Wynncraft. A popular MMORPG server within the game of Minecraft. For many years I was addicted to this server, to the point where it became detrimental to my wellbeing. But it wasn’t the game itself I

Wynncraft. A popular MMORPG server within the game of Minecraft. For many years I was addicted to this server, to the point where it became detrimental to my wellbeing. But it wasn’t the game itself I was addicted to; it was always rather average for an RPG if you ask me. I was addicted to the guild community. A simple mechanic of capturing and holding territories for a guild of around 30-70 people. It wasn’t all that special, quite bare bones for the genre. But I became intoxicated by what the players themselves had built with this system. A complex web of rivalries, alliances, betrayals, and all the political drama that one could imagine. A community of backstabbing and treachery that could make Westeros seem tame at times. For 4 years I remained deeply involved in this world, climbing my way up from being the 15-year-old that annoyed everyone he spoke to, to holding unparalleled power and authority over the hundreds who played. Despite all the success and excitement that the server brought me, at the very peak of my influence I came to realize that it was unhealthy. It consumed my thoughts, kept me free from experiencing anything other than a computer screen. I had wasted away years of my life, all for a video game.
               When I first began my adventure into this community, I joined a smaller guild which I will refer to as HoL. This was an insignificant guild, but due to the actions of some older members a few months prior, it carried a negative reputation. I looked at this guild and saw the weight its name carried. All publicity is good publicity, so long as you have the right person in charge to take advantage of it. But its leader, Eric, was weak. He was not very smart. He wasn’t even very inspiring. He had no ambition, he focused only on fulfilling personal vendettas. For a few months, I slowly worked my way up the ranks until I had become his second in command. Once there, I grew even more frustrated. He did not truly value my talents, my ambition, my appetite for clawing my way to the top. I offered him connections that would allow us to latch our guild onto the powerhouses of the time and soar to the top alongside them, but he resented the top guilds too much to consider this. I felt like I was being used rather than leaned on, he would take credit for the large raids I commanded that would result in significant gains of territory. This festered, and eventually, after a considerable amount of drama I sought the help of the most powerful guild leader in the community, Sarah, and with her assistance, we were able to oust Eric as the leader and install myself as the leader, so long as the guild remained loyal to hers.
               Eventually, after a couple more months of success and sucking up, Sarah quit the server, fed up with the amount of time and energy it required. The man she handed her guild down to, Igor, wasted no time, and he quickly built an alliance that took control of the entire map. Now, the number of territories that there are inside this game is far too many for a single guild to hold. The only way to reliably hold a large swath of land for more than a few minutes is to form a mega-alliance with other top guilds. This alliance then portions off the map to its members like a slice of cake, and each guild is responsible for holding the lands that they are assigned. This strategy is almost infallible if the guilds are strong enough, the only thing that can take down one of these alliances when they are at peak form is internal dissonance that tears it apart from the inside. Igor created an alliance like this, and I was one of its founding members. But this alliance quickly had problems. Almost nobody liked Igor. He was a strong leader, too strong in fact. He lorded himself over the rest of us, acting as if he was our King and we were all in his debt. He saw himself as our betters, so after a few short months of owning the entire map, half the alliance seceded. It collapsed instantly, nobody left in it had the strength to hold the map, nobody else in it wanted to. It ended with a whimper, not a bang.
               For a solid year after this, my involvement was low. I was busy with my Junior year of high school, and during this time the game had become fundamentally broken due to incompetence from the developers. It was almost impossible to get the guild system to work properly, taking territories was far more of a chore than it was entertaining. But even still I spent my time wisely, I became close friends with a leader named Ari whose guild commanded much respect, as it was by far the oldest in the game. However, she disbanded it. Her guild roleplayed as a Kingdom, and after a significant bout of drama, they had grown discontent with their Queen, demanding that she step down. In an act of defiance, she decided that if she couldn’t be Queen, nobody could, and disbanded it, and disappeared. She valued our friendship, and I was one of the few that she kept in contact with. Eventually, she planted the idea in my head that I should revive her guild, become King, and bring back her once-beloved kingdom. I immediately jumped at this opportunity, I knew how much I could do with a guild whose name commanded that much respect, and I got together some close trusted friends for their assistance in reviving it. It only lasted a few months. Those friends did not have the ambition and imagination that I had; they didn’t believe in the cause. They gave up after only about a month. We had agreed to bring back the greatest community the server had ever seen, and they gave up after a month. I could’ve seen the writing on the wall then, but I didn’t. I knew that I could do more than that, just not alone. I spoke with Ari and brought her back as Queen. I stepped down and became her second in command.
               We ruled that guild together for two years. What we accomplished in that time was unparalleled, it was magnificent. When she first came back, the Kingdom was worthless. But what is that saying by Augustus? “I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble.” For the first time, I wasn’t used. My talents were appreciated. By the end of my reign as second in command, it would be more proper to refer to us as Co-leaders than Queen and subject. As I proved myself more and more, the leash loosened and loosened to the point where we were complete equals, and I was trusted to run all foreign affairs without question. Exploiting this autonomy, I built the greatest alliance the community had ever seen. After being insulted by the leader of the ruling alliance at the time, which bore the name War Syndicate, I founded my own alliance. Over the span of two months, we slowly built it up until eventually, in what was later dubbed The Great Invasion, we struck all at once and had the map in a span of days. In a crushing victory, we took our places as the unmatched powerhouse. But soon, a mere two months after, a few of our guilds had become discontent and betrayed the alliance. They formed their own, and as those that left were all the strongest in the alliance not counting ourselves, they immediately seized the map from us. Even though I unequivocally hated that alliance whom we had first defeated to gain power in the first place, I contacted War Syndicate and brokered a peace with them. Together we formed a new alliance, The Federation, and after a grueling weeklong battle, defeated the traitors and were once again back on top.
               This was an alliance of over 500 people and over 10 separate guilds. It was built upon the thin concept of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. It was never meant to last. But it did. For nine whole months, I held that alliance together with duct tape and sheer will. It shattered all previous records; no alliance had ever held the map for more than 3 months before this. We ruled for what felt like an eternity, and although in name all its leaders were equal, everyone knew I was in charge. For those nine months, I was the undisputed top dog of the community, and I relished in it. I loved the power, the influence. I loved having leaders come to me to solve their problems, I loved the fear I struck into the smaller guilds who were repeatedly stifled by our might. It became an addiction. I spent every free second thinking about this game. How to resolve issues I was facing, how to defeat enemies, how to curry favor with needed allies. My grades slipped, my social life suffered, I barely talked to anyone that wasn’t online. It was a problem, and so after the alliance finally succumbed to its internal pressures and fell, I quit the game. Even now writing this, I want to go back. Like an alcoholic who can’t just stop at one, I know that if I ever touch the game again, I will not be able to hold myself back. For four years I worked to achieve something great, and in the fourth year, I realized that in the process of achieving something great I had missed out on all the other great things in life.