View source for Founding of Eternal Vigilance

Eternal Vigilance was founded on January 6th, 2005 by a [[Founders of Eternal Vigilance|group of close friends]] who were avid gamers, looking for a new [[guild]] experience based on the principles of friendship and [[democracy]].

==The Founding of Eternal Vigilance==

Although we say (purely for the record books) that Eternal Vigilance was founded on January 6th, 2005... to say so would not be completely accurate. We created the first version of our forums on January 6th, but began to conceptualize the guild and network for founding members and leaders in late December of '04. Eternal Vigilance (although it was not known by that name until Jan 9th) was in its planning stages long before its official birth.

===Before Eternal Vigilance===
All founding members of Eternal Vigilance hailed from a group called 'The Guardians,' a large guild whose roots can be traced back to the [[Star Wars Galaxies]] pre-beta community in 2002. The Guardians were once the largest rebel player association on the Starsider server, where a rich history played out - of which many Eternal Vigilance members still look back upon fondly as a source of pride. However, as the guild's presence in Star Wars Galaxies began to dwindle in 2004, The Guardians expanded into [[World of Warcraft]] and upon its release grew even larger.

The twelve founding members of Eternal Vigilance separated from The Guardians approximately a month after WoW's release, due to differences of opinion with the guild. It became evident that the only prudent course would be to create a new guild more aligned with our own ideas about how a guild should be managed. Enter '''Eternal Vigilance''' - a guild founded on democratic ideals.

===The Early Days===
For most of us, the early days were a blur; riddled with MSN chats, nonstop forum posting, and endless brainstorm sessions. It was an exciting time, full of promise - we immediately knew we weren't undertaking a flash in the pan guild, but rather something complex that had in many ways never before attempted. It was a time where we debated various leadership philosophies, government styles, naming themes (eventually settling on a Roman theme), and so forth. 

[[Arcarius]] set up temporary forums on his own server, and we congregated inside a section called the 'Constitutional Convention'. We'd move back and forth between this forum and a busy MSN chat that ran nearly 24/7 (due mostly to the international composition of the founding group; it was almost evenly split between North America and the United Kingdom). It was during these early days that we established our earliest drafts of the code of conduct, chain of command, decided on the name 'Eternal Vigilance', decided the leaders among ourselves, and much more. In just six days, these temporary forums accumulated over 425 posts and the work we had to show for it constituted hours upon hours of team effort.
At that point, we had finished our website and deemed ourselves ready to move on to [[more permanent forums]].

*[[Evolution of Eternal Vigilance|Beyond the Launch of Eternal Vigilance]]