The wobbly wagon… shaking people off

I got an e-mail yesterday from a friend.  He had been poking around some message boards from our old EQ1 server and found some application posts for a particular guild from some particular people.

I spent the first five years of my EQ career playing on The Seventh Hammer.  For most of that time, I was in just one guild.  I loved that guild and loved being a part of it… although, in retrospect, they didn’t exactly deal very fairly with me in most respects.  When that guild split up, I bounced around several servers trying to find a new home and eventually ended up on Quellious.

Shortly after landing there, I found a great guild that held open raids.  I attended many and had a fantabulous time, but I was paranoid about joining another guild.  I just kept attending open raids until they ceased holding them for a while.  At that time, I just left the game for a bit.

When I came back, I joined a guild that I really enjoyed.  The only problem was that they were fixated on content that I had done and burned out on long before even leaving Seventh Hammer.  Still, I enjoyed raiding with them and had hopes that they would eventually move on.

A year came and went and they were still doing the same things.  I started asking the officers when we were going to move on and the answer was that we weren’t.  This was what we did.

So, I left that guild and joined what ended up being the best guild I had ever been a part of.  Raids were fun, the people were fun, and the content was new to me.  Of all the years I had played EQ, this was the best time I had experienced to date.

Then, that guild split up and many of the members left the game.

Back to the e-mail.

It seems that many of my friends from my first Quellious guild along with the core group from the second guild that I loved so much have all joined the guild that I originally attended open raids with.

And, for the first time in a year and a half, I find myself contemplating activating my EQ1 account and picking it back up.

The arguments against doing so are many.  I’m at least 2 expansions behind.  My EQ1 version of Rao is sitting at whatever max level was when The Serpent’s Spine was released.  I was never an AA achiever, so I don’t have many… probably just barely over 100.  My gear is probably pretty sad.  Hell, I don’t even have my epic 1.5.  And, the game being the age that it is, groups are probably difficult to find and most guilds expect top gear, top AA’s, and top levels to even be considered for an applicant.  Skill at ones class seems to be less important than the quality of shinies.

Plus, I’m still having a good time in EQ2 and I’ve never been a person who plays 2 games at once.  I pick one and stick with it.

Still, in reading through the posts on that guild website and seeing the names of all the friends I made in two guilds all joined together into the one guild I always had hopes of joining one day have me definately eyeing the distant shores of the UNshattered lands and wondering if I might have one more tour of duty in me.

And oddly enough, as I consider my choices, I keep finding myself remembering the lyrics of the Jimmy Eat World song that Mirage did in their first big video, “Memory Album.”  “I promised I’d see it again.  I promised I’d see this with you now.”