Change

In case you guys were pondering over my absence over the last week, there is a good cause for it. Well for a while now me and a couple others in my guild, which is casual in nature, have been pushing and pushing for some reforms to improve the guild's performance and chances at downing bosses. The reason we felt that was necessary was primarily because we continue to wipe on content way behind us due to lack of discipline and what can only be surmised as greed.

The lack of discipline is fairly easy to place, but the greed is the one thing that irks me more than anything else. There had been a point when our progression was moving along really well, we had Gruul's down to a one shot and were making attempts at Magtheridon, not to mention those attempts were improving. Then at some point dozens of people decided that they no longer want to raid on their mains, since that class was boring (mind you the same class they had 70 levels to play through and decide whether they liked them), this was further compounded by the fact that their mains had already been geared with the T4 drops and more from Gruul's. Now as one of my guildies who was obviously as displeased with this change as I was said "We were supposed to gear everyone up and move forward together as a guild, rather than gear every tom dick and harry and their dozen alts." What makes it worse is that I have yet to get my T4 shoulders despite them having dropped over 20 of those tokens. How? Because we roll to determine loot winners, being casual and all, as a result alts have continued to get gear over me due to my persistently bad rolls.

The gear irks me some because I didn't get the upgrades that could help me further on, but what pisses me off even more is that because of this influx of under geared alts, we started to wipe on Gruul and had issues with post nerf Mag, despite downing him successfully pre-nerf several times. This was a blatant abuse of our casual nature and of our looting rules. I made several suggestions to have a cooldown period on changing alts to mains, giving loot to mains over alts, putting wowwebstats for people to see how they perform and to take interest in trying to improve themselves etc. I didn't ask for a DKP system or not including underperformers, instead I asked for some changes that could benefit us over the long run. What I got was a rant from the officers telling me that I am pushing the guild in a hardcore direction. This was the proverbial "last straw".

I took a break from my guild forums for a couple of days and mulled over my course of action. I realized that I want to raid, I also want to raid effectively, loot doesn't matter to me and I am ok with it being distributed albeit fairly. A guild concerned with progression will need to make the executive decision to gear a tank at some point or forgo progression altogether imo and hence my lack of concern. I also don't wish to push my guild into a direction its evidently not ready for. The kicker is that I don't want to cut away all ties from this guild because I have been somewhat responsible for its nature and I want to stay part of something that is a break away from a break. I enjoy hanging out with the folks there, I may not necessarily agree with the officers but they are all fine people and we get along fabulously when not discussing raiding. So how can I have the cake and eat it too? How do I make a decision on this evident turmoil I am facing?

I move Argonaut to another guild, a guild concerned with raiding, a guild that gets 25 people for all its raids. I keep Arjun in my current guild. I realized that I enjoy raiding and tanking in particular but being in the company of friends is something that is irreplaceable. So I talked to an officer in game about my decision, followed by a post on the forums informing the guild of the same. I didn't gquit immediately but allowed the information to sink in before making the jump, since in my heart of hearts I was waiting for anything that could sway me to stay. Utopia this ain't. I moved Argonaut over the weekend to my new guild "Nocturnal". The folks are nice but raiding is definitely their primary concern. They are an up and coming guild who have formed a mere weeks ago and have already made more progress than my previous guild. The warrior tank is also from my old guild and an officer since he is a RL friend of the GM and an able tank. He and I have tanked together since the time we used to wipe on Moroes and are as a result very well situated to tank together because of our abundance of communication.

What amazes me most about their progress is that there are folks who aren't nearly as well geared but they have what I assume is popularly termed as raid discipline. They don't make amateur mistakes, infact I would go out on a limb and say my old guild outgeared the bulk of the folks here and yet we used to wipe on trivial content. Be it the hunter who refused to replace his greens through quest rewards while sporting 4/5 T4 or the altaholics who had T4 on all his alts. These guys are very serious about their goal, which is End game. Being the best geared Druid Tank I am also expected to be one of the guild's main tanks and also dps when my tanking services aren't as much in demand. On the whole this place could be a new learning experience for me and hopefully leave me better for it. I guess we take what we can get.