Posted by pixiestixy on Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 - 9 Comments
Tags: gquit, Guild, guild drama, guild quit, RL, small guild, switch guild
50 DKP minus if you don’t get the reference. |
It’s hard not to get attached to guild mates when you spend hours on end online with them working though complex strategies and making friendly jokes at their expense. On top of that, add on real-life friendships with said guildies and you’ve got one heck of a bond.
That’s been my WoW world ever since I first started out in Vanilla. During a hiatus from playing, those same friends were groomsmen in my wedding. And when I picked up the game again after WotLK came out, we picked up where we left off in-game. There were a plethora of benefits of having a guild of just friends from RL. No awkward getting-to-know you phases, no hesitance of saying something which may offend them, basically no drama, and a hell of a good time. But there also were drawbacks: the main one being that rarely were there more than five of us on at a time, so any 10-man or more content had to be PUGed.
We struggled with how to remedy that problem for months. For a while, we were hopeful that we could find another small guild to partner up with for 10-man content. That didn’t pan out. We also spoke about starting to recruit, making our core group the officers and bringing in more members. But that also seemed to take away the point of us having a friends-only guild. I also worried whether newcomers might feel left out from all our inside jokes and already-forged bonds.
Finally, it came down to it, and a couple of us decided to look into finding another adult, somewhat casual raiding guild, and see how many of us they would absorb. I did a little research and found the friendliest bunch of players I could, and ran a couple of trials with them. My husband went first. A couple of our original guild mates didn’t like the idea of playing with people they didn’t know IRL. I stood torn for a couple of days. Not wanting to betray my friends by leaving, but also wanting to see more content.
I really shouldn’t have worried so much. After I decided to switch guilds, a lot has stayed basically the same. We still do a lot of 5-man content together. Now, 4 of us original buddies are in the new (to us) guild, and a few decided to stay behind. We’re building up new friendships with a group of really fun people, and have been running 10- and 25-man raids regularly. But more on that later.
So, what’s the point, you may ask. This whole experience has reminded me how emotional this game and all of its different aspects can be. I was so incredibly torn about switching guilds and changing that little name plate that hovers above my toon. It’s amazing, in a way, the sense of camaraderie that develops between groups in-game. Already, from playing with this new group for about the past month, I can see that it’s not just between people with real life bonds. The in-game ones also can be quite strong.
Has anyone else felt this sense of uncertainty when it comes time for a /gquit? How did you decide whether it was time to move on?
Related Posts: Choosing Your WoW Nickname, Of Lucky Dice and Rare Mount Drops, How Long Until Algalon Goes Down?, Doing The “Impossible”, Patch 3.3: Mutilate Rogues Say Goodbye To Rupture,
By Lar on Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
I spent my 1-70 and 70-80 experience with one guild and i wanted to switch to a raiding guild, i checked out one guild and i wanted to go to them, but i couldnt do it. Luckily the next week the G master quit the game and disbanded the current guild.
By Highwayman on Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
I know EXACTLY what you mean Pixy. I love my guild (I did start it after all almost three years ago) and membership has waxed and waned. Everyone who’s logged on, quit, left or stayed still remains someone for whom I’d do most anything for.
It’s the bond that builds with time and trust and that will NEVER be broken!
By BlahbahBlah on Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
I got into my first guild at level 11 on my warrior and that guild split up due to the guild leader (who was an awesome guy who told me what addons would be most useful to me, how to make money, and basically the basics of playing successfully and was hilarious to boot) quitting the game. The guild lasted a little while after that but it wasn’t the same. I was level 36 or so at the time and leveled from there to 80 guild free.
Shortly after I hit 80 I was recruited into one of those massive guilds that has like 600 members. I’m in that guild still but I don’t really like it, I don’t really feel that attached to anyone there.
By Mundous on Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 at 8:29 pm
Joined my first guild at lvl15 when someone randomly offered to help me out with a few quests, it was filled with active members but they slowly weened off and then it was just a few of us left so I just decided to leave and start my own and all my officers are the active members from my old guild… I would totally do anything for these people hell I even met my girlfriend through that guild, but all good things must come to an end.
Recently, like “BlahblahBlah” above me, I’ve been tempted by these massive guilds but I play this game for the social aspect as much as the “kick a tauren in the balls” aspect and I would need some kind of connection to some of my guildmates
By aadjed on Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 at 1:03 am
I was in a small guild that was struggling to see some raiding contect. We had like 8 core players and usually we had to pug a few. when the guild was finally big enough to do full runs, drama started. Out of those 8 players only 4 remained. The guild died and i applied for the guild a friend of mine was in. A big guild with about 350 members, about 50 of which raiders. This guild has tackled all normal intent and is working on algalon and totc hardmodes.
There is always a raid being organised, but also a lot of ppl only pvp. Ventrilo is always a laugh. I do miss the ppl in the old guild, but im enjoying myself more here, mostly because i get to see all contect now.
By the time icc hits, i should be a full raiding member and ready to kick arthas back n forth and that would never have happened in the old guild.
By aadjed on Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 at 1:05 am
n btw, go tinkerballa. do i get 50 dkp now? lol
By Asara on Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 at 8:43 am
I struggled with this relatively recently myself. I had been in one guild since I was level 27, back in 2006. Three years of my life with the same people. The guild changed a lot in those three years. It was pretty social and silly at first, then as more players reached 60, we toyed around with raiding. BC came, and there was more focus on raiding. Same with Wrath, only this time there were more people around and focused to keep the guild near the cutting edge of progression.
Unfortunately, by this time I was starting to get burned out. I was missing time with my family, and my playtime was cut down to almost nothing. I stopped raiding, and suddenly became next to nothing to those who shared my guild tag. Even my guild master, one of very few constants in terms of friendship and even guild membership. Back in the day, my logging on would bring many exuberant greetings. Not so any more. If they were in a raid at the time, /g might as well not exist.
I finally expressed my concerns to my guild master and class leader, and that’s what decided me. My class leader was supportive, my guild master did not even deign to reply. After that, I didn’t just leave the guild, I left the server. I have since found a guild that is, once again, excited to see me when I log on, and appreciates my characters and their abilities whether or not I sign up for a raid every week.
I still miss my old guild, but I didn’t really fit there any more. The game wasn’t fun, and as many people have said, if it’s not fun, why play?
By naxers on Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
Im now thinking of changing guild because the guild im in now only do 10man and rarely do 25man anymore i heard about this guild that only do 25man and they useually get 2 25man teams up i dont know what to do??
By Staryx on Friday, January 29th, 2010 at 6:58 pm
I’m really suprised how this random article on a website I never visited before suddenly brought up powerful emotions in me. I bought the game the day Vanilla came out. Not even 15 seconds after logging in a random person /g invited me. I never could have imagined that I had randomly been introduced into a strong guild that had been around since Everquest. They simply needed more members and I happened to be near by. These guys were pros and within 6 weeks most of us were 60 already (back when getting to 60 took the average person 3 months). I had happened into a hardcore raiding guild and had turned hardcore because of it.
Before most people had even started Stratholme for the first time, I and my friends (yes, by that time we were all surely friends) were already beating up vanilla Molten Core. We were on the cutting edge of the game. So cutting edge that I got a full T2 set barely a few months into the game (T2 used to drop in MC, not BWL).
I raided religiously and the real core players which numbered almost 40 stayed around. We did everything that everyone loves so much about guilds, we heckled each other in gchat, we cracked crass jokes on Vent, we whooped nerdrats when a monumental boss went down, we screamed in nerdrage when someone messed up a near-kill. We had in-jokes, we had the heroic leader who somehow already knew strategies to new content, we had the funny guy that would crack us up ever single time, we had the hot-chick on Vent, we had the quiet kid who was amazing on his toon, never said a word on vent or in gchat.
We went on through Vanilla, into the clumsy chaos that was BC, Sunwell, WotLK and then….
…then it just ended. The guild leader was supremely burnt-out and wanted (pleaded) to go to the #3 ranked guild in the world as just a player because he had been invited and wanted to be in a guild that set the strategies, not followed them. Our #2 leader wanted to go with him because they were friends IRL. The next in line was great as a back-up raid leader, but just didn’t have the tactic and charisma to control a whole guild. So.. we wished our leader well, because, yes, we loved him. We had shared a world, literally, of experiences with. We had followed him for 6 long years, 5 days a week, 4 hours a night, 365 days of the year, including major holidays, even when we had swine flu or chicken pox or just didn’t want to raid.
So we wished him and #2 well, and went on. Oh, the guild survived, but I was a casualty. I somehow felt something fundamental had changed, and thought that this was finally a way to also gracefully break my WoW addiction and just…move on. So I too wished everyone well and said goodbye to my toons, good bye to friends, goodbye to a world that I knew as well as, and probably better, then the real world.
I regret that decision now. I know it was for the best, but I’m….I’m sad. It’s been 9 months since I logged on and I miss the green chat bar. I miss the camaraderie, I miss the in-jokes. Yes, RL friends are better, and I do have more time for real-world things now, but still that is that pang of regret. Every once in a blue moon I’ll log onto one of those cheesy free servers, just to see the old sights, just to walk empty virtual forests, just to stroll into empty instances that once seemed like the be-all and end-all. WoW is a cold, sterile world without people to care about, and be cared about, inside of it.