Last night Xailia, Landuran, Myclawz, Greldor, and a random 6th (alt of a retired player) created a new guild: “Eqjunkiies” on the Oasis server.  We tried to create “EQjunkies”, but SOE doesn’t allow the word “junkie” in the naming policy.  Anyways, we plan on having a casual guild for now – working up the guild level and populating our guild bank.

If you are a follower of eqjunkies.com and have an active EQ2 account look us up in game.   Are play time is kind of sporadic, so if you don’t see us online, just leave us a comment here.

So, the EQ2 devs today came out with a real gem.  Apparently the petition system is down in game while the backend gets a little overhaul.

Notwithstanding all the jokes that could be made on whether the petition system actually does anything when it is working, it makes you wonder what happens if you were to try to use the petition system without knowing that it was down.  When you realized it was broken, what would you do… /petition it?  We’ve got a mind-blowing paradox here, folks.  The next thing you know, Sony is going to give dividing by zero a shot.

1999: Myself and the other EQJunkies were brought into the world of Norrath (EQ1) when we were merely sophomores in high school. I’ll list our current game names to make things easier…

1. Xailia – Wizard
2. Greldor – SK
3. Landuran – Druid
4. Myclawz – Monk

We slowly played more and more (I remember going from level 14-16 in a week and thinking it was a big deal) until we were all addicted.  We continued to play for about two years.

2001: We took a break to play this awesome new game one of our friends was talking about, DAoC.  Holy Crap – what a waste of our time.  I think we all tried that for maybe a month or so.  When we jumped ship, we fell right back into EQ1.  Eventually we needed another break from EQ1.

2002: We took yet another EQ1 vacation and tried out Final Fantasy Online.  In all honestly, I actually liked a lot about the game, although it had one major flaw: most of the player base was foreign.  MMOs at this time were hard enough, we didn’t need a language barrier in between us.

2003: We came back to EQ1 and started getting into raiding (Order of the White Dragon on Bristlebane).  We changed guilds a couple times before settling on one (Dozekar).  We raided for a few years until the release of EQ2.

2004: We all bought EQ2, played it for awhile, but it just didn’t stick.  For me, there really wasn’t that much wrong with it other than the fact it wasn’t EQ1.

Late 2004: Landuran jumped ship for WoW, the rest of us gave it a shot.

2005 – 2007: All of us except Landuran went back to EQ1….we eventually got Landuran back into EQ1.  We started a guild (Meiyo) and began raiding again.  As we progressed through GoD we eventually lost our desire to play and gave WoW a serious try.

2007 – 2008: Most of us played WoW for about a year, until about a month ago when it got boring and repetitive (and to easy).  We jokingly got Landurn a copy of EQ2 for his bachelor party, and so here we are…playing EQ2 again.

Ultimately, nothing will top EQ1 in my mind.  It was a hard, challenging, fun game.  In its heyday nothing could top it.  The MMOs now are built for mass appeal – they are easy with quick rewards.  EQ rewarded those who put in the time and suffered through things.  Hopefully EQ2 isn’t as easy as WoW; luckily – I don’t think is possible.

So, what is your story?  Have you moved around from game to game or stayed with the same one all the way through?

Today I decided to start a new type of blog post: Ask EQJunkies.com (similar to Ask Slashdot) – a post looking for comments from the community.

Today’s topic: Creating your own guild vs. joining an existing guild.

Both have their benefits and their disadvantages.  Here is my brief list:

Benefits of starting your own guild:

1. Control over guild membership and officers
2. Control over guild bank
3. Control over the type of guild (casual, raiding, etc.)
4. Good feeling from investment in the community.  Doing writs for the guild is helping you build upon your investment
5. Sense of ownership

Disadvantages of starting your own guild:

1. Timesink
2. Managing drama and guild members
3. Managing guild bank
4. Convincing people to work on guild progression
5. Managing website, vent server, etc.
6. Not many players at the beginning

Benefits of joining existing guild:

1. Can jump right into a well oiled machine
2. immediate access to guild status benefits
3. Large group of players to play with

Disadvantages of joining existing guild:

1. Don’t know many of the members
2. Most likely limited or no access to guild bank
3. Have to work your way up the ladder to gain trust of members
4. Have to break into potential cliques
5. No sense of investment or ownership of the guild

These are just a few things that come to mind for me – after weighing all the pros and cons, the EQjunkies decided to make their own guild.

Did I miss anything?  What have you done in the past?  We would love to hear your story!