Play to Crush on Loyalty

I swear that there is a conspiracy going on where people do things just to make something that I wrote completely wrong. :) Just after I said that I don't agree with anything on the Play to Crush blog, somebody wrote a blog entry on loyalty there with which I can only agree.

Basically the blog blames Blizzard for making endgame content so dependant on 40-man raids, which results in people playing the game in a small guild up to level 60, and then leaving the small guild to join a big raiding guild. "Guild-hopping" used to be a big taboo in games like Everquest, but Blizzard turned it into something which the majority of players does. Some players change guild several times, because as visible in yesterdays post the big raiding guilds require you to have a certain equipment before you can join. So you start out with a bunch of friends, then switch to a medium sized guild to get tier 0 armor and an Onyxia key, and when you meet the requirements you try to get into a big raiding guild.

I'm old school, having learned about guilds in Everquest. Most of my guilds I only left when I left the game, and even then there was a chance that I staid in that guild for the next game. I'm still in the same guild that I played EQ2 with, and I'm not planning to leave them, even if there are sometimes conflicts in the guild. But I don't believe in conflict solving by running away from the problem. And I certainly wouldn't use a guild as a springboard to catapult me into the next higher guild, just to advance my character further in the game.

Of course that is a question of priorities. If someone's priority is to advance his character and the guild is a means to this end, he will act differently than somebody whose priority is playing with friends and a raid is a means to that end. But like all old men I lament the lack of ethics in the younger generation, and wished that loyalty would come back into fashion as a value.