[Clinicus]

I can't edit the subject line, so I might as well leave this up, although I regret slightly bringing this up on a public forum in the first instance.
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Anyone who plays in Australian (NZ/SE Asia/etc) peak time knows that we have a different MMO experience to the rest of the world. In the bad old days, if you didn't start on the designated "unofficial" launch Aussie server (Tribunal in the case of EQ), you might have found it difficult to join a guild that grouped and raided in your peak times.

I know I did. Playing on Torvonnilous, for the longest time the only people I knew on the server were RL friends. Then they implemented custom channels, and a short time later had a small Aussie community together in the Aussie channel. Not too long after, naked transfers were allowed and a big chunk of the community decided to transfer to Tribunal together, joining Aurora Noctum. I had quit at the time, so I didn't follow.

Later on I started on Stromm, and remembering my Torvonillous experience, a couple of friends and I quickly gathered up enough Aussies (etc) and made ourselves a guild. We went from a small group of 20 somethings to filling out 72 man PoP flagging raids. Quite a lot of us became friends that stay in touch today.

So when I hear from a friend that he's playing on P99 and has joined an Aussie guild, I couldn't resist and installed EQ again.

Another friend told me that he and some ex-AN friends were going to start an Aussie guild because there wasn't one around yet. I told him there was one, our mutual friend was in it, and I had planned to join once I sorted myself out a bit. That's the last I heard of it until tonight.

Last week I joined Mostly Harmless and have been absolutely floored by the friendliness and generosity of the people in the guild. This is kind of Aussie guild I want to be in, with a good sense of humour, where everyone helps everyone else. I was feeling very positive about life on P99.

Tonight, seeing Full Circle recruiting in /ooc under the guise of "keeping the Aus/NZ community together" felt like a stab in the guts. I'm not the type to normally go rushing to a public forum, but I was annoyed. For me, there is little reason to keep playing if there is going to be two guilds competing for our traditionally small player base. That's only going to lead to inter guild drama, which is something easily avoided when you play in the dead hours like we all do. All the worse for me, I have RL connections to both guilds.

I realise there may have been better ways to bring this up, but I'd like it to be in the open before things get too far along.

I also realise that the leadership of Mostly Harmless and Full Circle may have already spoken, and I'm some stupid newbie that didn't bother to get his facts straight before getting emotional and making a thread. Apologies if this is the case. I hope I haven't been too out of line.

Assuming they haven't spoken though, where to now for both guilds? Are they positioning themselves as different types of guilds? If not, why even be two guilds?

I'd love for this to be resolved without too much drama. Us folks that play in the "dead time" have to stick together.