We hate younger peoples!

I don’t hang around my guild’s forum anymore, am not even registered there again, but once in a while I check out the new applications just to see what kind of new people might show up.

There is an age limitation to the guild I am in – people under the age of 18 are generally not accepted unless someone in the guild can vouch for them. (Most 17-year old applicants seem to get accepted without a hassle though for some reason, maybe because the guild leadership is trying to fill out the spots needed to go 25 mans regularly, I don’t know.)

This can sometime spawn some whining from even younger applicants who fail to understand why we have this rule, and in one declined application from a 15-year old someone had posted:

"Hello mates. I wonder why you have the age request and wonder why you guys don't take younger people for trial cause some kids are really mature and are much better then many older peoples so i would say that you guys have some kinda hate for younger peoples.."

This is absolutely true. We hate younger peoples. We abhor them. There are young people on the lawn! *hikes our pants up to somewhere just below our armpits.* (And if you didn’t get that reference you are probably way too young to fit into this guild.)

No, I am just kidding. We don’t hate younger peoples. If you think that the only possible reason for an age limit is that we hate younger peoples, then you are by far too young and immature to fit into this guild.

I can think of many reasons for imposing an age limit, but the main one is that with age comes experience. Experience is what gives us all our shapes. Young people are sort of shapeless simply because they have had no real clinches with reality.

It is a social guild, we chat with each other almost as much as we play. Like many others in my guild, I have a husband and kids of my own. I work, I have real life obligations, and when I do play I prefer to be around people whom I can relate to, with similar interests, a little more experience world-wise, and an understanding that gaming isn’t everything.

When I go out to grab a beer with my friends, I go to a pub that will not allow underage people. It’s the same here, the interest spheres are (generally) just too far apart for me to find it interesting to hang around 15-year olds and chat with them.

Also, adult people usually feel a responsibility to not expose impressionable kids, no matter how mature they are, to the more harsher sides of reality.

I wouldn’t want my kids (12, 14 and 16 years old, respectively) to hang around people who endorse using illegal recreational drugs, who unashamedly tell everyone they skip work to play WoW, or join in the discussions about sex or odd habits that sometimes surface in gchat.

I don't think my kids are old or objective or mature enough to handle that, and I don’t want to take responsibility for having other people’s kids around when the more odd discussions float around in gchat, and I don’t want to have to watch my tongue when joining in those chats.

Hence, the age limit.

And no, there is no way for us to check out if the applicant is truthful about her/his age, we have to take their words for it.