In the few years that I have been playing World of Warcraft I have been a member of quite a few guilds. In my time I have ended up out of a guild for a number of reasons. I've been merged into another guild, been kicked out because of guild drama that I made the mistake of getting involved in, I've left on my own for what I thought was greener pastures, I've left for actual greener pastures, and I've watched a guild die.
While I was trolling Blog Azeroth for the firs time in a few months the other day I stumbled across the shared topic for this week, and it called out to me. What happened when a guild dies? What do you do?
They say that hindsight is 20/20. Looking back, I find in this case it really is true. At the time I didn't see many of the signs that would have alerted a more observant man than me that not all was well in the world. The first rumbling of the end came months before the true end. The guild had been spending its raid time running twenty-five man Ulduar. Running is a nice way of saying we were killing 1-2 bosses consistently and then wiping over and over. The guild was not well geared, people weren't great listeners, and only a few of us were doing things outside of the raid night to make ourselves better.
A few of the higher end members began running a ten man Trial of Champions on the night prior to our Ulduar run. They were becoming more and more geared while others, like me were falling further and further behind even though we had behind. Comments began to be made about members in the Ulduar run. Some were fair, others not so fair. The guild became more and more split. The split continued to grow as more and more people got tired of being harassed by the "elite ten" as they came to be known. People began to leave the guild for places where they would be more respected, others just stopped logging in. Soon it was hard to fill the Ulduar raid. Tempers flared. More frustration built. The "elite ten" split off and raided more nights, including our original night for Ulduar. The end had come, I just didn't know it.
Then, one day I logged in to a mail from the guild leader to the entire guild, telling us we had twenty - four hours to fnd a new home because the guild was closing. This was the first time I had ever heard of the command /gdisband. I dropped guild immediately and began to look for a new home, but learned a valuables lesson.
From this I learned that respect is the most important part of a guild. It doesn't matter whether you always agree with the other members of a guild. It does matter that you show respect to the people of your guild, and you help them as opposed to attacking those below you. This is a lesson I have taken into every guild I have gone into since, and has helped me to avoid many a guild, and even leave a guild.
Respect, it isn't just a song by Aretha Franklin.
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