Guest Post: How I Came to Be in A Family Guild

As you've probably read in one of Beth's earlier posts, IVV started when a group of in-game friends got together to form a guild and began to recruit from their personal network of real-life friends. I am not one of these "real life" friends. How did I get into the guild, you might ask? It all started one day when I was a level forty-something noob…

I had a couple of real life friends who played, but for the most part I played alone. As time passed, I began to desire a group of people I could be friends with and possibly learn a thing or two from. In my time leveling I had seen a lot of different guild titles roaming about and even run an instance or two with a number of them, but still had no idea which to join. I did some google research and read about a few of the more prominent guilds, most of which seemed to be full of seasoned raiders. I felt those sorts of people would probably not want to deal with someone as inexperienced as myself.

Then one day I stumbled upon a guild called In Vino Veritas. I read their website and found that they called themselves a "family guild" but also raided. I had seen a lot of people from this guild running around so I figured I'd try to join up... there was a catch. First, I had to know someone in the guild and have them recommend me. I didn't know anyone in the guild, so I went to Orgrimmar and waited until I saw one of them.

The first person I messaged told me that, "Yeah, IVV was a cool guild but you had to know someone to get in." I asked him if maybe I could do an instance or something with him so he could see that I was not such a bad guy, but he told me he was already on his way to do something. So I waited until I saw the next IVV member. He was around my level so I asked him if he wanted to run something together and he agreed. While we were flying to whatever instance we were going to run I asked him to tell me more about IVV. He told me that everyone was really cool and, after I explained to him what I was looking for in a guild, said that he would definitely recommend me for membership.

I filled out my application and eagerly waited for a response from the "recruitment princess." After a couple of days she informed me that there was another Zachery Taylor (nickname "Z") in the guild who had a sister named Leah, which is the name of my wife. Because of the other Z's prominence in the guild, I became known as "Z2" or "Artoozeetoo." It all seemed too strange to be a coincidence and the guild had originally thought my application to be a joke by Z. When they realized I was for real I was invited to join the guild.

In real life I'm a pretty shy person until I get to know someone and this trait carried over into the game. For a while I kept leveling and never really said much in gchat, but I read the forums and read a lot about other members, trying to find common interests so that I could start to form relationships. I saw that a lot of members had facebook pages so I started a facebook group for people in the guild and began talking to a few people that way.

One day while reading the forums I saw that the guild was going to start doing "Hug a Lowbie Night" so I signed up to go, figuring I could get to know some folks better and hopefully learn a thing or two about gameplay. I went on a few of these runs and became friends with a Warrior and a Priest in the guild. Around this time a section of the forum was created for members to make threads about themselves. I figured it would be a good idea for me to make a thread so the people whom I had been reading about could read a bit about me.

Another way I made friends with people in the guild was by speaking to them in whispers. Sometimes someone would express a hardship they were experiencing and I would send them an encouraging word or people would express things they had accomplished and I would send them a congratulatory message. I would also talk to people about similar outside interests, through which I met a Rogue who shares my love of Star Wars. Now we constantly hijack forum threads by changing the subject to Star Wars.

During this time I was still in the fifties and sixties trying to make my way up to level seventy. I had been making increasing numbers of friends in the guild and began building personal relationships with them in-game and sometimes outside the game via facebook or AIM chat. I tried my best not to have to ask for a lot of help or to force people to go out of their way, but I was eager to learn. I ended up befriending a fellow Warlock who now plays a Paladin while discussing ways to become a better Lock. It wasn't until I hit level seventy that I began a lot of in game interaction with my guildies outside of guild chat.

I hit seventy only a week or two before Wrath of the Lich King came out, so after a week of running Burning Crusade heroics I started the long grind to eighty. At level eighty I became acquainted with other people I had not gotten a chance to talk to before through running heroic instances and communicating through Ventrilo. It was during this time that people really started helping me and giving me advice on things I didn't know a whole lot about. It was this way that I befriended another warlock in the guild who showed me how to improve my DPS from mediocre to the competitive numbers I post today.

That is the history of how I became involved with the guild known as In Vino Veritas. The moral of the story is that in order to truly become part of a family guild you have to have more than just a common interest in the game or loot, you have to have an interest in the people who you are playing with. I enjoy playing WoW and I enjoy the proverbial phat l00tz, but more than anything else I enjoy playing a game with people who have become true friends to me.

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Zackery Taylor is a member of In Vino Veritas.
Dr. Zackery Taylor is not a doctor, even though he tells everyone he is. He's an IT manager in Texas who likes comics and kittens.