Finding the beloved guild in World of Warcraft after 20 years. It’s actually a nice thing, if it didn’t seem like a relic of the past.
Guilds in World of Warcraft have a very different significance for all players. For some, it’s just a loose group of rather unimportant online acquaintances, while others have a large circle of friends in the guild that has built up over years and sometimes decades. And some still remember the first guild they ever joined and wonder what has become of it.
When you finally get the answer, it’s not always nice – because many guilds are just ghosts of the past.
What was shown? In a post on Reddit, Ravun88 shares a screenshot of his guild – or rather the attendance list of the members. You can see when the characters last logged in. For some, it has been 18 or even 20 years – so between 2005 and 2007, shortly after the launch of WoW.
Why do the characters have such strange names? If you look at the names, you will recognize quite bizarre characters. Names like “Kaity9AF389” or “AndaraA0136A” are not indications of bots or something similar, but due to another circumstance.
If accounts do not log in for several years, Blizzard releases the corresponding character names. If someone doesn’t play with the character “Kaity” for several years, that character gets an addition of random characters and others can call themselves “Kaity.” If the original Kaity happens to return, she can give her character a new name or call herself Kaity again if it hasn’t been reassigned yet.
The image shows the sad reality that many members of this guild have not logged in for about two decades. A genuine “ghost guild” and probably one of the oldest in World of Warcraft.
The fact that the characters have such low levels is mainly because the maximum level in World of Warcraft has already been reduced once, effectively “halving” the levels of most.
This is how the community reacts: In the WoW subreddit, there are a lot of upvotes for the post, which essentially represents a glimpse into the past, albeit a slightly sad one. Many comments recount their own stories with their long-standing “ghost guilds.”
Rockyfist wishes he could still log into one of the first guilds:
Man, you are so lucky that you can still log into your old guild. One of my guild mates kicked everyone out and then sold the guild name.
AccurateInsect8814 also has such a guild, where he occasionally checks in.
I feel the same way, we had a guild for alt characters. From time to time, I log in there and see if anyone has come back. No one has ever returned.
What about your WoW guilds? Are they communities that have existed for many years? Are your members in the guild still active? Or do you also have some “ghost guilds” among your characters?
If you want to take another look at WoW, it could be very easy – because soon you will need just one key to play.
