As I’ve already disclosed, my current guild is composed of many nationalities. (Note the use of “current” guild … ya, they’re on the bubble. More on that some other time.) I’m too lazy to calculate percentages, but I’d guess that it’s 20 – 25 percent non-Americans and 80 percent Americans.

Since I’m a stereotypical ugly American, I’ve made some stereotypical observations about the ugly non-Americans. It’s not politically correct, and it’s fundamentally inaccurate, but there are interesting cultural differences. (And, if you think I would worry about being politically correct, you haven’t been paying attention.)

Of course, we have several Canadians. Canadians are the ideal candidates for guild integration since they play at American times, plus they speak English quite well. If games ever force diversification on guilds, keep this in mind. They don’t talk too much, and when they do speak, it’s about hockey or football, but not American football or soccer … so what the fuck they mean by football, I don’t want to know.

We have a surprising number of Irish dudes. How we got to be a magnet for Irish gamers, I’m not sure, but I suspect it’s because all Irish people know each other and so the first Irish guy just invited all his neighbors and relatives into the guild. I always ask each new Irish guildmate if he knows Bono and if they can get Bono to join the guild. I know Bono probably sucks at gaming, but maybe he could get us all free iPods.

Every weekend, and I am not making this up, the Irish guys get tanked … BAD. Usually, they’ll “favor” us with drunken singing in TeamSpeak, sometimes all of them at once. The next day, none of them have any recollection of the previous night and they’ll report that they slept in some odd position … like the cat’s litter box or under the kitchen table.

We have one token Basque dude. If you score a token Basque in your guild, I have one piece of advice: do NOT call him/her a Spaniard. I made that mistake, being the dumb, ugly American that I am, and I got quite a lecture on Basque history. I also learned that Basques are probably all fucking psychos, but I could be wrong on that.

We have two German guys: the one is very quiet and the other talks too much. To be fair, my cultural observations are probably way off since I have no idea what the quiet German is like, but the talkative one goes on incessantly about incredibly bad fan fiction and war tactics. (I’ll let you make the obvious historical connection.) I’ll add that he speaks English very deliberately so his philosophizing can go on for hours. If you’re considering a vacation to Germany, you might want to rethink that.

We have a substantial Asian faction … handful of Japanese, handful of Koreans. Their favorite prank is to teach the ugly, dumb Americans foul Japanese or Korean and taunt us into using our newfound skills on the other Asians. For some reason, this is hilarious for them and they never tire of it. Like I did, after the 3rd time. I’ll say this for our Asian Faction, they play like beasts … always at the top of the levels, always well-equipped, never bitch or moan.

Lastly, we have our Aussies. Due to time differences, I only bump into our Aussie guys on the weekends, which means we’re ALL having refreshments and spending a good deal of time running for a corpse or repairing equipment. They seem to share my level of dedication to the game, as in: lagging in levels, equipment and attention spans. This probably has more to do with those refreshments than a cultural difference.

A culturally diverse guild membership does have its advantages. Some might say it’s the opportunity to learn differing viewpoints on terrorism, American foreign policy and celebrity skanks — hittable or no?

Really, it’s all about the drinking and swearing in many languages. Even I, ugly American, know some Australian: “no worries, mates” which means “let’s have another before we go get our bodies”.