And to follow it up. . .

I dont expect to be having many two-post days, but its kinda silly to have a blog with only one, rather boring introduction post in it. So instead, there shall be TWO boring introduction posts, this one a bio-in-brief regarding my WoW Guild history. Be warned, this is a long one, as I've been playing for nearly 2 years now, and I'm not known for being short-winded. I promise, next time I'll post about something more interesting and less. . . journalish.

I started playing in. . . late March or early April, I guess, of 2006. I had finally gotten fed up with D&D Online and figured that any other game out there had to be better (Though, in retrospect, even DDO was better than Lineage II). So I picked up a copy of WoW, installed it on my machine, and hoped for the best.

Before even buying the game, I had done some research to try to figure out just what I wanted to play. Now, before WoW I only ever played casters. But I was toying with the idea of trying out this whole melee thing this time around, just for a change of pace. So, having come to the conclusion that I didn't know what the hell I wanted to do, I rolled a Druid, figuring a hybrid class would let me explore all the options. Why a female, and a Night elf? Well, I have a sort of stock RP family I carry from game to game, and Surania (The personification of my fiancee) was the closest fit for a druid (She's the reason we have most of our 8 pets). And since Surania is a high elf in her purest form, Night Elf was a much better fit than Tauren.

As with most games I've played, I quickly got addicted to WoW. And before long, I found myself in my first WoW guild, the . . . Twilight Congregation, I believe we were called. An RP religion, but they were recruiting (As most guilds were, since SwC was only 2 weeks old at the time), and I didn't know any better. It wasn't long before I encountered my first major guild drama, the guild's GM and second in command both deleting their characters, having not even bothered to transfer guild leadership, instead leaving a note to the members to "Make Surania the Guild Leader". . .

Now, first of all, I didn't WANT to be the head honcho. I was still exploring a new game. And my one experience with guild mastery in the past (reviving The Codex of Wisdom in an obscure game by the name of Ashen Empires, originally Dransik) failed horribly. I did what I could to salvage the guild (Starting with Petitioning the GMs to assign me leadership of the guild, as deleting a guild master character leaves the guild paralyzed), but after a few weeks, I gave up, and urged the remaining members to do likewise, as the guild was truly a sinking ship.

I had reached level 45 or so by that time, and had been shopping around for a raiding guild anyhow, so it wasn't long before I joined my second guild, and my first "Raiding Guild", The Phoenix Order. This is also where I finally came to the conclusion that I wanted, of all things, to be a tank, as I met my first dedicated Feral Tank, Charle. I never got to see him in action, unfortunately, but his mere existence gave me hope that it was possible even in a gaming culture that discouraged "offspecs". Actually, I never got to see TPO in action at all, as the guild was having a hard time recruiting raiders, and ended up being absorbed . . .

I think I was the last TPO member to actually join the guild that absorbed us, Patronus Veritas, but I did eventually follow the crowd. I dinged 60 while I was in PV, and did most of my Pre-expansion raiding with them. Mind you, the extent of my pre-expansion raiding experience was clearing most of ZG and AQ20, and reaching farm status on Ragnaros. And, while the guild let me collect feral tank gear, it was rare that I actually got to tank, especially in MC, since after all, Warriors were the only viable option for tanking (Despite the fact that I could tank circles around at least one of our warrior main tanks).

I was content with the guild for a while, understanding the culture that surrounded their decision to not let me tank much, and finding sneaky ways to flex my tanking muscles in unofficial capacity, but after getting told to DPS on both Garr and Sulfuron Harbinger in one MC run, while a DPS warrior was forced to offtank on those fights, I got pissed off and, in a fit of Emo, /gquit, hearthed, and logged off. . . right before Sulfuron was pulled. I still maintain friendships with many members of that guild (in fact, a few old members are now members of Prophecy), but I refused to raid with a guild who would put in a DPS spec warrior to tank while a tank spec druid did melee DPS (Remember, pre-1.12, cat and bear druid specs were rather different).

Anyhow, after a week or so, I decided to join the Blades of Oblivion, after an old paladin tank friend from the TPO days convinced me to join him. I figured if they let him tank, they'd let me tank too. And I was right. My first week there, I got to tank the Ossirian fight in AQ20 (A fight which PV still hadn't successfully done, despite having Ragnaros on farm). Mind you, I did it in my resto gear on accident, but we killed him anyhow. Alas, it was only another week before the guild was literally split in two, the split happening due to the Guildmaster's extremely harsh, militaristic leadership style. My paladin friend stayed loyal to the guild, but I personally had to side with the rebellion on this one, as I had already been contemplating leaving because of the GM (whose name escapes me, I guess I finally purged my mind of him completely).

The mass exodous led to the formation of a new splinter guild named. . . yep, you guessed it, Prophecy. We ended up with something like 15 members initially, but before long grew large enough to run the 20-man raids. Despite only having been with my guildmates for a week, I was elected druid class lead for the simple reason that I was the only druid in the original roster (That, and I tend to be a very likable guy I guess). We mostly ran ZG, and were known on the server for our half guild-half PuG runs. After a few months though, we started running into problems. People were getting burned out on ZG. Others were just not raiding because TBC was going to be released soon. And the biggest blow of all. . . in early December, 2006, our Guild Master mysteriously disappeared.

We all seemed to pretty much avoid the purple elephant in the middle of the room, and our membership slowly dwindled. By Christmas, we were down to maybe 15 members (off of a high of 35-40), and we were pretty much dead in the water. Not wanting to see the guild die of attrition, I stepped up to the plate and actively worked with the rest of the remaining guild membership to rebuild. The first step was to get the title of Guild Master into the hands of one of our members. . . and since I was spearheading this rebuild, and had prior experience in dealing with the GMs on such issues (From TC), I got stuck with the title of Guild Master. Not wanting to be the head honcho, but not wanting the guild to die either, I accepted the position, but under the condition that the guild's structure change to that of a Tribunal, with one of our warriors taking the second "GM" position, and a third to be filled later. We also changed over from having 8 class leads to having 4 "Role Leads", one for healers, one for tanks, one for melee, and one for ranged. Eventually we had one of our paladins take that third Guild master slot, and we gradually re-bolstered our numbers and ventured into Karazhan.

Around the middle of last year, we decided it was time for a restructuring of the guild, as most of our official positions had very vague responsibilities, and we tended to step over each other when getting things done. We ended up going with a 1 GM, 4 officer system, with each officer having a specific area of expertise (Raid Organization, Loot Rules, Recruitment, and Public Relations), and I gratefully stepped down as GM to become the guild's Loot Master, with the Paladin GM taking the helm.

I thought I was out of the GMing business for good. . . but I was wrong. A few months later, the Guildmaster left us, and the reins were dropped in my lap. But I went along with it, and led the guild up until last week, when I finally got to (well, was asked to, mostly due to my inability to be around during peak play hours) pass on the reins to another officer, retaining my duties as Loot Officer. Can't say it was a bad run, though, I got to take a lot of credit for the progression of a bunch of GREAT people who, while not the most progressed guild in the world, had as of the time of the transition downed two bosses in Serpentshrine cavern and ALL of the T4 instance bosses (Including Magtheridon).

In a way I miss being the GM, but at the same time I'm relieved to be rid of the pressure of holding the reigns. Never been much for being the boss, I prefer middle management. Which isn't to say I wouldn't do it again if my guild needed me. . . I just hope that day doesn't come.