So I’m actively shopping for a new guild. I’ve been approached by several guilds due to a post on a low-level alt in the Guild Recruitment forums.
Some of them just don’t appeal to me. Sorry, I don’t want to raid for five hours at a time, five days a week. Hell, I don’t want to raid five days a week, period. I’m looking for 3-4 days, preferably for about 3 hours.
The top choices right now are a guild on Hyjal and another on Skywall.
The Hyjal guild (8/12 HM ICC25) seems really nice, with decent people and a good economy on the server. The GM is pretty awesome and I chatted with him, the healing lead and a couple of the guildies for an hour or so the other night. The raiding times are Sun/Mon/Wed/Thurs from 8:30pm-11pm ET. Those are the same nights I currently raid and 10 hours a week instead of 12, in sweet little 2.5 hour chunks. Not to mention the fact that the raid *ends* when my current raids begin! How awesome is that? I can have a late-ish dinner, then go raid, then go to the store at 11-11:30 or so if I’m missing milk or have a chocolate craving or something!
The Skywall guild (7/12 HM ICC25) raids Mon/Wed/Thurs from 9pm-1am. So I’d get Sunday off entirely and still have the same amount of raid time I do now, just a little more compressed.
“Kurn,” you may ask, “what the hell? Aren’t you 11/12 HM in ICC 25?”
“Why yes,” I would reply, “I am.”
“And you would go BACKWARDS in progression?” you may ask, perhaps with incredulity in your voice.
“Yes. I would,” I would reply.
Here’s the reason: I am tired of idiots and imbeciles. I am tired of abuse and blame.
In light of yesterday’s revelation, I better know why I’m looking for a new guild where the people don’t SUCK. It’s because I want that more social atmosphere paired with progression. I like approximately three people in my current guild. Maybe four. I loathe the MT/GM. I’m not speaking to the raid leader at the moment. One of the OTs won’t stfu when I tell him I don’t want to talk about X, Y or Z (guild politics, mostly) and don’t get me started on the moronic DPS who don’t know how to STOP DPS or how to move out of my range during Empowered Shock Vortex. Ahem. I’m getting cranky again. :)
Sure, there are a lot of 11/12 HM ICC 25 guilds looking for a holy paladin. But ones that don’t raid HARDCORE and ones that meet my requirements (Alliance ONLY, non-PVP, to start with) are pretty few and far between.
So what makes these two guilds “special”?
The GMs of both guilds not only posted in my thread but contacted me at the email address I left and then responded to questions I had promptly, politely and with a good deal of humour. They treated me respectfully, were honest with me about their progression and why they’re seeking out a new holy paladin. I also basically gave them both the third degree about their healing leads and healing teams.
So far, though the Hyjal guild has the advantage on raid times, the Skywall guild has the advantage with the healing. On their heroic Saurfang kill, the GM (resto shammy, who isn’t the healing lead) healed THE FIRST FOUR MARKS ON HER OWN.
No joke. I saw the parse. They got six marks. She handled four. They had five healers. She was the fifth mark and a priest was the sixth.
And I was bitching about handling marks 1/2 alone. Seriously, this is someone who knows how to heal. I LIKE people who know how to heal! They are awesome! Strangely, I’ve never known a great healer who was a complete tool, either.
The Skywall GM also believes strongly in working with their raiders to up their performance. Unlike my current guild who will either keep someone who sucks because they need X class (see: Idiot Priest) or will throw out someone who isn’t performing rather than talk to them about things first, the Skywall guild works with apps and members alike.
Funny story, I was going to implement that in the Wrath of the Lich King version of Apotheosis, but then Apotheosis fell apart.
The Hyjal guild has more perks, I think — guild repairs, guild consumables, etc. But I don’t think they have the level of effort and care that the Skywall guild has.
Truth be told, I was almost certainly going to go to the Hyjal guild, but the Skywall guild seems fairly compelling.
Another factor to consider with the Skywall guild is that it’s on the same battlegroup as my old server, Eldre’Thalas. The thought of renewing some acquaintances… well, either I would love to or I would leave the party instantly, haha.
So, Whirlwind Battlegroup people, Reckoning Battlegroup people, tell me of your random dungeon queues and the quality of those groups! ;)
I wish you the best of luck in finding a Guild that fits your personality and playstyle. As I touched upon in my (admittedly late) comment a few columns back, while I can’t relate specifically to your situation, I do know what it’s like to suddenly find yourself looking for something better.
In my case, I have found a Guild that appears to be a perfect fit for me, and I’m hopeful that this third Guild of mine will prove to be the long-term charm.
And I happen to be in the Reckoning battlegroup, actually. As is probably typical, I’ve had some extraordinary experiences in my cross-server Dungeons. Both extraordinarily good, and extraordinarily bad. Alas, I rarely pay particular mind to the realms that those people are from, and even if I did, I don’t know what the “hot” Guilds are on those servers. Sorry I can’t be of too much help. :/
Holy shit.
FOUR MARKS on her own?
Kurn – as far as a PvP server goes, I’m here to state that it’s completely overblown. I have been engaged precisely time since I xferred to the server (more on that in a sec) and most folks seem to leave well enough alone. Heck most run away from me – and that’s when I’m in my Holy gear.
The one time I got killed was, my own fault. See, I hate gnomes. It was the number one driving force to make me faction change the second it was offered. So I killed this gnome mage once or twice doing some dalies. He then caught up to me somewhere else, and did a /wave right before he pyroblasted my face off. After that, we just kept a respectful distance from each other.
Good luck finding a new home. Don’t come to Stormscale (you wouldn’t anyway, it’s PvP) if you like WG though. I think I’ve been involved with one WG loss so far, and I’m pretty sure that was because we fell asleep at the walls.
I’d be curious to see if the 4 marks weren’t entirely healed by CH. Get them all standing closish together and just spam away.
Will – thanks for the well-wishes and the info about Reckoning. :) I’m sure that most battlegroups have a small amount of uber fail and a small amount of uber win and everyone else is in the middle, but I’m also sure that some battlegroups are better than others and some battlegroups are worse than others. I like knowing what I’m walking into. :)
X – I’m still boggling.
Ad – Thanks for the comment. :) I levelled my mage from 1-30 on a PVP server with my brother’s warrior and it was nightmarish. Then again, this was during Burning Crusade and was just the one server and we were lowbies, but we were toyed with by a level 70 rogue for over an hour in Stonetalon. Still, I vowed that I never wanted to experience that kind of play again. ;)
I do like Alliance-dominated WG, because it gives you Stone Keeper’s Shards and I turn those into honor for gems. Plus easy pugs for VOA. Sounds like Stormscale is like the opposite of Proudmoore, where Alliance pugs for VOA form without even checking to see if we have it. ;)
As to the 4 marks, most of it was CH, but three of them were in melee, which made it viable. I just looked at the log again and she was making good use of RT, LHW and CH, rotating the person she cast CH on, rotating the RT target… Pretty nuts!
Whirlwind is pretty rad. You could do randoms with me!
…oh god, you’d have to do randoms with me. D:
By “me”, Rilgon means “us”… I would go lolret for you to heal, Kurnsicle! <3
woooooo Skywall!
Well, ok, I can’t actually help you at all because I play horde on Skywall, so I don’t know the ally side at all, or what their Q times are like. However, our server is nice and stable, and medium population. Horde complains that we suck at WG, but I don’t think that is actually true (Archavon’s log says we tend to win it a bit more than Ally does, but it’s close to 50/50 if we have WG during prime time or not). PvE is dominated by Ally on Skywall, Horde really does suck at Raids. Of the top ten guilds on the server I think there are all of 3 horde guilds.
Hey, at least I can totally /wave or tree boogie at you in Dal :P
also:
I’m with Kurn on PvP realms. They suck. The main reason I quit playing the first time was that leveling on a PvP realm sucks, having level 60s camp you when you are level 20 sucks. Finding out that Hellfire has become the next South Shore when you come back to try out DKs, sucks.
I’m actually not BAD at PvP, and I do enjoy it. I just don’t enjoy ganking from either side. Some the most fun I had on Frostmane was dealing with would be gankers (watching a level ?? pally have to bubble/lay on hands because a bunch of level 40s decided to fightback is friken funny!), however most of the time it is spent either stunlocked (there was a rogue that would single my out in IF and just stun lock me for as long as he could), or face down waiting for the idiots to stop corpse camping you.
I guess I’ve been lucky on the leveling side of things. A bunch of us started some new toons and have been slowly leveling them up. Maybe it’s because it’s late in the xpac and everyone is gone – but I’d think that would lead to even more people griefing the alt/rolled lowbies.
Of course with the LFD you can go from 15 to 80 and never leave your trainer’s side – but that’s not very fun (IMO).
I’m from the skywall server!!! RoAr!!
Guild even……. Roarrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh God, they’ve found me! ;) Hi Boo. :)