Breakfast Topic: A chat channel with a bank
by Brent Hoyler 
May 9th 2010 at 8:00AM
This article has been brought to you by Seed, Aol's guest writer program that brings your words to WoW.com. Watch for the next call for submissions and a chance to submit your own article. The next new byline you see here may be yours!
When Wrath of the Lich King was first released, my guild was red-hot for Naxx. We recruited. We started a website and started swapping ideas, posting videos, strategies and of course developed some great friendships. Although we didn't steamroll over content like a lot of our other guild peers on the server (a lot of us seasoned players had been there/done that with the hardcore raiding guild scene and were over it), we still went along at a decent pace and were satisfied with our overall progress.
Things were going well. Ulduar was around the corner, and everyone was ready to do a great big cannonball into new content. New strats, pics, videos and posts were going up on the guild forums. People were reading up, doing their homework and ready to roll right into Ulduar. We were getting through the first couple of bosses with no problems, but then we ran into a boss in that my guild failed to read any strats or watch any videos on: the RL Boss.
Our guild could not get past the RL Boss. People were getting married, getting divorced, buying a house, losing a house. You name it, it was happening. As luck would have it, it wasn't our second-tier raiders either; it was the performers that were taking a four-quarter breather from the game.
After a while, the guild leadership just gave up. Any senior raiders who were left started pugging, and there were a few months with absolutely nothing on the guild calendar. There have been a few half-hearted attempts, but those were over before they began. Rumor has it that the GM has put the kibosh on recruitment, effectively making the remnants of our guild a chat channel with a bank.
Has your guild wiped on the RL Boss enough times to discourage any guild activities, even to the point that the guild actually disbanded? What happened?
Filed under: Guilds, Breakfast Topics, Guest Posts
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
zachb1987 May 9th 2010 8:52AM
What the hell?
Redielin May 9th 2010 8:09AM
My first raiding guild was like that. We were doing great all through BC, and all through Naxx. I took a break from wow during Ulduar (yes, RL stuff). I came back, and our guild had broken up over drama. It took me awhile to decide to apply to another guild.
Best decision ever. I'm having a great time in my new guild. I still have a lot of the old guild /friended, and whenever I need to fill a spot in a pug raid or something, I know those guys are dependable and have my back.
Sometimes, the friends list is more important than the guild.
Scott May 9th 2010 8:11AM
I see what you did thar, beat me to it
Scott May 9th 2010 8:09AM
First time my guild tried ToC we had a really hard time on beasts, not enough to break us up but pretty bad
CaryEverett May 9th 2010 8:10AM
I used to be on a fairly low pop server. Seems like you couldn't run a raiding guild for more than 6 months before the RL Boss got in the way and crashed the guild from lack of recruitment.
I don't think there has ever been a single raiding guild on that server which lasted more than six months. It's rather sad, in a way, when you see one of the old guild names that used to be the top progressed server on the guild, reduced to something that people simply haven't moved their alts out of yet.
iam_sofaking_we_todd_id42 May 9th 2010 8:12AM
Yea happened to me like 2 months ago. Luckily i do applications pretty well si i got 4 guild offers within a week
Dave May 9th 2010 10:04AM
It has to be your unparalleled writing skills.
Jere Hunter May 9th 2010 8:14AM
I had a guild do that, only it was when we were halfway into Ulduar. We lost our MT, then the housebuying and marriages started happening. I moved my main to another guild that has friends in it (thank goodness) with my alts still in the old one, I check it from time to time cause the GB is stocked (and we did get hacked,but we got everything back) but I miss them all (I keep in touch with a chat channel tho)
Twangudead May 9th 2010 10:05AM
My guild at first jump started into 25 Naxx but then someone had a great idea to go start their own guild. Not an RL problem but i think they wanted a better time to raid. Well he was one of our biggest raiders. 11-12 people followed him and my guild never recovered.
Rob May 9th 2010 8:32AM
I am co-founder of a old (at this point) social guild. We've had our highs and lows. Recently all of our raiders took off to another guys guild (who's a great guy and a friend, so its a sister guild). We stated over and over we're not really a raiding guild, but if people wanted to raid and have fun, go ahead. I guess my main point would be guilds should not exist around raiding content. The content is there to make guilds enjoyable.
But after five years, i've lost count of how many 'raiding' guilds come and go. They are tied to a specific tier of content, this time its ICC. Want to bet how many of these guilds will still be here in 6 months? I know we will. It's not like its a bad thing to be in a raiding guild; i love raids. I just dont think the game revolves around them (even though all I do is raid, I know many others who don't).
Azizrael May 9th 2010 8:35AM
This happened to us. We had a nice tightly knit 10 man group where everyone got along, and on our second ever run we fully cleared Naxx, even picked up a few achievements along the way. Then our MT decided he'd rather play his rogue, and we missed a couple of weeks through not being able to find a PUG tank. Then one of our healers left for another guild because Ulduar was coming out and he wanted to gear up in 25s. Then slowly over the next few months everyone else broke away, culimating with the guild leader announcing circa 3.2 that he was taking a break from the game and making me GM. There's only two of us left now, we just level alts and do daily heroics separately. I don't think either of us even uses the guild bank.
I should've gone months ago, honestly, but I'd already missed my opportunity to get in on Ulduar, which means I wasn't geared for TOC, and pugging on my realm without a ludicrous gear score (I was told this week that 4850 was too low for a Maly weekly raid run because they wanted the 6 minute achievement, for example) is an impossibility.
I guess I'll start over in Cataclysm and hope I can get in a PUG on the first week to get the achievements I need to continue actually raiding.
zachb1987 May 9th 2010 8:53AM
Not meant as a replay to you Azizrael it was for the ad that came after your comment. lol
sonatasun May 10th 2010 12:32PM
"I should've gone months ago, honestly, but I'd already missed my opportunity to get in on Ulduar, which means I wasn't geared for TOC,"
I too, missed Ulduar and TOC. I so wanted to play that content, but the gear gods said no. By the time the gear qualified me for these the raiding guilds had moved onto the latest content. Talk about rinse and repeat :>.
Fortune smiled on me. I found a small guild this weekend running two ICC 10 teams on the ICC lower spire. They needed my class. And I need them.
I'm hoping the Cataclysm structure breaks the cycle of missed opportunity.
Tankizgay May 11th 2010 8:42AM
To all those who aren't being let into raids due to never doing them before use http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/underachiever.aspx then just keep quiet and read up on tactics
Pisses me off when people won't take a chance on new 80s
Groth May 9th 2010 8:51AM
My guild suffered from a mixture of RL issues and large scale burnout right around the time when TOC came out- and just having a raid to faceroll meant that people got bored (and we didnt have everyone geared for heroic).
We ended up with our MTs taking a month off, our healer corps lost several to RL work issues, and then burnout claimed several more. Slowly people just drifted off to other hardcore guilds, and I'm now one of 3 active members left.
Hopefully there will be people coming back for Cataclysm, but I can't say I'm holding my breath. I'll decide what to do once I see who comes back.
Cassie May 9th 2010 8:58AM
I think that one of the reasons my guild has survived for so long is BECAUSE it's not a hardcore raiding guild. We do progression with the folks who would like to, yes. But it's a very casual thing. We are 10/12 in ICC 10 and frankly, we're ok with that. We work on it slowly so that everyone gets a chance to experience it and get geared up. And I think that because of that, we have a group that is more than just characters gathered for good stats and good gear and steamroller runs... we are a group of people that has become friends because we're more social than anything. Although I have only been around for a year, my guild has been around since the start of WoW and still going strong.
Casual playing ftw!
Kylenne May 9th 2010 10:53AM
I think people need to be really careful about touting the fact that they're casual/social-oriented as if that alone is some kind of magic formula for making a guild last. The problem with that notion is I've seen just as many casual raiding guilds break up/have stupid drama because they *weren't* raiding hardcore enough for a handful of people or because of resentment over mediocre performers being coddled/carried due to being friends with the right people. I've also seen just as many social guilds stagnate and die because they turned into a cliquish, unfriendly atmosphere for new people. Sometimes all it takes is one or two people who are unhappy with the situation in a guild, so I wouldn't rest on your laurels thinking you're safe because you're not the guild screaming 50 DKP minus over vent.
Whether your guild is casual or hardcore in its approach is quite frankly irrelevant to its longevity, imo. There are hardcore raiding guilds who've been around since Vanilla also, and I know it's not popular to say around here but it IS just as valid a playstyle (too often people equate "hardcore" with "complete dicks"; yes, they frequently go hand-in-hand, but not always), and for people who think it's fun, it works just as well as being more laid back.
In my experience, there are a lot more factors that determine whether or not a guild sticks around for the long haul. So I wouldn't necessarily attribute your guild's success to the fact that it's casual. I would attribute it more to the fact that you've got a solid group of people who are generally on the same page about your goals in the game, and that you've got a group of personalities that compliment each other well. Those two things go a long way to making a guild work, regardless of the level of play it aims for.
Cassie May 9th 2010 11:47AM
Oh I agree completely. I don't think playing casually has been the sole factor by any means- but it has played a large part in it. I just appreciate that if I have something come up in RL, i'm not goin to face the Wheel-o-gkick for it, things like that. Sure, we've had people unhappy that we're not more hardcore. Yeah, some people have left because of it. I'm not trying to say that being casual always works, but you're right in that we have a group of like-minded people it DOES work for. And it makes for a very friendly environment.
Aldarion May 9th 2010 8:59AM
My guild always has problems and even wipes sometimes to the Weekend Boss. And right now we're struggling with attendance as a lot of our members are having their school-leaving exams, and the students have their exam period right around the corner... So... I hope we'll see each other in the summer vacation... :s
Pwnzoar May 9th 2010 12:45PM
Yes, my current guild is like that. The former guild leader moved and can no longer get internet, and the guild basically fell apart after that. I was taking a break at the time (End of BC laziness), and when I came back, there was only two people (myself included) who regularly signed on.
After awhile, we got back on our feet, started recruiting, had a couple changes in leadership. It looked like we might make it, but we could never get enough people on to do any raids. The most we could muster was five mans. Then RL boss struck again, and several people had to take an extended break. Fun stuff.