Armed Forces is September's Guild of the Month
October's Guild of the Month contest is still in progress, but right now it's time to announce our September winner. September's Guild of the Month is Armed Forces, a guild composed of United States military personnel stationed overseas, and they'll be walking away with a $100 SwagDog gift certificate. After being selected as our winner, Armed Forces was given the opportunity to write something about their guild that's a little more robust than the 200 word maximum contest entry. So rather than trying to tell you about them myself, I'll hand the reigns over to someone far more capable: A member of the guild.
Origins
Armed Forces was an idea that myself (Drahk) and our guild leader (Xertraz) had been toying with for a while. We are a collective group of members of the US Military, contractors and civilians stationed overseas. We had both been stationed overseas a few times before and the inability to raid with your guild because of the time differences has always been a huge problem. After discussing the issue we decided to take matters into our own hands and create a place that people like ourselves would have a home to come to that had like-minded people and raid times that suited them. Also, with the new ability to switch factions, it has made it even easier for people join up. So Armed Forces was born. In the beginning it was just a small group of Hordies on a small military base in England. But as word spread to other bases on the island we were able to recruit more into the fold. Before long we were able to recruit people stationed in mainland Europe as well. As people began to ship out to other over seas assignments they took on the challenge of recruiting people stationed in other countries.
Currently
We have people stationed in countries all over the world that can now see high end raid content that they might have missed out on due to being stationed overseas while serving our country. These countries currently include South Korea, Japan, Qatar, Turkey, Iraq, Germany, Belgium, England and Bahrain. We are a predominantly a casual raiding guild with a core set of hard core raiders lead by our raid leader (Perturabo) that make the way for progressions sake.
Some of the hidden benefits that we have found are that the people we recruit have a higher level of attention to detail, due in parts to prior military training, which can make for a great raiding mindset. Our members always know that the mission comes first so when real life takes a turn for the worst and it interferes with the game, nobody gets upset. It has also created a good support community for our guys down range as they are playing with people that have been in their shoes already and know what they're going through.
For the (Horde) Future
Our goals for the future are to expand the guild to where we can split into regional raiding groups consisting of Middle East, European, and Asian. We would like to see Armed Forces grow in size and provide an even larger foot print to further ease the raiding times for those spread out around the world and separated from the ones they love. WoW is just one of the few things we have that we can take with us and sometimes taking down that one boss that has been killing your raid for weeks is just the stress reliever you may need to keep you going through the tough times.
More importantly than the game itself, Armed Forces provides military and civilians alike a place to come and relax, escape from the pressures of everyday life, and have a good time just playing the game. Our members know each other, know their stories, know their problems. No one logs on and says they don't want to talk about their hard days, they let it out, they vent, because they know we understand and can sympathize. That kind of support structure means more than anything when you live thousands of miles away from your family and friends, sometimes it means everything.
