Each of us has chosen our local Children’s Miracle Network Hospital where thousands of children are treated each year, regardless of their family’s ability to pay. These kids are facing scary stuff like cancer, cystic fibrosis, and injuries from accidents to name just a few.

On Saturday, we’ll be doing a little event we like to call “Defense of the Pillow Fort” – we’ll be taking one of the structures in WvW and spending the next 24 hours trying to defend it from the invading forces.

We’ve raised over $500 and made our communities proud, and we hope you’ll join us at the Pillow Fort this Saturday.

Now that the early adrenaline rush has calmed, we’ve restarted our Friday night guild storyline roleplays that have been such a hallmark of our development over the past year and a half.   While the company’s interests will always be at home in Lion’s Arch, the threat of the dragons has prompted Kraddock Zealforge to take a third of the company and march south to Orr to assist with the fight for Tyria’s survival.

We’ve also re-opened our recruitment fully at this time.  We had to close it fully at launch, and then was revised to partially open for specific races only through much of the past month.  We’re happy to say that our racial numbers are looking a lot more balanced and we’re looking for applications of all five races once again.

We’d also like to re-state our commitment to this game.  This is a guild with staying power – we don’t intend to close up shop or quit in boredom once our characters hit 80.   We believe that this is the best MMO on the market and we want to be here for months and years to come.  There’s always another goal on the horizon and always another story to tell.  If you’re looking for a guild family that is securely anchored next to GW2′s shore, look no further.

We hope everyone is having as much fun as we are – see you in-game!

This Friday marks a milestone for us as we play out the series finale of our pre-launch content, when the Firstwatch finally confronts the Inquest scientist that blew up their labs several months ago. It’s the culmination of many storyline threads that are coming together in one final event.

Following Friday, we’re moving on to our live event format, where our storylines and activities will be grounded in the activities that we take part in while playing the game.  We’ve created a new forum for our planned events going forward and already have three events planned for a first two weeks in the live game, spanning from PvE to WvW, roleplaying all the while.

Before we go, though, let’s look back at some of our favorite Skype RP moments from the past sixteen months (you can find the log linked if you’ve never read it before!):

Fallen Pine:

“This was the moment when Shit Got Real for me. People died, went missing, and Drakorus showed just how bad his ass really was.” – Rodinia

“I’d say Fallen Pine [was one of] the biggest events that influenced who my character is today (even if I derp and forget sometimes), and he wouldn’t be nearly as awesome as he is now if I hadn’t joined you and experienced those moments.” – Caliday

Wintersday Party:

“Adirah’s “present” from Royce at the Christmas special would have to be my favorite moment, both for what it was and all things potato which it spawned.”  – Aldoria

“..if I had to say one thing, I would definitely like to remind everyone that ass tastes delicious.” – D-Pad

The Iron Lion Games:

“It was immensely fun to run a week long blitzkrieg of mini events that culminated at a grand closing mega-atholon.” – Thorvald

“The Iron Lion Games were a wonder to behold/RP in, especially thanks to their knack for mixing social and martial or competitive RP. That, and the nice feeling of building excitement that led up to the grand finale. – Sauerkraut

Congratulations to guild member Sauerkraut for having an IC article published in the very first Tyrian Taleweaver!

“It was a dark and stormy night, and I was curled up against a tree like a scared rabbit. I’d been trekking west from the Shiverpeaks for about a week, in the middle of the Krytan winter – and I think you all know just how awful a Krytan thunderstorm can get on the coast, right around Wintersday. Anyway, I was huddle up against this big ol’ tree, trying to sleep.  There’s the thunder boomin’ all around, and the flashes of lightning, and the sound of a restless sea not half a mile off. Sooner or later, I must’ve dozed off.

Next thing I know, there’s a mighty ruslin’ in the underbrush, hardly a stone’s throw away…”

Finally, a few bits of of business:

Thanks to D-Pad and Manekineko for stepping up into Veteran positions to help us keep the guild busy with activities.  Manekineko will be assisting Kraddock with the Champions branch and D-Pad will be assisting Thorvald with SCIENCE.

Also, an important announcement:   We’re closing our recruitment on July 25th to make sure everyone is settled into our roster.  If you’ve been waiting to put in an application, this is the time!  Otherwise, you’ll have to wait until the fall for us to re-open recruitment.   Thanks to everyone that’s make FIC so wonderful over these past fourteen months.  On to launch!

Even though MMOs in general have become easier to solo and traditional raiding isn’t for everyone, most players are still likely to end up facing some group-focused content here and there.  Although pick up groups can sometimes work, it is often easier to form one with a few members of your guild to save yourself the pain of pleading in an LFG channel or leaving yourself to the mercy of a random group finder.  In Guild Wars 2, however, dynamic events make groups significantly less necessary.  With events scaling based on the number of players in the area, and players cooperating with each other in a far more organic manner, there’s very little need to drag guild members out to help you with anything.  Instead, you’ll play with the others around you in ways that make natural cooperative sense.

There are, of course, a few minor exceptions to this philosophy of free-form grouping.  One is the game’s dungeons, which may benefit somewhat from planned organization, but these are only five-man affairs, and level scaling and lack of a holy trinity means that nearly anyone in your guild will be able to help you.  The same goes for teams in structured PvP tournaments. As long as a few other players are online, they can participate.  The other kind of exception is World vs World, where having a larger, organized force can be beneficial, but map-wide team chat allows players from multiple guilds to work together and communicate with relative ease.

Additionally, the multi-guild system reduces the need for your primary guild to be based around a specific gameplay system.  If you wish to join a guild for WvW activities, you’d only need to represent that guild while participating in that area of the game.  Otherwise, for the rest of your time in-game, you could spend it in a guild filled with friends or roleplayers.  The same principle goes for a structured PvP team, though a guild for that doesn’t appear to be necessary at all.

With the game functions out of the way, then, what guilds are now allowed to be are true community organizations.  There is every reason to join a guild filled with people you enjoy, and no downsides to being in either a roleplay or small guild instead of a larger, function-focused guild. With Guild Wars 2’s removal of so many barriers to content found in the traditional MMO formula, there is no need to worry about having enough people for a raid, or having enough players to help out with content at any level.  Instead, guilds become truly social entities based around a very important factor: playing together with your friends – and enjoying some great roleplay, too.

For an example of how this can happen, let’s examine human character creation, specifically Guild Wars 2′s selectable backstory choices for your character before you even enter the game.  In the big picture of a guild story and an MMO it is better to avoid using pre-set backstories as much as you can for your own story. The importance of avoiding them will vary; some things such as the choice between noble, street rat, or commoner are so generic that most backgrounds would accommodate this them anyway, though it’s best not to make them the centerpice of your character. Another of the choices for humans, though, has three very specific options: you were either an orphan, had a dead sister, or regret never joining the circus.  While you will have to pick one for character creation, you don’t need to add these to your character canon. Allow for deviation and the ability to make your character unique from the avatar story line.

When trying to determine whether to adopt pre-made story elements, ask yourself the question: “Is this story element broad, or is it unique?” The more unique the pre-made story element is, the greater chance that someone else will also have that same element in their own character story as well, thus dissolving the unique quality into a story trope (just how many orphan heroes are out there, anyway?).  Remember, the pre-made story won’t differentiate your character from XxPownizator4891xX. And he’s just in it for the loot!

Ask the same question – broad, or unique – when incorporating your PvE questing. In Guild Wars 2, many of the renown hearts and dynamic events are ripe for in the field RP. Most of the encountered situations are very generalized problems with  run-of-the-mill folks that need help, such as spiders infesting the orchard, bandit attacks, or centaur raids. All are general enough that your character can boast of besting them and have other say the same without it being the exact same situation, and it can still be something unique to talk about between adventurers. The Mist Wars (the lore reason for WvW and PvP) can be spoken of in the same fashion. It’s a never ending war and the battles are always a little different, so victory and loss can be an on-going topic of discussion.

The game-long personal story for the avatar will be where you need to think most critically about just what you incorperate into your character’s canon. It’s likely that end-game story arcs will take you to big boss battles and have you personally involved in their defeat. These situations make for a satisfying personal victory, but fall flat for RP canon.  Sure, you just killed that big baddie… except that baddie was also just killed by this other person an hour ago, and a hundred other people before them, and each one claims the victory for themselves. When stories get so specific or have a level of game canon finality, that’s where you as your character’s author will need to step in and look to either overlook it (play it OOC) or frame your character’s involvement in a different, minor way as to develop your character’s story without becoming hero carbon copy #4231 that personally bested the dragons.

Of course, these examples are merely ends of the spectrum, not a blueprint for perfect IC gameplay success, and there will be grey areas that you will have to think and decide for yourself what will be your character’s canon.  My final advice is simply this: Be aware, and make choices that will lead your character being unique from the carbon copies that will be running around. It may take more work, but in the end, would you rather tell someone else’s story… or your own?

We’ve added a media section to the top so that you can not only see all of our videos (some serious, some silly) but you can also browse through our picture gallery of screenshots from the beta weekends.  We’ll be adding to that as time goes on – expect to see photos of any in-game special events that we host or participate in along the way.

While we’re here, some membership updates:  We’d like to offer a special welcome to Arrakiv and Wymsical, who joined the guild during our month-long news blackout.  We’ve also bid a fond farewell to the few members whose real life has kept them away from the computer and all things GW2 – come back soon, you guys.  You are missed.

We’re also starting up Season 6 of our ongoing guild storyline content this Friday, so if you’re out there reading this and interested in getting involved, there’s no better time to apply to FIC.   This content train knows no brakes.

The Intelligence Service may not be an advertised service of the Firstwatch, but their role in the company and the city as a whole is vital.  Their goal is straightforward: protect the company’s interests and the entirety of Lion’s Arch at any cost.  Their methods, however, are not so straightforward, but IS inspectors know that the ends justify the means.

Inspectors can be found rooting out criminals and corruption where they see it, performing counterespionage, and providing personal protection for the company’s most important personnel.  In truth, though, they like it best when they can’t be found doing anything at all.  They have the most latitude of anyone in the Firstwatch, lacking much bureaucracy or oversight, but they also lack the overt protection of the company should they ever fail.

Open Positions:

IS Inspector:  While you’ll never see this job posted on a board someplace, occasionally you’ll hear about the Firstwatch’s private agents who are tasked with the security of the company, its personnel and resources, and the safety and stability of Lion’s Arch.  It’s a cushy job – if you can gain the trust of the notoriously paranoid administrator and get hired.

While I always loved the old design for its artsy charm, it wasn’t the best format for presenting information, so this should work far better for communicating the kind of information we want to put forward about our guild to the community as we head towards launch. I’ll always miss the big picture version of our character directory, though!

There’s one new feature for this new layout that I definitely want to draw your attention to, and that’s our FICthoughts, which we started back in April as a kind of collective journal of IC thoughts for our characters. Previously, we were linked directly to Tumblr, but now the most recent posts are being embedded right here on our site. It’ll be the most rapidly changing part of our entire site, so check back often to seen what’s new.

This weekend, the guild is looking forward to getting in some WvW action. It’s going to be a great time. See you in Tyria!

To celebrate, please enjoy this list of incredibly random, yet completely true, facts about our guild:

• OVER 9000 forum posts: No, that’s not a meme joke. Though it could be. It’s also 26 posts a day, and that’s on top of any participation on 2RP/Fortune’s Favored and our constant Skype banter. Activity isn’t just a buzzword: it’s a policy we believe in.

• 42 unique characters: Spanning all races, genders, backgrounds, and interests. With three branches for employment, there’s always inspiration for JUST ONE MORE ALT.

• 40+ Guild Storyline Events: That’s just the official, planned event nights, the logs of which you can find here. If we counted every night that roleplay happened in one of our Skype channels, though, it’d be well over 200.

• 160+ in-character FIC thoughts: And that’s just since April 11, exactly one month ago. Our characters always have something new to talk about.

• 95% member retention: A year in, we’ve kept nearly everyone that’s joined us, and we’ve NEVER had to kick a member. We eschew drama – the OOC kind, of course. We’re a family. Our members meet in person, support one another through thick and thin, and care about who’s behind the screen.

• 79 (approximate): Website hits coming from the tiny island nation of Seychelles.

• Innumerable strange search terms: Odd things people have Googled to reach our site over the past year include, “how to kill an incorporeal undead”, “i need more pictures of ponies”, “scars are sexy”, “together in spirit shirts”, and “how not to get the shits from sauerkraut”.