(excuse the most imaginative title, but I can’t think of a better one )

When the guild system first came out, I thought it was a fantastically innovative way for Maple to siphon away extra mesos from the whole Maple economy. Just look at the cost to set up a guild: they come in millions. Of course, it might just be a gripe coming from a player who just Cannot save enough mesos, but oh well. The conspiracy theory is more interesting.

Technically, I’ve been in three guilds, one for each of my characters. But two of them were those sort of guilds hastily thrown together just so that the leader could have a guild, and no one was particularly active in them.

muwhaha’s was a random party invite to create a guild (the process of which was so agonising slow and long winded: it took half an hour to assemble random players in the guild headquarters and even more time to decide on a name. It ended up having a number at the back, so I wasn’t too happy. I’m a sucker for orginality. )

I informed the leader that this was a secondary character and wouldn’t be actively leveling, so he agreed nicely to not boot me out because of inactivity. Afterall, the leader’s character was also a secondary. But I still got kicked out in the end, for unknown reasons, but I was glad: no guilt on running out on the guild. (intended pun!)

Gastropoda’s was an even more tragic tale, brief as it was. A random run around the huge green Ellinia got me a guild invite which I thought was a party invite (why, may I ask, are they so deceivingly disguised?)

I clicked on the ‘O’, stared disbelievingly at the angsty title that appeared under my username, had a laugh at the ranking names (sushi/ sashimi/ unagi, anyone?). I waited around for introductions and signs of life from the other members. None came, so I quit the next day.

The last one is the one my huntress, SilverFx, belongs to; it used to be active, but is now quite dead. It has all of 7 people: it was small, but we were close friends, so the guild chat was always on. Good times, those were. Our levels were quite far apart to train together (at least for me, since I was lvl 5X then while the rest were 7X and above), so we mostly had fun in the chatbox.

One memorable incident was when the Canadian that shared one of the characters in the guild got into an argument with a Singaporean. The S’porean promptly started using the most colourful local vulgarities to insult him, and my guild mate was Very Curious about what all those weird words meant.

It was most hilarious: imagine trying to explain local dialect vulgarities through a censoring filter that wouldn’t allow the slightest of English vulgarities through. In the end, my guild mate had to be satisfied with the vaguest of explanations: ‘They’re just very bad words.’

Good times don’t last long, of course. The leader and another member are now away serving the nation (XD), and the richest got hacked of 500 mil and quit Maplestory. He also changed the password to the account, which locked out the Canadian who shared his character. Another quit the guild because he was in another time zone and most of the guild will be asleep/at school when he was online. And so on.

The last blow came when the highest lvler (and hence the most active player) went on a hiatus until Dec. The remaining active member then left for another guild. In just a short while, my guild simply died away.

I’m the only one left now. It’s sad, but the good times we had and the promise that people inactive now will come back during the end of year holidays make the idea to click the ‘quit’ button unthinkable.

One last rambling: my guild’s name is Genesis. There is another more famous guild in Maplesea that goes by the name ‘lgeNeSisl’ (at least, there’s some random caps-uncaps word that spells Genesis between the lines), and once, while three of us were randomly adventuring, someone came up to us and accused us of copying. Total nonsense, of course. If their leader could have the word without the silly ‘l’s beside it, he/she would have taken it long ago. Sadly, the original name without a logo looks less impressive than the other with a great blazing (meso-siphoning) logo next to it.

And of course, a guild with an original name can never beat an active one. But I’m still holding out hopes, though.

[You read up till here? Wow. You deserve a cookie ]