Monday (3 Aug) - Guilds, A Look Back - And Forward

Monday (3 Aug) - Guilds, A Look Back - And Forward

Major FS guild news: On Sunday the longest serving raid leader and guild officer in the history of the FS guild gave his farewells to the guild. Rh was Wild's raid leader from the moment Wild first stepped into Molten Core back in the Vanilla days of Wild, and has been one of two raid leaders at every single FS raid Wild has ever been on. No matter what the situation with the guild, losing Rh is a significant loss for FS. The good news is that Rh said that he was not leaving the game, so I can hope to see him around. Rh's departure marks the fourth senior raider (counting Wild) to leave the FS guild recently.

Monday Update - Well, now I know what Rh was up to. I thought he might just do a little raiding without the pressure of leading one. I even thought (wished) he might end up in MM. However, he had other plans. Rh is now the guild leader of his own guild. There are 26 level 80s in his new guild, and I can count at least a half dozen that moved over from FS. Many of the rest of those 80s are likely alts. Now I know what the FS guild leader meant when he responded to Rh's departure, quoting "To ye and all that departed with ya I wish ya the best of luck!" Dare I say that this is the third new guild that has been born out of FS. I will have to dig up the last time I laid out that history so that I can add this chapter to it.

Unfortunately for all of you, I did do that digging, and what follows is a short history of Wild's travels through guild drama over the years:

2 Jun 2009 post: Given the recent guild drama I spent some time reminiscing with earlier posts having to do with raiding. Wild first got into raiding when his guild and another guild collaborated to form a cooperative joint raid venture that we called the "coop."

This was back in Apr 2006 and Wild was still making his slow, tortured way to level 60. By the time Wild reached level 60 the single "coop" had been renamed G1 and a second raiding group, dubbed G2, had formed. With two groups heading into Molten Core Wild was quickly swept into his first adventures in large raid gaming. "Large" being forty players, something now long gone from WoW. After some bumping between the two groups as an alternate, Wild earned his stripes as a regular with G2, gaining 7 of 8 Tier 1 pieces, the best of the best raiding gear at the time. Tier 1, now that takes one back. Wild is wearing Tier 7 gear now (well, one piece, anyway). [2010 update - Wild is wearing Tier 10 now]

In Jun 2006 the G1 coop, struggling to keep up it's enthusiasm, fractured. The raid leader for G1 broke ranks and formed his own guild, taking members of G1 with him. The new raiding guild then formed a partnership with the other supporting guild of G1/G2 - at the time I likened that arrangement to the supporting guild being the minor league franchise feeding their more talented players to the major league raiding guild. G1 died. A proud G2 elected to keep going, set up their own website, and Wild's guild, FS, offered to continue to help out. At the same time, Wild's guild was thinking that we may be ready to form our own raid group.

It didn't take long. On 4 Jun 2006 FS held their first guild only Molten Core run. Wild had had to make a decision that day - Wild was a regular in G2, and G2 was entering Blackwing Lair - end game for WoW at the time. If Wild went with his guild, vice G2, it would be a lot longer before he saw BWL. Wild went with his guild, and became not just a "regular" but the main tank healer for the guild on our first ever run. With more than half the raid making their first trip into MC, we hoped to at least try one boss. Over the course of two nights we downed FIVE. Now that was a rush. FS guild raiding was born.

The raiding guild formed out of G1 did not survive, nor did the guild that supported them. G2 still raids today and is one of the most successful non-guild raiding groups I've ever seen. Wild was glad to have been a part of that. Things might have been very different for Wild had I gone with G2. G2 is in Ulduar and has downed seven bosses - FS has downed two. But FS is Wild's home, and he's still glad he stayed.

To continue the Truncated History of Guilds Wild Has Known (and be glad this is truncated), Wild needs to introduce the Feral's Guild.

Back in 2007 Wild ran with two couples quite a bit. One couple had been good friends with Wild way back in his 40s, then left the game for awhile and then came back. The other couple were long time guildies that loved to include Wild in whatever they were doing. The husband half was a feral druid and we made a pretty good tank/healing pair along with Mrs Feral for the DPS. The guild leader and Mrs Feral were good friends, but they were both rather, opinionated, and the two often quarrelled (uh, maybe I should say, had differences of opinion).

On 23 Jul 2007, the Feral's, unhappy with the guild's raid progression, had one to many disagreements with guild leadership and left to form their own guild. Very few guildies left to join them, but two that did happened to be the other couple that Wild ran with. There was never any pressure by the Feral's for Wild to follow them, but they clearly would have welcomed Wild into their guild. Their approach to raiding was to work hard and play hard. There was a four night per week raid minimum that Wild knew he couldn't meet, and several other rules as well. I'd learn that they weren't that tightly adhered to, but Wild was happy with his current guild, anyway.

The Feral's were popular players, though, who had a lot of friends, and their guild grew very fast. In fact, their progress quickly outpaced FS. Wild kept in touch, and even joined them on some "retro" runs to older dungeons for fun.

In Sep 2007 Wild reached something of low point where he had missed out on most of the new 5 man dungeons in Burning Crusade while levelling to 70, was floundering in getting his Kara attunement, and saw the guild already starting Zul'Aman. It looked like Wild was falling so far behind there was no hope of catching up. The Feral's offered another option, which Wild considered, but ultimately Wild came out of his doldrums and fashioned a better plan.

Between Sep 2007 and Mar 2008 The Feral's guild exploded in popularity. They had a great rep for both fun and hardcore raiding with exceptional success. During that time, however, there was considerable in-fighting and twice chunks of the Feral's Guild broke from the guild to form their own. On the surface it didn't seem to slow the guild down at all. However, after the second exodus of raiders the Feral's established a coop with another guild for raiding that seemed to leave out some of the raiders who had stayed with the guild. The pot continued to boil.

In May 2008 the guild fractured in a more fatal way. With hints of guild leadership skullduggery and senior raiders walking away with guild bank loot, there was a huge dust up. In the end the core group that backed the Feral's gave up the guild and then packed their bags, leaving not only the guild but the server as well. Wild's friends were gone permanently. The original guild stayed around as a social guild for some time after that, but it is gone now, too.

FS, meanwhile, is still here and raiding.

The above 2 Jun 2009 posts were put together on the same day that "surveydrood" posted the "how serious are you about raiding" survey. Which is how he got his name in this blog, of course. This survey, I believe, marked the beginning of the end for FS.

Two weeks later our new guild leader made his first announcement of new raiding plans. FS raiding did begin to improve in a big way, but that very success created a fracture between more social guildies and the harder core raiders that would widen over the next several months.

On 7 Nov 2009 the social side of the guild lost it's leading and most active member, guild officer Lady Hunter, who finally had to admit that the scales had shifted too far. She left the guild for MM.

On 19 Jul 2010 the former guild leader, a founding member of the guild, and the original guild cheer leader on the social side not only left the guild, but left the game. While she had not been an active player for months, her mere presence had at least been an icon for the social side of the guild.

On 22 Jul 2010 Wild, too, moved on, joining MM.

Scroll forward to today and the news that a new guild has split off from FS. This comes after a long, slow exodus of casual raiders who didn't fit the new mold of the guild, and the departure of several harder core raiders unhappy that the guild wasn't progressing fast enough to suit them.

FS is not gone. It has evolved away from it's original balance between social and raiding and become a semi-hardcore raiding guild. The driving force behind the guild I believe is still surveydrood. This is really his guild now. I've always liked him and still do. He should be proud of what he's created and the many accomplishments of the guild since he stepped up the plate. I sincerely wish them well. Casual raiders like Wild, however, need not apply.