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]