I’ll forever remember running Crota and VoG in Destiny 1. Good times man. Good times.

Yeah. I miss my boys. Shiny balls of light, you mongrels.

Maybe one day they’ll come back online.

When StarCraft was still relatively new the Blizzard games had a Chat function that spanned all of their games. If they belonged to another game you would see that Chatter’s game as an icon to the right of their name. You could speak to someone playing Diablo at any time. The social setup drove high engagement between players who regularly used to seek playing at a time when the gameplay was typically hosted on a player’s computer rather than on a server.

Clans didn’t have a ready in-game functionality, but fortunately Blizzard had allowed Chatters not only the freedom to change their username quite easily, but to also create Chat Rooms with custom names. By holding the Chat room, you could maintain Administrator rights over the channel.

Early Guilds had to have their users change their names to include the tags in their names, which meant virtually anyone could edit their name to include the tag they wanted. The expanded tag would be used as the name for the Chat Room, which allowed both members and non-members to find it easily enough.

The advent of bots using a Battle.Net login to hold the Chat Rooms and provide admin rights regularly to specific users spiked a new age as Clans became more stable. The bot would be used to blacklist trolls, recognize officers in the Clans, and create rosters to stop people from masquerading.

It created a boom, and in these early days clans rose and fell like the sun. Smaller clans were quicker to join other larger clans and conglomerate into new structures that would require testing and vetting of player skills. Friendships between real players, who formed clans only to incorporate better players from absorbing other clans, were sorely tested as some friends found their skills did not allow them to play regularly any more.

I was in one of these early guilds at the time, a group called the Silver Arrows. I had recently proved that while I lacked strategy for unit construction (as we were playing StarCraft) and combat, I was methodically organized in base construction and could start generating Protoss Scouts while Zerg players were still searching for others to conduct Zergling raids. I was still new to the game at that time and was flounderIng my way through the Campaign. As part of the Clan I found myself playing more often and seeking out games if only to spend time with my clanmates.

I was a member of the -[SA]- clan for about a month when the Silent Assassins {SA} entered into talks with our clan. Different clans with the same initials claimed different forms of their tags. We folded into their ranks and with the additional experience under my belt I found myself joining their first line. I played for a while, but as the boom/bust cycle continued it wasn’t long before I found myself playing relatively alone. Without a support group I gravitated towards Diablo and ultimately Diablo 2, only playing StarCraft socially with my real life friends.

I was in a bf2 clan that was pretty tight knit. I have good memories of that. I was also in another clan when I was 14 and one of the older guys tried to groom me. No DoT, I don’t want to masturbate with you

My clan started with Quake. Eventually it grew to IRL get togethers. We all grew up and had families and jobs so we don’t game together as much, although sometimes a new game comes along that gets us all playing together again. But 26 years later we still come from all over the country to get together IRL once a year, without fail.

It’s pretty awesome.

I helped co-found a guild back when WOW was new - I was the guild webmaster. The guild never really got that big or active, but here it is 20 years later and I still occasionally get credit card offers in the mail for “The Blackrazor Brotherhood.”

Some of my favorite gaming memories are from my time in a guild called The Sylvan Guard on an EverQuest server around 1998 or so. It was a small guild but the last time I saw a question similar to this posted, on Reddit a few years ago, I checked in and so did a former guild-mate I hadn’t spoken with in decades.

I did clans a bit. Some message boards were similar. I was a mod of a small guitar-oriented message board and we knew each other’s real names, there were occasional real-life meet-ups where people drove from other states, etc… I miss that.

Dark age of Camelot, had a guild made up of mostly locals. Did a custom website, scraped Mythics rankings, put in interactive maps, scroll trading system. It was all a hoot, moved to Warcraft after. Solid group of good people.

Everquest, the original.

Two guilds come to mind.

I was younger, too young to work, so one summer break I joined up with a European guild to raid with. Lots of fun, learned a but about British (primarily) culture. Lots of fun, even when I joined another guild I raided with them from time to time.

The other was a family guild. It eventually fell apart as the adults got busier with their careers and kids and shit. But the inner circle, so to speak, were invited to a bulletin board and we all talked for years after that. Eventually lost contact with them as I grew up and got busy with life.

Lots of fond memories, and a couple not so fond (RNG hates me, in every way). But they were along when RNG screwed me time and again, and were always willing to try again. Lots of love for those folks.

I joined a Linkshell (guild) in FFXI a few months ago and they’ve been great to me. Everyone is always helping one-another and we run weekly events every Saturday night. I don’t have much of a social life in my 30s so it’s been a great time for me to spend time with folks.

I’m in my 30’s and I’ve gotten into clans within the past couple of years or so. I started playing games that none of the rest of my friends played, like Hell Let Loose and Squad. Joining a clan for those two games was huge because it gave me a ton of people to play with at pretty much any time of day. For these types of games, at least, clans are still a pretty big thing. All of the clans that I’ve seen use Discord these days.

My Hell Let Loose clan has over 1,000 members and my Squad clan has even more - not entirely sure how many. What’s really interesting is that I know and have played with a ton of those members. Made lots of good memories, too.

Anyway, in my experience clans are totally still a thing. You should seek some out! Maybe you’ll find a good group that you vibe with.

When Youtube Gaming was still young I played Call of Duty with people from a gaming community called Hupit.com, which was founded by a prominent COD youtuber. With Covid I found people through Reddit for Simracing, and we have done tons of races together in the last 3 years.

I remember playing AOEII online many years ago someone asked me if I was in a clan and I said “No, I’m not Scottish”.

Had your pretty run-of-the-mill road to hardcore experience in WoW, complete with the long term semi-hardcore guild I stayed in the longest, helped managed, got in a relationship with the GM and moved countries over it, etc. Eventually tried to go full hardcore, did for a bit and quit the game a few months later. You know your standard stuff…

I joined and ran many clans growing up but my first was in Rainbow Six: Rouge Spear. I spent many of hours sniping on bunkers and swearing at each other over Teamspeak. One guy I met took me under his wing and showed me all about each level. The mod scene was pretty good too, granted you had to manually install the mod locally or the server wouldn’t let you in.

My most memorable game was America’s Army. The challenge of the gameplay really drew me and my RL friends in and we ended up making a clan. We liked it so much we rented a legit server so we could get honor on our own turf. Between us and the players coming in it was some of my best time on a shooter.

Just for sheer amount of hours, Counter Strike 1.6 reigns supreme. I remember when I first saw my America’s Army friends playing it and was in awe. The movement was janky compared to America’s Army, but had way faster gameplay and more weapons. At first I had trouble getting the hang of it and it took a while but eventually I could somewhat keep up with them.

Needless to say, I got zero sleep as a kid.