The Echelon

People often play MMORPG games long after the game itself has become boring for them. But they stay because they made a lot of friends, joined a guild, and are using the MMORPG as some sort of 3D chat room. Fortunately there are ways to keep in touch with your online friends without having to play the same game for years: Cross-game MMORPG guilds. I was lucky enough to find one of those guilds 2 years ago, The Echelon.

The Echelon is a guild for the more mature gamers. That doesn't mean you have to be over 30 to join (although many are), it just means that you have to realize that friendship and loyalty are worth a lot more than experience points and "phat loot". We'd rather be close-knit than the most powerful guild of the game we are currently playing. That also means we don't just accept anybody into the guild. But if you get in, The Echelon is the last guild you ever need to join, as it will be present in all the major games you start playing in the future.

Currently The Echelon has full chapters in City of Heroes, Star Wars Galaxies, Asherons Call 2, and Horizons. But there are some of us playing other games, they just didn't get "full chapter" status (or lost it) because they are either dying out (EQ, EnB, Shadowbane) or somehow didn't fit into our "among friends" playstyle (Lineage 2, Final Fantasy XI). Naturally we will have a full chapter in World of Warcraft later this year.

Of course life in a guild is not always without conflict. For example we horribly bungled our Final Fantasy XI chapter, although you could say that this was in part the games fault, as it makes it artificially difficult to play in a group with your friends. But us all being grown-ups, we usually manage to handle problems in a mature and reasonable way. The important thing is to not forget that these MMORPG are just games, a form of entertainment. Certainly doing well in a game is a possible goal, but friendship has a higher value than that. So members are expected to share items, and to preferentially group with other guild members, even if that would make a group that is slightly sub-optimal.

I joined The Echelon in Earth and Beyond, and played both Star Wars Galaxies and Final Fantasy XI with them. And I'm looking forward to play City of Heroes with them as soon as I get into that game. And every time I play some free trial or open beta without them, it strikes me how much lonelier and emptier a game feels if you don't have your friends around. Even if you decide that The Echelon is not for you, or you are playing a different game than we do, you should consider joining a guild. It makes MMORPG so much better.
- posted by Tobold @ 8:37 AM Permanent Link