In a previous Ready Check, I posted about some of the problems many Sunwell raid guilds have been experiencing, ranging from member attrition and an unsatisfactory recruitment pool to divided aims and skill levels within the guild itself. This column will look at the aftermath of some of these issues, nearly a month later.

A suggestion from commenters that was overlooked both by myself in said column, and by those of us discussing future options within the guild, was simply to break for the summer if summer was taking such a hard toll on us. However, in a guild where a core of members are very active and want to kill Kil'Jaeden whatever it takes, an enforced summer break would likely have caused more key players to leave for other guilds. This might work if you aren't so close to 'beating the game' or if other alternatives aren't viable, however, so I wanted to quickly touch on it as an option that I'd omitted previously.
The option I took, in the end, was to move on. I took advice that I'd given others but not ever thought to apply to myself, realised what was making me unhappy about endgame raiding where I was, and sought a new home where none of these problems existed. While it has been hard in some ways moving from a guild where I had been an officer and raid leader for over a year – from a server i had been playing on since day one – and leaving behind a lot of friends, respected players and shared history, I felt it was the only way to continue enjoying raiding in WoW.

This might seem a little drastic, but let's invert the situation. Having seen applications from many people in similar situations, or whose raid guilds broke up for reasons close to those outlined in my previous post, it's not as uncommon as you might think to move server and leave it all behind. However, it's not always clear exactly why a cross-server applicant is transferring. I can totally sympathise with burnt-out officers looking for a less stressful time, but there's a fine line between a change of scenery and simply guild-hopping because your current one wouldn't give you a certain piece of loot.

If you're unsure about why a cross-server applicant is leaving, and you don't have an in-depth knowledge of their previous guild and server drama to guess, you can always ask. If their reasons match up with the questions they've asked you – for example, someone coming from a small officer team who is fed up with too much responsibility on too few pairs of shoulders might ask salient questions about how your officer team is structured – then their story is likely to be true. However, if they claim to be frustrated with other members underperforming but skip this issue to ask detailed questions about how they get loot... maybe their motivation is purely of the purple pixel kind.

Starting Afresh

Arriving on a new server with nothing but the gear you stand up in is daunting. You realise how much you had taken for granted before – your network of alts, your bank characters, guild banks, friends you run instances with, general knowledge of which guilds are trustworthy and which aren't, who to go to for crafts, etc. Like me, you might also have had to change your name, adding another layer of alienation into the mix.

In many ways it's akin to starting a new job, just as applying to endgame guilds is likened to a job application. You're no longer an old hand at everything, instead you're the new kid on the block and you've got a lot to learn. Hopefully this isn't too much of a shock to you – it's common sense, after all, that when you change guilds and servers there won't be much in the way of a comfort zone at first. But having seen raiders transfer to join guilds and then leaving because they preferred being back with their old friends, it's perhaps worth pointing this out: it won't be a walk in the park, and depending on your class and role, it can take a while to get up to speed on everything.


Learning to Learn

On trial with a new guild, it's interesting to observe the different learning processes that take place. First off, you're in a new social dynamic and while you may have been somebody in your old guild, the people in your new guild aren't automatically going to respect you. As an officer, the people I've observed who fit in least were those who acted like they owned the guild the moment they joined; many of these people did not stay in the guild long-term. Be yourself, of course, but try to get that chip off your shoulder first.

Then come raids themselves. Unless you're transferring to a nearly identical guild, there will be content your new guild raids that you aren't overly familiar with. That's fine – your new guild will want to see how you react to unfamiliar roles and content. There might also be content you've learned fairly recently, so you're intimately familiar with a particular strategy and probably know the reasoning behind it too. However, your new guild does things totally different and all you get told is 'stand here' – you've missed their learning process and you have no idea why they do things the way they do.

The obvious solution is to ask someone, probably the class or role leader assigned to you, depending how your guild is organised. There are different ways to go about this – the "My guild did it this way and your way is stupid/wrong" approach won't win you many friends, but if you feel there's genuine improvements to your role that can be made without compromising the overall strategy, they might be welcome. Just remember that the officers have put a lot of time and sweat into perfecting this particular strategy, and it works, even though it might be entirely different to the one you're used to. Some people are less sympathetic to improvements on their 'baby' than others.

On top of newer content, you'll probably be attending farm raids too – a glaive run for a Sunwell guild, for example. If you've been doing these fights with your eyes shut for months, there can be a lot to absorb at once. I found this particularly the case when training new tanks, and then trialling as a tank myself. For most DPS classes, if you know the fight mechanics you simply need to stand with other people and hurt the boss. Healers have it a little tougher, as they may have been used to specific assignments on fights and suddenly find out their new guild does everything differently.

But as a tank, you're responsible for boss positioning, gearing appropriately (you might be used to a conservative gear set because your previous set of healers were known to fall asleep during BT, but your new guild demands threat), perhaps even pulling the mob itself. Doesn't really sound like much, but coming from a land of conservative ready checks and misdirects to 'pull the boss at some point' can lead to some interesting moments. Trialling tanks has always taken the longest in my experience, as you generally want to test them out in a number of situations – although I've seen more healers fail trials than anything else.

The interesting thing about all this is that it's fun. Having to stay on your toes when you usually snooze through content, learning new ways of doing things and getting a handle on your new guild by figuring out the way they do things – all these are a huge difference from trying to run a guild you had no enthusiasm for before, or whatever personal reasons you might have had for leaving your guild.


Know your Limits

Another outcome of transferring servers and guilds, to me, is the joy of hindsight. Now at a distance from the guild I lived and breathed, I can see the flaws both in myself and the way I handled issues within the guild – as well as the guild itself – and I can hopefully learn from these. I've seen other recruits come from officer-type positions and swear never to end up in that role again; I've also seen some of these recruits, unsurprisingly, end up as raid leaders or officers.

Stepping away from the problems I previously had has let me get a much better idea of when I should say no, and I know other raiders who have found the same. In general, moving on allows people to seek out a fresh start instead of burning out, but you also have to make sure that the reasons you leave are worth the effort of readjusting, relearning and potentially not making it at all.

Tags: guilds, raiding

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Ready Check (Raiding), Raiding