Ahoy, Muffin Down!

Well, not really. I just wanted to work that in somewhere for TJ, and the title seemed as good a place as any.

It's currently Monday, but y'all won't see this until tomorrow because today is Mags' birthday, and I want that post to stay at the top all day without having to fuss with moving post times around. Yay laziness. Also thank you to everyone who went over and left her a birthday comment, I know they all meant a lot to her! Those of you who didn't, I know who you are and where you live. On with the show..

I find myself at a crossroads with my guild again. (yeah, this is about WoW, sorry!) Those of you who have been following my plurk probably saw that last week I mentioned that my guild leader got ahold of a beta key for Wrath of the Lich King. This has been cool because he's been posting some fun screenshots and things of what he's been up to over there. But there is also a very not-cool part. He's been neglecting us. It was spotty before he got the beta key, because he had a new boyfriend, and we all know how it is with new relationships. I didn't hold that against him too much, because we could still fill a raid now and again, and things were getting done, albeit a bit less frequently.

OK, that's not entirely true. I did hold it against him a bit, because he would sign up to raid, but as soon as it became obvious that we had enough tanks (he's a ferlol druid) or people who could be tanks, he'd drop out of the raid, and we'd be left to run without him. I don't know if it was motivated by a desire to see the officers step up a bit in raid leadership or what, but it seemed a lot like he was ditching us to spend time with his boyfriend because he was the guild leader, and none of us would say anything. And at the same time none of us could get away with that unless we just didn't show up and posted AFK afterwards, which is not something you do frequently if you want to maintain a healthy relationship with your guildmates.

Anyway. It's been worse since this whole thing with the beta key. He justifies it as "I'm a beta tester now, I have a responsibility to Blizzard to beta test!". That's fine, but your responsibility to your guild existed before you got ahold of that key, and still continues despite it. Last night (Sunday) was no different from the past couple of weeks. He started up the raid, and dropped himself into Group 6, which is what he does if he's planning on leaving. So finally I decided to say something. I asked him what he was doing down there, and he said he was soooo tired, he was going to pass out at his keyboard. He didn't say why, but I'd be willing to bet that he stayed up all weekend doing beta stuff. That's nothing new either, he was up for three days straight when BC came out, and says he plans to do the same when Wrath is released. But we weren't still trying to run progression raids when BC came out, so him being tired wasn't an issue. I told him well, if you do leave tonight, will you come play with us tomorrow? We miss you! I didn't get an actual answer yes or no, just *hugs*.

We ended up calling the raid, because a couple of people didn't show up. There wasn't a lot of effort made to find alternatives though, it was called only five minutes or so after raid time. So a ZA group got going, and I headed back to Winterspring.

I just don't know what to do right now. I like my guild a lot. I've been friends with my guild leader for almost as long as I've been playing WoW, and that's not something I want to just abandon. But to be in the guild right now is to be expected to sign up for raids, and I'm getting tired of signing up and doing a bunch of stuff to get raid ready, and then not raid. My feeling is, we're not raiding, let's just stop pretending to be a progression raiding guild, and just muddle through until Wrath comes out. Let people who still want to raid app to other guilds, so they can raid if they want to.

Me? I thought about it a bit last night, and I think that if I'm not in my current guild, I'm not going to be in any guild at all. Raiding with a whole new group of people, while an opportunity to meet new people and make more friends, just doesn't feel right to me. All of my raiding has been done with this guild, and I have a strong sense of loyalty to it, whether or not it's misplaced. I'll give it to the end of the week, I think, then decide if I want to keep sticking this out or not. Maybe I'll herd one of hubby's alts into helping me re-form Wyld Stallyns, so I won't have to worry about being recruited. Not that it would happen anyway, we all know that nobody ever needs more hunters. But it would give me a place to be, at least for now, and maybe I'd go back to SI again once I get to 80. We'll see how the week pans out.