Guild Names, or the Length Thereof

As an unguilded player, I routinely get offers for guild invitations.  Usually people whisper me about it, but every so often a guild invite window will just pop out of nowhere, which immediately gets declined.

The other day, I almost accepted an invitation.  Someone very politely whispered me and asked if I would like to join their guild, Women of the Republic.  When I declined, she (?) offered to invite me on a trial basis, just so I could see if I enjoyed their company.

I felt a slight twinge inside and almost said yes.  What held me back was the length of the name.  Yep, you read that right.

Some years back, I was in a WoW guild called Disciples of Redemption.  Sounds like a noble name, right?  Worthy message?  Trips swimmingly upon the tongue?  Yes, to all of those.  But when a few of us got together for just about anything, there was a real mess on the screen.  (In a raid, the clutter was overwhelming.)

I realized in short order I did not want to cause that kind of clutter on anyone's screen, so when the time came for me to leave that guild, I put as part of my mental criteria in my guild search that the name had to be short.

The guild I found was called Tempest.  That's about as short as you can get, and I stuck with them for 3.5 years.

When I started looking for a SWTOR guild, before the game even came out, along with the various criteria of server type, time zone, and so forth, I instantly rejected any guild with a long name, even before reading their webpage.  The one I managed to talk my husband into supporting was Redeemed.  Again, only a letter longer than Tempest, and definitely short enough to not be terribly cumbersome.  (Redeemed, however, has died, due to all the machinations of server mergers.)

So when this very polite person asked if I wanted to join Women of the Republic, although I actually felt a little tempted, what finally tipped the balance against the decision was the 21-character name.

But how do you tell someone, "I'm sorry; I don't want to join your guild because your guild name is too long"?  You really can't, so I didn't.

I politely declined and went back to my Taris questing.  (Wow, so glad for my speeder!)