The whole episode was a romantic duality of what can happen when players and guilds are given the keys to a universe. Shadowbane, from the very beginning, opened the door to guilds to expand their hierarchy everywhere, and even enforce it on others. Massive conglomerations of players rose to the occasion, uberguilds infamous in other games finally achieving dominance over one another. Until the dust settled, the chaos was something you could envelope yourself within. Wars popped up over insults, over out of game arguments, over anything. It was feudal Europe, but when our Renaissance came, we couldn't even burn "heretics" because of a non-aggression pact with opposing guilds.
But it wasn't all bad. Even amidst a crippling peace, the Machiavellian political rivalries glowed with the brightness of a thousand suns. Watching it from the sidelines made me reread The Prince half a hundred times. Seeing artists of negotiation and diplomacy work their magic more than justified the lasting peace many people had to endure.
And it mirrored much of the real world. During the Cold War, Soviet Premiere Mikhail Gorbachev would consistently position his underlings in a surprisingly cliquish manner: The ones who were in his favor would be close to him whenever in public, while the ones who angered him were on the periphery. Whenever I attended guild meetings and listened to gossip, one of the higher ups would do the same thing. Either he was an International Relations major with a penchant for obscure Russian political scheming, or obedience is rewarded in the same manner, wherever you go.
As the server population dwindled, the cliques grew tighter and more frenzied, the massive hierarchy crystallizing in a super saturated state; there was just too much drama for a community this small. It was only a matter of time before the unstable solution fell apart, and a couple of friends and I set out to be the ones to destroy Shadowbane's Perestroika.
It wasn't just because we were bored; sure, we were, and so was everyone else. But if it was just boredom, we'd have quit. No, we wanted to undermine our guild because we were tired of being the bad guys. Their bad guys. When you're charged with identifying and prioritizing which guilds to destroy, you inevitably wind up playing a cat and mouse game with their defenders. Our Gestapo was a team of stealthy characters, relying on being able to infiltrate cities unseen. When we'd actually come across someone able to not only find us, but kill us repeatedly, we made the mistake of fraternizing with them. A friendly tell quickly turned into conversations, and before we knew it, we started liking the "enemy" more than we liked our "friends."
It started simply. When our guild set its sights on a group of people we liked, we frantically sent messages to them, warning them of their impending doom. We led groups of warriors into well defended areas. We wouldn't attack our friends, and we'd take a dive against their low level members.
We did nearly anything to give the "good guys" a chance, while our imperialist horde tried yet again to justify their existence by snuffing out someone else. Sure, we were traitors to the guild that raised us, but we also knew we were doing something no one else could do: giving the server a chance. It grew beyond guilds; this was injecting a little anarchy into a perfect status quo. And damn it, it felt right. Honorable. Give the enemy a chance to face you on equal footing. What's more, it was working.
A guild a continent away suddenly looked a lot like us. Their city had walls, fully stocked vendors, and high level raiding parties attacking our established cities on that side of the world. My cadre tittered over IMs. Finally, a challenge, a fair fight, something to do. But then someone posed the big question I hadn't yet begun to entertain: Who do we fight for?
