Classic Guild Life

After spending so many years officering in my SWTOR guild, I'm finding it interesting to just be a rank and file member in a Classic raiding guild that has to operate in a very different way compared to what I'm used to. I just can't stop myself from still looking at certain things with an analytical eye.

For example I was quite confused by how, as I started to find my feet in the guild, some people seemed to become almost overly attached to me from one day to the next. I mean, I took a fast liking to many of them as well, and I don't really have major self confidence issues nowadays, but even so I'm well aware that I'm not that amazing if you get what I mean. It just felt weirdly disproportional how keen some of them seemed to be on simply seeing me online and talking to me.

This meme came to mind.

Things did calm down a bit after a few weeks, but I was reminded of the whole thing again when I logged in by the Stormwind mailbox today and saw next to me a rogue that had recently joined the guild... but now with another guild's tag over her head. I hadn't really got to know her very well - in fact we'd only really exchanged a few lines - yet I briefly had to fight the urge to whisper her and express great sadness about her leaving, perhaps even beg her to reconsider her reasons, whatever they might be. I stopped myself, especially since guild chat on the subject of her departure seemed to indicate that it had already been discussed with her, but it still gave me pause that I'd felt the urge to run after this person like an overly attached girlfriend even for a moment.

The thing is, we had only really exchanged a few lines, but she seemed nice. We are woefully short on raiding rogues at the moment (we only have two!), and she seemed like a promising candidate. And it's not just rogues we've been short on - raids as a whole have been a bit anaemic, often starting with the group being several people short and then only slowly filling up as the night goes on and social members and latecomers get dragged in. That sort of situation is bad for a myriad of reasons and ultimately endangers the stability of the regular raids, meaning that every member has a vested interest in filling any vacancies with decently competent and agreeable recruits as soon as possible. They don't have to be your new best friend, but just being "kinda nice" is honestly enough to want them to stick around.

I suspect that everyone who's ever been an officer in a raiding guild of any size knows what a challenge it can be to maintain a stable roster over the long term, and with Classic raids requiring 40 people this is only magnified. There are also additional challenges caused by other parts of the game.

Unlike more modern MMOs for example, it has no freebies or tasks on timers that encourage you to log in on a schedule... which is something I quite appreciate about it to be honest, and it can still be very addicting in its own way, but if you get distracted by something else for a few days that also means that it's very easy to just forget to log in again and "fade away". In raid terms this means that people sign up and attend raids for weeks or even months and then just... stop. With the sheer size of the roster, chances are that there isn't necessarily the sort of personal connection that you have in smaller guilds and that enables you to chase the person down via other channels in such a situation, so they're just suddenly gone and you have a hole in your roster.

And of course there's the matter of loot being scarce and oddly distributed for different classes, which means that there are a hundred reasons why you might find yourself craving to try a different approach if your guild isn't delivering the results you want, whether it's because there's too much competition for your class, the guild rarely runs the raids that actually drop your best-in-slot for whatever reason, or the loot system makes it hard for you to actually secure the drops you want vs. alts and pugs. With so many guilds being desperate to keep their rosters full, you have little to lose by throwing your lot in with someone else from one day to the next just to see if it works better for you, meaning that recruitment can be a bit of a revolving door at times.

The part of me that likes getting shinies can certainly see the appeal - I look at the 17 pieces of equipment that make up my hunter's current gear, and even after weeks of running dungeons and raids with the guild, more than a third of my gear actually still comes from two pug runs I attended weeks ago. AQ40 is surprisingly rubbish for hunter gear, and if I just wanted to maximise my chances of increasing my dps, I'd be better off looking for regular MC and ZG runs. Of course, in my particular case that's not really why I'm here so it's ultimately not that relevant, but I can definitely see why this sort of situation can be frustrating and why people don't waste any time to look elsewhere if it feels like their current guild's offerings don't help with their personal goals.

tl;dr: There are very strong incentives at work when it comes to raiding guilds in Classic, both to leave one that isn't a perfect fit, and to recruit and hold on to as many people as possible at all times if you are happy where you are. It's no wonder people can get very passionate about this stuff.