So tonight was cool. One of those nights where all the dramas and difficulties of raiding pale into the background and remind you why you bother.
In the new raiding guild that i've moved my 'main' to we tackled Greenscale's Blight, getting to 4/5 with the big cuddly Greenscale himself down to 11% before calling it a night. The 1st and 3rd bosses were downed on the first attempt and the 2nd on the 2nd ;) all to much cheering and joyous celebration.
In some ways GSB is actually easier than the ten man slivers, and certainly more enjoyable in many aspects. Always nice as well to have found a use for all 5 of my specs in one raid, going from Cabalist aoe on trash, to Shammy melee DPS, to hybrid ranged healing and pure MT healing.
After the raid tho, i switched to an alt and got chatting to the GM of my 'old' guild and found out that two more members had quit the guild in search of raiding opportunities elsewhere. Even as we were talking another member announced on the guild channel that he too was doing the same and waved bye bye.
After our previous GM had decided it was time to go, his decision also swayed mine in deciding to also look elsewhere for 20man raids figuring like he did, that our guild would never achieve the critical mass that it takes to get 20 members online and raid ready of a night.
I also bought another guild member with me into the test raid i ran with my new guild and they also decided to join. (for him personally, a good decision i think given his obvious ability beyond the average of our current members. (This is something that i want to talk about more in depth in a separate post)).
All in all, we lost 4 in the last week or so, including me and another 3 tonight, all from a guild that was often struggling to have enough players to raid the 10mans, let alone the 20s.
In chatting to the GM i struggled to think what to say, knowing that i was also a part of this exodus. Everyone who leaves guilds for this reason, will use the same line: 'all my alts are staying, so i'm not going forever...'
I'm trying myself to make that an actuality, rather than a throwaway sop to your friends you've decided to dessert, but its very hard to balance being in separate guilds (something that GW2 will have an interesting take on, allowing multiple guild memberships on the same alt).
Perhaps this was an inevitable occurrence for a 'social' guild. where once players decide to start raiding, the differences come to light and those who enjoy and then desire progression have to decide whether they're prepared to wait and attempt to gear up more players, or see it as unlikely to ever happen and look elsewhere. And then once a few players leave, they see the raid night's progression going backwards and even more struggles just to get 10 players online to raid and their departure then must be pretty much assured.
Tanking duty will now fall to the GM and probably myself on my warrior alt, and although we're both competent enough for it i don't think its particularly something either of us wanted. Him doing it because he's GM, me as i don't want to lose this guild and if they are going to raid, then i should be taking part in it. And as a tank, knowing the encounters we should at least give the runs a fighting chance of some success.
I don't know what the answer is for social guild. But building it up again with new members (of which there are plenty of levelers who will inevitably hit level cap very soon in Rift) and then, like allowing birds to fly the nest, do we expect them inevitably to fly away once they've been weened on the beginner 10mans? Or turning your guild into something its not, just to run raids every night because after all, what else is there to do?
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