Someone once said to me...

"Shell, stop looking at WoW through your rose-tinted glasses of younger years."

I'll be honest... I found that incredibly difficult to hear and I've thought about it a lot over the years.

Not purely because I think Wrath of the Lich King was objectively the greatest expansion ever made.

But because I don't believe the World of Warcraft I fell in love with ever disappeared, only altered.

Back in March 2009, Tapps bought me a World of Warcraft Battle Chest.

At the time I genuinely thought it was the worst present imaginable. We'd been together just over three years and instead of jewellery or a romantic weekend away, I got... a computer game.

I reluctantly made a Human Mage called Michelemarie and started killing kobolds in Northshire Abbey.

I had absolutely no idea that one decision would shape the next seventeen years of my life.

Within hours we'd accidentally signed a guild charter for 1 gold each.

We met strangers who became friends.

We learnt together, failed together, laughed together, celebrated together, and before we knew it Carnage Inc was born.

We weren't chasing parses.

We were just a bunch of clueless players discovering this incredible world together.

Then something magical happened.

Carnage grew.

What started as a handful of strangers became one of the longest-running raiding guilds to ever exist on our server.

From those first terrifying wipes in Naxxramas, where learning "the dance" on Noth the Plaguebringer felt impossible, through Wrath to Midnight and every expansion in between...

We've been here.

We changed factions.

We changed realms.

We moved hundreds of characters xrealm together under a "no man left behind" promise, collectively raising over £600 to assist those who could not afford the move.

We survived officer betrayals.

We survived roster collapses.

We survived expansions where progression wasn't possible.

We took time away from Mythic to focus on the community.

And when the time was right...

We climbed back to Cutting Edge.

Again.

And again.

And again.

We've earned Cutting Edges.

We've climbed into the top 500 in the world.

We've farmed legendary weapons.

Raised hundreds of pounds for Cancer Research through Raidathon.

Held real-life guild meets.

Watched members get married.

Celebrated members become parents.

Welcomed people from all over the world who are still here over a decade later.

Those aren't my only memories.

I remember Jobe lending us enough gold to buy our first mounts.

I remember proudly wearing the first guild tabard Banehammer bought us.

I remember thinking Maz, riding into Goldshire as a level 80 Paladin, was super cool. I remember guild chat flying by so quickly you couldn't keep up. I remember buying Sparkle Pony mounts with Crem & Vekna because we wanted matching officer mounts.

I remember Tapps shouting, "NUKE THE TENKATOOLS!" instead of "tentacles" during Heroic Deathwing progression, only for the entire raid to burst into uncontrollable laughter as we wiped anyway.

I remember logging in because my friends were online.

When I look back at my 'Ramblings of a Guild Leader' posts, it's funny...

I barely talked about boss kills.

Every single one comes back to exactly the same thing.

Friendship.

Community.

Loyalty.

Family.

Hope.

Even back then I wrote that Carnage wasn't just another guild.

It was my WoW family.

And I still believe that today.

People often assume what keeps a guild alive is progression.

It isn't.

Progression gives you memories.

But the friendships are what make it home.

That's why Carnage has survived for over seventeen years while countless guilds around us have disappeared.

We've always believed that the community comes first.

We may have grown from a small levelling guild into a long-standing multi-Cutting Edge progression guild, but we've fought incredibly hard never to lose what made us special in the beginning.

That overwhelming sense of belonging.

The feeling that no matter where you're from in the world, when you log in...

You're home.

That's what "Carnage For Life" has always meant to me.

It's never been a recruitment slogan.

It's been a promise.

A promise that this guild would always be somewhere people wanted to come back to.

A place where friendships mattered more than loot.

Where people mattered more than logs.

Where no one was ever left behind.

That's why Tapps and I spend hours talking about the guild every single day.

While we're cooking dinner.

Driving.

Walking the dogs.

Lying in bed trying to sleep.

Carnage is always there, because it has been a part of our lives for almost two decades.

It's not just a game to us.

It's hundreds of friendships.

Thousands of raid nights.

Millions of memories.

It's seventeen years of commitment.

Seventeen years of refusing to give up when it would have been easier to walk away.

So when someone tells me I'm looking at WoW through rose-tinted glasses...

Maybe they're right.

But they're not looking through my glasses.

When I look at World of Warcraft, I don't just see a game.

I see the people who helped build Carnage.

I see every laughter over Mumble, Ventrillo, Team Speak and now Discord.

Every impossible boss that finally died.

Every player who became a lifelong friend.

Every person who called this guild home, even if only for a little while.

The WoW I fell in love with still exists.

It exists every time people come together, support one another, celebrate each other's successes, and pick each other up after failure.

That place has always been Carnage Inc.

And as long as Tapps and I are fortunate enough to lead it, we'll keep fighting to protect that feeling for the next generation of players.

Because this guild has never simply been about killing bosses.

It's about building something that outlives every expansion.

A place where people belong.

A place where friendships are forged.

A place people are proud to call home.

Carnage For Life.