The Lich King Era

About a week after launch, I heard that some friends on the server (mostly ex-guildies from my first guild, the people I’d been alt raiding with at the end of tbc) were forming a new guild, just a small one, with a view to being “focussed on end game progression in the 10 man environment”, with a schedule of 3 nights a week, 3 hours a raid
I thought about it, and at that time, it was perfect for me, provided they would actually do what they said they would…

Me and the same friend that had always been guilded with me applied and got in there, and before I knew it, yet again I was an officer and raid leader….
This guild was amazing to start with…yes Naxx was easy, but even so, within a few weeks of starting raiding, we had all the standard level content (including Malygos) on farm, and were regularly doing Sartharion with a drake up and some of the Naxx achievement style kills….we were going great, at for a few weeks it was about as close to “perfect” as I’ve ever felt in a guild…. BUT….it was short lived…

The success of the guild had given some people a taste for what successful, focussed raiding was like, and the guild developed into two camps…some people started wanting to do 25 man stuff….more and more people started pugging them, and a few members left to a 25 man raiding guild. Other people decided that even a 3 day a week 10 man only schedule was too much for them and they didn’t want to raid at all, they wanted to concentrate on levelling alts etc….eventually we got to the stage were so many people left (or stopped being available to raid) that we couldn’t even get a properly balanced 8-man team together to do the 8 man achievements, let alone a strong 10 man team…even WITH using lots of alts….

So…the guild collapsed as I guess so many others have in the past…..it actually still exists, a couple of my alts are there and we run the odd 5 man together in our free time, but all our mains have gone to other guilds…

Personally though, I found myself in a guild that was surely going to collapse, with no plan of where I would go next…and the only thing I knew I didn’t want to do is go back to the 5 night a week guild I’d been in before (even though I was pretty sure they’d have me back, and I’d been raiding a bit with them when they were a man short)

It was in this short period, when on my regular lunchtime blog reading session, I read this post on Larisa's blog....a chance to join the same guild as a blogging celebrity….a proper raid guild, with a good history of decent progress, but on a relatively relaxed schedule with times that suited me…sounds good…..they weren’t recruiting my class, but what the heck, I was encouraged to apply anyway, and lucky me, they liked my app enough and I got in…..this was a big step for me though, I was about to change servers, on my own (my last remaining friend I was guilded with had decided by now to quit WoW altogether)…..how would I get on ? would I like it on another server, would I hate not knowing anybody at all ? Would I pass my trial ?

Answers to all these questions in the next post…