Frosstbyte

Come a long way from your SS's not so long ago, Las. I love looking through this thread from time to time to see how far we've all come. Pretty wild.

Despite my best efforts, I seem to have done a fine job of burning not one but two bridges in my latest guild shuffle. I had everything set up to avoid precisely this problem, but fate conspired to prevent my plan from happening.

(for those who care to hear the rant, read on, for those who don't, feel free to stop here, it's wordy, but I need to get it out, again, feel free to skip it if you aren't interested in my ranting)

I've been unsettled about my guild and its direction for a while, say a month and a half or so. There have been ongoing issues that have simmered but I looked past until other, more serious, issues collected them and pushed me over the edge. We've had a mess of trouble in AQ and with the world spawn green dragons, both in terms of execution and participation and it's created a very negative atmosphere that I wasn't very happy with. The two big things were a lack of raid invites recently (I hadn't seen a raid before the MC raid below for over two weeks) and our gross incompetence at killing ORBs.

So I did some looking. The first guild to kill Nefarian worldwide (Drama) put up an advertisement that it was recruting hunters. Naturally, I sent over my application. After about two weeks, they'd accepted a few hunters, so I figured the spot was full and I should just move on. A bunch of my friends from my previous guild are in another guild on the server called The Hammer Clan (THC), which isn't far behind Drama progression-wise (Drama can get C'Thun to phase II, THC is about to kill the twin emps). I talk to the guildmaster of THC and has says both that they have quite a few hunters and that a few people from my guild (Servants of Justice/SoJ) have app'd or joined THC recently and he doesn't want to make it seem like THC is headhunting SoJ members, but that he'd take a look at my application. So I send one in on Friday.

Yesterday, I have no offers, I have two applications out and haven't heard a word back about either one, so I'm thinking things didn't work out and I'll just roll with it. We clear MC and cloak of shrouded mists drops. Now, I've wanted that fucker since I first saw it on Rag's loot table months ago and, due to our open bidding auction system had been denied it a number of times. Another hunter bid me WAY up on it, as he did on the DS legs when those dropped a month and change ago. Just to give you some perspective, a full BWL clear is worth 50 AP. An AQ clear (Skeram-fankriss) is worth 60. I below 800 AP on my DS legs and 630 AP on this cloak, which are WAY more than either one has ever gone for, simply because they're both items I really wanted. I figure I'm not going anywhere because nothing has come of my applications, and I go all in and win the cloak (22 agi, 12 stam, 6 fr, 6 nr, fyi). I'm stoked, because, as I've said, I've wanted this cloak for a year.

Which brings us to today. I'm sitting around Azshara getting water and killing random stuff and I ask the GM of THC what the status of my application is. He's like, "Oh, I told our recruiting officer to move it to the prospects section. I'll do that now." That was all I got. That's, apparently, how he chooses to welcome people to the guild. There was no, "Congratulations, we've decided to accept you" or "here's what we expect of you now that you're a recruit" just what I type, almost verbatim. Whatever, it was an offer to be in a guild that's making good progress and in which I have a lot of good friends.

So I make my good bye post for SoJ, post it and gquit, which was rough. I got about 2 million tells about it and, honestly, it wasn't a happy thing to do. There are some really great people in the guild and I'm not looking to screw them over or piss them off, it just wasn't the right place for me anymore.

In the midst of the "OMFGUGQUIT" tells, the GM of Drama sends me a tell. "Hey, we had a really active hunter quit this morning, so we have a spot available if you want it."

Insert shocked silence here. It's a rare day when you get an offer to join a guild. It's a rarer day when you quit a guild. And it's a very rare day when you get an offer from two guilds less than 15 minutes apart split up by an emotional gquit, and one of those guilds is a guild with some good friends in it and the other guild has the distinction of having been the first guild worldwide to clear BWL. I really didn't know what to do with myself.

So I told the GM of Drama, "Hey, I'm a litle mixed up right now. I could use some time to think about my decision, is that ok?" To which he responded, "Sure, I want you to make an informed choice. Take all the time you need, we have a spot waiting for you if you want it." Cool, some breathing room.

Then I send a tell to one of my good friends in THC teling him about Drama's offer. First he says, "Apparently you were supposed to be approved as a THC recruit a few days ago, I dont' know what happened." He then tells his GM about it, and the GM of THC sends me a tell saying, "So I heard Drama gave you an offer. Our recruitment period is 10-14 days, so if you're interested, you should take their offer." I told him the same thing I told the GM of Drama, "I'm a little overwhelmed right now, I'd like 24 hours to think over it." And his response was, "I don't have time for this...if you have any shred of desire to join Drama, join them, but I won't wait for you to decide."

I don't like being told what to do, so that made my decision rather easy. A GM who understands that 24 hours to make a decision that will effect how hundreds of subsequent hours of play time will be spent speaks a great deal to how he runs his guild in a way that takes into account the needs of its members, in contract to a GM who doesn't seem to care about that. And with that, I joined Drama.

I had a lot of angry former guild mates who think I loot-whored and cashed out my DKP knowing that I was leaving, which I really didn't, and if I did cash out, I certainly paid a serious premium on an item. It usually goes for 250-400 AP. Nowhere in our item-record has it broke the 500 AP mark before last night. So if I had ended up staying (which I thought I'd be doing at the time), I would've been deep in the hole. I feel kind of shitty about having taken a nice item and then left, but it was a very high priority item that I've let others have for cheap in the past because they'd been in the guild longer and, honestly, is the only item I've been going to MC for for the last month.

My friends in THC are all a little pissed at me because they put their necks on the line to get me an invite and then the way things worked out I got accepted and then rescinded my application, which might hurt their standing in their guild. Also, I don't get to be in a guild with them, which pretty much sucks, since I like them all a lot. And I've been told in no uncertain terms that if Drama doesn't work out, I'm not welcome to apply to THC again ever. I don't blame them and it's a natural consequence, but it's an unpleasant consequence.

It just sucks that I'd actively avoided trying to have exactly this happen and then it happened anyway. I put out the app with Drama and Drama alone, waited a healthy amount of time, received no response and safely assumed I'd been tacitly rejected. So I apply to the next guild on my list that isn't actively recruiting but that I might get into because I have friends there. Although they decided to approve me almost immediately, they didn't tell me about it. Through some administrative snafu I didn't hear about my acceptance until I asked them about it some four days later, during which I'd gone to MC and gone all in on a cloak. And THEN Drama invites me.

If either guild had gotten back to me reasonably quickly, this whole thing would've been avoided. I would've either joined Drama or known they hadn't accepted me and then could've app'd THC without having another app "pending" in the meantime. If THC had told me I'd been recruited when they decided I was recruited, I would've gquit SoJ on Saturday and never been on the MC run in the first place. And then for them to both tell me within fifteen minutes of one another? Honestly, what the fuck kind of crazy shit is that?

I really wish the GM of THC had given me some time, because, honestly, I think I would've ended up going there, but at the moment I wasn't ready to have to make the call, and his fairly insensitive response, especially compared to the GM of Drama's very accomodating response, did not bode well for starting off on the right foot with the guild. I'm very glad to be out of my old guild, though I'm sorry I've left looking like a loot whore out to screw them. I'm glad to be in one of the best guilds in the game right now, though I'm disappointed that I have to make new friends, since I don't know anyone in Drama very well. I'm disappointed that I didn't get to join my other friends and that their GM thinks less of me for the decision I felt forced into making.

Just based on tonight, I really like Drama's attitude and players. They act more like a group of friends who play together and less like a job, which is what SoJ always felt like. I think I made the right choice, but the circumstances all make it feel like the wrong choice in the short term.

As one of my RL friends who plays on a different server pointed out, "Dude, it's a game. Join the best guild you can and come drink with me if you need a friend. If they're giving you shit about it, fuck them." I think he's on to something...

If you read this far, feel free to comment or whatever. Thanks for hearing me through.