Given the fact that The Old Republic only launched (officially) nine days ago, it’s pretty amazing that this guild I created to be devoted to the game, Beskar, has just turned three years old.
As I’ve said before, had I known TOR wasn’t going to be released until late 2011, I don’t think I would have started the guild as early as December 2008, however, at the time, no one really knew what was going to happen. All we knew was that the game had been underway in semi-secrecy at Bioware for some years, so a launch in late 2009 (when the guild would have been established for a year), or maybe early 2010, seemed as likely as any other guess we could make at the time.
What this meant, of course, is that the guild had to stick together over a long period of time without an “official” game to play. This was no easy thing. Someone might join in, say, mid-2009 and, by the end of that year, be bored with the concept of a guild that existed primarily as a forum community and would walk away. Two years before the game was even due. Two years. It’s a wonder those of of who stayed the course over two or three years didn’t go crazy. Yet somehow, against the odds, we kept the faith.
And I guess, looking back, it wasn’t all hard-work and suffering; there have been some very clear advantages to starting so early. The game has barely just begun, for example, yet Beskar is extremely well-known at all levels: within Bioware, within the TOR community, and within our server environment.
This is useful as our members are a generally very sociable group of people and if that tag under our names in the game can “mean” something to people (and it seems to), then it opens doors for us to talk to people from outside our group and, more importantly, have those people want to talk back to us. It helps build community, inside and outside our server, and that’s always a very good thing.
So here we are. Happy third birthday, Beskar. You make me proud.
