A Day in the Past: The WotLK Story

If you read The TBC Story, this story starts off right where that one ended. It's less self indulgence about me and my own personal history (but don't worry, I still managed to squeeze it in there) and more about the history of my long passed, best guild I'd ever been in.

To catch you up, after TBC release I screwed around as a non-raider until my guild exploded and asked me to go resto during T4. Fast forward through that guild dissolving shortly after, during T5, and over a year of me healing TBC progression in a new and better guild, and slow down around the end of TBC when I went back to balance.

flashback fade out, queue dream sequence music

TBC was the pinnacle of my raiding career. As I said at the end of my TBC story, at the homestretch of Sunwell, I was ranking as 4th best balance druid in the US and 12th best in the world.

Jungles, Shipyards, and Orcs Oh My

So 6.2 came out yesterday. This was me, today, on Wednesday.

zeroed in on the druid changes

Yesterday, I went on a day trip and played MH4U, forgetting there was a huge patch. So, I dove in today.

I updated my addons, - except for Master Plan since it wasn't updated and doesn't work and my life is in shambles - half assed some of my garrison chores, and built a shipyard. I'm killing orcs in Tanaan Jungle, and vaguely remembering that there was something about being able to fly.

pigeons?

I didn't read up a lot on the new patch. Honestly, I haven't been keeping up to date with what's coming in and going out in patches for awhile. This is the biggest patch of Warlords so far, and here is an exhaustive list of what I knew about it before today:

• A meta-achievement to grant flying but apparently not yet or something
• Timewalking and relevant weekends (which I wrote about)
• Tanaan Jungle, supposedly kinda like Timeless Isle
• New raid instance
• Shipyards are a thing

Funnily enough, I've really been looking forward to 6.2. Not for anything in particular really, since I haven't been paying that much attention, but for a dive into some (hopefully) exciting new content.

World of Identity Crisis

It's been a little under three months since my guild dissolved. We had been struggling since WoD's release, a veritable rollercoaster of events with an initial huge influx of new members, the splitting off of one of our best healers, followed by a full split of the entire guild where both our most casual and most hardcore people left the guild for different perceived reasons. Our GM quit and we tried to merge with another guild, which failed tremendously. We had just enough good people to hold on while we tried to rebuild, but recruiting was impossible. Of the about six good people that were holding us together, three of them left to greener pastures due to our stagnation. We were done.

We never made it to a level of progression and success that I was used to, and I've been struggling with Warlords as an expansion on its own since December of last year. Without a guild, a raiding schedule, or any interesting content, I haven't had much reason to play the game. I keep logging in, though, and I want to play. I don't know if I should look for a new guild or not. I feel completely conflicted about what I think I should do right now.

Hardcore Casually Raiding

I really like raiding. After my guild dissolved, I basically stopped playing, since I didn't have anything to do. Despite pug raids not being quite as bad as they were once known for, they are still just angry conglomerates of people who all don't know each other. They are all just a means to an end for everyone in them, rather than being a group of players who are all familiar with each other joining up to enjoy time together.

typical pugs

I was pugging for awhile, but it was exhausting and unrewarding. There was no reason to hang out in a raid of random strangers killing bosses I didn't need. Considering the time it took to find groups, I spent several hours to kill just a couple bosses, especially since not every group would be successful. Pugging just doesn't amount to what raiding with a guild feels like.

The Tragic Ending

How ironic that not a few days after I post about the sad state of small raiding guilds due to Warlords' new raiding system, my guild finally kicks the bucket.

After putting up quite a fight, I'm honestly more surprised that we lasted as long as we did. The only reason I thought we could even pull through was due to our tenacity - but we took a huge hit as three of our best members, one an officer, split off.

Our GM had tried very hard to keep things together, but with this hit, he just gave up. I don't blame him. I was acting recruitment officer and I had been trying pretty hard to find people, but there was just no response. It seemed hopeless, but I figured as long as we had the people we had, we could eventually endure through it. That, of course, would have required keeping those people.

What Warlords Did to Guilds

8/10H thanks to random pugs and lots of perseverance

My guild has been through a lot since Warlords came out, but after finally being able to relax for a minute, I realized that it's not just my guild that's suffering - Warlords' new raid system set up has had a widespread, far reaching effect on the vast majority of guilds.

As we know, Warlords removed 10 and 25 mans as a thing and replaced all difficulties with flexible roster numbers, except for mythic, which is exclusively 20 - a number Blizzard probably looked at as a 'happy medium', and a solution to the 10 vs. 25 drama.

The problem now is that there's a large number of small guilds that need to recruit for 20 man rosters and not enough potential recruits to go around. Every 10 man guild from Mists is looking to bring on 10 or more new people just to reach mythic content, but there are nowhere near that many recruits looking to join new guilds. It's not like 25 man guilds had to shed any of their members - those extra five people simply had to compete for their spots and the losers likely stayed in their guilds to warm the benches. The result of the 20 man "happy medium" was that 10 man guilds were expected to scrounge for a minimum of 10 more people, while 25 man guilds had to do nothing.

written out it's something like this

The Dark Times - a Guild Story

I figured there's no time like the present, and I've decided to regale you all with the tale of my third guild, that fabled year I spent with the worst guild I've ever been in. The first time I dedicated more than a sentence or two to it was the opening to my Experience post, but it was always a story for another day. I've waited long enough, so that day is today, or whichever day it happens to be when you read this.

Now, I mean no offense to anyone when I say this guild was 'the worst'. Mathematically, statistically, and operationally, it was undeniably less functional than any other guild I've been in. It's just fact. I had issues with only one member, and I put a lot of time, effort, and emotion into that guild.

Though the main catalyst that caused me to leave was directly related to a person within the guild, I imagine that after enough time, I still would have made the decision to part ways. It's doesn't feel good to accept putting my heart and soul into something while the people around me consistently fail without holding anyone accountable, without any signs of improvement. Even so, I was in the guild for an entire year - and it wasn't because they weren't always bad. Oh, they were always bad.

"Well, how did you even end up there if you think you're so great?" you ask me, accusingly. Yeah, I heard you - rude much. Well, what had happened was...

it was just a couple years ago...

Why Our Merger Didn't Work

As I posted about previously, our guild attempted to merge with another guild awhile back which totally failed. It's been awhile since the implosion and I think I've realized why it didn't work out. If you missed it, I wrote about it three times - before it happened, after the initial merge, and the aftermath, including a follow-up of our guild's state after the calamity - or you can read my expositional summary below!

once upon a time...

When the Going Gets Tough, the Guild Gets Going

My guild has been through a lot in the past few months. It's easy to say that the people who are still there are some of the most loyal and determined people I've ever raided with. Some of them had been given offers to join better guilds, and a good chunk of them easily could have left to better guilds if they had wanted to - but they didn't.

Of the ones who left, I've heard here and there that a number of them have quit raiding or quit the game altogether, and the guild that formed from the departure of several long time members is currently lost in a trail of dust in progression.

I even recently found that a good chunk of the members in the guild from our failed merger stopped trying and chose to be absorbed by a much more progressed guild - something we've refused to do. All of this bedlam going on within and around us, and we're still here and raiding.

The Guild Goes Full Circle

Last night, my guild did a co-op raid with the guild that originally started to cause all of our troubles. It was the guild that the first guy left to join, which was the catalyst that caused several other people to leave to join their 'more progression focused' guild, then more people ended up leaving because we were 'too progression oriented'. Yeah, that whole thing.

Turns out, that first guy is going to quit raiding, and that guild is also losing their guild leader and raid leader. The co-op raid was a pretty good success, and there is some talk that members of that other guild may be looking for a new home. Unlike our failed merger, having people join us would probably work out fine.

This is all in spite of the fact that I wasn't there. I had uh

zzzzz

yeah. But another officer told me all this this morning, so that's all pretty interesting.

I don't feel particularly awesome, but maybe I can feel better by raid time tonight. I have the conclusion to our latest D&D adventure coming up soon!

The Never-Ending Guild Trial

sigh

Well, the merger didn't work out. If you were any of the people I talked to about it, feel free to say that you told me so. To be honest, I was never totally sure it was going to be okay.

There were times when it felt like it was working out, but as reassuring as it felt, I was always aware of the unseen action in the background, the unspoken feelings, and the clear disinterest of several members in meshing together and becoming one.

We had weak links on both sides from the merger, but honestly a lot of the troubles had to do with poor organization and decision making. We would say, oh we're only bringing the best, then invite everyone who was online. Then say, oh we're going to cut the weakest members and tighten up this raid, and then we'd go four more attempts without doing anything about anyone. We'd say, we shouldn't waste anymore time on this boss, let's go somewhere else, and then not go anywhere.

We all knew what should have happened, but it seemed like everyone thought it was someone else's job.

Cop-out Day!

Well, I was trying to think of a post topic yesterday but nothing really came to mind. I actually usually write my posts a day or so in advance in case I'm busy that day, and as luck would have it, I'm going to be busy today and I don't have anything to write about! So this is my cop-out post.

cop-out is apparently the name of a movie

We had some trouble with our raid week this past week. We downed two bosses in heroic BRF, which is pretty lame for a guild that was 1/7M in highmaul. Some guilds that hadn't even downed heroic imperator were killing more bosses than us. Oh well. That's the way the cookie crumbles, or some other idiom.

The Trial of the Guild Merger

1/7M!

This post is a day late because, well, I couldn't think of what to write about. This last week or so, I had been talking about a possible guild merger with another guild on our server. I had a busy past weekend, but after the work I did, the other officers and GM finalized things for us and we collaborated to practice for the merger by raiding together this week.

We cleared 6 bosses on heroic in quick time and practiced on Imperator, downing him our second raid night after three attempts. We had met after the raid yesterday to compose a mythic team, which we took with us to M Kargath, which we also downed last night.

The other guild was happy with us and our progress so we voted on a new guild name and we merged last night. It's pretty exciting, but there is a lot of work to do replacing the old name, getting us all in one place, organizing our roles and responsibilities, and just settling down together under one tag.

The Rebuilding Phase

So far, so good - almost a week later and we haven't lost anymore members, got a few applicants, and even have a potential guild merger on the table.

what!?

Guild mergers are scary. Recruiting people is one thing. Starting a new guild is one thing. But taking two full guilds - two websites, two GMs, two entire officer teams, four tanks, too many healers - and smushing them together is an entirely different thing. However, we are one boss away from hitting mythic and, being behind the general populace of mythic raiders, recruitment might end up being tough. Merging might be a necessity rather than an option.

The Light at The End of The Tunnel

went 5/7H, clearing three new bosses as a guild

We made good progression last night. We had barely raided at all the last few weeks due to the holidays, and the tension has been rife in the air the entire time.

As I've mentioned, my guild's been struggling a bit. It's never a comfortable feeling, and having gone through many similar situations before - two of which caused the ends of my previous guilds - a familiar sense of dread creeps into the picture. We have stabilized since the catalyst implosion and things are looking on the bright side for now. Unfortunately, I've experienced this situation before, too, and it didn't end well last time.

The PUG Stigma

Up until around the middle of Cataclysm, I was always in really good guilds. I had only been in two ever, but they were full of good people who played well. The prospect of a guild group was always better than considering the idea of bringing random strangers. Picking up a pug seemed like a worse option than not even going to the dungeon.

you probably boosted that character

Then, my second ever raiding guild declared that they were no longer raiding and I took a break from the game. The third "guild" I had ever been in came into the picture soon after I returned, and it was the first time that I found myself in a place where a guild group was not guaranteed to be good. The crazy thing was, those players - players I found myself actively avoiding grouping with in favor of pugs - still considered pugs to be poison.

vile creature

Should Your Guild Use "Personal Loot"?

With the overhaul to the raid difficulty system, we saw the added loot option of "personal loot". Personal loot is how loot is distributed in the LFR difficulty, and was the unchangeable loot distribution method of flex. Now that "flex" is no longer a difficulty but rather both normal and heroic modes are flexible, personal loot has become a choosable option, just like group loot or master loot.

First, a bit of explanation:

"Experience"

I'm not here to say that I'm the best player around, I'm far from it - I'm pretty decent, but I make mistakes. I'd bet even raiders in cutting edge progression guilds do, too, just with much less frequency than your average player. I have a lot of practice raiding; I've been doing it for years. 

pictured: absolutely fantastic raiding skills

At the beginning of 5.2, the Throne of Thunder patch, I left my guild at the time because I was putting in far more effort than I was getting out of it. I'm not the best player in the world, but it felt like every night I was baby sitting. It felt more like I was carrying the raid rather than my guild members each exhibiting a relatively equal amount of skill and effort into our progression.

I had become so frustrated with my guild that I ended up taking a break altogether for a significant amount of months. When I came back, I knew I'd have trouble finding a new guild that was at my skill level and convincing them that I was worthwhile to bring when I hadn't done the raid on normal and was geared entirely from the previous tier.

I Am Heroic - and You Can Too!

I've always felt like I couldn't call myself either hardcore or casual. While I leaned over toward the hardcore side of the fence, I've only ever been in guilds that raided two to three nights a week. I never really felt it was fair to call myself hardcore when other guilds were putting 4-5 nights a week - back in Vanilla sometimes more than 40 hours - into their progression efforts. 

Even so, from Vanilla up until a few tiers into WotLK, the two guilds I had been in were consistently well within the top five guilds on the server progression-wise, even with only raiding about 10-15 hours a week. Since then, the guild I was in had become worse and eventually disbanded, and with my real life getting more serious, I accepted my fate to be in the bottom rung of progression raiders - no hope of competing in the progression race and high possibility of not even clearing content before it was outdated. If I thought I had felt casual before, now I really felt it.

A Guild is More Than its Progression Ranking

My latest hiatus was unintentionally one of my longest, and it was rather recent. I had little control over my work schedule and had just moved. I had been having to post out of raids to cover shifts at work and finally decided to stop posting out every raid night and just post out of raiding. The same night that I decided to make that post, I got called into work.

After deciding I needed time to organize my life, I literally didn't even log on for at least a month. My instant detachment from the game after making the decision to stop was the first time I had felt that way. I played other video games and everything felt normal - like I hadn't even been playing this game for the past eight years. As quickly as I had detached from it was as quickly as I began playing again when I finally logged on again - months later. I had felt awful about leaving my guild, and what I found out after I came back made me feel even worse.

We had just gotten enough people to transition to a 25 man guild back during Throne of Thunder. When I came back, they were a 10 man again, recruiting various classes, including a balance druid. Some people I had liked a lot had stopped raiding or parted ways. I didn't feel I deserved my raid spot back, but I was playing every day and one day happened to be on during raid invites when I got invited. "Was that an accident?" I asked in guild chat.

"Are you available to join us? We're missing someone."