And I thought I was being Pranked!

Yesterday I received a suspicious whisper on my hunter named Joy:

“Joy!”

“The Tribe has found you at last”

I didn’t know this person, so the first thing that popped into my mind was that someone was pranking me. It didn’t make it less suspicious that the name of this person’s guild was “Joy Tribe” and they were only two levels above me. That was a lot of coincidences, so many that I couldn’t make sense of it. Who were these people and why were they setting all this up, or was all of this just a really obscure chance of events?

I was then invited to a group with a few of them and asked where I had been and that the Tribe had been missing me. Still being utterly confused with my mind racing trying to figure it out, I started to wonder if it was someone who had read my blog who was now teasing me, or one of my study mates.

This person (I’m calling them V here*), who was being really nice, proceeded to ask me if I wanted “to return home“.

And I accepted… I don’t know why, I guess I was just too damn curious, so I went with the flow of the situation, this despite my plans for Joy isn’t raiding nor anything big, but rather relaxation and random unobligated playtime.

But now I was a member of Joy Tribe and was even promised a special rank, as I was “the essense of the guild“. It felt like being caught around a flash mob, your ability to read the situation is challenged for a while, as you slowly start to realize that everything was a set-up, actors in a real time Truman Show.

So was this a set-up?

When I joined the guild, V enthusiastically told me about the other members and we joked around a little. He then stated that this was just a small social guild with a “predilection for exploring dungeons in a joyful manner” and that they were very selective with picking their members. He had himself tried to make a character named Joy, only to find out it was unavailable (cause lucky me took it!). He didn’t say it, but I assume this made him curious to whom Joy was, put the name on his friendslist and then whispered me when I came online.

Here's my first meeting with the guild master "F".

I’m both thrilled and in doubt. See, Joy was meant to be a solo character, a character for me alone, where I can just log on and off without any consideration, no hi’s and bye’s – just me, Joy and Azeroth. I’m not shy of guilds and do in fact enjoy membership, but guilds don’t have a “show as offline” button or any way to seamlessly be invisible without a neon DND (“do not disturb”). Sometimes it’s nice to play WoW not as a social game, but as a solo game.

My old main, a night elf shadowpriest, was initially conceived as a secret character. I played low-level Warsong Gulch with her without any of my online friends knowing, later I brought her out into the open. Secret characters don’t have to be secret forever. Joy is not secret per se, but it does put me in a dilemma.

What’s worse is that the dilemma is double edged. With so few members in this guild, it’s likely that I can easily continue my solo adventure without too much guild chat attention, and maybe this is the kind of guild I should stay in, just because they seem like really nice people, basically the kind of guild you’d never find your way to, unless they approached you. BUT! I have consciously avoided all types of level enhancers, all heirlooms. This guild is still level 1, but the level 2 perk is “Fast Track”, that’s 5% extra xp, a boost I very much want to avoid.

So on one hand the solo issue might solve itself. When the guild hits level 2, I could leave it. On the other hand, is this an adventure I should explore more, see what fun opportunities come out it? It was a curious and entertaining beginning, the kind of beginning that predicts well for the future perhaps?

* As I don’t have a permission from them to use what is actually a private conversation, including guild chat, which is also a sort of closed venue, I’m blanking names out. Even though the content is not harmful in any way, I’m doing it out of principle.