--Niniel EU-Kilrogg --Niniel EU-Kilrogg

Swiftmend

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.

2012-03-07

Guild going inactive until MoP

At the end of January this year I decided to stop raiding for this expansion at least. I've possibly logged in two or three times since then and maybe done a cooking or fishing daily. Instead I've tried some casual SWTOR, playing some alts there instead of pursuing a main character so I've been spread a bit thin and maybe that's why the game hasn't really got a strong grip on me.

I'd say being on a break has been good to me so far, health and work is great though the same was true while raiding seriously. It's just sort of nice to discover the amount of time that you suddenly have available once you stop with something you've been doing a lot for so long that you've almost forgotten what it was like without it. I did commit to the deal about free Diablo 3, MoP beta access for WoW subscription so I haven't really made good use of that if I look at hours spent logged in but it doesn't bother me. I'm fairly confident that I will return for MoP to check things out, even if I strongly suspect that the immersion and comradery I felt in Vanilla and TBC will never return in the game. The people that made the world come alive have moved on and the mindset is lost. It was a shared experience in a perfect environment that is hard to explain if you weren't there.

Anyway, my guild had struggled with raiding numbers for a while and it had to turn into a 10 man guild. Having been an epic full scale raiding guild since 2006, this was a sad turn of events of course. It just wasn't the same in a 10 man raid and looking back I haven't really enjoyed any raiding this expansion. I think the last fight I enjoyed was heroic Halion back in Wrath when it was topical.

I browsed the guild forum today as I do from time to time as I like to stay updated with what's happening and found the post below. As it has been posted on the public part of our forum I think it should be fine if I post it here as well:

Hello guys,

It saddens me to have to write this, but unfortunately this time there is no way to avoid it :(
Never in my 5 years since I have started calling Anarchy a home did I think this time will come or that I would be the one having to do this.

Anarchy has reached a point of no return for this expansion. Due to our slow progress and 10 man raiding not providing the same enjoyment as 25man raiding we have lost a lot of key players in the past months which at this stage prevent us from being able to do any kind of progress raiding.
Taking this decision was the hardest thing we've had to do in what WoW is concerned: as of today Anarchy will stop progress raiding and step down to a casual raiding style until MoP.

The current plan is the following
- We will be only raiding once per week, and then depending on raid setups see what bosses we can try to do on heroic and which on normal, but without banging our heads against a wall if a boss just won't die (see Hagara the past two weeks). The day for this raid will be set according to the day most of you remaining in here with either the mains or just with alts will vote as the best to try to make the raid.
- We will not be kicking any of the alts of the people who wish to leave the guild with their mains. We appreciate you guys sticking with us until the very end and really hope to be able to raid again together (see the next point).
- Two months before the release of MoP we will try to restart the guild and do mass recruiting in order to try to have a 25 man squad ready for MoP raids, even if at the start it won't have the same level of raiding quality as most of us have grown accustomed to.

Once again - thank you all who stuck around until this point, and many apologies for not being able to any longer provide that which we all want from a guild - nice steady progress and a friendly environment.
We are totally aware that even more people will leave now, but while you do so please keep in mind that the friendly environment isn't gone and you will always have a home to return to back in Anarchy should you decide to try with us to restart Anarchy before MoP.

Just so there is no misreading - all current members will get into the guild instantly without an application, should you decide to re-unite with us for MoP. We rely on you for this to happen.

Signing:
A sad Evil, a sad Pharaoh, a sad Dast and a sad Karja


Anarchy, I thank you for the moments we had and hope that you will manage to be reborn for MoP!

5 comments:

Enmagi said...

my last guild also went inactive, however it didn't seem like they'd be able to be reborn. Here's hoping your guild does come back!

Iz Chan said...

Hiii! Having followed your blog since 2006 I feel your loss almost as profoundly as if I had lost my own guild (Which I have... a couple times, so i do know the feeling :( ) nevertheless, i hope you get your guild back, and all the best <3 hope you keep up the great work with your blog! always a pleasure to read.

Niniel said...

Hi and thank you for your encouraging words! :)

It means a lot to hear that you've liked what I've written throughout the years. Personally I think I wrote my best posts in the TBC era and I've gradually lost inspiration since then. Maybe it will come back in MoP though?

It looks like the guild is going to merge with another guild on the realm to be able to get back to 25 man raiding now.

I'm currently on a break from the game, just playing a little on the Beta and I'm pretty excited about Diablo 3 for the moment.

Take care! :)

Iz Chan said...

Hmm I would agree that your best writings was probably around the TBC-early WotLK period. It's probably just a matter of age, having played the game for so long. I certainly hope it'll come back! :) But even then, I have to admit, WoW just doesn't feel the same anymore these days...

i've been on a break since last sep. who knows I might rejoin the game when MoP comes out :)

btw - i just realized that you're a guy. For some reason I had always imagined you as a female. Kinda embarassing hahaa. Anyway cheers!

Niniel said...

Oops, I didn't notice I got a reply here, sorry for the long response time ^^

I'm pretty sure that it was better written posts during that time because I was way more enthusiastic about everything that happened in the game back then. I'm going to rant a little now that you set me off ;)

The two most important things for me in an MMO is the sense of immersion and the in-game community between players. Both of which in my mind are not as good as they were a couple of years ago.
I think some immersion has been lost along the way while making improvements to the game which makes things more convenient to players. I’m not sure what can be done about this though, you can’t remove improvements that people have gotten used to and it’s probably not an easy thing to predict what might be lost when making things too convenient.
For example, grinding different kinds of tokens and Justice/Valor points and doing daily quests removes a bit of the magic from the world. The immersion of the game was way better back then, at least in my mind. You were in that world together with friends and you went off to kill bosses in rather exotic places because there was lore and quests that told you to do it.

It was ok to assemble a group and travel far to an instance because that old world was huge, it was supposed to take a while to get anywhere. It's way more convenient now to just group up with strangers and teleport in wherever you are but waiting and hoping for a friend to come online to fill the group and then ride there together is a completely different and shared experience. You did it because you had fun together and if you were lucky then maybe the Baron in Stratholme would drop your damn dungeon set pants this time around but there was no virtual currency being earned for just trying, that's something that might be fair and convenient but it has no real connection to what’s going on.

So, getting points for whatever you do might make you feel that you earn and accomplish things and thus makes you feel that time spent was worthwhile but is done at the cost of killing immersion in my mind.

Something that can fix the in-game community might be Battle Tags. Being able to add players from other realms to your friends list with the use of Battle Tags is going to be a very important step in bringing back the community among players. It’s not a good thing to not be able to make new meaningful connections when playing with others. Not being able to stay in touch anyway is probably contributing to the mood of random dungeon groups.

I'll certainly be happy if you come around and comment now and then :)

Hehe, maybe it's the female name and female night elf character that was misleading? There are a lot of female resto druid bloggers around though so easy mistake to make ;)