Saying Goodbye to Your MMO Guild [Guest Post]

Today’s post is brought to you by Scarybooster.  He’s not really much for playful banter and witty author biographics, so on with the post!

Since the start of Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games (MMORPGs), guilds have been there. Guilds are what players call home when they log on. Guilds are our friends and our social network of like-minded gamers. In most MMOs today, guilds are the people we can trust to fight by our side in dungeons and Player vs Player (PvP). During our time in a guild, we make friends with people and talk with them extensively over voice chat systems like Ventrilo.

These are the people we bond with everyday, but what do we do when it is time to call it quits? How do we let our friends down easily? What is the best way to say goodbye?

Quittin’ Time!

Telling fellow guild members goodbye, can be the hardest part of quitting an MMO. Sometimes, people spend years playing with the same people. The game or guild name might change, but the core members stay the same. This is when it becomes hard to quit a game. The stronger the social ties, the harder it is to quit. A person might spend months fighting with themselves over quitting. They feel obligated to log on to talk to members of their guild, but their character doesn’t move from the town. I have fought with this same problem several times.

When I start getting sick of a game, I find myself logging on to say hi to the members of my guild and banging out a few quests. As time goes on and I grow bored of the game, I find myself just logging on to say, hi and logging right off. After weeks of logging in and out in the matter of seconds, I decide to quit the game for awhile. I can’t bring myself to tell my fellow guild members I want to quit. Should I write a long goodbye on the guild forums? Should I go to the public forums for mass attention or should I “ninja quit”?

What do you do?

After spending over 7 years in MMOs and getting to know some new friends, I made a list of the most popular ways to say goodbye to your guild.

1. The long love letter on the guild forums: This is the best way to say goodbye if you have made some life long friends. In the letter you can explain your current dislike for the game and why you are quitting. This method also, gives you a way to have your friends say goodbye and exchange info if you want to talk to them outside of a game.
2. Public forums: This is a great way to say goodbye to everybody you might have ever played with. I only suggest this if the game has a tightly knit community or you are Brad Pitt.
3. Ninja Quitter: If you really don’t care about the people you play with, this is probably best way to go. Most likely, they don’t care much for you if you feel this way about them. One day you are logged in and the next day, you are gone. To me, it is a sad way to go.
4. Rage quit: This happens when you are fed up with the people you play with. It never ends well when someone rage quits. Sometimes, they ninja loot the guild bank and swear a lot over guild chat. I’ve seen people take it to the next level and post a rage quit post on the public forums. If you do this or have ever done it, you might want to take a long break from games.
5. Phone a friend quit: This is when you are very close to a guild member and you just want to say goodbye to them. You explain why you are not playing anymore and let the responsibility of telling the rest of the guild, fall on your friend’s shoulders. It is ok to go out like this if there is mixed feeling about other members of the guild. Maybe, you had a falling out with some of the other guild members and you can’t bring yourself to log back in to say goodbye. You might feel embarrassed or angry, but you don’t want to vent your anger or sadness in guild chat. If you feel any mixed emotions about quitting a game and have some great friends in the guild, this might be the best way.

No matter how you choose to quit a game, it is always hard to do. It might take you several times of quitting to finally quit for good. When you have a great network of friends in a game, you might be just playing to be with them. As an ex-smoker, I think it is harder to quit a game with great friends, then it was to stop smoking.

Have you ever had a hard time quitting a game because of the company you keep? Have you ever played a game when it was no longer fun to you, because you wanted to socialize with your friends?