LOL that was a fun read,
You know I was once the (accidental) Guild leader of the 8th strongest guild in Dragon Nest Mobile. It was the 20th when we started just enough people to complete a squad, we were left behind when the top Chinese Guild "pirated our Former Leader as well as the top members (there is a pic of us in my introduction post) but we rose slowly till eight rank then we manage to get by even after several server merges happened... we actually almost gave up.
I kept it as a Non-Competitive Casual Guild, some of my members didn't like that (especially the boys) and left for the top Chinese Guilds, eventually my guild filled up with girls since my vice leader was a girl and I let her handle everything guild related and as I handle our relationship outside of guild.
"BabyGirl" got stress out because of the guild merges and we suddenly became a competitive guild (I refused to merge with top guilds even if they begged and promised... they come to us 🤣, so the smaller guilds merge with us voluntarily because of my guild policies).
All fell apart when I needed to get back to work again, people started to question why are we still a casual guild and I was out working.
It was the best community I ever had in my life... even if there were just a few of us just hanging out and talking not minding the big guilds.
Hope I didn't bore you with my story.
P.S.
I posted our Pic in my intro post hoping maybe they are still out there.
Quoting from memory:
"Sorry for writing you a long letter, I didn't have time to write a short one" Mark Twain
Source @newbies-guide ( somewhere there )...
I have always found friends that I still talk to and connect even if we have long disbanded and left the games we met.
There is just this thing of bonding over the many late night sessions grinding, boss hunting or just plain hanging out that makes guildmates into friends for life.
The same people that I used to hang out with in the original Ragnarok we are still friends and even have a cooperative of Axie and other NFT games together.
So I can totally relate to your story and that struggle against the bigger, more well funded whalers hahaha