After 6 years or so with some of the same people you start to consider them family. I was invited to several weddings of guildmates around the country. When I lost my job some of my guildmates offered me a place to stay until I could find a new one; they’d never met me in person before. And when a guild member said she had leukemia, several guildies offered to donate bone marrow if she needed it.

Now days there seems to be so many shiny new games to play and people come and go so quickly. Its hard to build up the commitment and familiarity that led to those kinds of close ties.

I’ve come to realize that sometimes with a smaller guild it is easier to maintain the primary focus of the guild. It’s no fun for officers or GMs to log in feeling the pressure is on them at all times. Guildies need to be supportive of the guild objective and officers need to be firm about what is and isn’t acceptable within their guild. Easy to say I know, but much more difficult to maintain.

Guilds will never be drama free but hopefully when issues arise they are dealt with quickly to move forward in a positive direction.

We are one of the oldest guilds in our server, if not the oldest one. What has kept us together has been our friendship, both in game and RL.

We prefer recruiting a group of friends, rather than a known “skilled” individual because it’s just more fun with friends, I say!

Our stubborness paid off as Blizzard went into the 10-man design. It’s been great.

I’m sure if some of you came to our server and sought us out, your time wouldn’t be wasted.

hehe, see how important my guild is that i’m shamelessly trying to recruit on this blog? =P

I relate alot to what you guys are talking about =)

I must say, I took a few weeks off here & there, and when you log back in after a month away, to see Guild Chat light up with people YELLING your name the second you log in, that’s why many of us continue to play. For some players a Guild is little more than a means to an end, but for others, a Guild is Family.

No matter if you are #1 or #40 on a server, when a Guild ends espically one together that long, it is a sad day. You are saying good bye to people you spent every day with for a long time. People that you have come to look to as friends and family.

The guild was short a third healer for Kara, so we pugged a tree druid. I’m afraid I can’t recall his name at the moment. As per usual, I thoroughly explained the loot rules for everybody before we began: we don’t roll. When something drops, if you want it, you tell me. If more than one person wants it, I will make a decision based on how big of an upgrade it is for them, and how much loot they’ve already gotten compared to their competitors. It’s unusual, but that’s how rolled, and we were always certain to explain it before we got anybody saved.

Things were fine as we made our way through the first half of the instance on our way to Curator, and the tree druid we had pugged got 2 epics off of previous bosses. When Curator died, he dropped a druid Tier 4 token, and the PuG was quick to say that he wanted it. I don’t recall who it was, but one of the other members of the raid, a member of Entelechy, also wanted the piece. I don’t recall how big of an upgrade it was for either of them, but the PuG had gotten 2 epics by that point, and the guildie had gotten nothing at all. So I gave it to my guildie. I might just be embellishing the story in my mind, but I believe it actually replaced a green for my guildie, so it was quite an upgrade.

The PuGged tree druid promptly throws a hissy fit, accusing me of favoritism. I reminded him that the loot rules had been clearly laid out, and that what I had done was exactly what the rules indicated SHOULD be done. His response was that we should have done a /roll for it, because “It’s not just an epic, It’s T4.” and without waiting for a response, he dropped group and hearthed.

Amusingly enough, one of the guild’s officers who had been absent invited him to our raid the very next week, and I promptly kicked him right back out of the raid again.

I stand by my decision and still use roughly the same loot policy, though if I’m running in a group of 3 or more PuGs, I usually go with a random /roll instead, just to avoid unnecessary drama.

And there you have it. Pointless explication of a single line of Pike’s post.

One guild i joined was great until i hit 60. I went to MC and it was just fine until one player was afk, presumably. The raid leader waited about 15 seconds and then started cussing out the player, and was joined by several other players. It was so much hate for such a small offense. The person came back quite rapidly and was apologetic, but was kicked anyway.

Removing someone for 20-30 seconds for being afk is a little extreme, but whatever rules are rules. Its when you start being mean for little offenses that it ceases to be fun. Mind you, this was no repeat offense either.

So I gquit and hearthed. I wasnt going to be a part of that trash.