Guild Changes

About three weeks ago I posted about running Terror from Beyond for the first time, and about how I wasn't sure how my guild was going to proceed from there, seeing how we only had a handful of people left who were interested in running operations. Shortly afterwards I had to be AFK for a bit more than a week, and when I returned I came back to a message from one among that last handful, telling me that he had left BoR to raid with another guild.

I wasn't surprised, but I was a little miffed... at least initially. It didn't seem fair that other people were taking "the easy way out" and leaving me in the lurch while I was still agonising over how to keep things running in the guild. However, then I realised that in essence, I was suffering from an issue of my own making. I wasn't a veteran member or a high-ranking officer; I was only as responsible as I wanted to be. (Stubborn has a very topical post on that subject up today. At least I'm not the only one who has problems like that.) So I finally got over myself, admitted that I didn't really want to lead, and that maybe it was best for those of us who still wanted to raid to simply join other guilds. Nobody got mad, and the slightly resigned responses basically came down to: "Yeah, I guess you're right." We were still going to be friends. Phew.

Now my only problem remained that I knew nothing about how to find a good guild to raid with. I've been playing MMOs for six years and have been guilded for 99% of that time, but every single time I joined a guild it was because existing friends invited me along for the ride. I had no idea how to find a guild for a specific purpose. Fortunately I knew a couple of friendly people through random PvP (yay for the community-building effect of same-server warzones), so I started probing one of them about his guild. How often did they raid and on what level? I didn't even think to ask about their raid schedule or any other details like that. They were active and the couple of people I knew were friendly enough; that was going to be enough for me. I applied on their forums, got accepted, joined the guild - and done!

I've now been a member of Twin Suns Squadron for about a week and it's still a bit weird not to know anyone that well. I'm finding that I'm unusually shy because I don't want to commit any kind of social faux pas or make a fool out of myself while I'm still getting a feel for the general tone of the guild. Nonetheless, things have been going well so far.

I signed up for their more casual raid night, they had a space for me, and I got to participate in a nightmare mode run of Karagga's Palace, even though I'd previously only completed it on hard mode. Getting a new title on my first raid ("The Unyielding") sure felt rewarding. It also made for an interesting change of pace to be playing in a more progression-oriented environment again, as I suddenly felt acutely aware of how little attention I had paid to my PvE gear in the past few months (missing augments etc.). I must have felt pretty flustered about that, seeing how I managed to make it through the entire raid without noticing that my push-to-talk key wasn't working. ("Oh well, I'm the new person, of course they are ignoring me!") The absurdity of that thought made me laugh afterwards.

The op itself wasn't without entertainment value either. My favourite moment was when we were at Karagga, and the following conversation took place (paraphrased):

Tank: "Okay, so I'm going to tank him clockwise around the room."
[Fight starts.]
Someone else: "Dude, you said you were going clockwise."
Tank: "Yes?"
Someone else: "Well, you're not! You're going counter-clockwise."
Tank: "Eh, give me a break, it's been ages since I looked at one of those old-fashioned clocks!"
[We bork it up and wipe. As we line up for the next attempt...]
Tank: "Okay, so apparently I'm going to tank him counter-clockwise..."

And tonight I finally got to see Terror from Beyond story mode in its entirety. I'd forgotten how much fun operations can be when you're excited to see new content and don't have to worry about anything but your own performance. I'm really looking forward to seeing where things will go for me from here.