Mormon Battalion is turning 7!
It's been quite a road since then. Personally, I began playing Guild Wars in July 2005, and was fortunate enough to join this great community the following month. For me, my introduction to Mormon Battalion came about as I saw Crom (playing his monk, Alma The Elder) broadcast the now iconic line "Do you know the Brother of Jared?" line in local chat as I wandered about Ascalon City. Jerron Blacksilver was a fresh faced level 13 W/Mo at the time. I joined up right away and never looked back.
The early days of [MoB] were a sight to behold. We had an easy 20-30 people logged on any given night, with constant groups running missions and quests. The spirit of community and camaraderie made for some of the best nights of gaming I've ever been a part of. Any time a guildie needed a hand with anything at all, volunteers would step up and get it done. To this day I recall the addition of Sorrow's Furnace as being one of the most exciting times in Guild Wars for the Battalion; we had 2 or 3 full groups (in game and on Teamspeak, yeah we used Teamspeak way back then!) fighting their way north through Snake Dance trying to find their way to Grenth's Footprint (You remember that guys? That very first group of Stone Summit with the two priests of sorrows that kept rezzing all their friends, man they were a pain!) and eventually to the Deldrimor War Camp and Sorrow's Furnace.
Things escalated from their with the addition of Factions, and though we lost the odd member or two primarily to WoW (Tantheos, Arti, Bender, etc...) we also steadily picked up new blood, and even reached critical mass with our guild roster capping out at 100. We even had to add two sister guilds, Mormon Battalion Elite-which was strictly for second accounts, and Mormon Battalion Reserves for the "less actives". Shadow Of The Serpent was our first official ally guild, and though they have since disbanded we still have a healthy group of guilds whom we are allies with. We kept up the momentum through Nightfall and GWEN, though as these things go, once the content had been mostly finished, people began to find other things to occupy their time.
At this time, we have a group of perhaps a dozen players in Mormon Battalion (I'm not sure about our ally guilds) playing on at least a semi regular basis. I think it's fair to say most of the "Old Guard" are in a holding pattern, whiling away their time in other games whilst eagerly anticipating a return to Tyria in Guild Wars 2. Though Guild Wars gave birth to the community we see here, this site has been instrumental in keeping this community alive and helping it to grow beyond the bounds of Guild Wars. And through this community we see not only old Guild Wars players, but players from other games as well, poised to leap directly into Guild Wars 2 and continue the legacy which began nearly seven years ago when a pair of Mormon gamers from Winnipeg said "You know what would be cool? An all-LDS Guild!"
- By Jerron Blacksilver
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