The raiding guild I was in finally imploded yesterday afternoon, if we’re all honest it’s been building for about 6 weeks or so, pretty much since Arthas was safely dead and the bulk of the raiders got their 25-man Kingslayer. While progression was maintained for a while on heroic modes it was clear that sign levels were dropping off, it took truely massive efforts on the part of the officers to get a second LK kill in for those were standby on the first one.
We’ve dropped a raiding day to help us through the lull, but even with that signs for the two remaining days were dropping off (we barely scraped enough for one raid last week). This week, the first raid is dead in the water before we reach invite time, 18/25 signed, pathetic. So the officers have officially called it and the guild is offiically closing for business on the 29th, it’s 5th birthday.
What killed the group
Split personality
Realistically the group never really worked out what it wanted to be, hardcore raiding, friendly to people with a life, there to have fun etc etc. Based on our progression and after reading some thoughts from Kevlon I would have to place the group in the ‘hardcore’
Personalities & Expectations
There are some in the guild who don’t hide their expectations that it was a hardcore progression guild which shouldn’t have had time for new raiders, only wanting experienced players who’ve raided a lot. All those who were in the guild will be able to point at one or more names easily. Their true colours have been showing through in the post-announcement chat on the channel, “I hope she doesn’t have to experience a true raiding guild” “we coddle too much” and so on.These are people who I don’t think really grasp where the guild was in global progression or indeed within the server, decently progressed, certainly more cleared than a goodly proportion of the global raiding community but at the position in the food chain where we’re seen as a friendly entry point or a stepping stone to the top guilds on the realm.
The comments from one of the officers about not letting teenagers into a raiding guild are particularly laughable knowing one of the teens and that he was a teen himself when accepted and I would still consider him to be pretty much a kid and in need of some hard life lessons to knock the arrogance off.
Too long in ICC
It’s been a hell of a time, ICC opened in December 2009, by the time Cataclysm goes live on the servers it will have been open for 11-12 months, a year near as dammit. The first push through on normal keeps people interested but there are problems at the choke points where the wiping raid after raid on a single boss which can’t be skipped is just painful.Coming back to the heroic modes on some is just a joke (lolship particularly) and others we have a solid challenge to beat, but fundamentally we’re still doing the same damm fight as before with a few extra bells and more health on the boss.
Boredom / end of Wrath
This is one of the core parts of the failure, I suspect that over time knowing who was leading the chairteam it would have morphed more into a hardcore raiding guild and been more demanding on the raiders it was looking for. However the simple fact that we have seen the content for nine months with no new solid lumps of content in sight before Cataclysm members simply weren’t signing. The depressing thing is that they didn’t have the manners or simple thought to let the team know they wanted to step back, go do other stuff and so on, I suspect that it was a case of “off playing something else, I should have a slot in the raid when I want to come back” without thinking that all social enterprises like raiding require some extra push from everyone to keep it going through the barren periods.
Could it have survived?
I’m in two minds about this, the group could have gone on a raiding hiatus with ad-hoc raids being organised for those needing their fix, however the group would have lost some core raiders doing this as they moved on to pastures new looking for something to bridge the gap into Cata (it was happening already). So the structure would have been there but it would have taken work in the initial phase of Cata to bring the roster back up to scratch.
Something may yet arise from the ashes, we’ll see.
Where next
Probably a break from progression raiding until Cataclysm with some pugging / Team Pirate runs.
