Friday 21 March 2008

How do you "feel" about your guild?

That looks like a simple question doesn't it? Except I stuck those pesky "quotes" around the word feel.

If I'd asked "What do you think about your guild?" then the question becomes even easier doesn't it? But I'm not going to let you take the easy way out... no sirree!

I'm asking "How do you feel about your guild?". Why am I asking this when all you've come for is a bit of light fun?

As I said yesterday, BBB set me to thinking a lot about a number of things including guild progression and guilds. And I realised I couldn't think about two of those things in isolation. I can't separate guild progression from switching guilds because they're all fundamentally tied together in how you feel about your guild. That probably doesn't make a lot of sense right now, but bear with me while I meander my way through all of this.

Guild progression - Part 1

For the record, Renegade of Funk are:

  • 11/11 Karazhan
  • 2/2 Gruul's Lair
  • 1/4 Temple Keep (Loot Reaver ftw)
  • 6/6 Zul'Aman (As of this Wednesday huge gratz guys!)

On the normal scale of how these things are measured that's not bad; not uber-leet great, but not bad at all.

We've also been to SSC and popped in to say hello to Magtheridon, both only once or twice because... you've guessed it, we're struggling to get those 25-man raids together.

My guild history

I've been in a few guilds in my WoW history. But setting aside the early days when I didn't really know what I was doing I've only really been in three guilds (and the middle one of those was a new guild that died an early death).

My first real guild was a place I loved to be. We had a casual approach but raided regularly. We had a core of around 15-20 people who had multiple high-level alts and were on most of the time. Guild chat was lively and there was always someone asking "anybody fancy this?" and, more often than not, a number of responses of "I'm up for that".

We were OK when it came to raiding - we had a guild alliance for MC and Onyxia; we raided ZG and AQ20 as a guild - but, for example, we never downed Raggy or Hakkar and only got the first two bosses in AQ20. Our main problem was technical execution. We could do the tank and spanks, we could get by on the simpler fights but when it came to an encounter requiring co-ordination and no mistakes we suffered. And then came TBC...

I raced my priest to 70 re-specced holy and then started instancing and I started to get worried. Some of the instance encounters in TBC were just as technical (and much less forgiving) as some of the raid encounters in Azeroth... what the hell were the raid encounters going to be like for us? I stayed with the guys until we hit Moroes and it broke my heart.

This was a bunch of guys who had welcomed me into a home from home; a bunch of guys that made we want to rush home from work to logon; a bunch of guys who had helped me and who I'd helped to grow their charachters. But I stood staring at this brick wall that was Moroes almost at the start of the raiding journey and asking myself "Can I really stand 6 months of struggling through entry raid content?".

I hope I was honest and straight-forward about the way I left. The fact that I still chat with the GM and the officers and still instance with some of them occasionally says I probably did something right at least.

And that brings me to Renegade of Funk (RoF). I was looking for similar things to my old guild: a good bunch of people to relax with after work; an active community; a semi-casual approach to raiding but with no obligation to raid if you didn't want to... but the difference I was looking for... at the time I called it "progression". I'd probably use a different word now.

I'm happy to say that I've found what I was looking for. RoF is a great place to be and I'm getting the same things as I was from my old guild as well as the opportunity to raid in the new content.

Guild Progression - Part 2

Now as I mentioned earlier, we're stuck at that point that a lot of people are. We can't seem to reliably get 25-man raids together to keep going in Temple Keep or start in Serpentshrine Cavern. So am I thinking of shifting out? Big fat NO to that one!

I know that we have the ability to progress in TK/SSC. Any group of people who can deal with a 5-phase encounter like Zul'Jin has the technical ability to do so. Any group of people who have downed Gruul after 7 growths has the raw dps and after 16 growths has the tank and healing power.

And this brings me back to the heading for this post... see I told you I'd get there eventually.

I feel at home in RoF, I want to rush home after work to be in RoF, I respect and admire the guys in RoF and I am proud to say I am a RoFer.

If your guild can engender those same feelings in it's membership then, to me, that is real guild progression.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

RoF sucks. Worst guild on Turalyon, and almost everyone has been kicked from other guilds because they have ninjaed loot