Tuesday, July 08, 2008

What can you do when your raiding guild stops raiding?

Anyone have any answers? Because I am at a loss right now. This whole pre-expansion funk is invading my guild, and I don't like it at all!

The problem started back when we finally killed Lurker. We had been playing around in Gruul's and Mag's, and we'd spend a day or two a week working on Lurker, our attempt to break into the next level of 25-man raiding. We got the hang of Void Reaver at about the same time. Seemingly the next thing you know, we're 2/4 TK and zooming through SSC. We got our first kills on just about every boss in there within a couple of weeks. We got to 5/6 and then got the hang of Al'ar, putting us at 3/4 TK. We had a couple of attempts at Kael'thas, but never made it past phase 3. We started working on Vashj, and got stuck in phase 2. We just couldn't get things together to get those elementals down and keep the striders under control.

So about that time, the patch went through that removed attunements from BT and Hyjal. We were so frustrated with Vashj, we decided to try Hyjal. Over the next couple of weeks we had dropped three bosses in there as well. Heck, let's give BT a try then! We two-shotted Naj'entus on our second night of attempts. I think it took three attempts at Supremus, but we dropped him too. And Shade of Akama. But now it seems that we've hit a wall. We've been losing raiders slowly but surely through all of this, and we stand to lose a couple more in the very near future. Our guild leader is basically our raid leader as well. There were a few nights he couldn't raid due to work, and they always turned into wipefests. People started to get really frustrated, myself included. We finally decided to take a week off, no raids, just play what you want. With the news about Diablo 3, quite a few people started playing Diablo 2 again, to the point where they set up a channel on our guild Ventrilo for them to use.

Last night was our first try back at raiding. We had the signups at first, but right before raid time a couple of people backed out. The rest of us sat in game and formed up the raid, and tried to decide what we would do once we got the full 25 online. Tried being the operative word there. Our guild leader had left a message on the signup post saying we should try TK if we could get another tank, or BT if we could get a couple more dps. We spent half an hour talking back and forth about what we could do or should do, and in the end.. we did nothing because nobody would step up and say, all right, we're going here. Let's go and do our best, even though we might not have the optimal raid makeup for it. Instead people who used to be officers (they stepped down) were fussing, and people were listening to them like they still were officers. Most of the raid didn't care, they just wanted someone to take authority and decide. But nobody could do it, because of a few people who had arguments for everything.

Finally, I was ready to just log off and say forget it. I was tired of running around in circles waiting for someone to say yea or nay, when someone did say nay. So a few went off to run ZA, and I logged off for the night. Our guild leader is going to be afk all week because of work.. and I am tempted to pull the rest of my signups. Very tempted. Mostly because I know it's just going to be two more days of the same.. sitting around and waffling about what we can or can't do. Some people want to push progression over farm content, other people want farm content because they still need gear from it to be better able to progress. Some people said they didn't care, but were nudging about just getting together a Kara group for badges.

I hate this feeling that the guild is slowly falling apart. We've come so far so fast, and now that we've hit a stumbling block, suddenly people feel it's not worth the effort. I'm going to see how tonight goes.. I'm not signed up, but hubby is. If they can get something going, I'll give them a chance on Wednesday. If not, I'm not going to bother. Raiding is fun. Sitting around waiting is not.

6 fellow footsteps:

Callie Ann said...

Sometimes I enjoy the fact that I don't know what the hell your talking about.. Love ya girl.

Anonymous said...

This happened about a month ago to my Horde guild. We fairly quickly built up a 2/4 and 5/6 progression. Then all of a sudden sign ups were hard to come by and raids started getting canceled. Now 25-mans are off completely. It's really frustrating since there is so much more content I'd like to see. I certainly know what you're going through. Best of luck to you.

P.S. - Just remember there are few problems that can't be solved by grinding a little Wildhammer rep.

Anonymous said...

Asara--

This is just all part of the general apathy right now. You have a few options, but don't let the lack of raiding get you down. You can try out PvP, you can work on an alt, you can farm your butt off for whatever, you can collect badges -- anything. Believe me, there is a lot of this going around, and you might as well scream at the wind.

http://parttimedruid.com/2008/06/03/top-five-fighting-wow-apathy/

Rebecca said...

That sucks. Well, not that I know exactly what you're talking about. But I used to be a part of a gaming community and was very sad when that group all broke off and went their seperate ways - I hope this is just a temporary thing for your group!

Anonymous said...

Oh hon, I do know where you're coming from at the moment.

So many people are just 'busy' now it's the summer, and then there are those who just can't be bothered anymore and want Wrath to get here already.

If your guild does break up it's not to say you won't have a great time somewhere else, and if it doesn't, you'll be able to say you were one of the ones who "stayed till the end". Mind you, staying if yr not happy is usually not a good idea. Damn it's a tough situation! I really hope the raiding picks up a lil more soon!

Kaz Dragon said...

I think it's time to buy a UK copy, join the Horde and level up a new 70 to come raiding with us!

But seriously, we get into the same troubles: raids where we just don't have the manpower to do it. Just last week there were 22 of us sitting there going "So... Lurker?" But there weren't enough tanks, and weren't enough healers.

And then 7 people tried to organise seperate ZA runs and nothing happened.

It sounds like your GL has time commitment problems, though. If that's true, he might want to appoint an understudy that still has "the bug", and will chase people up all week long to make sure these things still happen.