Heh... little did I know back when I purchased EQ that I'd eventually be a guild officer. I originally bought EQ because it looked like a fun game to play and the multi-player aspect of it just seemed like a nice touch. You know, a nice mindless (hah!) computer game to play every so often during the evenings when I had nothing else to do. Well, that lasted all of about 6 weeks or so! (Actually I was hooked as soon as I got into my first group up on orc hill and saw my first glimpse of group dynamics.) So while you can play EQ as a casual player, there's a whole other realm of experiences that will open up to you once you play regularly (building a friends list or joining a guild).

Once I realized that (and how undependable a friends list can be until you work on it for a bit), I was ready to join a guild and expand my horizons. One of the big benefits for joining a guild is that Norrath suddenly feels a lot smaller because now you have a guild chat channel that you can use to get advice and input from your guildmates. Plus, you can seek guildmates out for groups, organize events, or just chat about some cool new hunting spot that someone has discovered. So for a few weeks I reveled in my newly guilded status, striving to bring honor to the guild's name by being the best magician that I could possibly be, playing with integrity and not getting into petty fights, kill-stealing, or any other abhorent and immature activities that would give the guild a bad reputation. (I considered myself to be on "probation" even though our guild has no such process yet.) It was quite pleasing to have gotten guilded so easily (or at least it seemed easy... basically my plan was to group with one of the officers of the guilds that I was interested in until I got noticed and invited).

Of course all of that "playing to my best" means that somewhere along the line I got noticed (er... and I don't remember what I did either LOL) for my er, officer-caliber abilities. And of course, I forgot to "duck" when Liberi came around to promote me (I forgot the principle of "strategic incompetence"... just kidding). So now I'm an officer in the guild (Liberi is the guild leader, Felweniel is the first officer, and then there are the 3 of us who are regular officers), plus I'm in charge of the guild forums (oops, put my hand up and volunteered again), and put together plans for a guild event into Najena.

So what does a guild officer do with his EQ time? Well, I still get to just "play" the majority of the time (unless it's a guild event and I'm helping to run the show). But I also spend time monitoring the guild forums, monitoring guild chat, discussing membership issues with the other guild leadership, looking for ideas to add to our guild charter, our raid planning guide, our raid guidelines, looking for new recruits that would be a good fit with our guild, trying to get people to register on Guild Magic, getting people to register for the guild forums, updating the guild MOTD when Liberi isn't able to get on, and trying to dream up new raid ideas. All of which can lead to a very busy schedule when things are popping. But I wouldn't have it any other way (we've got a good guild leadership team, and a pretty good set of guild members at the moment... I've actually seen 15 Avatars on at the same time over the New Years holiday, which is about double what it was a month or two ago).