I still remember in February of 2021 seeing the words on twitter, "Guild Of Guardians is a Scam!!".   The FUD in this space is understandable though.  I was only 2 months into researching NFT's and NFT based games.  I spent a majority of my time deep diving The SandBox Game, Illuvium, Immutable X, Polk A Pets, and crypto currencies.  Lots of regret touching Bondly and Polk A Pets...Ouch.   Allegedly they are making a comeback....

Through the Illuvium discord space, I first heard about Guild Of Guardians.   I took for granted the GoG early registration NFT's and I actually missed out on that.  DOH!!  I had no idea how fast that would fill up.   Regardless, I started digging.  Back then, I thought the company was based solely out of the Ukraine and owned only by Stepico Games.   I found one of their first videos on Vimeo and liked what I saw.   It looked like it could be fun.  My style of game.  Not to knock other games such as Illuvium or Axie Infinity, but they didn't look fun to me.  Maybe to others, those styles are fun though.  Financially, it was insanely dumb of me not to get some Illuvium or Axie exposure.  Hindsight is 2021 eh?  

So on March 3rd, 2021, my first discord post was "any English version of that you tube vid?" Papuyu was the first person to respond to me.  I lurked for awhile as I dug into any info I could find.  I started making videos and getting more into the community half way through March.  My first video was on 3/19/21, and after that, found myself getting more interested in the entire project / discord community.  Later on I found out IMX was the actual owner and that solidified my belief in this project.  I had been digging on IMX since early February, so the stars lined up for me on that one.  

I can recall in those early days on Discord, StepFam, Fries, Plasma, Boslee, Inspectre, and MANY other well known names you see now chatting amongst each other daily.   D-ick was there also chatting with us often.  There was roughly 1000 ish members within a few days, but we had 15-20 regulars popping in and out.   One got used to who was who really quick.   It was pretty consistent and we watched it grow modestly for a bit.  Gray was lurking for awhile.  He appeared out of no where one day like Batman with a smoke bomb answering questions non stop.   I remember saying to myself "where did this guy come from??"  ROFL!

I want to say we seen spikes in discord growth / engagement from 3 specific events early on.   The 04/09 Faction Contest got a lot of ppl involved.  While the Empire lead of late has dwindled, when it mattered, we were all over it.  I may have used the words "If you want to be a winner, join The Empire" repeatedly.    May was Wave 1 sale, and that got a ton of people involved in the community.  It was a rocky start to the sale, but overall a success.   A lot of people were worried about "wen NFT's from sale"?  We know how that played out.    Not long after Wave 1 sale, the Poap bot incident took place.   I remember Nick saying "I didn't expect that to happen!!"  LMAO.  That spiked the discord numbers so hard in a short amount of time.  If you want a good laugh, go back to around 06/02/21 and find the start of the Poap Giveaway.  Good times.  Codeword??!!

After that, a lot more people started coming around and the numbers grew even more with Wave2, Wave 3,  GoG Tokens, NRG, ETC.
There is a LOT I'm leaving out.  I could write a few books on this probably.  So in the interest of trying to keep this short, what can I say my thoughts are on this overall experience...... FUN. 

Since I started, the FUD / Stress of "is this project for real?" has melted away.    There was a leap of faith for many of us, but the team has delivered on everything they have said.  There has been mistakes, but they owned up to them, and made corrections as best as they possibly could with in contract limitations.  You cannot say that about a lot of other projects out there.   

We have seen growth on many different layers of the project, and that in itself for me has been FUN.   The experience of hanging out with people in discord while we watch the project grow has been FUN.   

Watching MANY people in discord add value to the community with their own talents has been FUN.  Who knew a Gopher or Marmot (I'm not sure which it is) screaming "NICK" would take off to be the Discord Rally Meme???!!!  WTF???  FUN.   

A simple mistake of communications leading into "Josiah needs a girlfriend"  FUN. 
There is COUNTLESS instances of people in the community and the team hanging out having FUN. 

And that is what I think of and feel when Guild of Guardians comes to mind.  FUN.    The game is not even out yet.....can you imagine the what the community will come up with when an actual game is rolling?  Cue my maniacal laughter. 

It's been a blast with ALL of you this past 9 months.   Thank you for the FUN.   See you all in 2022 for more FUN.  

Guild of Guardians. FUN.

Sincerely,

WT