This weekend I came to a rather sad conclusion. The guild I’m in is going nowhere. They’re all great people, good pvp’ers and very helpful – but they’re going nowhere. By nowhere, I mean they’re not going to be progressing past the Outland 5 mans. Individuals in the guild might see Kara, but it will only be because at some point down the road, they’re going to attune themselves and jump to a different guild. Beyond that? Forget it. Right now – I have good money that says more than half of them will never hit 60 – much less 70.
Now in the past, this wouldn’t have bothered me in the slightest. For the two years or so that I have played this game I have been an unabashed master of ALTs. *Progression* was a dirty word for me and the skum-sucking bastards that left guilds in order to do more end-game were the worst sort of WoW-player imaginable. Now, after all this time and all the drama-dragons and end-game bashing I’ve experienced, I find myself in a particular quandary.
The coin has been flipped. My alts languish, my main levels at a dizzying rate. I want to raid.
Progression. I crave progression. I want to sheath my Warlord’s Bludgeon in the brain-pans of instance bosses, I want to breathe the rarefied air of the places only a small percentage of WoW players go, I want to be a champion of the naru and to stand, calm and proud in T6 gear while mongoose enchants flicker and spark off of paired epic battle-hammers.
Seriously though, I’d just be happy if I could get my guild-mates off of their alts long enough to get through Slave Pens.
I know the life of a raider isn’t what it’s all cracked up to be. The guild infighting, waiting for slots to open up in a run, gear drama, dkp, wipes, repair bills. Worse it probably also means that my enhancement Shaman will have to retire his matched battlehammers and replace his +STR and +AP gear with +Healing a shield and a kilt of flowery-heals. But I’m ready for it.
I’m sure a lot of it has to do with the fact that I’m in the military and that I’m going to deploy this year. I will spend a good 9-12 months with no WoW at all. This time constraint coupled with my ALT-itis going into remission seems to have galvanized me. I have goals – I want to run instances. I want to progress. This sudden focus has caused me to look at the game and the guild I’m in with new eyes.
The irony alone is enough to make anyone who knows me to /snork a little. Most of them know me from my time helping found and *build* an Alliance guild that is currently running two full time teams in Kara and progressing through Zul’Aman. They will progress further. It’s just a matter of time. I raided with this crew back in the pre-BC days and enjoyed it as much as someone that would rather be on their alt possibly could. In the end, I moved on – they were focused – I was not. If I were willing to go back to my Alliance toons and finish leveling them I know I’d have a raid slot on their B-team. I know the company would be good and the drama minimal.
But I’m Horde at heart. I’ve committed a lot of time and effort to leveling my Shaman and continue to chug along, my current guild tag still in place. Every night I try to schedule an instance. We have enough mid 60’s that we could be running a myriad of Outland’s plentiful 5-man dungeons – but we rarely do. My favorite druid healer has rediscovered her troll-hunter and is pew-pew-pewing in Alterac Valley. The rest of the guild are either folks that just can’t seem to get out of the 30-39 bracket, or they’ve shelved their higher level toons in favor of grinding battleground rewards in 10-19 Warsong Gulch. Our guild leader has been benched at 59 fully intent on gathering both warlord’s 1-H swords and the full epic pvp armor set before heading into Outlands. He’s been at it for about three weeks now. I fully expect him to start (another) alt either halfway through this work, or immediately upon achieving his goal. He’ll never tank or off-tank an instance with us.
The most bitter pill to swallow in all of this is that each of these players is me. They’re doing things I’ve already done. Just because I’m suddenly all bug-up-the-butt concerned with raiding and running instances doesn’t mean they need to change their game to suit me. It also means that I know how little luck I’m going to have in trying to get (any) of them to follow a schedule. I’ve tried. When go-time comes around the players that committed to the run are nowhere to be found. One or two show up late and are obviously hesitant when I shoot them an invite. No, no – our healer hasn’t logged in yet. Yeah – go ahead and play on your ALT – I’ll let you know when she logs on and we can go.
Normally, I end up pugging the instance – or having to forgo it altogether. The necessary team-members either never show up or show up so late that it’s obvious they never intended to go in the first place. Lately, when I try to schedule a run, my queries are met with silence. It’s that nasty silence – the kind you get when your newest level 15 recruit is crying on guild chat for someone to run them through Wailing Caverns. Everyone heard you – and everyone is feigning afk in hopes you’ll just go away.
Part of me figures I just need to relax. Spend the next few months finishing the drive to 70 (not much longer now) and play casually until the deployment hits. After all, the game will be here when I return and there are *other* things to do besides WoW. Another part of me wants to at least get a shot at running some regular instances with folks that know what they’re doing. I don’t need the perfect tabard and I’m not particularly worried about dkp. In fact – I can even forgive a really pretentious Latin guild name if it means that I can clear Underbog and Slave Pens together in one night.
So give me grief, call me a faithless guild jumping hypocrite that’s getting exactly what he deserves. Who knows, you might even be right. But until then, I’m looking for some guildies that know how to finish what they start and who can keep even the most minimal of schedules. I’ve been in plenty of fly-by-night “family friendly casual raiding guilds” and know that most of them (are) family friendly and (aren’t) raiding guilds. A the same time I doubt I can commit to the brutal schedules of the hard-corp raiders.
If you are:
- Horde
- Raid 3 nights a week between 8-12 CST
- Not Ass-Hats
- Need an enhancement shammy or even a (cough) resto shammy … Heck – I even have a 65 warrior that I could toss in on the bargain
Give me yell. We can tear stuff up together.
LoL! /snork
I know the pain you speak of, both of trying to find a suitable guild and of military deployments (though those days are thankfully behind me). I’m currently guildless due in large part to the fact that, once you’re 70, you’re either a raider or a guild hanger-on in the eyes of the other raiders. It’s not that I don’t want to raid (mostly). It’s that I haven’t got the time to commit. And I’ve never felt that asking for a quick run through Heroic Ramparts was terribly inconsiderate of me, Mr. Guild Leader. Saying no would’ve sufficed.
Sorry, as I said, I know the pain. And this is one of the things about this game that has me particularly peeved, hence the rant (which I would have been able to continue ad infitum, if it didn’t sound so self-serving and whiny, which is hardly my intent).
/shakes fist @ Gitr
๐
Arren – yeah – that’s the problem isn’t it? Things tend to be either black or white out there. The folks that *do* raid tend to have brutal schedules and be utterly inflexible. The folks that espouse a more “casual” schedule almost always struggle to field a regular series of 5-man runs. In the end you either raid 5 days a week for 4-6 hours a shot – or you fight to find pugs and fight puggers for gear drops (in between wipes.)
Despite the fact that Blizzard has ostensibly made the end game more accessible (no more bloody 40-man instances) – the complete lack of reasonable, progression minded guilds with a reasonable raid schedule just don’t seem to exist.
Maybe it’s my server…or maybe I need a bath…So hard to tell.
Bath I vote Bath they fix everything.
Growl – You’re absolutely correct. I was in a pretty good guild not so long ago that took a casual view towards raiding. Sure, there were some that wanted to do it day in and day out, but timing and available players sometimes didn’t present itself. So, as happens a LOT in these “casual-raiding” guilds, it fell apart as people moved on to bigger and better things.
And thank Elune I was never there for the days of 40-man raids. There’s no way I’d still be playing this game if I had to deal with that hell.
i know this pain all too well. I was an officer in a casual guild that went as far as we could. I scheduled and mostly ran twice a week, doing the 5-mans, but we had one tank and one healer that consistently showed up. In the end, the GMs decided to disband the guild to free those of us who wanted to progress. I suppose that’s a good thing. I never could have left without it, and I am a better player now then I was. I found a new guild home with some guys I had run a few different things with, that had been kind enough to invite me to kara when they had needed an extra DPS, and I am lucky that they waited forever for a hunter (we are a dime a dozen). Teh new guys are great, I have new friends to group with, we do a mix of everything, and they are a drama-free group where there is no bickering inside the guild. For all that I am sincerely lucky, but I rarely have as much fun or satisfaction from the game as when 4 of my old guildies show up and ask me to run something. We tore up Bot last night and it was a blast. No it wasn’t a heroic, no I certainly didn’t need a single drop, yeah we wiped once, but we all know each other so well I spent as much time laughing as anything else. The trick to it all is finding a way to maintain your friendships while moving into something more progressive. If you have a toon on bladefist you’re welcome to check us out, guild name is Cataclysm. We have one group with KZ on farm and are looking to form up a second group. We raid T,W,R and sometimes Sundays (ZA) for now, raids start at about 8pm CST. Feel free to message me if you come online… Hoder 70 Orc Hunter
Growl, it was just a little /snork.
Yes, this is quite the quagmire. I have come from a slightly different perspective. After months of building up a guild of people who were friendly, nice to talk to, etc- I watched as our numbers grew and grew in alts. When finally our numbers were over 100 (perhaps 25% of them being alts) I found myself (an alt-less 70 wondering why I couldn’t even get people to do 5 mans because they were busy running RFC for the 8th time on a new alt). I eventually left the guild (which crumbled almost instantly) and joined a raiding guild. Being a dps warrior, I knew what I would face. I entered in full tier4 pvp gear (and some tier 6) so did not really need much that would drop. After a few weeks I noticed something surprising… I wasn’t accepted on runs because… guess what… people’s alts were reaching 70 and now they were filling in the spots.
I finally left and formed my own guild (with a few equally uhappy guildies). Now we try to convince 60’s that we will help them, raise them up, run heroics, etc. and get back to Karaa, Gruul’s, TK, so forth- they just don’t seem to care.
I’m starting to wonder if there’s any sense in having a guild at all- maybe a guild of NPC’s would be cool.
Good luck on your quest!
Well, I’ve been wanting to reply to this blog for a while because I know what everyone is talking about. The reason I didn’t is because I kept telling myself just give my current guild a chance. None of us have hit 70 yet and I have seen some good stuff happening.
Let me go back a bit. When I started playing again this Thanksgiving I responded to one of those “New guild seeking members. Have guild bank, vent and tab blah blah blah in Westfall”. Normally I don’t do this, but being in even a small new guild with low levels at least gurantee’s you a couple of people to run Deadmines with. I get on vent and I actually enjoy playing with a core group of these guys. After a week or so in this guild, the core guys I’m with have a fight with the GM, some 17 year old punk who we all heard yelling at his mom telling her he was going to stab her (/stabmom is now an inside joke with my guild). Needless to say we left and within an hour have our own guild started complete with tab, guild bank, and a new vent server.
Everything goes fine and the core group of guys I’m with are leveling fast and having fun when it happens. We are in Maura and I’m there to get the shield from the goblin guy when our new GM (who buys a bunch of gold which I don’t approve of but at least gets stuff like a quick guild bank) gets mad at another guildie and leaves us right before the croc. In my opinion this is unexcusable, u never leave guildies stranded in an instance no matter what. But like I said, I really like playing with the other 4 or 5 core guys and the GM isn’t a bad person to BS with on vent when I’m out grindin solo so I forgive it. About two days after this, I log on and noone is on. 5 min later the GM gets on and tells me everyone has decided to switch servers b/c we are on a recommended one and it’s too crowded and they want to play horde anyways. I had never had a horde toon b4 and was really getting into my first pally which was at lvl 50 at this time and it took a lot for me to abandon him and switch…..But I did.
We move to Bloodserver and I roll my current BE Pally and once again everything is going smooth until last night. Once again we are in Maura on an all guild run with the same core group I’ve been with since I joined this guild on the other server save one person. We are making good progress and I have just sit down to drink some water when the GM (a rogue who has nothing better to do then play all day and is consequently 3 levels higher then us (I’m currently 47 with this guy) charges into the BIG group of flower guys (the one with 2 big flowers) and starts hacking the one I had marked with a skull. By the time I notice this 2 secs later he is already at 25% hp so I say over vent just let him die which he did 2 secs later anyway and there was nothing we could have done to save him regardless. He gets pissed off b/c we “let” him die and starts crying saying he was just going after the skull and we all turn on him and let him know I’m the tank and he should have waited. What happens…He leaves the group. Well this is the 2nd time he has abandoned me in maura on two diff servers so I’m pissed and the rest of the group is on my side.
We haven’t left the guild yet but going through the instance we started talking about our end game plans and how we wanted to do it and have decided that we are either going to ask for control of the guild or leave and start our own b4 too long. Point of the story…I don’t know. I just needed to get it off my chest I guess, unless i’m subconsceistly seeing if theres another guild on Bloodfurnace who could use a prot pally.
The night wasn’t all bad though, we continued four manning and lost another guildie to a d/c after the elemental guy and decided to go on. What happens.. we successfully complete the instance princess, landslide, crock, and goblin dude 3 Man, myself a 47 prot pally, a 47 holy priest and and a 50 hunter with a spider pet. This accomplishment made up for the GM leaving us and we had a great time spamming on guild chat 3 man FTW afterward. I love the core group of guys I’m with but why can’t I find a core Guild if u know what I’m saying lol. Thats all I guess and thanks for listening ๐
I ran across this website by accident and found this post, I would like to ask you all for you opinion
We were in a guild simillar to what Tatcha described, a core group of players whose 70’s wanted to gear up their toons and progress beyond ZA and eventually see 25 man content. We started doing weekly Kara runs, one night up to curator and another beyond curator, as we started getting members up in gear. There was controversy, as the geared ones now wanted to bring in their alts, and gear them up. We wanted to however get everyones mains built up first or a least provide the opportunity to the mains in the guild to gear up so we could progress. This caused a lot of drama,and after serveral months a portion of the core group decided to form their own guild.
And this is where we stand today, I am a GM of Guild. who is essentially run by a committee of RL friends or players that have played together for a while, trying to progress to 25 Man content. We have gotten to the point where with our core group can clear Kara and have it on farm and have scheduled ZA in the coming week.
We will soon be running into the issue of, we enough people to do 1 Kara run or 1 ZA Run but are just short of doing one at the same time or two runs. We are missing healer and couple of tanks, and will have to rotate members in and out to do the one run. I am constantly. I am advertising for guild recruitment and advertise as a mature casual guild, who understands that RL comes first. Actually we are more of a mature, laid back, casual guild who wants to have fun but still is serious in progressing to end game.
My question is how do I reach players, who as I noticed like you, who would like to be in a casual but serious raiding guild. I’ve advertised WoWikki, WoWhead, World of Warcraft Forums. but found out if I cross realm posted, my account would be banned from the forums.
Do you all have any suggestions?