Mushy rant incoming, but hey it’s me so I’m sure a lot of you aren’t surprised.
I first joined Moon Guard in 2009. I remember it pretty vividly, even now 15 years later. I was missing World of Warcraft, particularly missing Dloin and his guild of pirates, but I knew that after a couple of years those folks from Silver Hand likely wouldn’t be around anymore. So I did some research, found that Moon Guard was the server to be on for roleplaying, and popped on the official forums to ask how the server would feel about a dwarf pirate and his pirate guild. Reception was solid and supportive, so I renewed my subscription and jumped back in.
Old Pirates of Khaz Modan, on Silver Hand, was good. I remember it fondly still. But the new Pirates of Khaz Modan on Moon Guard was influential to me. I made friends, both as part of the guild, from among other guilds on the server, and over the forums. I got to know a lot of players over the course of the end of Wrath and the beginning of Cataclysm. In hindsight it was probably only a year or so before I ended up quitting again, but I carried a lot of those memories with me, even to this day.
I then came back during Mists of Pandaria, returning to my old dwarf pirate captain and trying to reform the guild for the third time. The new PoKM never got off the ground, and most of the old contacts I had made had either left the server or left the game, but I found a bunch of new friends and did a bunch more RP. I was forced to think of what Dloin was like without the guild of pirates around him. It was an incredibly satisfying period of RP for him. I felt like I had unlocked a new level of character development for my previously one-dimensional dwarf.
Then I quit again, and returned in Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands. I race-swapped my Dwarf Warrior to a human, remade Dloin as a rogue, and leveled him up to get to the Legion content. The people I met during this run were the best. The server had only grown more inclusive and more supportive as a whole, and while I lamented losing all of the old contacts from my heyday, I was swiftly making new ones. I played through the first few months of Shadowlands, and then quit due to IRL responsibilities piling up.
And then Dragonflight brought back the talent trees, and introduced dragon riding, and all the preview stuff for The War Within was looking super hype. So I came back again a couple of months ago.
And let me tell you, this most recent stint has been the greatest collection of RP I’ve had in my entire history of playing World of Warcraft. I’m sure recency bias is playing a big part of this, but, Dloin had gone from “yar har Ima dwarf pirate” to “I’m no longer a pirate and I’m sad about it” to what, now, feels like a fully three-dimensional character with years of history and an exciting future.
The people I have met since I came back, and the old friends who are still around, have helped to make this recent experience absolutely one-of-a-kind. I’ve had a couple of one-on-one RP sessions with folks that left me just sort of sitting there, staring at my monitor and thinking “is THIS what RP has always been like?”
Moon Guard, you’ve always been good to me. And you continue to be good to me. I’ve been tossing around ideas about how I can give back, about what I can do to show my appreciation. I’ve got a couple I’m thinking of, but I wanted to start here, where I started 15 years ago, on the forums.
I am excited for what the future holds for me and Dloin as part of the MG server. And even if I decide to unsub, I know that by the time Midnight, or The Last Titan hit, I’ll be ready to come back and do it all over again.
Thank you. If I’ve RPed with you EVER, thank you. If I haven’t yet, well, let’s fix that. I am almost always in-character, and I am always looking for new contacts.
