Making the transition: Finding what you are looking for first in a guild

It is weird. I find myself wanting to do something that I have no wanted to do in a while. I touched on it in the last post when I spoke about...well really nothing. It was just babbling. But what I was hinting at the other day was that I was going to be trying raiding again. This is something that became part of my normal week, and while it was fun doing it with people who were fun to be around, we suffered from a heavy burnout when Deathbringer Saurfang was brought down. Eventually the guild stopped raiding and most people left the game. I stuck around for the most part, and while I have had fun with my casual leveling game, I have found myself wanting to do more of the endgame content. Read on



Enter the last few weeks, I have since started looking around for a guild I can call home. A place that raids, and is somewhat fixed in its raiding schedule. I know I am not ready to devote 15 hours a week to raiding, but I do not want to join one of those guilds who is just starting to do endgame content for the very simply reason I just sort of want to slip in and do my role right off the bat. I don't want to ever have to 'help' the guild get to raid readiness. I got it from the get-go that if I stick to this idea, I very well may be riding a backup bench if everyone from the normal raid is there, which I am totally fine with. I am a person who doesn't ask for mats or flasks, or food. I bring what I need for myself, so I am ready to go when needed, and I know eventually every guild needs to reach into the bench, it's why they have a bench.

Well contrary to just about everything I said there, the guild I ended up joining did have immediate need for me, and when we raided that one night, it was a great time. A few wipes were had, but according to one of the healers, I availed myself well, and as far as I could tell I did not cause any wipes. Unfortunately I ended up leaving that guild on Thursday, after only a week and a half with them. I was actually sad to leave, they are a great group of guys who are good at what they do. However, the minor reason I left was that we only raided that once in two weeks. I was told this may happen, and I was ready for it, as I said, they were fun and the GM/ MT has a very busy job that can pull him away from the computer at a moment's notice. However, the main reason I ended up leaving was that besides raid time, no one was ever really around, and whoever was, was not typically talkative. Why should they be really? The guild is a group of real-life friends who wanted to raid together. Instead of getting on WoW at once, they most likely went out, or just spoke over Facebook, which is what they should do, I would never begrudge them of that. Also, why outside the raid would anyone really wish to speak with me? I was almost like an outsider, encroaching on their territory. I tried to be friendly, but in the end this was not the guild I need in the raiding, or more importantly the social aspect.

So on Thursday when waiting to see if the raid would happen, I was invited to go kill some heroic 25-man bosses with a guild I was with for a bit in Wrath. I accepted when it seemed obvious my progression-ish raid was not happening, and I ended up having a ton of fun. I got a ton of achievements that I never thought I was going to get and things were generally good. These people are friendly enough, but as the problem is with any guild with a lot of people, they are very clique-ish, which is actually a good topic for another time. Also they are very...family oriented. Which means basically they do not curse, and get all pissy if you do.

In the end, I am not sure if I can stay with this guild. They are a little too squeaky-clean for my tastes. But for now, we do Firelands trash, and will hopefully move on to try some bosses. Who knows, maybe I will end up staying with them, getting past the little clique-ish tendencies and making some connections. As it stands now, I guess I could stand to do worse. This post has given me a few new post ideas, which I plan on expounding on, which is why this kinda cuts off.