My Sorrow and Broken Hearted Story of my WoW Experience - 2 Years Ago

[Zefeh]

This is just a quick post as I needed someone that knows about WoW to talk this out with. - Not so quick, but if you don't feel like reading everything skip to the last paragraph or two for something you can talk/answer about.

At start of Cata, I was wish my old WotLK raiding guild that started just when Ulduar ended. I got to know many of the people, grew close and knew/treated them like a second family. We got Lich King down and even Heroic Lich King with the buff! The guild leader took had to take leave near the start of ICC and his second in command helped out by temporarily leading the guild. I was also one of those people and co-lead the guild for quite a while, using my Warrior alt and Resto Druid to help out whenever I could! When Cata came around, our old GM came back and things where looking great! I was finishing high school and I was raiding my hearts content out with the starting Cata content. Main'ed a hunter, alt'ed a Resto druid and everything was great!

That was when things started going sour. While we weren't a top end raiding guild, many of us knew/felt we where carrying people through raids that where bad. Our progression group was the main group and the 2nd raid group was often people from the progression raid groups alts helping the others in the guild through the raids. It got to the point where the progression raid group never ran and we swapped people to make it fair and give everyone a chance to raid. That was when people in the top raid group started leaving for other guilds to get progression and even heroics done.

I was thinking of the same thing, thinking about the "fat-heroic-loot" I could get if I just joined another guild. A few friends left to other guilds and some of them where convincing me to follow. That was when I made the stupidest mistake of my life. In the middle of progression raiding, something I wanted for a while but we weren't getting far with, I got fed up with how my GM wanted to try the boss fight. Words traded, I said I'll leave. I left, already had a guaranteed invite on the other guild and insta-invited to them.

I say this now, It is the biggest mistake of my life I have made so far. With illusions of grandeur and luster in my eyes I joined a completely new guild. With only one person I knew. Surrounded by strangers in a game that I played with close friends for over a year and 1/2. I raided! Joined the main group too! We progressed quite a bit. Got Heroic Al'Akir, Heroic Twin Dragons in the Cho'Gall Raid, and joined in on the Heroic Halfus/Maloriak/Atramedes/Chimaeron/Magmaw farm and preformed great! But outside of that, I still joined my old guilds ventrilo when my GM was offline. I still talked with my old guild while I raided with another.

It wasn't until the guild I transferred to started losing members to transfers to other servers. That guild fell apart. And when it started falling apart, I wasn't included in the fights. I took a break, came back in Firelands and I didn't preform up to snuff. There wasn't a spot for me in any raid group.

That was when I realized how stupid I was to leave my old guild. I left a family of close as hell friends to progress in a game. I thought I liked the game more than them. I realized how stupid I was and one day I logged back into the vent during a raid. I waited, asked to talk to the GM and I apologized sincerely and admitted that I left a group of friends that I missed dreadfully for stupid greedy reasons. I admitted it was/is still - the biggest mistake I made. I asked if I could just sit in vent and listen in, talk with people etc. He let me, said he wasn't really expecting me to apologize but admitted it would take him a while to accept it. I didn't really log back on, didn't really talk to them again much either. I started college, started playing League of Legends, sorta forgot about them. I added one of my closest friends on facebook and still talk to him today from time to time (The Co-GM, who flipped out one day and sorta left the guild without vent as he payed for the year of it of 30 man vent - not a story I know about).

I learned that you don't play this game for the raids, the gear etc. You play it with friends. Look at your guild, look at how you play WoW and see if this is you. Most will find it surprising! This game is meant to be played with friends. Without a Guild of friends, without that social aspect, this game isn't the glorious game that it is at heart!

All that brings me to today. Friends that I play LoL (League of Legends) have recently just given up on LoL. We've realized that it makes us angry, it's not fun, and we don't feel like we are having fun while playing and after a match the most prominent feeling felt is relief! So one of my friends played it on a custom server and suggested playing WoW. The stubborn friends was convinced after watching a popular streamer PhantomL0rd raid.
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Short Read Below
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I re-newed my account and found my old server Mok'Nathal dead! I was really surprised that it was so dead. My friends wanted to play Horde (For someone who has 2 level 85 Night Elves and a 82 warrior Night Elf with my second favorite race being Draenei who knows NOTHING BUT Alliance, this was really difficult).

I had too much emotional attachment to my characters so I decided I would just re-level with friends (One of them is SO SLOW-and is non-stop complaining that leveling sucks) instead of do the costly 25$ server transfer to 3 of my toons as well as the fact that they are Alliance.

Without knowing for sure that my friends are going to hit 85-90 I decided I would wait and if so, I would send my 80 Warlock - scroll of rez - over since I had no emotional attachment to it - over to the server.

That brings be to another reason for this post besides my heavy heart. I thought I should check why my server was so low on population. Went over to WarcraftRealms.com and checked. Mok'Nathal, a server I first started on years ago, is the lowest population realm in NA according to WarcraftRealms. . . .
http://www.warcraftrealms.com/census.php?serverid=752
310 People

I asked the question to myself - my characters are wasted in a empty server. Even if my friends don't follow through with playing at end game, should I transfer them?

So if you've read all that, I congratulate you and ask you this which will probably get a separate thread.
Transferring a Alliance to Horde - How much changes? Do you enjoy it? How many Achievements gets screwed?
Or is it better off staying Alliance? Alliance cities look so much better. Their music is so much better. To those that have done Ally-to-Horde, do you miss the epic-ness of Stormwind/Ironforge/Darnasus? Horde doesn't have much epic-ness in Org/Thunder Buff - Somewhat Undercity (Too cramped compared to Ironforge. Like wtf?

Anyway, that's the end of my rant/story. To anyone that comments after reading everything, thank you and I'll appreciate your opinions/discussions. The ones that haven't read everything and skimmed, I still appreciate anything you say regarding whatever you read. I just need someone to talk WoW too . . .

[Doktor Faustus]

Move to a more lively server, send scrolls to your friends (so they get a free lvl 80) and take it from there.

My guild since WotLK pretty much went into long-term hibernation after the first tier of Cata, but a few old players are coming back now (after having children, and being at home more :P).

Nostalgia is what keeps us going, coupled with the social element.

[Deleted]

I went through nearly the same (left my friend guild for a progression guild), and I can't tell you a lot of positive news. Your new friends probably won't stick to the game. If they hate levelling that much I don't think they will enjoy the grind in end game (farming loot, points, whatever).
I, too, changed to a more lively realm and leveled a new mage, but it was a mistake!
With WoD, it's my guess that a lot of people will come back to at least give it a try. Don't transfer your characters, maybe your old friends will log back in when WoD hits?

It's a game meant to play together. I feel you. I made the same mistake. I'm still looking for a place where to play now.

My advice is: level a char on a new, more lively server. But keep your old characters where they are, you might regret it, when people come back.

[Blitzdoctor]

Don't forget your old server will become more lively in the near future as they're busy connecting low population realms together.

[Blarglord69]

Yea ive been on mok forever it like it personally , i just do lfr and become grumpy when people dont try.

[Lente]

Hi there

Our guild have experienced what you have written in your post and its with a VERY sad heart that I tell you about our experience.
My friend and I were in a guild together with a GM from hell and decided we had enough so we decided to start our own guild so we can raid together. He is very good and I am very average. From the start we said we would be a social weekend raiding guild as we both worked and did not want to raid during the week. For some reason we were lucky and we found some very good raiders who joined us and our progression was very good.

I think what made our guild special is that we put everyone's real name in their notes and pretty soon we all knew each other by their real names. We became a close family and we knew everyone's good and bad points and we lived with it. I know our great raiders were carrying some average raiders but we were still doing well. But we battled to find good or even average raiders when someone left so we were very dependent on the commitment of our raiders.

Our raid times were also awkward for some, as we raid Sat and Sun 2pm - 5pm server time. We barely managed to get 12 raiders together for our main team and we had to cancel raids sometimes because we did not have enough raiders online. Some of the top raiders started complaining about our progression in that their alts in different guilds had better progression etc. Anyway, things were going okay until Blizzard announced their new ideas for the next expansion. If our little guild wanted to do heroics we would need 20 people. Knowing that our top raiders wanted to progress we started serious recruiting.
We chose 2 new officers to help my friend and I but the recruiting was going slow. Then during December my friend and I took a break and when we came back we found that one of the officers we promoted, who was also our main tank had a fight with some of the raiders and they all left the guild. With the loss of our main tank and some of our DPS's, and main raiders wanting to progress faster my friend just lost all motivation, as he and I had been running the guild and doing recruiting for 2 years and the pressure was starting to affect him. Together we decided to stop raiding for a while, and needless to say our main raiders all left to find progression raiding guilds.

Our family is broken. I see my friends on real ID and it just makes me sad. I don't even want to log onto WOW. I agree completely with you, it took me a long time to find a guild where i felt comfortable and where I made friends and it felt like home. Now that they are not there anymore I don't see the point to play the game. My friend has suggested we play Rift and Guildwars etc. but it is just not the same. I want my family back dammit!! I hope they are happy where they are now... no actually I hope they hate it and come back. Perhaps we will raid again during the new expansion but for now its just a sad story.

[gibbie99]

I went through nearly the same (left my friend guild for a progression guild), and I can't tell you a lot of positive news. Your new friends probably won't stick to the game. If they hate levelling that much I don't think they will enjoy the grind in end game (farming loot, points, whatever).
I, too, changed to a more lively realm and leveled a new mage, but it was a mistake!
With WoD, it's my guess that a lot of people will come back to at least give it a try. Don't transfer your characters, maybe your old friends will log back in when WoD hits?

It's a game meant to play together. I feel you. I made the same mistake. I'm still looking for a place where to play now.

My advice is: level a char on a new, more lively server. But keep your old characters where they are, you might regret it, when people come back.

I agree with this. I was in a dead realm at first. I did some raiding and really liked the raids (kara), but my guild was god awful. I'm talking 8 hour runs awful. 15 min between pulls awful. Otherweise people were nice. I did server xfer my main to a better server in a progresion guild and had alot of fun doing progression raiding. DUring that time, my friend decided to start another guild...horde. I was alliance. So for a while i was doing double duty, doing progression raiding and leveling horde side to be with my friends.

Anyway things change. The progression raiding guild is a distant memory, but I still play on my friends server. Actually, I now have 2 90s and a bunch of 80s on that server, and the other one, i haven't played in a few years. I think the only advantage is to see the story from both sides, horde and alliance.

Anyway life is short. You can do LFR to see the raids, being in aprogression raid team is no longer that important (whereas back in BC, that was the only wait to see the content and even for dungeons).

[Nuvuk]

Well thanks to Battle.net you can play with your friends online without being on the same realm. About the faction change though, I would create another toon and get to know the horde side but you can always faction change on to see is you like it. You should always have one top lvl toon from both factions. I play horde and kinda have a hard time adjusting to the alliance.

[Alopex Major]

You're a better friend than me. If mine tried to make me play Horde full-time I'd tell them where to stick it :P

With flex and LFR, your server doesn't matter as much now, though having a non-dead realm is good for the AH and such.

[-Superman-]

This right here is why I stopped raiding. When I had a "friend' pick raiding over our friendship. My RL best friend of 15 years turned on me and kicked me, and 11 other people from the guild to make room for all his new raid buddies. When I saw him at work the next day, he said, "Shit happens. I want to progress, and you fucks weren't trying hard enough." So instead of going to join a raid guild, he stripped the one we built together and hired mercenaries (paid for high end raiders to join).

Though in the end, he got what he deserved. Some one used the Dethrone option while he was on break, stripped it, sold it, and made sure to boot everyone in it. Bros before Video Games.

[Labruja]

I think what made our guild special is that we put everyone's real name in their notes and pretty soon we all knew each other by their real names. We became a close family and we knew everyone's good and bad points and we lived with it.

We do very much the same in our little guild. We also strongly believed in sharing everything we had in order to make raiding easier on the group. Cool-downs were used to gear those who did not meet the standard for Flex and Normals and we provided everything - from gems and flasks to food and enchants. Unfortunately people just used us to get themselves geared enough to get into other raiding guilds and kept setting us back. Now I'm no longer sure that helping everyone who joins the guild is a good thing to do.

Fortunately the core of our little family has stayed strong and the bond has not broken. I'm sure we will manage and we'll find people that are the right 'fit' for us. I do hope that it will be that way for you too Lente. Maybe your guild family will come back together in the new expansion and stick together this time!

Zefeh, thank you for posting this. It's given me hope that those I've cared about in the game will come home again, hopefully to stay. Good luck in finding a new guild to call your home. There are some really good ones out there that care about the members.

[Zefeh]

Let me first and foremost thank all of you for the responses I've received, it brings my spirits up and gives me hope that I can possibly have what I once had again in WoW!

Zefeh, thank you for posting this. It's given me hope that those I've cared about in the game will come home again, hopefully to stay. Good luck in finding a new guild to call your home. There are some really good ones out there that care about the members.

I hope so too as I would happily play again and enjoy conversions while running around circles in Undercity!

Our family is broken. I see my friends on real ID and it just makes me sad. I don't even want to log onto WOW. I agree completely with you, it took me a long time to find a guild where i felt comfortable and where I made friends and it felt like home. Now that they are not there anymore I don't see the point to play the game. My friend has suggested we play Rift and Guildwars etc. but it is just not the same. I want my family back dammit!! I hope they are happy where they are now... no actually I hope they hate it and come back. Perhaps we will raid again during the new expansion but for now its just a sad story.

I feel like that alot! My one friend suggested GW2/Tera etc and we play them but ONE INDIVIDUAL always goes full lazy mode and doesn't like to level. Now he doesn't have an excuse because he's starting to hate LoL. But I know what you mean when you say you want your family back! I want to turn on my computer and jump in vent and hear my old friends Rusty,Gush,Xadie,Lone,Thor,Justice,Mynxy,Shadow,Yadooh,Brains,Sno,Mittoq and any others that I forgot!

Thank you all for expressing your very familiar feelings! I don't feel alone in them now and it makes me feel like I can do this. That I can come back and play again! Thank you all!

[Deleted]

if you like alliance stay alliance and just change server, horde and alliance are equally epic, they just appeal to different tastes, nothing more.

ps: everybody knows horde is better but not everyone is strong enough to admit it /joke