So I’ve been looking for an active guild for a while to throw some of my characters into. I’m happy with the guild I’m nominally in charge of, Sika Of Karrnwood, but that guild is for RL friends only, and basically only has four active players including me. I can only play UK evenings, the two I static group with only play Fri-Sun really due to other evening commitments and the other chap plays in UK evenings when he can, but not usually for more than an hour or so.

I will also shortly be swapping to LOTRO one night a week when it goes F2P because my wife doesnt’ like DDO and does like LOTRO, and I like to be able to play with her - although I much prefer DDO. Upshot is, most of the time when I come online there’s no-0ne around who’s going to be on for the rest of the evening, and even PuGging, that makes progression very hard for some of my squishier toons - even the non squishy ones once I hit L10 seem to stall.

I did some digging into the static guild listings for Argo, but couldn’t really find anything that suited my parameters exactly.  I put a post up on the Argo Guild forums, outlining my play style, my play times and so on. I thought it was a fairly reasonable post but no replies for over a week, except from a few other euro players asking me to let them know if I got anywhere cos they were having problems too.

I considered starting up a new guild myself but I already have one, and I wanted to join something established where there’s a bit of community - and I don’t fancy being a guild leader, I can’t dedicate the time.

Anyway, just over a week later I got a PM from MrEd7, and gave Darkside a go. They were nice folks, they really were - but there were hardly any of them ever on at UK play times. After a couple of weeks I sent MrEd7 a PM to let him know that I’d be leaving but no hard feelings, which he seemed to appreciate and I haven’t garnered any hate. So that’s cool. Anyone reading this I’d recommend Darkside if you play US times - they were really nice and helpful. Whenever anyone was online they were always willing to swap to a lowbie to help out a new guild member, and I felt very welcome. Just not enough people around to make it worth it.

I added a post to my forum thread to say I was available again and still looking. Nothing. Not a thing. I started doing some more digging around the static guild listings, a stumbled across The Thieves Guild. They’re US based, like most guilds, but like Darkside claimed to have people on all the time more or less. Their guild page and forum thread amused me.  Since it was a Rogue I was looking to migrate in the main, this seemed like a good fit. I sent PMs to the leader and the person listed on their guild thread as the forum monkey.

Nothing.  For two days.

I’m beginning to wonder: does anyone on Argo actually USE the forums? Moreover, have I posted some kind of offensive post? Am I too exacting? Do I come across as high maintenance (I’m really not. I think. Validate me, interwebs, by looking  http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=265263 )?

Then, by pure co-inkydink, I joined a Darkhan’s Tear PuG that was advertising for a trap monkey. Guess what? The whole damn PuG was filled with members of the Thieves Guild, and not a trap monkey between them! They were all on with Alts trying to level, and none of them had a lowbie Rogue! Now I write this, that seems very odd, for a guild called ‘The Thieves Guild’. But I already knew from their forum thread and guild page that the requirement is that you get recruited IN with a rogue. After that and you’ve served your probo period,  its open season.  So to me, all I thought at this point was: Fortuity!

(Yes. I’m the sort of person that thinks words like “fortuity” with an exclamation mark. Sorry).

So we (alright, they) blasted DT. I got all the traps. I joined in the banter, gave as much friendly abuse as I got, and then we did it on Hard and I still got the traps. And then I got an guild invite and we (alright, they) blasted Delera’s from start to finish in about 30 mins. Yikes.

So yeah. I’ve joined The Thieves Guild on Argo. Like Darkside, they’re nice folks, pretty helpful, but unlike Darkside there do seem to be half a dozen on at once of a UK evening (last night there were a dozen, but they were all doing the Demon Queen raid so weren’t available to play with me - and they were on mid afternoon US time I think as one last summer holidays blast before school/work/whatever starts again).

One of the people who PM’d me right at the start of my search has also joined, so now there’s also a couple of euro trash like me in the guild.

My only concern at this point is that every time I’ve run with any of them they’ve absolutely zerged it, with me trailing behind. I’m just not fast enough - and I have no wish to be. I’m also not a natural born zerger.

Fortunately, its all been content that I’ve done before, so the rush isn’t much of a problem. When I start really getting into new content though, that could be a killer, and that would be a shame, because socially speaking I’m having a blast with this guild.

Let’s hope not - because bar a lack of RP (my holy grail of DDO), and a seemingly overwhelming and irresistable (and, apparently, tautological - yeah, I notice things like that too. I should probably seek help) desire to rush every quest they’re in, these people rock.