The Guild is an American comedy web series created and written by Felicia Day, who also stars as Cyd Sherman (AKA Codex). It premiered on July 27, 2007, and ran until 2013. The show revolves around the lives of a gamers' online guild, The Knights of Good, who play countless hours of a fantasy MMORPG video game referred to as The Game. The story focuses on Codex, the guild's healer, who attempts to work on her gaming addiction.
During The Guilds first season, episodes were uploaded to YouTube and the series website. Then, The Guild entered a partnership with Microsoft and episodes of the second through fifth seasons premiered on Xbox Live Marketplace, Zune Marketplace, and MSN Video before being later made available on the official Guild website, YouTube, and iTunes. Microsoft's business model changed after season five; Day wanted to keep ownership, so the episode premieres moved to Day's YouTube channel Geek & Sundry. The series is also available via DVD and streaming on Apple TV. In 2013, after the end of the sixth season, Day confirmed that the web series was complete.
Since its release, The Guild has received several accolades, including six Streamy Awards and four IAWTV Awards.
History The Guild was written and created by Felicia Day, an avid gamer, in between acting roles in other television shows and movies. After two years of gaming, Day decided to make something productive from her experiences and wrote a sitcom television pilot. The plot was purposely kept generic to avoid copyright problems and to appeal to fans of a wider audience of massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), but Day based it on her personal experience with a World of Warcraft addiction.
Day wrote a cast of characters with diverse backstories and lives to reflect real-life gamers and subvert stereotypical depictions of gamers as lonely men. She produced the series online with Jane Selle Morgan and Kim Evey. Day already knew Sandeep Parikh and Jeff Lewis from Empty Stage Comedy Theatre, a comedy theater in Los Angeles and roles were written for them. The rest of the cast was filled through auditions. After filming the first three episodes in two and a half days, production ran out of money. After soliciting donations through PayPal, the fourth and fifth episodes were almost solely financed by donations.
Format Each episode opens with Codex (Felicia Day) recapping the previous events in the story in the form of a video blog. Usually it gives the audience a recap of the previous episode and shares Codex's feelings on the subject. The video blogs are usually reflective and interspersed with flashbacks, though some blogs take place in the timeline with other characters or situations interrupting Codex. Each season is divided into 12 episodes (with the exception of season 1, which is divided into 10 episodes).
Plot
Season 1 (2007–2008) Cyd Sherman struggles to limit her time online, where she games as her alter ego Codex, a member of the Knights of Good. After the guild realizes that Zaboo has been offline for 39 hours, he appears on Codex's doorstep. Zaboo misunderstood Codex's in-game chats as flirting and turned into a stalker living in the same apartment. On the in-game side, trouble also arises when Bladezz is banned from the game for using a macro (to spam homophobic slurs "a few thousand times") in the trade house. Codex uses this as an excuse to have the guild help her with her Zaboo problem. The guild (except Bladezz) reluctantly meets up in person—for the first time—at Cheesybeards, a local restaurant, only to find out that Vork had transferred all of their in-game valuables to Bladezz's account as part of a team building strategy. If they decided to kick out Bladezz, they would lose everything.
Things get worse when Bladezz begins to slander the Knights of Good by showing inappropriate videos of the members' characters, and Codex is no closer to getting Zaboo to go home. Then, Zaboo's home comes to him in the form of his overbearing mother. Zaboo confesses that his mother controls every aspect of his life besides the Internet, which she is beginning to read about. He saw this as his only escape.
Codex comes up with a plan to bring Bladezz down, using Zaboo's stalking skills. Zaboo finds out about Bladezz's modelling career and blackmails him into giving the gold and equipment back to the Guild. The Guild then fights off Zaboo's mom, and Bladezz redeems himself by landing the final blow. Codex soon realizes that she got Zaboo's mother's loot- Zaboo.
Season 2 (2008–2009) Zaboo's mother takes revenge for losing Zaboo by having Codex evicted. Codex and Zaboo move into a new apartment, where Codex meets a new love interest: Wade (Fernando Chien), a stunt performer. Codex tries to get Zaboo to move out by telling him that he needs to level up before they can be together. She arranges for him to live with Vork, who will take in-game gold as rent, something Zaboo is really good at: gold farming. Codex focuses on trying to get Wade interested in her.
The Guild finds a valuable in-game orb which Clara and Tink fight over. Just as Vork lets it go up for bid, Clara's children unplug her computer from the Internet and, upon re-connecting, Clara finds out Tink wins it. Clara vows revenge on Vork for giving it to Tink and spends an entire weekend betraying Vork by corpse camping him on an alternate account as well as searching for her own orb. Bladezz believes Tink is romantically interested in him and begins to max out his mother's credit cards to buy her stuff, when, in fact, Tink is using him to get what she wants. Vork is annoyed with Zaboo's lack of logic and his antics in trying to 'man-up' for Codex. Codex finds out that the stunt-man has a "stupid tall hot girlfriend," Riley (Michele Boyd).
The Game announces that the online play will be shut down for maintenance for four hours, during which Vork plans a strategy lecture for Zaboo and Bladezz, while Codex plans a quiet party with Clara and Tink. Bladezz coerces Vork to abandon the lecture in favor of a poker game (offline), hoping to make up some of what he spent on Tink. Clara advertises Codex's party and it becomes a crowded kegger.
Among Clara's random invitees, Wade and Riley come to the party. After finding out that Riley is Wade's roommate and Wade is single, Tink and Clara try to hook Codex up with him. Zaboo, learning of this, persuades Vork and Bladezz to go to Codex's party to try to stop it. Vork discovers that Clara has been attacking him, and begins to question his quality of leadership. Bladezz confronts Tink about their relationship; upon learning that he has been used, Bladezz steals Tink's laptop and deletes her character. Meanwhile, Zaboo walks in on Wade and Codex kissing and challenges Wade to a fight. Wade is a much better fighter, but Zaboo's seriousness about Codex leads to Wade giving up his interest in her. Codex yells at Zaboo that she doesn't like him, and he leaves dejected. Then Codex sees a drunken Clara kissing with Wade, and decides to chase after Zaboo to apologize, but is hurt when she sees him making out with Riley.
Season 3 (2009) Codex was able to recover from the disastrous party by the announcement of the new expansion pack for the game, Spires of Dragonor. The Knights of Good are first in line at GameStop until a rival guild, the Axis of Anarchy, cuts in front of them. After the Axis tricks a GameStop worker into sending the Knights to the back of line, Vork, still not over the events of the party, resigns as Guild Leader. Codex is elected as his successor, causing Tink to leave the Knights and join the Axis.
While Vork goes on a self-discovery journey, Clara's husband George demands that she spend more time with the family after discovering her gaming has severely distanced her from him. As a result, Clara proposes that he take Tink's place after auditions for a sixth member fail. Riley, who becomes increasingly domineering to Zaboo, offers to join, but Codex chooses Clara's husband instead, adding "Mr. Wiggly" to the Guild. Meanwhile, Bladezz begins to be targeted by Tink and the Axis of Anarchy, who expose his modelling alias to his school and plant weapons in his locker; later, Bruiser (J. Teddy Garcia), a member of the Anarchists, seduces his mom. Codex issues a message on the game's public forum to stand up against the Axis for the behavior, and in retaliation the Axis puts a bounty on the Guild. Mr. Wiggly unknowingly gives away information about the Guild to other gamers in exchange for loot, which leads to his expulsion from the Guild. With this, he tells Clara to quit the game, and she does to save her marriage.
Codex and Zaboo track down the Anarchist Valkyrie at his job in an attempt to end the Axis' harassment of Bladezz, where is he playing the game on company time. After taking away some of his character's possessions and threatening to expose him, Valkyrie tells them where and when the next Axis of Anarchy meeting will take place. Vork returns after regaining his confidence to lead and, with Codex, reassembles the Guild to challenge the Axis at an internet cafe where they planned to have a group raid. The battle begins, but both sides lose members quickly. Some of the Knights die in-game when their real-life problems manifest: Clara's husband shows up, angry that she is playing the game; Riley destroys Zaboo's computer for not meeting her demands. Clara tells her husband that they are going to have another child and he forgets about their argument and redeems himself in the eyes of the guild by helping Clara kill the Anarchist Kwan in game. Zaboo breaks up with Riley, who then proceeds to make out with Venom.
Finally, only Codex is left to face off Tink and Axis leader Fawkes (Wil Wheaton). After Codex makes Bladezz apologize to Tink, Tink decides that the Axis members are even bigger jerks than she can stand and lets Codex kill her in-game. Codex, in a hallucinatory conversation with her game character, musters the courage to defeat Fawkes. The Knights welcome Tink back into the guild, and Bladezz makes tentative peace with the Axis member who seduced his mother. Fawkes invites Codex for drinks; she initially refuses but, in a twist ending, wakes up in bed with him the next morning.
Season 4 (2010) An unexpected and unintentional one-night stand with Fawkes (Wheaton) causes Codex to stress over what the guild thinks of her and persuades him to cover for her in a pretend relationship. But after spending more time together, Codex realizes he is a "total tool-bag" and reevaluates her criteria for relationships with men. Her computer breaks and she is forced to get a job at Cheesybeards to pay for repairs but has no idea how to fulfil the expectations of her boss, Ollie (Frank Ashmore).