March 2006 - The move to the Ahn’Qiraj server came after a couple of months of playing. Having roped in another friend, Dave - known online as Davedodger - we found our gs in PvP so much fun that one Friday night, following many drinks, we hatched a plan to change from our Alliance incarnations on a PvE server to Horde on a PvP server and, after a couple of false starts, we arrived on AQ. I remember sitting on the phone for the best part of an hour contemplating the choice of character, before eventually settling on a Warlock, and the name Pixelsmith.

It was a little while before we spotted a recruitment ad for The Bruces. It was the first one we’d seen with a sense of humour and, before too long, we had all joined up.

That was more than two years ago, and a lot has happened, in game at least, between then and now. As the aims of the guild changed over time, and the players in it became increasingly familiar with the game, The Bruces gradually crystallizsed into the relaxed, social group of people it is today. A colourful cast of characters have come and gone in that time - some sorely missed, some gladly waved off - but many have stuck.

It’s a funny idea, an online social group. A nominal leader, a committee which takes decisions, a set of rules - however loose - an unspoken code of conduct and an application process, all designed to facilitate a set of convergent but physically intangible aims. It’s a complete fabrication, in a sense, because you can switch off your computer and extract yourself from it in an instant, so it’s easy to see how ridiculous it looks from the outside. But even when you’re only communicating by typing or jumping up and down on somebody else’s screen, the people you’re communicating with are still real.

Before too long, it wasn’t just text. After a few failed attempts at instigating voice chat, we eventually signed up to a Ventrilo server, bought ourselves microphones in dribs and drabs, and shuffled awkwardly away from the security of total anonymity. It was weird at first - discovering that shy, polite healer you’d known for months actually had a deep booming voice - but for many of us it quickly became a standard accompaniment to playing.