced sub-groups and assign primary and secondary tasks to groups. They also give structure to what the objectives are for the raids. When they occasionally have to ask for sacrifices from the raid members it is done by volunteer (and I'm proud to say I'm frequently the sacrificial lamb to make sure the raid is successful). [EQ, M, 35]

The most difficult part of a large raid, in my opinion, is the ability of a raid leader to exercise patience. Good raid leaders are a rare thing these days. However, a good leader will exhibit positive traits such as reporting often to the raid of his intentions, waiting for those that have gone linkdead, listening to suggestions from others, treating the players in the raid with respect and not losing his/her temper, etc. The person leading the raid must understand that the other players participating in his raid are there for their own enjoyment and it is his/her responsibility to accentuate the experience as much as possible and still accomplish the objective. I have been on many large scale raids have failed and/or players leaving with a disgruntled feeling about the way it was run simply because the raid leader was either rude, dishonest or acted in some other unsavory manor toward his/her raid companions. [DAOC, M, 47]

The most successful raids that I have been on (in DAoC) have been led by well known and knowledgeable people. People who had built up a reputation on the server. This one particular person was very strong minded and commanded respect. It was easy to follow him since he had 'paid his dues' and was always certain of what he was doing and what he needed everyone else to do. The worst raids I have been on , have been led by people who technically knew what they were doing but lacked the charisma to lead a large number of people. You always know when it's going to turn out bad when people start questioning the raid leaders judgment and he starts defending himself/herself. IMO, it is always better on a big raid to show them how to disband if they create too much discord. Seasoned raid leaders know this and practice it. New raid leaders don't....usually. [DAOC, F, 32]

That question is about as difficult to answer as ask for the meaning of life :) Not sure why I 'still' play. Everyday I log on and find something new to complain about or not like, or bump into someone who rubs me the wrong way...funny how an online environment can be similar to reality in that sense? For me personally, I do enjoy the fantasy about it all, being something your not even in the imaginary sense. It also provides an easy way for me to keep in touch with several real life friends I’ve made over the years who have moved to new geographic locations. The same applies for family, I have a brother who plays and this is the only way we can 'spend time together' with a country between us. [EQ, M, 28]

I started playing after watching my young sons play - i never had never been interested in computer/video/nintendo/online etc. games but felt that i needed to watch to make sure it was suitable for them. After many weeks of questioning and watching i found myself interested in the interactions between people in the game, it was totally absorbing!!!! The fact that i was able to immerse myself in the game and relate to other people or just listen in to the 'chatter' was appealing. I enjoy being a healer and like to help people and are often disappointed if I’m too slow in helping even if people haven't asked, I'm quite happy to watch while someone battles and then heal them once they are finished and then just keep going with what i am doing in the game. I will happily risk my character to save another’s character. [DAOC, F, 34]

What keeps me coming back to MMORPGs, and any RPG in general, is the social aspect. I've been playing RPG's of various kinds for over 15 years, and it's the only 'hobby' that I have maintained that long. The reason is the people. When I log on to EverQuest the first thing I do is say 'hi' to my guild, then I hit my 'friends' list and say 'hi' to them. Often times I will sit and chat with people and never get anything accomplished in-game. And I never feel like I wasted my time. I would have stopped playing long ago if it wasn't for the other people that play. [EQ, M, 30]

Overall, I think it's the friendships that I've forged that keep me returning to Norrath time and again. It's rewarding to log on and be greeted by the same quirky, fun-loving friends I've spent the past two years learning and growing with, both in-game and personally. [EQ, F, 37]

For awhile I kept playing because I enjoyed exploring the high level zones and seeing new things. The gods and other creatures looked amazing and the scenery was really beautiful. Now I have seen mostly everything and I continue to play for lack of anything else to do and mainly log on to chat with the good friends that I have made. Raiding with my guild is pretty fun, we just recently made it to Plane of Time - only one other guild on the server has made it there so far. It's new and exciting but raiding gets old sometimes, so mainly just to talk with my friends. [EQ, F, 18]

I just recently started playing again after 2 years away. I started playing again simply because I missed the people that were my friends. I enjoy being able to chat away while healing my group and meeting new people. [EQ, M, 30]

My guild and my friends. I am an officer in my guild, with a lot of responsibilities (head of recruiting, raid organization, healer organization) and my loyalty to the guild and my friends in it keeps me playing. Experience camping got dull a very long time ago (I've been playing for over 4 years), but my friends keep me coming back. When I don't attend a raid because of some RL commitment, illness, or some other reason, I often feel guilty that I'm letting my guild down. [EQ, F, 31]

I play for friends. I have made many friends in EQ - and have carried those friends threw to other games. If it wasn’t for my friends in EQ I would have cancelled my subscription a year ago. Having a family like guild has been important to me, and in turn I stick around to help them out. Friends can make you feel needed, and that feel is what keeps me in game, cause I am then useful. [SWG, M, 26]

The friendships are the force that keeps me coming back. The guild keeps me playing. In order to be able to play with my friends, I have to keep up with equipment and raid points. This is not my favorite part of the game anymore; and if it were not for the people and the fun we have as a group, I would most likely stop playing, or at least, stop playing as much. The most appealing part of the game now is the people and the teamwork we display. Our guild, though decent sized, is rather small for a raid-guild. We simply do not usually have the numbers on to 'zerg' a mob or zone. But we make up for that in teamwork and skill, and some of us prefer the game when there is an element of 'will we be able to do this with only xx people?' The fact that we as a small group can take on and defeat encounters that other guilds or groups need (or just take along) nearly twice as many is a great feeling. [EQ, F, 43]

My family just moved out to west coast and I still live in the Midwest so my brother and I frequently play together as a way to stay connected. We are constantly chatting about what is happening in life and it's a fantastic way to stay close. We both find the game interesting and fun and can usually be found spending time together in the 'virtual world' when we both have a few extra hours. [SWG, M, 24]

I play MMORPGs with my husband as a source of entertainment. Overall it can be a cheaper form of entertainment where you can spend quite a bit of time with a significant other. To play well you end up developing more ways of communicating. While my husband and I were separated we still played our first graphic MMORPG EQ but switched servers and only duo'd with each other giving us time to talk. Since we were not in same room we actually communicated with each other better at that time. It alone didn’t help our marriage but was definitely one of the contributing factors in helping us communicate and get through our problems much easier and without anyone else's involvement. [DAOC, F, 31]

I use the game as a way to spend time with family and friends while I am away from home at college etc. Almost my whole family plays so it can be a good way to get together and catch up. It's also a way for me to de-stress. [EQ, M, 21]

Several years ago (Dec of 1997) I was working as a nurse on the graveyard shift at a local hospital. While repositioning a patient, I seriously injured my back (L4-5 disk). I've been disabled and unable to work since then. MMORPGs have allowed me to interact with people and feel more whole/able. I've come to enjoy spending time with people my own age and people of very different ages (both younger and older). Folks who are friendly and helpful, polite and worth getting to know seem to be in most games. With online gaming I can meet people and have something of a social life even while isolated and pretty debilitated in 'real life'. [SWG, F, 46]

I have always enjoyed video and computer games. This was a whole new experience for me, being able to play real time with other humans. I am disabled and mostly housebound so EQ gives me a great social outlet; I can talk and joke with others without having to leave home LOL. I keep playing as I advance in levels, etc there are always new goals to reach. But the most appealing thing to me is not what level I am, or what level mob I can kill - but the interaction with other people. [EQ, F, 59]

I play for the interaction with others as well as for the constant improvement of myself and others. What is appealing to me is that you CAN keep on playing; there is almost always something else you can do. When you finish one thing, there is always another thing, another obstacle to pass. [EQ, M, 16]

The reason I play is that there is so much to do. You can lvl your character and when you get bored, you can craft. Or you can choose another job class. Get bored with that, you can fish, mine, log ... etc. And the thing that gets the most is the scope of the game. How large the world is and the detail of everything. [FFXI, M, 23]

I like the whole progression, advancement thing ... gradually getting better and better as a player, being able to handle situations that previously I wouldn’t have been able to. [EQ, M, 48]

For the entire first 20 years of our life, we're taught that if 'you put the work in, you'll get the reward'. And it does happen that way -- If we study for school, we get good grades, or do well on tests. If we practice hard, we make the soccer team or the band. If we make the effort to learn or do certain things, we get the next girl scout or boy scout badge. Same goes for college. There is a very clear cause and effect relationship in many of the things we do in our young life. Then ... we graduate from college or grad school, and find ourselves out in the 'real world'. Suddenly, effort and determination are only part of the equation that leads to reward, because now the world isn't as insulated as it was before, or as predictable. Your responsibilities go beyond simply trying to improve yourself, and luck and circumstance play a role in the course your life takes. Sometimes, you try very little, or put in little effort, but you're at the right place at the right time and reap big rewards. Sometimes you work so hard you want to scream, and it seems no one notices, and you don't feel at all fulfilled. The element of measurable and certain reward disappears to an extent, and for some people (like me) attaining personal goals I set for myself in a game like EQ allows me to enjoy some measure of accomplishment, some level of control, and the personal satisfaction that comes with it on a weekly basis. [EQ, F, 35]

First off, I am handicapped, and thus don't make real life friends easily. However, in EQ the 'playing field' for social interaction is leveled. I can act and say what I really feel like saying without the pressure I normally feel when around others. No longer am I just another 19 year old in college with an average future. Through sweat and blood I can become someone who wields great power, who has earned the respect of his fellows, and whose actions have a true impact on what goes on in the 'game'. I guess when it comes down to it, I feel as if I have accomplished more through my actions in EQ than I will ever have the opportunity to do in real life (sad but true). [EQ, M, 19]

I just like the alter-reality. I was lucky to find a group of people (my guild mates and a few others), with whom I get along and can have amusing conversations. I find EverQuest to be a good way to relax and shed the daily troubles for a few hours. Honestly, I find this alter-world to be like a mind massage that lets me get back into the heat of real life struggle with rejuvenated energies. [EQ, M, 34]

I play Anarchy Online & EverQuest because it's an escape from the real world. No one complains about jobs or other meaningless things. It's a great stress reducer. I like that I can be someone else for a couple hours. [AO, F, 28]

I play the game because it is fun for me to play. When I get home from work or school, and I'm particularly stressed about something, it is fun for me to just jump on the computer and jump into EverQuest. It is a great stress reliever for me. The only real reason I keep playing is because I have a couple close friends that I can talk to a lot via EverQuest. I also am able to keep in touch with my brother through the game. The game itself, honestly, has gotten a little boring now, so I really cannot wait until World of Warcraft or EverQuest 2 comes out. [EQ, M, 17]

I enjoy playing the games because it is the perfect way to escape the mundane of everyday life. I find it exciting to become something that you aren't and live and experience a second life full of adventure and intrigue that I can be shared with many other people. [SWG, M, 22]

I play the game for the challenge. In my opinion, it is far more challenging and fun to play with or against other people. In a video game, you can easily figure out the reactions of the program. With people, however, you can only be 40% sure of what they are going to do. The most appealing thing about the game is the challenge. I enjoy being challenged. I enjoy being beaten. I enjoy the twists and turns that are thrown at me. [SWG, M, 18]

For DAOC, the dynamic interplay of realm war and keep takes keeps me involved. I'm not so interested in victory; in fact, some of my most memorable moments revolve around heroic actions in defeat (I stood off 16 Midgarders alone for two whole minutes - they could hardly land a hit or a spell on me - and that allowed my group to escape.) Facing live opponents is far more interesting than facing a more predictable AI. [DAOC, M, 42]

There's also the factor that I often find myself with nothing better to do; I get home from work about 1am, and of course my family is asleep. I'm typically wide awake, so playing EverQuest gives me a way to wind down, and it's a hell of a lot more entertaining than the crap they show on television after 1am... [EQ, M, 32]

Gaming is an interactive time sink. I don't find television entertaining, I can seek out things I find entertaining in the game world. The most appealing aspect of gaming is getting together with friends to explore and garner items. [DAOC, M, 29]

That's an easy answer. I have too much time on my hands. Day to day most single people get bored and end up spending hours in front of the Television. Sure they mow the lawn, clean the house, do laundry and then watch TV. I don't enjoy that or going out to clubs or sitting on the beach, they all lack appeal, so I play EverQuest, it surely beats watching paint dry. [EQ, M, 30]

Currently, I am trying to establish a working corporation within the economic boundaries of the virtual world. Primarily, to learn more about how real world social theories play out in a virtual economy. Secondly, to become rich and famous (in game). Finally, I'm trying to in some way effect the way MMORPGs are designed and played. This process is incredibly time consuming and assures that I will continue to log on daily to manage inventories and make sales. The most appealing aspect of the game is the open-ended player driven economy. Players in general seem to be stuck in a certain paradigm of how things are supposed to work. The idea of a corporate entity issuing stock and offering franchises and employment strikes them as odd. I'm not sure if this is because no one has done it before, or if it is too much reality in a game. At any rate, I appreciate that the limitations are more organic rather than being imposed by the game design. [SWG, M, 30]

I don't maintain close relationships in-game. If I can't touch or feel it, it's not very real to me. So I tend to develop more acquaintance type relationships in game and more personal/meaningful relationships in real life. [EQ, M, 43]

I feel that relationships in MMORPGS can be 'real', but not 'meaningful' as in real life - although people can find someone with whom they 'click', they may in fact be clicking with a totally different person's invented Avatar, which in many ways detracts from the potential of a relationship being meaningful. [NWN, M, 17]

They are meaningless. You can be anything you want. I have a distrust for what people tend to say about themselves in game. [SWG, M, 27]

I believe that relationships formed in game are even more structured than those in real life. I love the fact that your appearance doesn't affect your relationship with someone; only the content of your character. I know my best friend through the game, and I can tell that person things which I wouldn't even be able to tell my siblings or parents. [EQ, M, 17]

It is just as easy to have a 'superficial and meaningless' relationship with someone in a game, as it is to have one in real life. I have made more, and closer friends in MMORPGs than in real life. This doesn't mean I don’t have close friends in real life, as I do. Both RL and online friends are a very important part of my life. I have also seen meaningless relationships formed in game, a few times. Where one would use the other for money, items, power leveling, etc. But I have also seen a good deal of real life relationships where one used the other for money, games, clothes, and other things. It all depends on who you are dealing with. There are going to be bad people online who don't care for a meaningful relationship, but these people also exist in the real world too. [EQ, F, 17]

To me, there is a real person at the other end of the screen. The fact that you interact with them online is incidental, they aren't any less real or any less of who they are just b/c the medium of communication is a computer. That said, there are those who just want to play the game w/o any social attachments or complications. They point out you can't really know if the person at the other end tells the truth. They have a legitimate point of view as well. Perhaps they just want to keep the focus on the real life people they live with. As long as they don't use their view on superficiality as an excuse to be hurtful, I generally have no problem w/ either point of view. [EQ, F, 37]

There is no question in my mind that some relationships formed in an online game can be every bit as meaningful as those in real life. When you find folks who share your goals and aspirations, and you can work together with them for the benefit of all involved, that can be the foundation for a strong relationship. It gets you off on the right foot. And no matter what any guilt-ridden griefer may say, there's always a living, breathing person on the other end of our in-game actions. If there weren't, nobody would play the game. The fact of physical separation is only a minor limitation and not a barrier to friendship; can a blind person not make friends? So why should it be that because we cannot physically see or touch the people in the game with us, we cannot interact in a meaningful way? A particularly significant example I can remember is talking a troubled young friend that I met in game out of ending her real life. I knew she needed a friend, and I knew she needed to talk, but it wasn't until the end of the discussion that she let on she had been thinking about making the big mistake, and I had given her hope. That qualifies as meaningful, and the entire conversations took place in game and over ICQ. [UO, M, 29]

Relationships are relationships, regardless of the vehicle one uses to create them. It is just as possible to fall in love or make a wonderful, trusted friend online as in real life. Certainly, there is more risk involved, since if you see this person IRL after meeting online, there is the possibility that they've misled you about themselves, and that can create trust issues at the very least ... the slight but definite possibility of this person being an axe-murderer can, of course, not be ignored. However, the vast majority of people out there are just as normal as you and I (scary, isn't it?), and so you can safely assume that a large percentage of people you meet aren't out to kill you. That said ... I have to say that while it is just as possible, and maybe even easier for some people to FORM relationships online as in real life, some people have denounced the quality of these relationships. I have a friend I met online (not in game, but online just the same) and we just met for lunch a week ago. We talked for hours, and had a great time. We made a deal to get together again soon. Is this any less a real friendship because I met his intelligence and humour before I met his face? No. Similarly, I have online friends that I have met in game that I can talk to if I'm worried, and I am there for them when they are. Just the other day, my husband was very late coming home, and I was very worried. Two good friends, both of whom I met online, talked me through it, and helped to calm me till he came home. They are just as much my friends as the ones who I see with my eyes every day. Just because I've never seen them in real life doesn't mean we can't be friends. I talk to them when I'm worried or sad, or happy ... and I'm there for them at those times as well. A relationship between lovers or friends can span time, distance, religion, politics ... why shouldn't it be able to overcome the WWW? Those who say it can't are clearly missing out on the possibilities of meeting people from all over the world, befriending them, and learning about them and their homes. [EQ, F, 22]

I see no evidence that relationships formed in the Game Online cannot be just as meaningful, real and fulfilling as those in Real Life. I have 'friends' in the Game that I have never met in Real Life but we are concerned about each others welfare and interests and communicate those things the same as if we could walk next door and shake hands with our neighbor in Real life. [UO, M, 57]

This seriously depends on the person you're becoming friends with. I've made many friends in games who become outside-of-game friends because we have a lot in common, same maturity level, looking for the same things in a friendship, and just click. I would call these very meaningful. But I also have many friends in games who are just sort of there to pass the time while I play... they're silly and fun to chat with... but I'd never want to deal with them outside of the game. Those relationships I would label as superficial. [EQ, F, 22]

Most of the relationships I've formed (with guild members and the like) are superficial, even when we talk about real life issues. But there's a small group of players that I've become close to, and this group forms a network of people that know each other in real life. In other words, I know Jon, and Jon knows Barry, and Barry's worked with Steve and Brian, and Ruth and Heather are their wives....etc. This group is geographically scattered across two continents, but I now regard these folks as my friends as much as most of the people I meet physically. I know their personalities, know that they'll be there for me if I need them (as much as they can be), and appreciate their company. The military moved us to a town where Brian and Ruth lived. We'd never met them face-to-face (my husband had played EQ with Brian regularly for about 2 years, while both of the wives had come into EQ later), but they invited us over to their house the first week we were in town and offered help in getting settled in the new place. That's more help than the hubby's job friends offered, and we certainly consider them 'real' friends. [EQ, F, 34]

I believe that the nature of the relationships formed will depend on the people forming them. Some people approach MMORPGs as strictly a game, with no interest in the social aspects beyond how they can advance the game. These people make 'game friends' -- superficial and meaningless friendships IRL, but all you need when it comes to the game. Others take advantage of the medium to be deceptive -- to pretend to be someone they are not. These are also superficial relationships. My husband's step-mother does this repeatedly, she left her husband, moved in with someone from EQ, then left him for another person from EQ. Others play for fun, but have come across people they felt especially close to over time. I met my husband that way -- over the course of a few months, we went from being friends in game to conversing IRL, then getting married in game, then meeting IRL, then getting together IRL. Since we've been married for 20 months, I'd say that's definitely not superficial or meaningless. :) [EQ, F, 40]

A relationship is as meaningful and real as you make it, in-game or in real life. I have some very good friends in-game who ask me if I am feeling better when I have been sick for a while, while people in RL hardly even noticed that I was gone. Someone whose real name I don't even know remembers my birthday, while my closest colleague doesn't remember that I don't smoke or drink alcohol. [AO, F, 28]

I, personally, feel that a relationship in any medium, Real Life or any game, can be as true as *both* sides want it to be. I had a friend on the game EverQuest for several years. He eventually decided to actually come and visit my family for a month. it was an absolute blast and I wish he coulda stayed with us longer. [Planetside, M, 16]

Actually, both of these are correct statements. The relationships formed are as 'superficial' or as 'meaningful' as you allow them to be. I have people that I group with on a semi-regular basis that I know next to nothing about other than their character information and yet I still enjoy their company. I look them up when I need a group, we have fun and experience the game together but it never goes any further. There are others, however, whom I have formed deep friendships with. These are people I speak with on the phone, who I share RL experiences and problems with and whom I confide in. I am still of the firm belief that MMORPGs are like RL; the experiences you have are what YOU make of them. YOU dictate the length, depth and breadth of the relationships in them. The one caveat I would like to make is that I have found MMORPG friendships to be be more 'dangerous' based on the fact I have to take a person's word for their actions and their true hearts. You can be one person IRL and a completely different person in game. All players must keep this in mind. [EQ, F, 39]

Relationships in MMORPG's can absolutely be as meaningful as those in real life. In general, as with real life, you get out of relationships what you put into them. I have a friend from DAOC that became quite ill, and I called her (for the first time ever) at the hospital. I made brief phone calls to her every day I could after that, until the time that she passed away. I can not say that if she had been a 'real life' friend, her loss would have affected me any less. [DAOC, M, 35]

I disagree completely with the idea what MMORPG relationships are meaningless. However, I have to concede that the answer really depends on the player. I'm sure there are many players who do not take friendships forged in the game seriously, simply because it is, after all, a game. One rarely even sees what the person on the other end of the relationship looks like, or sounds like, and quite often a player will not truly project their real persona into the character in the game--I know this because I know I act somewhat differently in the game than I do in real life. However, for many people I've seen besides myself, that's not the case. I have met several people I truly consider friends through online gaming. I'm happy when I can talk to them, I miss them when they're gone, I am familiar with their personality and interests and generally know when they will like or dislike something. Distance doesn't preclude friendship or even familiarity. [DAOC, M, 22]

My RL nephew was helping me kill the Black Dire in Mistmoore for the shaman epic - results in the black fur boots, as well. We cleared to the wolves, and killed the 4 around the Black Dire. We then pulled the Black Dire and began working on it. At this time a group of players, all in one guild, came up and stopped a short distance away. They seemed to pause for a few seconds, as if talking, then ran up and proceeded to KS the epic mob from us. Then one of them sat down and logged off, and a shaman showed up with an almost identical name, same guild, and looted the epic piece. I was so angry I could not type in /say, and could barely type at all. I ended up apologizing to my nephew for burning his ears. [EQ, M, 53]

I remember long time ago, I was still considered a 'newbie' then, I came across a camp and as far as I could see no one was camping it, I /ooc a few times to make sure and after a few minutes I then /ooc for group members, it must have been about 5 minutes till I got a full group together, when up came running two peeps claiming that this was their camp and I should get lost. After a lot of verbal abuse and my guild coming to back me up ... I found I was actually crying (RL) I couldn’t believe that I let them affect me in that way... that it was just a game. I then realized that day, that it isn't 'JUST' a game and I never let anyone talk to me that way again!!! [EQ, F, 29]

The ogre camp in west karana. I was with two guildies, very close friends. We got there to see two halflings pull the entire camp and run around like chickens with their heads cut off. They yelled for help after they died: so-and-so's corpse yells for help, literally. So, we figured they were out of their league (they had not signaled for help at any time throughout the fight), and decided to camp the spot. Later they come back, and they get upset we were there. They start calling guildies. An obnoxious gnome arrives and starts telling us 'friend, that's not how the game is played,' etc. The halflings are screaming accusations that we 'let them die on purpose' at this point. More of this guild arrives. They are shouting throughout the zone, loudly proclaiming their bravado and tight-knittedness (a friend who had been in this guild later referred to them collectively as hyperactive children). Much more than 6 people are here by now, challenging our 3 man group for the spawn. We did offer to share it, but that was met with cries from the original halflings, declaring our evilness. Eventually the obnoxious gnome threatened they would KS everything we pulled if we didn't leave. So we pulled one more, which they failed to KS successfully (much to our amusement), pretended we got something and rolled on it, then left to cries of 'run like the cowards you are' from Mr Gnome, just as their guild leader arrived after much shouting and cavorting across the zone. God damn it, I should have /reported his quip about ksing everything. It would have been too easy, but we didn't. Nothing would have given me more pleasure than to see a GM arrive and blow them all to smitherines. I'll never forget their guildname, either. It was extremely stupid. Of course, the guild is dead and buried now, but that's little consolation. I just know they're all still out there... [EQ, M ,19]

We had a group of 5 in one of the Gnoll dungeons. A caster (I believe it was a wizard) asked if he could join us. Since we were full & he was a good 10 levels higher then us we politely declined. He then complained for a bit & went invisible. We forgot about him & proceeded to start fighting. We ended up having a large number of adds & most of us we very close to dying so we were running for the zone line. I was a couple steps from the zone when the wizard decided to cast an area effect spell & kill almost all of us. It was a extremely rude & childish thing to do just because we wouldn't let him group with us. Then there are the times when you're about to kill something much higher then you when someone comes along & kills it in the middle of the fight. That's always frustrates me, all that work for nothing. [EQ, F, 27]

After months of camping a particular spawn in a tough zone, a small group of all guildmates invited me to hunt the SAME spawn with them, since they already had a druid I asked if I could hunt for the item with my Mage. It would be more helpful to us all, and they agreed I would roll on the item with my mage and they would hold the item so I could take the item on the druid. We hunted and hunted and sure enough the mob spawned, we pulled it and killed it. The item was visible, my goal was in sight. So we rolled, the necromancer, the cleric, the druid (who HAD one) and my mage. Turns out NO MATTER who won the cleric was going to get it, I got ONE chance out of four. I was SO mad I just could not group with them after that, I spent three weeks saving up to BUY the item as they were STILL hogging this spawn. After about two weeks I just could not stay in the guild much longer, the animosity was too much, I discussed it with an officer and the officer told me 'Druids just aren't important enough to get decent gear first'. I disguilded IMMEDIATELY especially since I had worked hard helping this guild's members get epic pieces. [EQ, F, 34]

I was an officer in a guild and we were small, we had just started raiding. We had a raiding task force that was designated to run the raids. These were officers that had agreed to run them. I was not one of these officers, I hated to lead raids. Well, one day I was helping one of these officers scout a location, thinking it was innocent and all I was doing was porting. The raid was the next day and when raid time rolled around, the officer was nowhere to be found. The guild leader told everyone that I was leading the raid and to send me all the tells and questions. This came out of nowhere and I was infuriated. I told him that I would not be leading, and he told me that I HAD to. I came to find out that this was arranged between the officer and the leader and that the other officer told the leader that I agreed to run the raid. What made it worse is that the leader was present for the raid and was sending me very angry tells asking why I hadn't been faster, why we weren't mobile, why was I being such a pain in the ass? I wanted to quit the game right then and there. I do not like being forced to do anything, and the loyalty I felt to the other 30 or so guild members there was a sticking point to do something I really had no idea or want to do. It was very stressful and even worse when we wiped out because I took a wrong turn in the dungeon. I felt responsible and I had to deal with the crappy morale that ensued. [EQ, F, 25]

My boyfriend and my two closest online friends and I were hunting giants in Rathe Mountains when a warrior asked if he and his partner could join us. We talked it over in group and decided that would be okay for a while, so our leader invited them into the group. I was playing my enchanter at the time, and his partner turned out to be an enchanter, a level higher than I was. I was medding up after buffing the group and switching my spells back to hunting/guarding spells, when the new enchanter started casting everything I had just cast, overwriting everything I had done, telling the group what to do and commenting on how they obviously hadn't had a chanter with them who knew how to take care of their group and they were lucky he was there, he'd make sure they didn't get into TOO much trouble. He started bossing them all around and trying to tell them what spells to cast and who to go where and telling me to just sit back and stay out of the way. I disbanded and headed for the zone, in tears of frustration. I had always felt that I had something to offer my group, that I could be an effective part of any group, as I had a variety of skills and spell lines and knew how to use all of them.

To be overwritten, pushed aside, and belittled was unbearable. The rest of my original group also disbanded and followed me, preferring to hunt with me elsewhere and ignore his Out Of Character berating our leaving them, but to this day I still doubt whether I really can, really do, contribute my group. I always have to try harder, do more, because so very little of what I do is really visible... unless you're standing in a crowd of mezzed mobs waiting their patient turns to die, what a chanter does is simply grease the skids, and that's so hard to see ... and so rarely appreciated. I had never doubted my usefulness, until then. And even now, knowing I can be overwritten and cast aside as negligible, leaves me uneasy. Knowing how cruel others can be in casting people aside as useless, negligible ... and how badly that hurts, though you can't see the tears ... has left me unwilling to tolerate people in my groups speaking badly to or about others. My groups all operate on the Thumper Principle - 'if you can't say something nice, don't say nothing at all.' =) i keep hoping the concept is contagious. :-\ [EQ, f, 36]

My first and most beloved character is a paladin. Being who I am, I prefer to solo - a hard thing to do sometimes. Loving the game, I purchased a second computer and account to two box. I moved the cleric I had to second account and once she was high enough, the 'twins' soared to the high 40's easily. My guild is a small family guild of soloers. Some 10 or so characters were reaching the 50 mark at roughly the same time. The cleric was always in demand, sigh. I should have seen the problems coming. When cleric was 40 and pally 46 (estimate of level - can't remember exact details), our guild started having mini raids. These were 8 to 12 players strong, PoP had just been released and we needed practice grouping, working on tactics, using raid window, loot for armor upgrades, etc. My paladin showed up for a 45+ raid (cleric too low). She was the only tank option. We had a 55 shammy and 2 druids over 52 for healers.

I explained my tank strategy and the drawbacks of a paladin (takes longer to get aggro). I made a hotkey to call for assist. The shaman was pulling with slow so I asked the druids to root the mob near me to help me get aggro (and save shaman from needing more healing). Despite multiple pleas for them to wait, all would immediately jump the mob. Naturally, we could not keep the heals up and my paladin could not get aggro. Casters simply attract attention when they cast before the tank has time to hurt the mob. I had talked on guild forum about how hard it was for my paladin to get in groups. No one wanted a not good enough tank or inadequate healer (both were excuses given me by groups looking for members).

About 10 minutes into the raid, one of my guild mates said 'we need a real tank.' I held my breath. Not one of my mates backed me up. The guild leader (one of the druids) took maybe a minute to offer his 42 warrior. (this was a 45+ only raid, guildies who weren't high enough were turned down) 2 others said sure. I stated, one last time, that I could get and hold aggro if they would let me call for assist before attacking the mobs. Yet again, I was ignored. The tank was logged on and when he arrived, I told all goodnight and jogged back to a safe zone. I was crying too hard to play. My own guild didn't want me.

Now that time has passed, I realize that I was in a real life low spot but the betrayal still stings. See, despite their assurance that I play my paladin well ... when I show up with pally, they say 'but we really need a cleric.' It got worse the higher the cleric got. I finally moved my paladin to the higher fee server and have found welcome there. Now my problem is - I like the people in both guilds (old one cleric is still in and new one pally has joined). I feel some loyalty to the old guild but also a lot of who knows what to call this mass of negative feeling. Do I dare move cleric to Stormhammer? I enjoy playing her but now that the pally is welcomed, even requested - I'm gritting my teeth when I log onto my old server. If I move the cleric will the new guild prefer her more? (yes, clerics are in great demand on at least 4 servers, sigh, lol) [EQ, F, 41]

I constantly use the game as an escape from work. Right now work sucks, but the market is so depressed I have been unable to locate anything else. So, I go home every Monday night to meet with the Undead Slayers(tm). We pick a nice undead zone and just beat them up (though sometimes they beat us up as well!). It is a great release and helps me make it through the rest of the work week. [EQ, M, 43]

In hindsight, I definitely used the game as an escape from my job as a medical resident. I spent all day dealing with things that, more often than not, got me depressed, and the last thing I wanted to do when I came home was to watch TV or sit around. The game was a good way to obliterate any thoughts about the day of work. However, I'm not sure it really helped me out. I guess it's hard to say. That time of my life was definitely the worst, and I didn't have much of a life outside of my job and playing EQ. On the bright side, that time passed quickly. However, when I started enjoying my other life again, I generally lost interest in the time investment that these games require, possibly because the escape part of it was not as necessary anymore. [EQ, M, 30]

I use online gaming as an escape from worklife. I work as a security guard and at times the annoyances that I have to put up with can sometimes be very bad. Since I have to spent the whole time being polite even though I want to reach across the desk and strangle someone who just can't understand that they are not the center of existence or worse yet when someone is on the phone and continues to tie up the lines even after they have gotten information or the information they have in not available. Thus going home and playing some game where I can run around and bash/fry creatures which I give pet names to while getting some reward (ie experience or gold) makes me feel a lot better. [DAOC, M , 33]

I had been involved with a man who had a dependency problem ... and life with him had become hard. He would disappear into his world of addiction and I into my world of EQ. I had tried for months to get him to seek help to no avail. He would become angry and say he had things under control so I just despaired and sank deeper into the game. I met friends, married one, we broke it off, I met another man … I think I did all these things because I was missing a lot in my RL relationship. One day I came home and found my RL man really high and out of it. I had to do something. I called a psychologist and we entered couples counseling. She sent him to detox and rehab. His life has changed ... and I am happier for it. My 'addiction' I am still working on. As far as helping the problem ... it’s difficult to say. In the short term, sinking into EQ helped me get through the bad days. In the long term, I think EQ was detrimental to the situation because perhaps I would have gotten him help with the drug problem earlier. [EQ, F, 29]

I have, and it always comes back to bite you in the ass. Crass but true. Graduate apps. I didn't want to do them. You couldn't make me do them. I had such a huge mental block to filling them out that it would have been easier to cut off my arm. Needless to say I played a lot of EQ to null the apprehension when I should have reconciled my feelings and played for enjoyment. It wasn't the game that got in the way. I put the game in the way to block my responsibilities. [EQ, F, 33]

It helps me take my mind off of my depression. And my RL relationship, and family problems. I think it just put resolving the bigger problems of my repeated abuse on hold until I was mentally ready to do so, with the help of someone I actually met online at a message board for the game. But even now, I still use the game for an escape from the real world very often, mostly because the real world isn’t a very great place to be, at least for me it isn’t. [EQ, F, 17]

My entire life is a problem, and the game is an escape from life itself. When I log in to EQ my every problem is instantly forgotten. I am no longer a lowly teenager who doesn't go to school and has a piss-poor job. I am a respected and powerful warrior. There is no father in the game that tells me how messy my room is. There is no mother in game that tells me what a scumbag I'm turning in to. It’s just me surrounded by others like me, all with a common goal: just to play the game and get away from everything else. Well that's what I like to believe anyway. [EQ, M, 18]

I have been out of work for a year now. I have found EQ to be a good diversion from the daily stresses. It’s nice to be able to see green fields and feel like a useful person when, in real life, it is cold and ugly (winter time) and no one wants to hire you. I think EQ has helped reduce stress but has not done anything to resolve the issue. I have, however, received job leads and resume help from people I have met in the game. [EQ, M, 32]

I often use EverQuest as an escape tool - I am a stay-at-home mom, which is often incredibly mundane, repetitive, and frustrating. There are only so many times that I can change diapers, vacuum the floor, wash dishes, do laundry, and play peek-a-boo before I'm almost screaming for some intellectual stimulation and the opportunity to 'be someone else' for a while. It's just a great relief to get away from all that and for a while become an accomplished troubadour who leads a strong guild of roleplayers in a fantasy world, for a while. I've found that playing EverQuest to escape the boredom of daily life does not interfere, but rather gives me a much-needed break, and time for mature discussion and imagination. [EQ, F, 25]

Going into my final year of college I was forced by class scheduling to go to school at night. At the same time I was forced out of a job I had held for three years working nights and weekends. In this time I had the stress of school, a new job, and lack of contact with friends. The people I knew and trusted continued working nights and weekends. My time was spent working days and school at nights. I went from a working environment where I worked with like-minded people to an environment where my hobbies and interests were frowned upon. EQ provided accessible social contacts needed to get through stressful times. It helped alleviate feelings of isolation and depression that might otherwise have broken my willpower to finish school. [EQ, M, 25]

Social phobias. I am a hermit but also avoid social situation because of anxiety. EQ offers me a way to play a video game (mind numbing, etc) yet have some social contact at the level I chose. I can guild chat, hide in an unguilded alt, participate in tradeskill chat serverwide, etc. If all flops, I can switch servers and restart new alts and new friends. If I cannot give up my alt, I can pay to change her name and just not let on it is me - something I haven't tried, btw. Via online interactions, I have identified new issues, managed to work more on issues that I had gotten stuck on, etc in my talk therapy. Kudos to eq, lol. [EQ, F, 41]

Being a bookworm by nature and none too sociable as a kid, I was very bad at talking to people. Online however, was different. I could be totally anonymous, and I could actually think of what I was going to 'say' before I said it. I was actually a darn good writer, I just was no good at talking to people. UO and EQ helped me build up a relatively accurate model of social interaction and allowed me to become better in conversation, to the point where I was normal. [EQ, M, 20]

EverQuest has always been my escape from things like a job that I hated, times in life that I wasn't sure I would live through, etc. Once I moved to a new location to be with my husband, EverQuest became my life. I have Asperger's Syndrome, meaning among many things that I have great difficulty in social situations (to the point where I would rather be alone than make friends). My online world was mostly safe and I already had my quota of friends to keep my company. My husband's family no doubt wondered why I did not want to hang out with them, and I didn't want to kill time making small talk about other people's children. I'd rather be off adventuring with my friends in Norrath. There have been a few times that I have not been able to play EverQuest for one reason or another, and I hate those times. EQIM doesn't quite cut it. If I didn't have my guild message board I would be really lost, but thankfully most of my guildmates are all real-life friends and family that I have phone numbers for. However, when I can't play EQ, I still wish I could escape into it... badly sometimes. I miss my friends. I have a difficult enough time with real life, about all I can do some days is play games and deal with the little bit of lifelikeness you can't help but come across in games. [EQ, F, 25]

I have GAD (General Anxiety Disorder), OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), and depression diagnosed. This causes me a lot of trouble 95% of the time. I even had to go to an alternative school because I couldn't handle my other high school due to anxiety levels. Then, I was able to make it through one semester of college. But the second semester fell through. I had more classes that seemed to provoke anxiety, my OCD was getting out of control, which prevented me from going to classes, which in turn ate away at my grades, and everything except the sport I was involved in went on a steep decline. I had to withdraw from college (I plan on doing something online and such...I didn't drop out) and come home.

Still, I am plagued with anxiety since I'm home by myself all day. The game allowed me to be with people, even if we were, in reality, millions of miles away. It also took down my stress level, lessening the anxiety I felt while at home. I'm also a lone wolf sort of person ... a social outcast. I had never fit in before college, and was always being made fun of. I had little to no friends ... and through 12th grade, I had one best friend and two school friends whom I haven't seen or heard from since graduation in the summer of 2002. My best friends are all online friends and live in other states from me now. Playing the game allowed me to become an entirely different person ... it allowed me to start over. I'm not a social outcast in the game. I don't have a single enemy in the game, and I try to make friends with just about everyone (except the monsters). I'm accepted there, and since I get to participate in more conversational things in the game, it actually helped me to understand how I should behave with a group of people in real life. Things I should say, things I shouldn't say ... I'm still learning that.

My parents just got divorced after the process took two years to complete, and are now living in separate houses. They have a ton of arguments, still, which drives me nuts. My father isn't the best of people, either. He's not understanding at all of my disabilities, and before they split apart, my mother was never home to talk to. I have a younger brother (by two years) that isn't going to school either because of depression, and I worry about him a lot of times as well. Playing the game enabled me to forget all my troubles in real life and become the character I created. I would rather spend my time in the game then in real life because of this.

So, once again, the game allows me to become someone else, make a clean start, and interact with others and be who I want to be. I can't protect all the people I want to protect in real life because of how far away we live from one another. But in the game, I can protect others. I can be strong, and I don't have to worry about a disability. I can also see my friends and make new ones. It's a good coping outlet for me while I try to get my life straightened out and put all the pieces back together. Because when I role-play my character, I don't have to worry about anything except for what I'm going to do next in the game. [Other, F, 19]

I did play Underlight for almost 5 years, at the end I pretty much burned out. I am glad what happened in the end for me to realize that I wasn't living a reality. I looked for a game for self esteem and self worth. Games sometimes become addictive not because they are great games, but because we go looking for something that is missing in our lives, because of a feeling that someone in this game is giving you. I feel that people that already have a addictive personality should really stay away from these games because once they suck you in its really hard to be sucked out until something bad happens in RL or in the game itself. I have cried, I have laughed, and I have loved in this game and I will tell you right now I think at that time of my life I just needed to go through it before I could face the world again. [Other, F, 36]

I was playing EQ one night in June of 2000 when I got a call saying I needed to hurry up and get to the hospital because my daughter had been hit by a drunk driver. They said she was in very serious condition. My boyfriend and I immediately logged our characters and rushed out of the house. That night my daughter ended up dying from her injuries. I at first blamed my playing EQ for her death. I couldn't believe that while my daughter was out with friends that I was involved in another world. After the tragedy I decided that I needed to take a break from EQ to get my priorities straight. My boyfriend posted on our guild website that we would be out of the game for awhile due to my daughter being killed. The support I received from the people in my guild was overwhelming. I couldn't believe that people I only knew from an online game were so supportive of my decision and my feelings. I took a break from EQ for about 2 months. I finally realized that my playing EQ was not the reason for her death. So I went back to playing because I missed all the people I played with regularly. I was still deeply depressed about losing my child, but when I was in EQ I felt so much better about myself and about life. All my friends were there to talk to me about how I was feeling and to offer me advice on things I could do. I eventually got over my depression thanks to the people in EQ. If it wasn't for them I probably would either be depressed still or laying dead in the ground. I really feel that the escape into EQ and all the good people I have met there was very helpful to me in dealing with this tragedy. I really have the members of Warriors of Wrath and Ittie Bittie Brigade to thank for this! [EQ, F, 35]

I started playing Everquest as an additional activity between myself and my boyfriend at the time. When we broke up, I spent more and more time playing Everquest to escape from the feelings the break up had left me with. I refused to interact with people on a personal level for a long time. I feel that Everquest helped me to get back to dealing with and caring about people. [EQ, F, 23]

In fact I 'met' my current boyfriend in EQ. It was the silliest thing really. Boy this was when EQ was first started and the Bertox server was still young before our first server split. I was playing my first character the famous Bard of Freeport, Markie. I had gotten lost and wandered into the Oasis of Marr barely alive. There this handsome wood elf druid comes along to 'save' me. Being an outgoing bard character I thanked him and we chatted a few moments while we rested. I made it out of the Oasis and back to my group to hunt bandits again in North Ro. Over time we chatted it up as players since we seem to be playing at the same times. I am such the role-player I am always playing Markie so it never hard to find me when I am online. He, however, has quite a few characters since he finds he can’t make up his mind which suits him. But he starts to play one of Markie's weaknesses. Paladins!! Well Markie is being courted by several paladins in-game. None of which I find that worthy since I don't 'know' them. I start hearing 'grumbles' from my real life boyfriend at the time about all of this 'interest' in me. Bah! I tell him they are only interested in Markie and I prove it! I ask my new friend what he thinks and he agrees he would be honored to 'court' Markie. So we exchange emails and become friends. My boyfriend insists he 'likes' me. I even ask him straight out and he tells me no problem, in game only. I think that it was the first time in my life I ever got the chance to really become good friends with some one without all the sexual tension and oh what do I wear and how do I look getting in the way? I think meeting on line was both easier and harder. We never planned this whole thing at all. I found that more and more my friend on line was the person who understood and was the person who talked to me. My role-playing being in love with his character and playing and chatting with him most every night kinda set us up to 'find each other'. We found we had much in common and we even lived in the same friggin' STATE. It was friggin weird. And we both found that our real life relationships were in the toilet because they were not what we wanted. And one day I just confessed I needed to break up with my boyfriend and he was in shock when I told him he was the reason why. After that things were kinda weird we kept playing but we didn’t get round to meeting in person for about 4 months. Yeah we were both shy. But since then we have been together and happy ever since. That was almost 4 years ago. Who ever knew I owe my happiness in love to in part to a game? [F, 32]

When I first started playing EQ, it was to have some fun once a week with some coworkers. When they quit playing, I'd already made some 'friends' that I enjoyed grouping with, so I kept playing. At the time, I was single and had no intention of ever changing that. One of the people I met in game was going through a divorce. I've been moral support for guys going through their divorces before, and wound up doing it again (I seem to be a sympathetic person and easy to talk to). Through our many conversations (online, through IM, email, and phone), I reconsidered my hardline stance against remarriage. In the meantime, I had gotten married online to someone (see question below for the explanation) that I never considered a potential RL love interest. He was much younger than I was, and lived on the other side of the country. However, he had asked me out to visit, and as he was acting jealous of my friendship with the person getting the divorce, I decided to go ahead and meet him, so that he would understand how silly it was for him to care about who I might get involved with IRL. Well, it didn't turn out that way. He moved here about 2 months after we met, proposed a few months later, we found out shortly thereafter that I had gotten pregnant (around the time he proposed!), and now we're married with an 11-month-old baby, and so far, still very happy. [EQ, F, 39]

I play on a non-PvP server. I am part of a large guild that I have been with for almost a year. It’s large, but in guild chat we talk a lot and I have gotten to know a number of people quite well. Most recently I was online and we were talking in guild about some topic, maybe it was the war. I got a tell from one of the players about something I said, and boom ... we ended up talking for 8 hours straight. I have always respected this person and thought he was an intelligent, sensitive man, but after this night, I realized the depth of his personality. Well, as I’m sure you can imagine, we talked again the night after and after and after ... after 2 weeks we met and hit it off in RL ... really well. We are dating now, and he means a lot to me. It was weird, I was talking to a friend about it ... We got to know each other from 'the inside out' … meaning I got to know him on a deep personal level first without letting anything like physical appearance, etc get in the way. [EQ, F, 29]

We were in the same guild and about the same level and began hunting together regularly becoming friends in the process. Gradually we began talking about RL things and getting to know each other better and began talking outside the game using instant messengers. Getting to know him in game over a period of a couple years made transitioning to talking in RL so much easier, and we always had a lot to talk about. When I left that game for another and he stayed, we continued talking in RL and eventually added phone calls to the instant messengers. We live on opposite coasts so meeting took some planning but we did finally meet about 3 years or so after we met in game and had a great weekend becoming friends in person as well as online. We plan to meet again in a couple months for the second time. Meeting in person added a whole separate level to the friendship, it was a nervous time though, because we both worried that we would not click the way we had online. Meeting online first helps in several ways but creates its own problems as well. You may have much more to talk about with shared experiences from the game and such, but pictures and phone calls cannot substitute for seeing each others eyes and watching them smile when they see you. Meeting online was very different from say meeting someone at work or the mall. We were already friends, had much in common and had spent hours and hours talking about everything under the sun. We knew the person behind the pixels and liked them, Meeting face to face just opened another level to the relationship. It was very hard however to not have expectations for the first meeting, but I believe that is true for any 'first' such as a first date no matter how you meet. I suppose the biggest difference between this online beginning and other relationships is that we took our time, becoming good friends first and talking about everything. Learning to like and trust each other in game/online before actually meeting, in my mind, made everything much easier when we did finally meet face to face. This relationship has lasted almost 4 years now, who knows where it will end... that’s half the fun of life. Maybe 25 years from now I will be saying ' yes honey I really did meet your Grandpa fighting giants!' [DAOC, F, 43]

I am currently engaged to a man I met in EQ. It started when my guildmaster asked his troll warrior to join us in a group. We hit it off right away and were friends for about six months when we realized we had much in common. We decided to meet in real life about six months after we met in game. This relationship was different from other relationships I've had in that it was based on similarities in values and ethics as we discussed first online, then by phone, rather than by a physical attraction. Meeting them in an MMORPG environment made it easier to get to know him. [EQ, F, 51]

I am engaged to marry a man that I met in EQ. We have spent sufficient time together RL to know this is the right decision for us, even though we have lived our lives on opposite sides of the planet (US and Australia). Having each been married before, and being older (I'm 41, he's 32) we believe that this relationship will succeed, although the absence of the 'traditional path to marriage' has created unique challenges and stresses for us. We are both fortunate to have a great deal of relevant education (both have degrees in psychology) and a great deal of personal insight to sustain us -- this would be infinitely harder without either. I definitely came to know my fiancé more as a person, and he me, in EQ than we would likely have in RL (assuming that we'd even stumbled on each other despite living 10,000 miles apart). Indeed, RL biases would have likely caused both of us to ignore the other had we just encountered each other -- this is sadly the way the world works with people of different ages, races and religions. The virtual world, in which all the stereotypes and prejudices were minimized because you have no idea how the other person looks or sounds for a long time, allowed those ingrained visual and auditory prejudices to take a back seat to real-time information processing about the other, our values, beliefs and feelings. I think that this mandatory filtering of conscious and unconscious 'attraction habits' or 'attraction stereotypes' played a great role in our romantic relationship beginning at all, even though now it thrives only because we purposefully apply the same levels of disclosure, candor and intimacy when we are together that we first became comfortable with while faceless and nameless in EQ. Unlike many 'traditional couples' the only way to make a relationship survive without face-to-face, day-to-day interaction is *constant* communication and, assuming that neither party to the relationship is engaged in deception, that constant communication actually gives you a leg-up on many couples who marry in haste and repent in leisure. If a virtual couple with a RL relationship don't talk, and share, and deepen your intimacy through words there is nothing else to fall back on, unlike many RL based couples who are ill-suited but hide their problems through sex, drugs, avoidance, large crowds and other tools to avoid genuine intimacy -- especially the downside of it -- that romance tends to encourage. By the time he and I finally met face to face, 3 years ago now, we each felt like we'd known each other all our lives. Still didn't stop us from being giddy though =) [EQ, F, 41]

I have been in several romantic relationships with people met in EQ. The first was early on, when I had just been playing for a few months. I'll call him 'D'. I met D when he was hunting with a friend and they invited me to join them since they needed a healer. We all had a lot of fun so we started grouping together on a regular basis. I became friends with both of them, and eventually some of their other friends, but D and I especially enjoyed spending time together.

Our characters started flirting and taking an overt interest in one another, and pretty soon people viewed us as something equivalent to a dating couple. After two months or so, he asked if I'd be interested in talking on the phone. We did, and really enjoyed it, so we started talking on a regular basis and exchanged pictures by email. After another month or so, D's character proposed to mine, and they had an in game wedding.

Another month or so after that, he came into town on business and we met in person. We met at a neutral place (restaurant) and my Mom came along, because otherwise she would have been home tearing her hair out with worry. But he was exactly who he'd claimed to be, just a normal guy. It was a little awkward at first, knowing this person's personality so well but being a complete stranger to them physically.

For the first day it kind of felt like a first date, with nervous giggles every time our hands brushed together, that sort of thing. But by the second day most of the weirdness had worn off and it mostly felt like we'd been dating for at least a few weeks. A couple months later he had another trip into town on business and stayed for another weekend. There was no weirdness that time; it was as if we'd been together since our characters started 'dating'.

He had a couple of layovers in town for 1-2 hours at a time after that, so I just went and met him at the airport to sit and talk. (This was long before 9/11 so I could meet him at the gate.) A few months later I flew 2000 miles to spend a week with him at his place. At that point I was considering moving out there, as he had much more tying him to where he was than I did and I thought I would enjoy that part of the country. It'd be an adventure even if things didn't work out.

But before it got that far, things started going downhill anyway. It was a long, drawn-out, confusing sort of break-up, but I honestly think he just lost interest and didn't know how to tell me. It took a long time to get over that, because of the messy ending. He stopped playing by the end, which was really just as well. My character stopped wearing the wedding ring eventually, but she still has it in the bank, almost three years later.

After that there was a string of some pretty foolish romantic relationships. I swapped pictures with a number of folks, some of whom were truly just friends both between us and between our characters. There was one guildmate that I had known almost from the beginning but didn't get close to until after things ended with D, we'll call him J. J had had a longstanding crush on the friend who got me into EQ, even though she was in a committed relationship and had no romantic interest in him. He and I started spending more time together, and soon he was obsessing over me as much as he had obsessed over my friend.

I was not really interested in another relationship, still recovering from D, but I enjoyed his company and was flattered by the attention, although I never lied to him about how I felt. Still selfish, I know. J and I had low level alts that we sometimes played together, and behaved as if they were married although we'd never had an in game wedding for them. (Yes yes I know I know.) After several months of this J took an interest in one of several new members to the guild. Knowing full well how foolish I was being, I still got jealous and resentful and went to some effort to keep J's attention.

His new object of affection was eating up his attentions, though, and pulling all the right strings, so it wasn't very successful. I made myself back off a bit, but we still talked a lot. J had always teasingly pestered me about coming to visit him, but a couple months after he took an interest in the other guildmate I realized I had a good chunk of vacation time stored up again and thought it might be fun to go visit. (Yes I know!)

He lives in a major metropolis that I've always wanted to see, and I knew that even as 'just friends' we'd still have a great time. So I went, and really we did have a great time. Some things happened that shouldn't have, but nothing worth agonizing over. I knew in the back of my mind that this was never going to lead to anything long-term, so I can't say I was very surprised when I came back home and he returned to showering affection on my guildmate. It hurt, but given the fun we had while I was there and all the sights I got to see and the things I learned about men (ugh), I don't regret it.

The string of foolish, short relationships continued, but none with anyone I actually met in person. Some of them wanted to, including one from overseas who talked about flying here, but at least I had enough sense not to let that happen. Then this past fall another serious relationship appeared rather suddenly. We'll call him Y. I had known Y almost from the beginning of my EQ days, and considered him one of my closest friends in game. He had been in beta testing with the friends who got me started in EQ, and was even closer to them.

He was married when we met though, and had played with his wife for the first couple years. They had separated maybe eight months prior to the start of our relationship, in a very messy and painful breakup. His wife had all but stopped playing, at least on any characters that I and my friends knew, but I had no particular ill will towards her. I had met Y already, at the RL graduation of the friends who got me playing, when he and his then-wife came.

It was the first time they had met any of us, but a great time was had by all. So anyway, having once already met Y and having spent tons and tons of time together in game, having supported each other through our various heartbreaks (he helped me cope with the difficulties of D and J, and I spent a lot of time helping him deal with the departure of his wife), when he suddenly started talking about how I should visit. This idea sounded great immediately because Y lives in what is by far the most appealing part of the country to me. I was a little hesitant though, as I'd always had something of a crush on Y, although I think I'd done a good job of keeping it nothing more than that, given that the man was married and then going through the trauma of a failed marriage. I never even let myself consider anything serious with him to that point, but was afraid that being there with him, all lonely and vulnerable, might present some problems.

So I was sort of pushing the idea around on my plate without actually taking a bite until he rather suddenly confessed that he had begun thinking of me as more than a friend. That was a shock and a half. After literally years of having a hopeless crush, knowing deep down it could never ever happen, suddenly it was happening. Foolish optimist that I am, I ignored the voice whispering 'rebound' and went for it. Having known each other for so long, we immediately launched into a serious relationship. We made the plans for my trip out there.

My Mom bought me a new set of luggage as an early birthday present to take on my trip. (She's come a long way since D!) I rambled on endlessly about him at work, plastered his picture on the desktop of all the various computers I use, and idly surfed through job openings in his area. The only thing that worried me is it all seemed too good to be true, too absolutely perfect, things that good simply don't happen to me. I told him so, told him all about my misgivings and worries and everything, but he was the picture of confidence, reassuring me endlessly of his affection and happy anticipation. We talked as if marriage were a foregone conclusion and everything up until that point just a pleasant formality.

We talked several times a day (very much long distance) but didn't spend as much time together as we'd have liked, due to his irregular work schedule. But we did sling plenty of sappy emails back and forth. Then...*sigh*...a couple weeks before the trip, he started acting just a little distant. He talked about being busy with work, and did hold a very responsible position at his job, so I didn't think much of it. But sure enough, literally a few days before the trip, I dragged out of him that he no longer felt so much in love any more.

He'd been planning on letting me come and hoping that'd rekindle things (selfish son-of-unwed-parents) but thankfully I had the sense to be doubtful, and my Mom and my friends had the sense to talk me the rest of the way out of it. That one hurt, hurt worse than D or J combined ever had. Y had been a friend for so long, I trusted him implicitly. We had been through so much together over the years, I just couldn't conceive of him hurting me that much. I now know never to trust *any* man that much, online or otherwise, at least not without a very real ring on my ring finger.

I spent the weekend on the couch, alternately sleeping and crying, and then took a couple days off work to continue sleeping and crying. Of course life goes on, his picture was stripped off all my desktops an all reminders removed from sight. It was a week before I could unpack my bags though (they were ready to go a week before my flight).

For a while after that trauma I wanted nothing to do with men, of course. It was a few months before it dawned on me that one of the friends I'd been spending a lot of time with seemed to be a little more attentive and interested than usual in a friend. We'll call him R. I had met R about a year earlier, shortly after he started playing. We were in different guilds but our guilds do a lot of things together, so we ran into each other a lot and found it natural enough to start hanging out on our own, inviting each other to come when our groups needed more people or when we were soloing and wanted some company. He'd been a very good friend to me through all the stuff with Y, willing either to listen quietly or distract me, as needed.

We spent every possible spare moment together, and I started having feelings for him. After a couple months of worrying about ruining our friendship and making a fool of myself, I decided I couldn't possibly look a bigger fool than I did after Y, and R's a sweet and strong enough person to handle any temporary discomfort if he wasn't feeling as I suspected, so I told him how I felt. Turns out I (and the friends I'd had watching for signs of interest in him) were right, he did feel the same.

He'd never been in a serious relationship before, online or otherwise, so we started out taking it slow and so far it seems to have gone well. We talk on the phone maybe once a week or so, email a couple times a week, and have our own private chat channel in game at all times, so we are in constant touch whenever we're both online. It's almost like having him sitting there next to me...almost. He's scheduled to visit here in four weeks, and assuming that goes well will be applying to grad school at the big university in town. :)

I was worried about what would happen if he came here and we promptly broke up, but badgered him with what if's until satisfied that he feels here is as good as anywhere for grad school and wouldn't feel compelled to immediately move back if things go sour. He has a strong network of friends and is close to his family, so I think he'd be okay. I'm still nervous, but he's worth the risk.

I went into all that detail in an attempt to illustrate the fact that none of these relationships differs much from RL relationships, except for the geographical distance and resulting dependence on technology for staying in touch and eventual need for relocation by one party or the other. Those are the only hardships I see at all.

The jerky behavior I endured (and selfish, foolish behavior I committed) has nothing to do with having met online and everything to do with human nature. I haven't been in any long term RL relationships for comparison, but I've been in plenty of short ones and seen friends go through all sorts of long and short ones. I see no difference between those and mine that started online, except for the hardships imposed by distance.

And the benefits go a long way towards outweighing the hardships. Relationships online pretty much all start with friendships, because that's all you have to go on for attraction. Everyone's a hottie, and a fake computer animation at that, so there really isn't any chasing of people based purely on appearance. It’s very easy to spot the ones who are only after the 'rich and powerful', maybe because of the intensely social nature of game time. The game is all about interaction, so there's never an issue of where to go or what to do, or for that matter of personal safety while spending time together.

People sometimes say 'aren't you worried that he could turn out to be a murderer or something?' to which I reply 'so this guy I've talked to for hundreds, maybe even thousands, of hours over the course of a year, and about whom I have developed no criminal suspicions whatsoever, is still more dangerous in your eyes than in some random guy who sat down next to me in a bar ten minutes ago? I don't think so.'

Of course people can deceive others over long periods of time, but that's nothing new to online relationships. Heck my cousin married a guy that we all thought was great, they dated a long time and her family loved him. But on the flight to their honeymoon he started drinking and was a drunken abuser ever since. No one even dreamt him capable of such a thing. They're long since separated and have been fighting very nasty custody battles.

That kind of stuff happens just as much in RL, it just doesn't grab attention the way it does when people happened to meet online initially. I'm firmly convinced that if it weren't for the geographic problems and the resulting heartache, meeting online would be by far the best way to go. [EQ, F, 25]

My friend and I were married in game once. It was a hoot. I am female in RL and play a male char, and he is male in RL and plays a female char, so that role playing was fun. Our guild leader made everyone remove their head gear and disarm their weapons before the ceremony, and then read these very beautiful vows that she had written. They were full of Norrath imagery and very well done, I was impressed. During the ceremony attendants were role playing via emotes **Sarah sniffles and looks for a handkerchief** **Korlon hands Sarah a piece of gnoll fur** That kind of thing. It was great role playing fun. Then everyone gave us gifts and we handed out the booze, and everyone got drunk and danced and made each other levitate and what not. It was very silly and fun. That guild had several weddings, and they were some of the best times I've had in the game. That guild broke up though, I miss them. Its also fun because now when we see each other in game on those chars my friend and I can be like, 'Oh damn, there's my wife. Hi honey.' **rolls his eyes** or some such role playing nonsense. He has another char that he role plays as my Mom, that is even more role play fun. =) [EQ, F, 33]

I married my boyfriend online in 1999 and we were married in reality in 2001. The wedding was held in a special chapel in the game and a 'Seer' preformed the ceremony, with much pomp and circumstance. We received specially engraved wedding rings which are blessed and cannot be lost should our characters die. A guild we often interact with and role play with arrived. Our guild is the 'good guys' guild and theirs the 'bad guys' guild. They roleplayed a small disruption, but nothing to spoil the day, and we had a really great time. Then I was kidnapped away during the feast and my beloved had to follow clues and he and the wedding guests set out in search parties to find me. After a little searching they found more clues which eventually led him to me. He had to fight his way past some of the 'bad guys' guild to rescue me and take me away to our honeymoon. It was great fun and I will always cherish it. [DAOC/UO, F, 40]

My first wedding was very special. I married Zexis Tal 'Daris. A GM friend of mine took us around to various places that we considered for our wedding. On a specific date, our friends and guild members met us by being summoned and a gm friend who was a cleric 'married' us. Afterwards, we had wedding cake and lots of ale etc. We had no unruly nor unexpected guests. It was a very nice experience. My second wedding was several years later after my first virtual husband had left the game. It was very romantic. He asked me to marry him at sunset on the Oasis beach. His name is Tobie Baine. The location was special, in that we were married on the Oasis beach where he had asked me to marry him. Our guildmaster married us and it was delightful. There were no special vows really, but I kept going linkdead =) No unruly guests, but interestingly, my previous online husband showed up unexpectedly and seemed to have a bit of a difficult time with this wedding. It didn't bother me and he behaved himself. Tobie and I have remained friends now since our characters were both in our early teens. They are now both 65, but he no longer raids with the group we used to raid with. He is currently in college and can't keep the raid schedule and do well in school. We have kept touch by email even when one of us has taken a break. We still have a good friendship. I also remain in contact with my first husband by email and by instant messaging. Oh! Interesting story =) With my second husband, Tobie, we were raiding together the day after the wedding and I got charmed and killed him. He said that he joked that it didn't bode well for the marriage when the bride kills the groom the day after the wedding =) [EQ, F, 51]

Some months after we became involved IRL we married our characters in the game. It was a full guild wedding. We actually had special outfits we'd acquired (pity the male high elf cleric got to wear white while the female woodelf druid had to settle for bejeweled brown leathers-- Velious Models). I was at his place in Toronto and we had major problems with keeping two machines connected-- I kept LDing every couple of minutes. We wound up on the phone with the guildleader (who's a computer person) trying to coordinate everything. Wedding was done in increments until I LDd again. We had picked the location for ease of access, safety for guests, and beauty: the shoreline south of the port in ButcherBlock Mts. Would have preferred the dock in Lake Rathe on the RM side but it's too hard to get to. We wrote our vows in advance, and our 'best man' had a speech prepared as well. Most of our friends attended, the ceremony was performed by the guild's ArchBishop Ldara and leader, Prince Zackary. Some people gave up raids with their guilds to attend. Pictures posted on guild website (along w/ several other weddings of guildmembers who are RL couples) at http://sofeq.sofguild.com/scenes/scenes15.htm The rainbow of spell effects coordinated by our friend Katrinz afterwards is one of my favorite memories. [EQ, F, 59]

I’ve been married twice. Once to a very good friend who I met very early in the game. We were married near a large arena by a lake. The vows were strange, because normally people dont think of a pair of dark elf shadow knights to be all happy happy love love. O_o But you know, it was your normal evil wedding with vows about walking the path of darkness with each other and slaying the innocent, ect. LOL. Followed by a drunken guild fight in the arena. (What would you expect from a PvP guild?) The second time was less fun. It was in a dull place that I didnt pick. The vows were nothing to remember. I didnt enjoy it very much. After we went to a dungeon that I also didnt pick, to camp something that he wanted. The start of a very unhappy EQ/RL relationship. One wedding I remember well actually wasnt my own, but a friends. It was in a city, and a guard came by and started to attack some guests as the vows were being said, it was pretty interesting. [EQ, F, 17]

Highlights of the wedding? It was a cute ceremony, I guess. I got a ring that one of my alts still wears. I got married to my old guild leader, the location was the docks at Freeport. We all went and 'got a hotel room' in Freeport and started boozing it up. The funniest part: a friend of mine who didn't want me to get 'married' to this guy, sends my RL boyfriend (we weren’t dating at the time though) a tell sayin 'i hope it friggin rains' and it started raining. [EQ, F, 22]

Yes I have been married 3 times, the first 2 times just a roleplay arrangement. The first wedding my husband got drunk and fell in some water and drowned. The second was supposed to be in my favorite place in lesser fay fairy ring, sadly before i arrived the whole wedding party was wiped out by the corrupted horse so the venue had to be changed. But the most meaningful was the third time because I had truly fell in love and now am married to this many in many different lives. [EQ, F, 38]

I have married someone in game. It was partially a political move (believe it or not....) to get me into a pretty selective high end raiding guild that had closed off its application process. I got married to a long time friend. We said pagan-like vows to each other (as I wanted to roleplay it as much as possible ... and had been to previous weddings that modeled the american-christian weddings services ... that bugged me to no end … as he iis korean-american and I am jewish-american it made sense to do it this way) There was a lot of alcohol drinking and food eating. We got married in Lake Rathe....a place we both picked out. [EQ, F, 29]

We are a family-type guild. Our ideals are to help others, especially guild members, as much as we can, to have fun, and to not be a prick. However, since our only rule is to not be a prick, we have had a few major problems. Part of it is that we are not a very large guild and once people reach a certain level and have attained their epic, they usually leave for a higher tier guild to do things that we can't or don't do as a guild. The same issues keep creating the same problems. Mostly members feeling like they have been left out or feeling like we don't do enough high-level stuff. We have to work the issue out each time it happens and we usually lose several members. It seems that every three to six months, we lose about 30% of our guild. A couple leave because of issues they feel we don't resolve, others because they want to do bigger things than what the guild is doing. Each time we lose people or have issue come up, we have to work through it and we come out with our ideals intact. There have been a couple close calls where the guild leader was about to disband the guild. It is a difficult process made even more complicated by our wish for no rules (other than our don't be a prick rule), member's differing maturity levels (we have our most difficulty and explosive problems with college students), and everyone's different interpretation of what is wrong and what is right. [EQ, F, 26]

Our guild has been attempting to challenge the Sony/Verant stereotype by being a family-oriented guild that nonetheless succeeds in the high-end game. Unfortunately, we have suffered for years from the rollercoaster which occurs when a push to emphasize family values bumps heads with the need to make decisions to further military/strategic goals. We go through periods of build-up and success, then someone gets what I affectionately call 'uber disease' and loses sight of the fact that we are in our guild as opposed to another is because we don't choose to raid 24-7-365 or make the acquisition of 'Phat L3wt' our raison d'etre. During these times, people leave in a huff (although its amazing how many people *lie* about their reasons for leaving rather than just say they are leaving because they are unhappy we aren't moving fast enough for their taste. You sooner or later -- usually sooner -- find out the truth when you see them raiding the server's uber the next day and members soon thereafter (even though they told you they were just 'taking a break from the game' but needed for some reason to untag while they did it LOL). Usually their social clique follows, and there is a period of contraction with a loss of guild capability. Followed by, of course, reflection and rebuilding with a core of old die-hards and new members. We half-jokingly refer to ourselves as a training guild at this point. Some of us are accepting that this will be ongoing and may be something that we cannot ever permanently change, because people change in their approach to EQ as they level. But we're still thinking about how we can change this phenomena, rather than do what 99% of non-powergamer folks do -- abandon raiding/high end gaming or abandon the friendship/value system that brought them together in the first place. Some of us 'old-timers' are getting weary of the cycle and the emotional toll that it takes on those who choose to remain loyal to a guild over a long period of time. [EQ, F, 41]

I experienced the complete implosion of an 'up and coming' guild on my server. Basically, the guild leader took some time off and the guild began to split into rival cliques/factions each out to further their own gains rather than benefit the guild as a whole. Raids became more and more disorganized, morale became low, attendance low, and we found ourselves getting repeatedly beat by creatures we had once dominated. People began leaving in droves, and the guild eventually fell apart completely when the leader finally returned and saw the state of things. He tried to patch things up, but it was too late. The guild was soon dissolved. To this day (almost a year later) there are still people from the old guild that remain on my ignore list... [EQ, M, 33]

Yes. I was once in a large guild that had a smaller clique within it. This clique was made up of the guild leader and his close friends, all high-level characters who tended to be the ones who ran guild events. So when on raids, these people tended to be the ones who made decisions about who got what items that dropped. 90% of the time, it was someone in the clique who got the item. This ended up destroying the guild. There were MANY officers who weren't in the clique, but who were aware of what was going on. The guild ended up completely falling apart, and no longer exists today. [EQ, F, 33]

There was a few times in this guild that there was huge debates that left a negative impact on the guild. The one that sticks in my mind the most was shortly after I joined the guild, our GL was a college student that when EQ first started he played all the time. As time in school went by he realized that he needed to cut back on his play time. Some of the people in the guild felt that our GL should relinquish his title since he wasn't going to be in game 24/7 (so to speak). Our Gl was a very good Gl and handled all problems in a timely matter and made sure that everyone in the guild was happy. When he got wind of this dispute about his availability to the game he promptly posted a thread to our guild message boards about the situation. He asked all guild members to post a reply about their truthful feelings on the matter. The guild was pretty much split down the middle in regards to him remaining the GL or stepping down. Some of the people from the stepping down side were so offended that people were against them in this issue that it caused a lot of heated debates in game and out. Finally when things seemed to have calmed down about the situation we held a guild meeting for people to vote on the issue. Well as it turned out the people in support of our GL was stronger then what we believed and it was voted that he would stay in his position. This infuriated the other people so much that when all was said and done they all left the guild because of it. [EQ, F, 35]

Guilds are always faced with political strife. The main issue that seems to appear for most raiding guilds is the distribution of loot. Several guilds have gone to a point based system which awards points based upon participation in sucessful raids that can be used to bid on items that drop during guild raid events. However, for many guilds the point system is too complex and time intensive to be properly utilized. Some guilds use the CAWU method which basically means 'can and will use'. This method allows any player that can and will use the item to put their name in for an open roll. This system causes a lot of turmoil because it comes down to the luck of the roll. A casual player who only shows up to one or two raids can walk away with an incredible item while the seasoned veteran who spends night and day raiding with the guild goes home with nothing. Personally I believe that CAWU should be left to groups and pick-up raids and has no place in guild run raids. The system that my guild uses is the council system. In that system the guild officers and 2 randomly chosen members (a total of 6) decide from the list of those that would like the item, who should receive it based on participation, attitude, last time they recieved loot, etc. However, every system can fail and has its drawbacks. Just last night we had one of our most veteran members disband from the guild because a breastplate that he wanted went to a guild member who was much younger in the guild. The belief that he had 'earned' it in his eyes outweighed the unanimous decision of the council who awarded it to the younger, and honestly more needing player. Since the veteran member disbanded last night there has been a miriad of posts, /tells, and guild chat pointing fingers and asking questions. Only from experience do I know that this will not be over for days and even weeks to come. [EQ, M , 28]

A guild I was once in (for about a year), split due to internal debate on the direction of the guild as a whole. Some people played a lot and put in a huge amount of effort to advance the guild as a whole, and then there were the more casual players who didnt do as much towards this. In order to advance the guild as a whole, and provide more equipment and more engaging experiences for everyone, it is generally considered that Merit Loot, ie giving certain items to the people who can use them to the greatest effect (actually merit just means giving it to a person you choose, but it's usually to the best use, or most deserving due to time put in person), is the best way to help advance your guild if equipment is scarce. Giving the Big Really Protective Breastplate to your number one Warrior who attends every fight, and is always the one getting beating up and keeping to monster from eating everyone else, is a good idea. the alternative to this, Random loot, is where everyone who attends gets to roll a dice (Everquest has a facility for this) and whoever rolls highest wins the item. In this scenario, the Big Really Protective Breastplate could maybe go to a Rogue for example (who if they are doing their job right shouldnt be getting hit anyway), or say a Warrior who might play once a week. In this example, this nice piece of equipment, which could have enabled your main Warrior to do his job even better, meaning your guild succeeds more at raids and gets even MORE loot, has now been given to someone where it will not benefit the guild in any way.

Most high end guilds go in for Merit loot over Random loot, as it is the only way to move the guild forward. Anyway. The casual people in my guild were all for Random loot, as it meant they might get something, improving themselves in the short term, while stopping the guild improving in the long term, where it might have provided loot for all. the people who played every day and were actually making things happen and being the living heart and soul of the guild, were more for merit, in order to equip the people in the line of fire, in order to enable the guild to do bigger and better things, and quite frankly to reward all the hard work and effort of the people who consistently did their best for the good of the guild (the officers and guild leader were on the Merit loot side of things). The casual players accused the dedicated players of being greedy, officers not doing enough work to improve the guild (when in fact they were working their arses off), casual players were not pulling their weight when online, and only attending raids where they knew something would drop that they personally wanted. The leadership then offered to put up a poll of how things should advance. Everyone was given the opportunity to give ideas for inclusion in the poll for a week beforehand, so that everyone's input could be gotten. The poll was held, and the large majority was in favour of Merit loot.

Naturally, the very same hour, one of the people who had voted for the continuance of Random loot (know this from knowing the person, the results were anonymously displayed of course) cried that the poll was obviously rigged and the choices were unfair, even though they had had a whole week to include their own ideas (which, surprisingly, they had not). They further accused the officers and guild leadership of being charlatans, with no interest in helping anyone but themselves. Unsurprisingly, after many months of abuse, our guild leader called their bluff and said that they could run the guild any way they wanted, because he was leaving. Probably about 75% of the guild left with him, from which he forged a new guild, which is currently going strong, and of which I am a part. Merit loot is currently in use. The old guild is falling apart very badly indeed, which i am very happy to laugh gleefully about, as the cretins got what was coming to them. Incidentally, a good portion of the people left behind were the ones who enjoyed shitstirring (if this term is not used outside of England, it means to cause trouble by making snide comments, encouraging arguements, and trying to set people against each other). This was another part of why the guild split, due to constant bickering and backbiting between some members, generally started off by these individuals. [EQ, F, 22]

The first incident was that a member who was not very well liked, was accused by the guildmaster of trying to convince someone to join him in his travels after he had heard the guildmaster in guildchat ask that person to join a GUILD GROUP SOMEWHERE ELSE BECAUSE THEY WERE NEEDED THERE. No one could convince the guildmaster otherwise.. that it was not intentional. He wanted the person thrown out of the guild, but he wouldn't do it hisself and had the guild council and officers met him where this person was and vote on throwing him out.. the vote was to throw him out, but the guildmaster would not tell him hisself.. instead he made an officer do it. That officer did not like having to do it but did as he was told and was upset by the whole affair. The very next day, the guildmaster, who I was supposed to be marring in game soon, also let me know that cyber sex was required to be his wife. Being so upset I got my private messages and guildchat mixed up.. the whole guild heard my reply to him and one by one quit the guild. By the end of the day there was no one left in that guild except the guildmaster. A few of us were hunting together in the forrest, that guildmaster came near our location to commit suicide, to be sure we all saw his death in our info panel. He had pleaded all day that he was wrong and sorry but no one wanted to hear it, so he killed the character off. [DAOC, f, 51]

I left a guild once because the guild leadership did not seem to understand that real life was more important than playing the game (my husband got sworn at because we had plans on New Year's Day -- plans we told them about in advance when they first mentioned wanting to raid that day -- because we wouldn't change those plans to attend the raid!). I left guilds twice because the guild leadership seemed to think what they wanted for themselves was more important than the rest of the guild -- one guild leader had a tendency to cyber all the female members of the guild (and some that weren't members), all while pretending to have a 'meaningful relationship' with them and trying to hide the fact he was cybering more than just that one person. Another guild recruiter (a guild I never joined) did pretty much the same thing to recruits -- you were 'guaranteed' an in (top guild on the server) if he decided he 'liked' you.

Another problem was a guild where the leadership decided their opinions were the only ones that mattered. They would do things on the spur of the moment (guildremove or take away board access) without explanation, leaving people who were 'friends' of that person to try to find out what was going on. They would 'justify' it by saying they did what they thought was necessary for the guild... The very first guild I was in, the guild leader was EQ-married to what I later found out was an emotionally unstable woman. She would have these fits where she would decide somebody in the guild was 'against her', and would make the guildleader get rid of them. I saw it happen to a couple of other people, so I was talking to some of the other guildies about it, trying to decide whether it would be a good idea to move on, guild-wise. She found out about it, so I became her next target. I removed myself, a lot of the guild followed because one of the original members got pissed about what happened and she took him (level 20 or so at the time?) to the Dreadlands (a level 40+zone) and left him there. Two of our friends stayed, one was an officer and one of the founders of the guild. They broke a rule the guild leader and his girlfriend made up and grouped with me anyway, and the guildleader and his girlfriend and the only other remaining officer showed up, guildremoved the other founding officer and the other person. That pretty much ended the guild. That founding officer quit the game because of it. [EQ, F, 39]

Guilds can be extremely political and the officer/lead positions can mean a great deal to the people who hold them. I joined a guild as a newbie, in EQ, and was nominated to be an officer within a month of joining. I had no idea what an officer did, however I did accept the position. I learned quickly and over the next 6 months became comfortable with handling situations. Then, our guild leader had some personal problems and said she would not be playing for a few weeks, weeks turned into months and it became very difficult to keep the guild running without someone with the guildleader functions. She did come on once in a while, for a few minutes, just to say hello. But, she refused to turn the lead over to anyone else, even temporarily, and people began to leave the guild. Well, this went on for two months until we, the officers, approached a GM about having her removed as guild leader. She decided to come back then, and called a meeting to tell the members that she was back, but in her absence we all forgot how to behave like civilized people and with her help, we could all learn to play nice. We were baffled, we didn't understand where all of that came from, and frankly, we, the officers, were hurt by her words since we were the ones she left in charge. So, we began to talk amongst ourselves about what would be best for us now, and three of the officers decided to quit the current guild and begin their own. Many of the members from the old guild left to join the new. The stubborn leader turned the old guild over to her boyfriend and he deemed the guild as being 'unmanaged' from now on, and at that point, the old guild was pretty much finished. The new guild lives on, much stronger than the old, with old friends and new, a very happy ending to a very sad story. [EQ, F, 24]

In-guild politics has never really been an issue for me directly, as I tend to avoid officership (and thusly, headaches and responsibility) like the plague. However, I have experienced guild politics first hand. My old UO guild at one point in time had the oppurtunity to merge with a group of other guilds in order to form a united coalition against our enemies. I was among the supporters of the change, however our leadership saw it as a loss of their own personal power, whether or not it was for the greater good, and so they declined. Apparently leadership and many other factions also refused to give up power as well, so the coalition never formed. And of course, we continued to lose battles regularly without each others' support. [UO, M, 21]

Guild politics were a large part of the reason I burnt out on EQ. I found that I was playing for the guild most of the time, not for my own personal pleasure and that being a guild officer had become a second fulltime job of being diplomat, psychoanalyst, paper pusher, badguy authoritarian and cruise director to ensure 'fun' for everyone else, even tho I wasn't having a bit of fun myself unless it was time I stole on a secret alt to get away from 'officerhood' I was a founding officer of a guild that fell apart, pretty much thru mismanagement by the officers.

The tag is still around, but the guild is a pathetic skeleton of what it once was, and the blame should be squarely placed on the officer's shoulders. The officers Ali (me) (raid point/loot officer) Fulltime working professional with a boyfriend that played EQ, but far less seriously than I did. I had a background in LARP story telling and administration so I had a first hand working knowledge of how fragile and time intensive a group like a guild is to keep healthy. From my experiences there, I felt it was incredibly important to provide a set of rules ahead of time so that when there were the inevitable conflicts, decisions didn't appear retaliatory, but would be impartial based on a set of public policies. I was the only one of the bunch that had any willingness to do the administrative aspects of things, so it ALL got dumped in my lap. I was easily spending 10+ hours a week on maintaining the raid point system and the website and raids for me were a nightmare, trying to maintain attendance with people arriving late and leaving early, run loot auctions and track raid point expenditures and be lead cleric at the same time.

Brian (guildleader) Bri worked in tech support, stable job, but underemployed. He had some other interests outside of the game and while he logged some serious time on line, he at least had other things in his life. Bri became guildleader when we formed mostly from his on line charisma. I don't think he ever grasped the fact that creating and maintaining a thriving guild was WORK. He just thought that he could decree things and that was that. We were a council when it came to other people doing the work but a dictatorship when it came to any personal agenda he had. He wanted everyone to be happy, which meant he was great at not committing himself to anything one way or the other and living in his own personal reality where everything was rosy and he was well loved. He could be intensely loyal and also TOTALLY irrational when he felt someone had offered slight. He made slight overtures towards something off line and romantic when my relationship was on the rocks and when I turned him down, albeit kindly and amicably, our "relationship" as friends and fellow officers began slowly deteriorating.

Martin (first recruiting officer) Martin, like me, was a working professional. He traveled for his job, also had a son he had custody of and an online girlfriend in the guild so his time to commit to being an officer was limited. He was the only other one in the guild that really saw the guild as a community that needed to be nurtured and maintained not just a tactical force. But for whatever reason, Martin preferred to stick his head in the sand, disappear for long periods or be on line anon and avoiding everyone rather than speak up regarding his concerns. Martin's lack of response on officer issues even early on was perhaps the first crack in the guild. Rather than getting unanimous agreement, to get anything done, we had to go for a majority vote of officers voting since Martin and Dom would be so non-responsive.

Dom (Main Tank) I never totally understood Dom. He played an ogre warrior and because he was generally quiet, I think a lot of us underestimated the person behind the keyboard. He was very "hippie" in his perspective: Everyone should be "happy" and free to do whatever makes them happy. We didn't need rules as it would all just somehow magically work itself out. He was loyal and responsible.. when I paid for a year of web hosting, he was one of two of the officers to actually come up with his share of it. He and Bri had a long history together in EQ and it was pretty much a given that whatever opinion Bri had on an issue, that Dom would have the same one.

Chris (raid officer) Chris was a late 20 something college student with an ex-wife he hated deeply and a kid he saw sometimes on weekends. Chris was a poster boy for MMORPG addiction. Other than class, he had no life outside of the game. And, I suspect, he was trying to bolster his self-esteem through the game. Chris was the one that wanted the guild to move into the top tier of "uber-guilds" and take on all the hotly contested boss mobs. To him, the guild was successful if we were able to raid whenever he wanted and not wipe out taking on boss mobs. He simply didn't grasp "community" in the slightest. He saw classes and tactics, not people behind the keyboard. Chris was also positively desperate for a girlfriend, be it on line or in real life. I suspect that a good bit of the reason that our interactions turned us into bitter enemies is that I never realized that he was pursuing me in game and that he took my character's ultimate in-game relationship with his real life roommate as a slap in the face.

John (raid officer) John had a lot of good qualities but he was also myopically self centered. He wanted to have his cake and eat it too, and seemed honestly bewildered when his actions had repercussions. Despite being nearly 30, he still had no clue what he wanted to be when he grew up. He'd gotten a degree, ended up managing a discount store, then decided that he was going to move cross country and go back to school for computer science, despite having no real like for the subject. Then he wondered why the girlfriend he left behind wanted to leave him. John was Chris's roommate and my character's on line husband. John understood that the community aspect of the guild couldn't be completely neglected, but living with Chris (and also having not much of a real life outside of the game) he, like Chris, needed to feel powerful and important IN the game. And that meant pushing our guild to "bigger and better things".

The first crucial mistake we the officers made is that we never sat down and agreed on a direction and focus for the guild. And the longer that the guild was allowed to be each officer's personal vision rather than a consensus of all the officers, the further and further the opposing camps became. Martin and I wanted an intimate family atmosphere guild whose raid capabilities did not come at the expense of the community. We wanted very selective recruiting based on the personality and personal character of the person BEHIND the screen. Chris wanted an uber guild filled with enough people that we could raid any time of the day or night. So long as it was a competently played class that he felt the guild needed, the person behind the screen was totally irrelevant. Bri and John wanted the best of both worlds. They had visions of our guild challenging the 2 ruling uber guilds on the server.. but they also claimed they wanted to maintain the tight knit atmosphere. And Dom.. well, he wanted whatever Bri wanted at that particular moment.

Many of the people that joined the guild early on liked the fact that we raided a couple of times a week, but we weren't obsessive about it like a lot of the big name guilds. They joined us because of the tight knit atmosphere. The fact that we were honing our raid skills was a nice bonus, but definitely of secondary importance. Then Chris began working very hard on pushing the guild to bigger and better things. It made some sense initially: the officers were all 60 and working on AA points (this was pre-PoP) and seeking a bigger challenge. Bri would pretty much tag anyone that expressed an interest in the guild, so he was tagging low 50s toons while Chris was trying to ramp up for Level 60 encounters. This frustrated Chris so he started indiscriminately recruiting based solely on level & class and added people that were definitely not a good fit towards the tight knit atmosphere.

The second crucial mistake we made was our inability to act decisively. Because we were a council, we technically needed a majority to come to a decision. And as things deteriorated, officers either acted without consulting any of the other officers or ignored the issue on the board entirely, effectively consigning the issue into limbo. Chris would make rash threats on the server board, I would go ballistic privately to the officers (but felt that it was important that the officers maintain the appearance of unity publicly) and Brian would avoid taking a stand either way, just in case someone might not like him afterwards. So issues lingered on and guild members got disgruntled that the officers weren't responsive to them. As summer came things got worse. Chris was playing EQ pretty much 24/7 since school was out and he was wanting to raid more and more. My job was getting more intense so I wanted to raid less and less, since coming home from a stressful day at work and dealing with a stressful night of raiding in EQ, especially since there was much pressure for me to not log at 11PM EST because many times that effectively ended the raid (me being lead cleric).

We began losing people in the guild.. some because they didn't like the influx of new people Chris was bringing in and the new focus on high end raiding, some because we weren't doing the things Chris promised them the guild would be doing as fast as he promised them. Chris accused me of trying to sabotage his vision of being an uberguild, I accused him of making statements publicly that reflected badly on the guild as a whole (and destroying a reputation for honorable play that I'd spent 60 levels creating) without consulting the other officers and trying to sacrifice the sense of community on the altar of uber loot. Martin hid his head in the sand and stopped showing up to raids or reading the officer's board at all. Bri adroitly avoided taking a stand and managed to convince himself that everything was just fine, Dom was spending less & less time on line because of his marriage and John didn't want to keep putting effort into the guild when he was getting bored with what we could do with the people that we had.

The final issue was a player Chris recruited (against my vehement objections) that caused enough interpersonal strife in the guild that even the officers that didn't want to take a stand on anything finally spoke up and agreed that what this player brought to the guild wasn't worth the constant headaches he caused. Chris left in a fit of pique, John left a month later claiming burn out and boredom. John ended up in the top guild on the server, I think Chris quit playing all together. But at that point, the guild was too fractured to be re-buildable. Bri was getting bored with the game as a whole and definitely with leadership, but he still wanted to maintain the status of "guildleader". Dom was pretty much MIA, Martin was actively refusing to do anything guild related (yet he wasn't stepping down from being an officer or removing the guild tag) And I was just burnt out completely.

More and more people began leaving for what they saw as greener pastures. I gave it another 3 months trying to get the guild back onto a healthy track, but after a while, it seemed apparent that while people were fast to complain there just WAS no way to make people happy. And the effort seemed less and less worth it. So after a lot of emotional wrestling with myself, I finally removed the tag. I started recruiting with an uberguild where I could just be 1 cleric in a CHO and leave the running of the guild to other people, but I was so burnt out on the game, that I stopped playing completely a few weeks after that. [EQ, F, 35]

No content other than high-end hack and slash, got boring, even the quests involved either rampant killing or boring delivery-style stuff. [EQ, m, 14]

Coming into EQ from UO left me feeling rather unsatisfied with the game play. The mechanics of the world itself didn't help either, it may seem like a little thing but not being able to sit in a chair or really change clothes to an extensive degree was really immersion breaking. Early game when I played was also extremely monotonous, and I simply did not desire to spend 20 hours killing the same rat when I could go role-play in UO. [EQ, m, 18]

The game got old. I don't care what anyone says, after a while it's all the same old grind. I play these games for fun. When they are no longer fun, or when I start feeling like I 'have' to log on...I quit. In fact, I'm about to quit my current game (DAoC) for those very reasons. [EQ, m, 30]

The game reached a state of repetition for me. The only activity that I followed in-game was leveling, which was very dull considering I was unable to find anyone to role play with. No one had any interest in taking chances or doing things differently, which created this mediocrity that made the game lose its sense of fun. It simply ceased to be worth my time. [DAOC, n, 33]

All of a sudden, I found myself being logged in and sitting in front of the computer, bored or anxious. I tried for a couple of weeks to come up with things I could do to make the game fun again -- working on tradeskills, starting a new character, even moving to a different server -- but then I realized how silly it was to try and force myself to like again something I'd grown tired of. [EQ, f, 24]

It became a chore to play. I became defacto leader of a guild and it was too much. Being an officer was too much. Pleasing people did not interest me. I wanted to get away from real life and politics and social ettiqute followed me in! [EQ, m, 20]

Was more like work then fun. One day got burnt out trying to get exp for level 55 and quit. Got tired of always complaining about how I disliked the game but still playing it. Also had a traumatizing event happen in real life. Stop playing and never went back. Sold all my gear and gave character to an online friend. [EQ, m, 22]

I've played EQ off and on for almost 3 years now. I quit this time for 2 reasons: 1. Other people's attitudes. Some people were downright rude, just to be mean and hurtful. 2. There was no possible way to get past level 46 without a serious guild and serious playing and I was just playing for the fun. Didn't want to put in the incredible amounts of time and effort in the hopes of being invited into a guild and being allowed to loot what was needed to improve my characters. [EQ, f, 32]

The community became too eccentric over time. More and more people took everything personally as if their whole life was depending on this game. Also everything had to be bigger, mightier and more and more complicated. The pure fun playing the game with just a handful of nice people has vanished over time. To put it simple: playing the game was much more stress than fun. [EQ, m, 34]

I stopped playing because I just didn't want to commit to the crazy raid times (6+ hours in the evening?) and because I'd kind of stalled out on my interest in my main character. [EQ, f, 27]

No specific events made me quit, it was rather that i couldn't find myself any semi-longterm goals to achieve. I absolutely need a longterm goal to strive toward to enjoy the game. In the end the game was more 'work' than 'play', and with no personal goal to achieve my gaming experience deteriorated. I played the game for about three months feeling like this before i finally decided to take a break and check wether that certain 'withdrawal syndrome' would present itself or not. Unfortunately it never did. [AO, m, 30]

Nothing in particular. The game just seemed like an endless race to nothing...in other words it was more work than fun. [EQ, m, 21]

I stopped playing EQ because: 1. As I leveled, I felt less powerful. At first level, you can hunt in any number of places. Not so at 49th. 2. Difficulty of getting the content I paid for. Maiden's Eye, a high level area, was difficult to get a group in, i tried several times, albeit briefly. That had a lot to do with my leaving EQ. I have few places to hunt and getting groups there is not worth it. 3. It takes ~1 hour to get a group together. That's unfortunate. 4. The guild I was in spent more time saying hello to one another than adventuring. [EQ, m , 36]

I guess I stopped playing it because a lot of my close friends had left the game, or I just kept missing them the times they were on. Got a little harder to level, and some new MMORPG's were coming out that I wanted to try. [f, EQ, 14]

I took a break from EQ to play DAOC; EQ was getting to me a bit and I needed time away. DAOC I found interesting, there was much to like about it (especially in contrast) but what I missed was all the social interaction I had in EQ. I knew that I could develop a new social network on DAOC but I was wondering too much about my EQ friends to get interested in that. Soon I found myself popping onto EQ to see if any of my EQ friends wanted to go to DAOC with me. When that didn't pan out very well, I finally quit DAOC. [DAOC, f, 49]

All friends out-leveled me, so I could no longer group with them. [EQ, m, 32]

Wasn’t as good as EQ. Found that because EQ is a more difficult game it took longer to master, and therefore had more lasting appeal. I think they should stop making these games so simple. I have quit other games for the same reason, and also because it is harder to communicate well on some games EQ was easy to speak to people, so was DAOC...all the other games out there i have played and quit because it was to difficult to speak to people in game. [DAOC, m, 26]

I feel that there is no real role-playing in the game, I had imagined it as a world alive with creatures and characters/personalities but was disappointed. After a year I gave up trying to find other role-players in the game and decided to quit. There are some very talented role-players out there but they are few, most people are only interested in gaining levels as fast as possible. [EQ, f, 28]

Mythic did not address bugs and balance issues in a timely manner. When they tried to fix something, they did so in a way that didn't really fix the problem and caused several additional problems. I've since tried a free month of AO and AC2 (and briefly re-subscribed for Shrouded Isles), and I think DAoC is still the best game out there. It's just not quite good enough for me to give them money every month. [DAOC, m, 28]

Although the addition of new content via monthly patches was fun, it also caused a number of problems due to Turbine's constantly rolling over for the loudest players. They nerfed their own game balance and then completely destroyed the in-game economy at which point I left. Additionally, Turbine's attitude towards exploiters was unbelievably irresponsible to their larger player base -- people who are utilizing in-game exploits should be removed from the game to avoid incumbent issues (server crashes among them). Overall, I felt that Turbine was incredibly disrespectful to the largest part of their community while catering to the vocal few. [AC, f, 39]

The developers' actions and attitudes towards the game encouraged me to quit, because they keep messing around with stats, spells, skills, classes, nerfing this group of players or that group, but never finding the holy grail of a happy medium and sticking with it. [DAOC, m, 28]

Anarchy Online was a great premise handled horribly by a company who wanted to get their product out before it was finished. The lag and bugs that I experienced in the game made it unplayable. I gave it 4 months of my time that I wish I had back. I have heard that it has solved all of its lag and bug issues and even was given some awards, but I have refused to return because of the initial bad experience. That is one company whom I will never play another game by strictly because of its handling of the release of Anarchy Online. [AO, m, 31]

Game balance was pathetic. Developer had no idea what the issues were and was making changing that had little or no impact. Often made changes that made stronger classes stronger and weaker classes weaker. [DAOC, m, 37]

The first reason I stopped playing was terrible customer support. Should something happen regarding your account, in-game, or other reasons there was virtually no assistance. The phone support was quite poor, slow, and unhelpful. The second reason I quit UO was tremendous lag problems. They spent all of their time and effort creating a new version of the game no one wanted to play because the old version was faster and more manageable. These people ruined an extremely fun game by allowing their bow-tie management to dictate what the customers wanted. They have no clue what their game is, what makes it tick, and what the customers wanted out of a game. My conclusion was that the people making the decisions had never even played the game before. [UO, m, 31]

Grew tired of the repetitiveness of the activities and annoyed by the way they were self sustaining. (kill something to gain skill and items so you can kill something stronger to get more skill and better items so you can kill something stronger .....) Also Verant / Sony's downright antagonistic attitude toward their customers really pissed me off. The atmosphere of the game became such that it was as if they were doing you an enormous favor just by allowing you to pay and play, a privilege they would rescind at their slightest whim without any justification or chance of defense. [EQ, m, 34]

I didn't like the direction it was taking my life. I didn't like the feeling that I needed to be playing. After spending just a few weeks constantly on EverQuest, I decided that that was no way to live. [EQ, m, 24]

I found it was an escapist mechanism; a growing addiction; a way to keep me irresponsible & childish; a way to get away from my bad relationship. I didn't give away any avatar items because I cancelled on a 1-minute realization.... it still feels good. [AO, m, 29]

Quite some time ago, I was playing with a full group in the sarnak fortress in Omen. We had an ogre for a tank who seemed to be the most experienced of us all; in fact, I think some in the group were very inexperienced. We got in pretty deep and were holding our on for some time...I think we were all having a good time and exp was good. Then, like clockwork in the fortress, the adds began to stream in out of nowhere. Mr. Ogre ascertained that we were in over our heads and gave the RUN command (as he was in charge). Two team members were already well on their way and I tarried to watch the last of the group leave, except our tank who was holding way too many at bay while we made our escape. Being a druid (backup healer) it is my style to stay behind for a brief period to snare, root or heal during our escape. But Mr. Ogre showed rare courage by staying until everyone was clear, including me, knowing that he would probably not make it out alive. That was the most selfless thing I had seen done before or since. He stayed, knowing the corpse retrieval that awaited him, the experience he would lose, and the wasted time he was about to experience because of it. He could have ran and lived, but he didnt for our sakes. Since that time, I have played differently, making the same sacrifices in a druid's way. I've taken suicide missions, evac'ed people that were trapped or dieing, and attempted missions for people when I knew full well we were sorely outnumbered. But when you make sacrifices for people, they will remember, and the best groups are those built on loyalty, self-sacrifice, and courage. --- [EQ, male, 32]

There have been several people who have done completely altruistic things that still amaze me. Giving away valuable items when they could be sold for lots of money. Fighting to save me when I was going to die. Pulling my corpse out of a completely unsafe place that I had blundered into and would never have gotten out of (darn Frontier Mountains Giants...) without help. That is the one thing that amazes me. That people, with not only no incentive to do this, but the disincentives of loss of time and possible loss of life and definate loss of money, continue to act as very good and decent human beings. --- [EQ, female, 39]

I am guild leader of a small to medium sized guild on EverQuest and the longstanding members of the guild are in some ways like a family, certainly nothing less than very good friends. So, there are close ties. Recently, I, in real life, have had a series of crises, financial and otherwise. Firstly, my roommates stopped paying their bills and then, wihtout notice, moved out of the appartment, leaving me with over $2,000 of bills to pay. A couple of weeks later, I lost my job and a few weeks after that, my grandfather had an accident, and is still in the hospital because he has contracted numerous ailments just from being in a hospital environment. There is great concern on the part of his physicians that he will live through this experience. Not because I am guild leader, but just because I have become one of the guild "family" members, I have had more than one guild member offer to help me financially. One of the young members of my guild even offered to take money from his college savings to help me. I did not accept the offers, but just the fact that these individuals who only know me from the game have offered their support, say quite a lot of good things about people in this world. I am not the first person from this guild to experience this. Another member, who passed away shortly before my crises occurred, was ailing from a heart condition which prevented him from leading a normal life. These same guild members also offered him the same support, one of them sending this person's family money to help with bills, etc. These people had never met in person, but still, just as if they had known each other in real life for years, one helped the other and we all offered this person and his family our moral support. I think this shows that there is more to a MMORPG than just the gaming part for some people. It is a way of making contact and friendships with other individuals worldwide, that would be pretty much impossible otherwise. --- [EQ, female, 40]

A Friend and I were camping the Preacher room in Permafrost. Hoping to get a Rune Circlet which neither of us had. He was a Druid 32 I was Playing my Enchanter 32. We were doing well most were green. some of the casters and the preacher was blue. Well one Mob got away and i had my DUMB enchanter animation out. We promptly had 10 Greenies beating on us. My pet had aggro'd everything. We as you guessed it died. I popped up in Everfrost and rememed spells and prepared for CR. I get this tell. hey where are you. I said i have no clue. Meet me at zone this person says i will show you to your body. I met up with this high level Euridite mage. He leads me to my body. I forgot to mention that when we were fighting all those greenies the preacher had popped again. We had just killed him 5 minutes before. He helped to finish us. Anyhow me and the Mage go into the room ITS EMPTY. My heart sank as i knew this uber mage had killed the Preacher. The mage said to me, you died camping the preacher?? Yes i said. got mobbed by Greenies he had just repopped again. All of a sudden my Trade window pops up. THE RUNE CIRCLET he said i know what its like to camp something for so long only to die trying to get it. here i killed him for you take the circlet. I couldn’t believe it. I actually had a tear forming in my eye, my mouth was wide open. This guy could have taken the circlet and gotten an easy 400pp for it. Thats what they sold for when i got it. Instead he gave it to me. My druid friend had forgotten to bind in Everfrost so he was still on his way from NK when he got there the mage showed him the way to his body also. That is the single coolest thing that ever happened to me in EQ. Somone who acutally thought more of others then themselves. Its people like that Mage that make EQ so worthwhile to play. That one act of Kindness wipes out all the other greedy idiots who continue to plague Norrath. --- [EQ, male, 37]