Guild / Operation Woes

You may or may not have noticed that I haven't talked about running guild operations in a while. The reason for this is that my guild gave up on operations several weeks ago. We saw a brief resurgence of interest right after the server transfers, but then we lost two tanks at once and... yeah.

To me, it wasn't even a surprise. BoR has always taken a very casual approach to raiding, and not just in game. People would forget to sign up, or sign up and not show, all the time. Nobody cared. To be honest, as someone who was a dedicated raider in WoW for over four years, I was quite affronted by people's lack of commitment at the beginning. I couldn't argue that it worked though, due to sheer numbers more than anything else, and nobody else seemed bothered by it. So what if the raid starts an hour late? Does it matter if everyone's chatting away on Mumble in the meantime and having fun? I soon learned to go with the flow and love things as they were.

But alas, the numbers didn't last. I know from experience that it can be hard enough to keep a dedicated raid guild from falling apart when you suddenly find yourself one or more members short, but to me it felt like our casual raiders melted away even faster than snow in the sun once we stopped having the numbers for our "whoever shows up" style of operations. They wanted to be social and where the fun was, and if an operation wasn't guaranteed to happen and deliver entertainment, they had no qualms about completely ignoring it. I felt really bad while the guild leader still tried. Some nights I was the only one who showed up. I was actually kind of relieved when he let it go.

Part of me wishes that I had been able to help him, but I wasn't sure how. I already went through the whole "trying to save a failing raiding guild" thing in WoW, but while the guild did persist, I never felt like I had really made that much of a difference. I only remember that it left me feeling exhausted and anxious. With BoR I felt even more helpless, having only been a member for less than a year, not to mention my confusion in the face of the conundrum presented by the guild's purpose. I knew how to recruit raiders for a raiding guild (sort of), but how do you recruit raiders for a guild that is primarily social? As if guild recruitment wasn't hard enough already...

Anyway, this all might sound like a very depressing story, and it certainly did make me sad, but at the same time things are not as bad as they might seem. We do have active members left who chat and play together, just not enough for operations. I don't feel lonely. You may or may not remember that I wasn't sure whether I wanted to get back into raiding at all when I started playing TOR. While I did end up loving it in the end, operations remained just one of many pursuits that I enjoyed in the game, and not the main reason I played.

Still, it's easy not to miss raiding while I'm not actually missing out on anything. I cleared Explosive Conflict on normal multiple times, and I've never been that fussed about hard modes, so I've basically seen all that there is to see right now. There hasn't been a new raid since April. However, yesterday I read this developer blog about the upcoming operation Terror from Beyond, and that definitely sounds like something that I would love to see. Doesn't look like it will happen with my guild though.

I doubt it will be part of the group finder on release either. What to do? Ideally I'd like to find a friendly guild that'll let me come along for the ride a few times without forcing me to leave my home, but I realise that's quite demanding on my part. It's an issue that will definitely present me with some hard choices once the next patch comes out.