[quote]The Guild has been a large part of my daily activities on the internet, boasting about five years of activity on Roleplayerguild, both pre- and post guildfall. Perhaps I haven't logged as much years on here as other people, but I feel like I've left my mark here, both on the site itself and the people here, negative and positive. Likewise, the Guild has left it's mark on me, much more so the people I met here. 

I started roleplaying approximately.. six and a half years ago, on a forum for a videogame called Mount and Blade. At that time it was something to pass the time, not even a 'hobby' yet. We wrote some dumb stuff in a roleplay set in the universe of that game. This 'hobby' of mine could keep me busy for hours on end, as we rapid-fired posts of about 3 paragraphs back and forth between five or so people. That kind of changed when we moved to Roleplayerguild to find more people to roleplay with. It was then that I kickstarted my roleplaying career and began working towards becoming a better writer. I called myself 'Vuurvos' then, after the Dutch 'Firefox.' [i]I thought I was so cool.[/i]

I think, like many people, looking back at my old posts.. I'd rather pretend I never wrote those. However what I always feel is important to mention is how [i]crucial[/i] Roleplayerguild has been for me to become a better writer. When I came here with my group of friends, we were all pretty bad writers. We started our own roleplays, ignoring the existing roleplays, and kind of carved out our own little 'empire' in Roleplayerguild. This was pre-Guildfall, so the clique's were a lot bigger and a lot messier than they are now. Back then, we got the feeling we didn't really belong. 

That changed quickly when we joined a Naruto roleplay, which died about a week after it started, after which me and my friend Gerontis created our own Naruto roleplay. Again, looking back, it was an awful roleplay, the characters were bad and not thought out, and the plotlines were all over the place. 

[b]But[/b] we had fun. Probably because we didn't really care about how good we were at writing. But in the process we met good people. [i]Kho, Ganryu, Sloth, j8cob, Hillan[/i]. Especially Ganryu was a push factor for me. He wrote at such a high level that I felt intimidated, which felt strange because I was the GM and he was.. just a player. However, it also motivated me - I wanted to show him what I could do, that I could be just as good. It was through these people that I pushed myself forwards, using them as handles to grab onto as I climbed the rocky mountain up to becoming a better writer. So I strived to improve my writing - every day, I should at least write something new, or use a different writing style, than the day before. If I could improve a little bit each day, I would always be better today than I was the day before. 

That's why Roleplayerguild was so important for me as a writer. It allowed me to meet new people with different styles and different weak and strong points. And it also allowed me to take note of them. Roleplayerguild, as a roleplaying platform, is not much different from the others. It allows you to post your posts, to write, and to do everything a roleplaying forum needs to do. But where it differed from the rest was the different crowds you'd meet and the different interests people had here.

Fast forward to Guildfall, and I'd stopped roleplaying for some time. I'd gotten bored with it and my lack of interest in playing in the advanced section meant that, as a writer, I'd effectively stalled. I was not part of the community as a whole and didn't participate in any of the off-topic sections. So, when Guildfall happened, I didn't really feel the impact. 

I stayed away after Guildfall for a while, mostly to focus on other things, then returned, this time with other friends. Again, we started a Naruto roleplay, and somehow I got interested in roleplaying again, where as before this interest had dwindled so steadily it was nonexistant at some point. 

After a few roleplay cycles, I decided to try advanced and got my first taste of what would become my staple roleplay. I found I was easily able to keep up with advanced writers, and even rival them, despite never having gone into this section. It reminded me of what a companion told me at some point, years before; 

[quote]“Most advanced writers are not much better than casual writers - in fact, the high-casual crowd seems far more elitist in their standards.”[/quote]

I made the switch and decided I didn't like the dividing sections between advanced and casual - I just roleplayed in both, whenever some roleplay caught my eye.

It was after that that I became more involved with the community, and if I dare say it in the most melo-dramatic way, 'made a name for myself'. Through my own fault, and without regret, I did that in the worst possible way. And I will continue to do so. 

I think most of my sailing after that has been smooth - which sums up my experience with RPG for the most part. It's smooth sailing. There's no storms, at most there's a little whirlpool caused by someone pulling a plug out of their bathtub. And that's why I like RPG. Nothing really changes. It's the same place now as it was when the guild restarted. And my friends are (mostly) still here. 

It's not just a forum, it's a community. You make friends, you pick up new friends along the route you travel. The Guild is always changing, there's new people coming in, there's the Old Guard that maintain a sense of the 'elite' in a friendly manner, there's the spammers, both bots and spam-forum regulars, there's the debate club, the arena.. People's interests change all the time, from shonen anime-esque roleplays to slice-of-life superpower roleplays to college and highschool roleplays.

I guess we can call that Roleplayerguild Magic.[/quote]