Breakfast Topic: How and why did you leave your previous guild?
by Robin Torres 
Feb 8th 2012 at 8:00AM
But guild levels haven't always been around, and many people who played before Cataclysm guild hopped. I've never been one for bopping from guild to guild. I like to get comfy in a guild and stick with it. Taking time to properly choose your guild helps, but sometimes guilds devolve into places you don't want to be. I've been rather lucky. Of course, the WoW Insider family of guilds is my main home, and it's a rather wonderful place to be.
I began the game in a guild I liked very much. It was filled with people I worked with, and we had a good time leveling up together. But since we let anyone we worked with into the guild, we ended up with a couple of people we liked at work but not so much in game. We didn't want to cause strife and we wanted to preserve our working relationships, so we didn't want to gkick. Instead, we formed a new guild and moved our characters over to it, leaving the bad eggs behind. We were rather cowardly in retrospect. I don't recommend it. Not too long afterward, our guild evaporated and we all went to play on different servers.
Back in EverQuest, I left a very friendly guild because I wanted to raid, and the only way to have a raid that didn't last all day and night was to join an organized guild. I enjoyed the excitement of killing dragons and not wiping for hours, but I missed the camaraderie of my former guildmates. Still, we could continue to chat via other means, and raiding was a priority for me at the time. This is similar to Boulder's situation in a previous Drama Mamas.
Why did you leave your previous guild? How did you do it? Have you ever rage quit? Or have you stayed with the first guild you ever joined?
Filed under: Guilds, Breakfast Topics
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Noyou Feb 8th 2012 8:08AM
I was in a cool leveling guild. We had fun, did things together, talked a lot in gchat. The GM was cool but she kept demoting one of the officers as a joke. Finally one day, he got tired of it and /gquit. Things were getting bad leading up to it. The GM was involved with a hordie on the same server. Brought in one of his alts and a couple of friends. Wasn't really a hard decision to make. I /gquit and made my own leveling guild. Eventually hooked back up with the officer who quit and a couple others. We still embody all that was good with the first guild I was in, without any of the drama. Next month will be 3 years. What a long strange trip it's been. :p
Draelan Feb 8th 2012 3:29PM
It's probably just that I'm missing part of the story here, but how is inviting the alt of someone who's main is the opposite faction inherently a bad thing? I mean, unless he was causing trouble and the GM wasn't doing anything about it because of their relationship... But you didn't mention anything, so I can't be sure.
My own guild has a few alts from a horde guild on our server, and they have some of ours, so I'm just not seeing what's so terrible about it.
Ben Feb 8th 2012 8:19AM
I have never left a guild, they always just collapse around me. I think I might be curse. :(
robitrock Feb 8th 2012 9:19AM
I'm the same way, 3 guilds now and all within about 17 months.
Vincentmagius Feb 8th 2012 10:02AM
A friend and I have that same curse. If we're in the same guild, they tend to die around us. The one we're in now should be stable. If not, we will never be in the same guild again.
sckeener Feb 8th 2012 12:27PM
It happens a lot. A key member of the guild changes (whether quits or just a backseat role due to real life) and suddenly the guild is in jeopardy.
It can happen gradually. I like to imagine a brick wall and over the course of a year key bricks are removed until the wall falls.
In my guild, we've decided to step it up and try harder to make things work. We've had some success since our intervention guild meetings. Only time will tell. I hope our successes will keep people around, but I think once it gets to a certain point, it takes a lot more work to keep a patchwerk wall up than it does to start a new one.
viciouspen Feb 8th 2012 8:20AM
Ugh.
There were a perfect storm.
They were the worst kind of elitists. But they were face rolling horribly bad. I mean, these guys could not pull of a shadowfangs keep run back like 4 months after cata's release, yet they would jump at the chance to criticize anyone and everyone for the flimsiest reasons acting as if they were the most elite people in existence.
At one point I just yelled at the GM "For frig's sake, where you do you get off giving anyone a hard time? You literally standing in EVERYTHING until you're burnt to a crisp, and you're the healer!"
Yup, left them, moved onto another guild.
wow Feb 8th 2012 8:22AM
Been in the same Guild on my main since I joined my PvE Server.
As yet, still no desire or need to leave :D
neder Feb 8th 2012 8:22AM
I have been playing for a little more than a year and I have only changed 2 guilds. First one was fun, mostly leveling guild. There were some "intentions" for raiding, but such never happened, so I decided to move on for a guild that actually raids. Since than I've been in my current guild, (like 13 months already), have been part of the raid team all that time, was promoted to officer position and I love it. We may not be the most progressed guild on the server (nowhere near actually :P), but I am there for the people.
Arrowsmith Feb 8th 2012 8:24AM
Why I left each of my previous guilds, in order:
-People were apparently upset with how my Best Friend, an officer, handled getting the guild bank restored after someone cleaned it out and /gquit (I thought he was a bit blunt but he got things done). Not only was he demoted from Officer status, but so was I by association, and neither of us were notified about it beforehand.
-An officer made a big stink about the fact that I donated enough gold to buy another tab for the guild bank, so she left and poached most of the guild and it slowly crumpled.
-We discovered that the GM was using the guild's Raid ID to run Ulduar with his friends and screw the rest of us over as a result.
-An officer made a big stink that the GM (Best Friend) wouldn't relent on the guild rule of "no hate speech of any kind in guild or raid chat" and so she left the guild and poached most of the members, causing the guild to slowly crumple. Hey this seems kinda familiar...
-Best Friend and I got burned out from raiding 6 nights a week and after a night of wiping to Anub on Heroic ToC-10 I got blamed for it despite other people screwing up a lot more than I did (not to mention we were supposed to be doing Ulduar hard modes instead). Best Friend chewed out the raid leader and we were kicked.
-The guild wanted to transfer to a PvP server and go Horde.
-The GM was a complete moron and we were kicked after bluntly telling him that.
-Some members of the guild wanted to start a new guild and Best Friend and I were invited along.
-The GM quit playing and after control was handed over to Best Friend and I, the guild slowly bled out.
-The guild had no direction.
-I was invited on the condition that I'd get to raid but was sat out three weeks in a row.
Thank god I found a guild I can finally call home and have called home for three patches now, even if they play SWTOR and I play STO (Star Trek Online).
Zhaph Feb 8th 2012 8:53AM
That sounds like a hell of a month! But seriously, I don't think I'd even be able to REMEMBER all those guilds, that's some rough luck.
DarkWalker Feb 8th 2012 8:27AM
I just left the game back in January 2011; I really disliked Cataclysm. When I came back a year later (mainly thanks to WoW's $8 Brazilian subscription price and the annual pass), my main's guild had changed realms (and was struggling to get a raiding team off the ground, after losing both teams at the start of Cataclysm), and the guild I had joined on an alt was nowhere to be seen.
BTW, I really disliked the very idea of guild perks and guild levels. Makes me feel like a second rate player whenever playing a character without a guild. Besides, I'm the kind of player that thinks a guild should be a group of players that enjoy playing together; I see adding bribes for joining a guild (the perks) as throwing a monkey wrench at the mechanisms that make guilds tick.
Noyou Feb 8th 2012 8:36AM
@ Robin
Guild hopping happens more than you think. There is a lot of "testing out". At max level, you can get your guild rep up fairly easy. Most of the major perks you get right away. A lot of people look for a high level guild for heirlooms and once they realize they have to be honored with the guild they take off. Which is good in a way because it weeds certain types of people out. There will always be a lot of movement from guilds. The single thing that keeps you there also pushes you away. People.
Apoman Feb 8th 2012 8:42AM
I left my previous guild to transfer servers. It was on a PVP server which i had IRL friends on, but i hate PVP. My guild was awesome we raiding and had a laugh but it started to change in cata, some of the oldies moved to new guilds/realms and my 2 best friends from the guild moved to new toons. I still fitted into the dynamic but it was less comfortable than before so when my IRL friends realm changed i was more than happy to join them on a normal realm.
Jason Feb 8th 2012 8:42AM
In my 7 years of playing this game, I've been a part of 3 guilds for a minimum of 18 months apiece (the longest time I was in a single guild was 4 years). The only reason why I would leave is if I felt disrespected. That's exactly what happened every time I left a guild.
madeofrain Feb 8th 2012 8:46AM
Not really a hop per say...I've never done the guild thing. I set up a guild bank for my main back when I started playing pre guild perks and really don't want to lose it. I like my tabard and champion status..Even though in 'new' guild terms they're meaningless... :) I have a level 25 mage alt that I thought I might try to be more social with. I have to admit the level 20 guild perk of a head slot heirloom might of swung it!! ..Applied to 4 casual/social level 20+ guilds on my eu server...So far nada, zip. zilch. Is it my winning personality or do high level guilds only take on level capped players?
Ruta Feb 8th 2012 8:48AM
Prior to my current guild, my main had been in two guilds. One lasted only a few weeks and disbanded while I away for a weekend, came back, logged in, no guild, checked around, didn't exist anymore. No explanation was given.
Not long after that, I was snapped up by an RP guild, this guild had a good reputation anyway, and I got comfy there, it has a great atmosphere, lots of fun RP to be had, and eventually, I moved up the ranks to become an officer.
Then malaise set in. Everyone lost interest, two senior officers quit, then the GM went AWOL. The only officer more senior than me logged in once in a blue moon, talk about his "great ideas" and then was all "Oooh shiny" and disappeared again.
Not long after that, the rest of the guild stopped caring. We went from being a well reputable guild known for good quality Military RP to being violent thugs who spent most of their time intimidating and blowing stuff up in Stormwind. At that point, I took the reins of the guild, and I tried steering it back towards its glory days, but people just didn't want to try.
Eventually, I reached the end of my tether, told the guild in no uncertain terms I wasn't happy with the way things were and that I didn't want to lead anymore, so I passed the reins over to an officer and quit.
I then spent the next few months guildless, enjoying the peace and quiet and the once in a blue moon RP (that also dried up, seems that my abandoning a festering wound of a guild sullied my reputation), before eventually joining the core guild of the raiding community I had been in for a long time, and have not looked back.
sinceritystar Feb 8th 2012 8:53AM
I've left two guilds in the past year. The first one, I was in a Firelands progression group whose raid leader was the GM's girlfriend. She was so stubborn, refusing to try different strategies on bosses and treating the teenagers in our raid group like children (the younger one was slightly immature at times but always showed up prepared and on time, the older one had me convinced he was in his 20s until he told me his age). One night after raid, I logged to an alt, and when I got back on my main, I had mail from the raid leader saying she was removing me from the raid group. I was so infuriated with her cowardice to not speak to me (we were on realID), I formed my own raid group with the aforementioned teens and a few others. My boyfriend ended up getting us all into another guild.
The next guild started out well - we were all quickly accepted into the top raid team and started pushing heroic content together. The GM's roommate turned out to be a problem. He was incredibly elitist and hot-headed, not to mention he had a real problem with women who won't just "shut up and do their job" (direct quote from him to me, I'll never forget it). I like to think I'm more patient and tolerant than I used to be, but one night we talked to our GM about him on Mumble, and as soon as he got home he hopped on and started attacking us. I'm not proud, but I definitely did not stay calm, accusing him of being a misogynistic pig and an elitist who doesn't have the cred to be an elitist.
After that incident, several of us got together and raided the guild bank, and server transferred. I'm not proud of that either,but as I was the primary herber/fisher, I didn't feel as bad as I probably could have.
HappyTreeDance Feb 8th 2012 9:02AM
I've been in the same guild since I started playing WoW. I was lucky enough to find the right people to hang out with on the first try, I guess. :)
Tortheldrin Feb 8th 2012 9:05AM
It died... Guild leader best friend won a Epic boe drop in H-Vp. It was a guild run with a group of people who played together all the time. He said he needed it for off spec, But he really sold it on the ah. The officers didn't know anything about this until the group he was with confronted him about it. Drama went down and words was had, Next thing you know people started leaving the guild left and right. Then He said* we didn't need them anyway* laugh then log off. Next week he was in a new *Top guild* and the guild leader who was suppose to be best friends with this guy in real had no clue. After that it just went down hill and died.