I just wanted to make a correction, the Syndicate is not the oldest guild in online gaming. Guilds were first created in the online game "Neverwinter Nights" that was hosted on AOL (Wiki info here).
The game was created by Stormfront Studios using the old SSI "AD&D Gold Box" game engine (any of you old enough to remember those games?).
The first gaming guild ever created was the "Guild of Chaos" who's founding leader discovered that you could attack other players using a loophole within the game (he was also the founder of PvP and the players of NWN also created most of the online jargon thats used today such as PvP).
In response to this new evil guild, many rallied to Handler1's and Trollsbane's call to create the first good guild ever, the Crusaders of the Realms. Now Im not sure of the state of the Guild of Chaos, I do know the Crusaders of the Realms are alive and well.
TynanCOR, aka Trollsbane
Crusaders of the Realms
I did want to add that the Syndicate did get their start in Neverwinter, but it was much further down the road then the two guilds mentioned above.
Edited, Sep 7th 2009 4:03pm by TynanCOR