How do you and your MMO guild celebrate your guild anniversary?

Anniversaries are important, especially in MMORPGs. It’s important to celebrate the launch of a game that many of us have come to play and love. But even more, I love celebrating the anniversary of my guild or friend group reunions every year and going on adventures together.

In The Lord of the Rings Online, my family will soon be celebrating our 15th anniversary. During LotROs 15th anniversary is this month, ours in July. But it’s a monumental number. Fifteen years is not enough to work with such admirable and extraordinary friends. It’s also far longer than any other guild I’ve been a part of has played together.

My guild inside The Elder Scrolls Online has also been around since launch, but it’s more just a place for players to pool resources in one of the five guild banks you can access in the MMO. my Final Fantasy XIV and World of Warcraft Guilds have been around for a long time too, but I’ve only been around for a few years. my LotRO However, Kinship was founded by me and a friend in 2007 to find a small group of players to enjoy Middle-earth with.

And it’s been fantastic over the years. Since then I’ve been married, had a child, divorced, changed jobs, and more. And all the while, my Kinmates were always present and able to search, talk, and more when I needed it.

Every year on the weekend of July 17th (the starting date of our kinship) we got together and did the Rift Raid The Lord of the Rings Online. It was something that gave us a lot of joy, especially in the beginning as it would take all weekend to complete the raid. We all had jobs, real lives and more, so getting us all online at the same time was never easy. But the Rift raid was an opportunity we knew we could do.

We even started naming the Balrog in the Rift “Eruchin’s Bane” after our kinship because we couldn’t beat it during the early anniversary runs.

Now we can with our eyes closed (no harm, it’s a level 50-60 raid and we’re all level 140). But it’s something of a tradition to commemorate the tribe in this way.

However, it made me wonder. Is defined guild activity like this normal for your group? Is it the same as ours every year (and that’s not a complaint, mind you), or do you have something tailored planned for each year? Let us know how long you and your guild have been questing together and how you’re celebrating!