I was in the guild, Giant Censored Robots, for a good time. I’m not one to simply guild hop; it’s usually things that cause me to leave a guild. The guilds I’ve been in, from first to last:

Warrior Nation – I spent a good year or two in this guild; it’s the first guild that I began to raid with. However, RL issues with the guy I was seeing at the time caused me to leave, and apply at Remorseless. I went back to WN when things were resolved with this… guy, but the depression of having wasted an entire year set in… Things had changed so much in WN, that I felt like I didn’t belong anymore, and so I moved on to Giant Censored Robots.

Remorseless – this guild was amazing; the first really “pro” raiding guild I’ve been in, and I love all of them still. The same guy who caused me to leave WN caused me to leave Remo as well; however, I’m still in contact with many of the people from Remo, and will probably go back to Arthas at some point on some toon to play with them again.

TG – Yet again the same guy, but this time… I found myself a heals leader, and a raid leader. Then, well, the GM sold his account, and the others in the guild weren’t too happy with that, so we all basically left, and it melted away… and I went for several months guildless, then went back to WN.

Giant Censored Robots – GCR was the first kind of hardcore raiding-type guild that I’ve been in – at least, it was a step up for me. I began to raid with them whenever Wrath hit; I piddled in T6 content with them for a little while, but it wasn’t until Wrath that I became an actual part of their raiding team. I’m still friends with some of the people in there, but what really pushed me out were the kinds of people in the guild; it upset me that someone could insult other players in the guild and still have a raiding spot (as precarious as it was), and the kinds of comments I was receiving after I took an hour out of my life to write a post in the forum outlining the things I saw in the guild that were going to be a problem – it became oversimplified by my guildies and was simply glossed over by most of them. It ended in me making a very brash decision, and trialing at Aftermath.

Aftermath – the guild I was part of for approximately a month and a half as a trial. The problem? They had a sudden surge in attendance… And I guess that I’m not one who wishes to sit outside of an instance for nearly 6 hours, or on vent for 6 hours when I could be doing other things. If I’m not needed, fine. Tell me. Let me go do my dailies and bullshit with my friends instead of wasting both of our time.

Where do I go from here? I’m not quite 100% on that myself; I have some friends in another guild that I’m looking at going to, while a friend or two in GCR are asking em to rejoin them (or at least making me regret my brash decision further). Frankly, I want to find a guild where I can live by my philosophy that raiding should be done with a team of friends – it shouldn’t be a time that I dread, or one that I feel apprehensive and nervous about. Have I found that guild through the ones with my friends? I certainly hope so.

On the other side, will I get to see the hard modes? Will I get to see the final final boss now? Or do I value my friends above that question? Can I set aside my desire to be “the best” and my competitive nature?

Admittedly, for a person who’s always seemed to find a place among top guilds, I find myself wanting more and more to just have fun while raiding – so yes, yes I can. I mean, it was fun raiding with GCR before all of the crap I received, but I want a guild I can joke around with and be myself – I’ll admit my sense of humor is a bit rough around the edges. I don’t feel like hard mode honestly matters in the face of friendship and fun – fun to me is not being told I’m “bad” for a rather humorous death in which I was tanking Auriaya for half a minute.

Even so, I’ll admit that I am looking at folding when it comes to playing WoW. I’m not too enthused by the attitude of many of the players – that you have to be in a “top guild” to be any good or to have fun. If it is going to become this serious of a game, then I would prefer to find destressing through other means – perhaps replace WoW with the hobbies that it replaced in my life.