Two months ago, I left the guild I’d raided in through most of WotLK and been an officer in for over a year, and joined a friend’s raiding guild. Alas, our friend’s guild had a bad case of Main Tank Syndrome plus a RL revolving door and start time. Although offered the opportunity to run the B team raid and thus have complete control over the RL and start time, in a guild that is now 11/12, my SO and I both put raiding on the back burner for the first time in over 5 years (5.5 years for the SO.)
Truth be told, my RL schedule has been too hectic for the past month to take on progression raiding prep, let alone leading a raiding team. But this leaves me at loose ends. Yes, I have a whole army of neglected alts who would love some attention. But my World of Warcraft — from the time my druid hit 58 and stepped into MC to heal our META guild’s raid– has revolved around raiding. Not always cutting edge, top 5 on the server raiding (though there has been that too), but I’ve always been a part of a regularly scheduled raid team since that first night of raiding.
It feels weird to not need to make any flasks.
It feels weird not to be watching tank spot videos and pestering people to read Jaded Alt’s strats.
It feels weird to be poking around on alts in the evening instead of slaying Internet dragons with friends.
I don’t think this hiatus from raiding will be permanent, but I do think it’ll be longer than a vacation break. It’s absolutely exhausting to think about trying to find a guild that raids horde-side, 6 PT start or a bit later, with fun and friendly and interesting guildies. I am positive it can be done, but I don’t feel like I have the energy or the time to do it right now. And my schedule with the classes I’m taking means I don’t have a more open schedule for raiding at the moment. But I know that once 4.2 hits the live servers, the urge to raid will likely tip the balance back to “must raid!” from the “not enough time to find the right fit in a guild.”
One thing I know for certain is raiding progression is not enough reason to stick it out in a guild where you don’t connect with the other people, or worse yet, they don’t even connect with anyone else. I’ve already spent too much time in guilds where folks were only all about the raid and were PUGging 5-mans alone in a sea of 25+ guildies online, in-between bouts of snarking at each other in the guild forums. I want more than that. And I’m positive I’ll eventually find it.
As I mentioned to you on Twitter, Shadow Rising would love to have you guys join us in raiding. We start raiding at 5:30 pm PST but usually don’t really get going until about 5:45 pm. If you were to make it at 6 you would be right on time for the first boss pull of the night.
Tuesday/Wednesday 5:30pm to 9 pm PST
We are on Drak’Tharon Horde. If anything come roll an alt. You’re welcome in any capacity. 🙂
Sometimes a break from a fun thing is good. Eventually, I promise you will want to come back and raid again — it just has to be something you REALLY want to do. A break is good, I promise!
When you just cannot wait to get home and play…then it’s time to return 🙂
I wish you guys were not on a PvP server — I just honestly don’t think I can hack that. I’m a total wuss…
🙂
I do hope so. Right now, with the bummer that raiding has been for me this expansion, I’m really just not sure what to do with myself. I am holding out hope I can eventually find a guild that is full of nice fun people that is also committed to raiding.
Totally late comment, but I know how you are feeling! I haven’t been able to raid at all since I came back after having my son. Raiding was such a big part of my play-time in WotLK! If I wasn’t raiding, I was usually doing things to prep for raids, like dungeons, farming, dailies…it’s odd to have the game change so much, but honestly I am too busy or tired to do anything a proper raider should! It does kind of bum me out though, especially since they are going to have a legendary caster staff.