Our history begins, essentially, on September 30th, 1997, with the release of Ultima Online. Erath, Daran and Agonisties, weary of the growing player-killer community on their server (Great Lakes) during the beta test, decided to make the most of it and combat the player-killers with force. Agonisties created and lead Hand of Virtue, a guild that rebuffed the player-killers, while also roleplaying a form of Scottish Gaelic persona. This ability to play the game effectively, while also radiating creativity set the bar high. It's the will to create more than what is necessary that calls us.
Nearly two years later (December 1998), during the 3rd beta test of Everquest, the founders made their home again. Tormod (formerly Erath, of UO, aka: Torquil, of DAoC), Daran, Agonisties, and Gamaeliel (aka: Loden, from DAoC on) created Clan MacLear as we now know it. It was an evolved form of Hand of Virtue, since Everquest was not based on player-versus-player gameplay. Here, we began our primary over-arcing storyline, as a family. What most people don't know is that Clan MacLear carries on, to this day, a long-standing storyline. Many of our members have, at time, been exposed to portions of the storyline, but even they don't know when that was or what it is. Some of our officers know a little more, but it's largely played out by a few tenured members. Inspired by this, some other members created their own storylines (not based on any given member, but played out by the membership, itself). Over the span of years, as our members circulated around to various games, EQ's guild leadership moved to Lanadena, who remains our most tenured guild leader in any of our games. Should you ever meet her, you'll understand why.
Many insignficant ventures came and went. Some of us planned to play on a large, premier, private Neverwinter Nights server that never came to pass. In fact, many of our members played any variety of online games available around 2000, but they were neither full enough to retain our interest, nor allowed us to play while maintaining our decided form of roleplay. The guild had either no, or no significant, offical presence elsewhere. We were still an essentially Everquest guild.
Along comes October of 2001 and Dark Age of Camelot. The family that wasn't playing Everquest largely moved to this new game. Loden and Logard (Peldor, officer from EQ) forged the way, there. The Midgard faction allowed us to roleplay a somewhat more accurate version of what MacLear was intended to be: a Scotto-Norse barbarian, under the monicker "Siol Lear". Now, before you scoff at that, read up on European History. These people even had their own language (Manx). Considering the fact that Clan MacLear's roleplay flavor is based heavily on the real family heritage of our founders (read up on Someplace on Isle of Skye), this seemed ideal. The family grew quite large, again, as well as incorporating the members of many guilds who were friends of ours in previous games.
The list continues on. From Shadowbane in April 2003, to Earth and Beyond (no longer available) and Star Wars: Galaxies, within a few months, we ventured, but none of them stuck.
With the year 2004 came three more games in which the family delved to some some extent. First, in April 2004, came City of Heroes, in which we created The MacLear Foundation. In November of 2004 came both Everquest II and World of Warcraft. While the former was never all that popular, the later did last some of us a while.
One more year brings us to May of 2005 and Guild Wars, which brought us a little more to do.