Wyrmfoe in the Beta!

I received word from Blizzard last night that our guild was one of the 500 that won the guild beta essay contest. So very excitingly Wyrmfoe will be rocking the beta, and I’ll finally have tanks and healers to join 5-mans with me and I won’t have to keep badgering Zeherah to switch to her tank alt to tank for me

Back when the contest was first announced, Hrist and I talked a bit about the essay and how to go about it. We figured there were basically two routes: go for something serious and honest — the tricksy matter of representing the guild well without sounding like you’re boasting, and without sounding like the rest of the bazillion guilds in the world; or go with something funny/thematic, in which case you need a good hook, a good angle to shoot from so you’ll stand out from the bazillions of those entries.

Now at this point I had already known for a while that I was getting in the beta, but I still *really* wanted to get my peeps in too, so this was serious business. To be safe, I wrote out both versions at exactly 250 words each, then Hrist and I and the rest of the guild weighed in on which to use. It was a bit of a tossup trying to figure out which was more likely to get us a good response, but in the end we decided to go with the funny thematic one on the theory that it was more memorable.

I just re-read the contest rules, and I am not actually allowed to share with you what our winning entry was. Blizzard owns that now : )  However, I can show you the one that I wrote but we decided not to submit:

I don’t know how to explain why our guild is deserving of a Cataclysm beta invite other than by describing our guild.

Our guild is a guild of friendships brought together and sustained by this game we all play. It is a guild of extraordinary people. A guild of high school friends spread across the country who 15 years later still spend time together in Azeroth; a guild of parents who play with their children; a guild of students and of teachers and friendships spanning the globe; a guild of disabled who can’t work the controls but do the research and call the plays while his girlfriend does the driving and together they slay dragons; a guild of armed services members, one recently deployed who we hope to keep in touch with through the game. These people, this guild, is a guild of heroes who every week sit at the computer and play with friends.

I truly believe these extraordinary people, some who I’ve known for years and some whom I’ve just met, are the embodiment of what makes WoW so great. Because ultimately it’s not about slaying dragons. It’s about the friendships, the people coming together and playing together and working together to overcome challenges. It’s not about the characters, but the heroes behind the characters.

On behalf of guild Wyrmfoe we would love to continue our friendships into the Cataclysm beta. I think these remarkable people could provide you valuable insight in the best spirit of the game.

PS: Sadly I have to report that the WHU guild did not get in the beta : (