Guild Upheval

Well, it's time to change the name of this blog. Yesterday, I finally decided to leave my guild, AEAE. A good friend of mine left with quite a few of his friends to start his own guild. While I did not choose to join him (his raid times just didn't work for me), I also decided to leave. Several of the folks who had been running Naxx10 with me are coming with me, and we are starting our own little guild.

I tried to minimize the drama of leaving and to make the transition as smooth as possible. While it came suddenly, at the same time this had been building for quite a while. I know I've vented a bit here with some of the frustrations I've experienced with the guild politics and tension AEAE. When Pat left the guild, and my raid group began talking about leaving as well, I reallized that it would probably be very good for me to leave as well. As I've also mentioned here, I'm incredibly busy this term with school and stressed out about grad school preparations. Getting out of that added stress of large guild drama should be a load off my back.

The Naxx group that broke off are planning on starting a little guild. One possible guild name we are looking at is Fianna:

"semi-independent warrior bands who lived apart from society in the forests as mercenaries, bandits and hunters, but could be called upon by kings in times of war"
-Wikipedia

I really like the imagery of this, and I hope it is the name chosen. However we are still looking at some others. While this is going to be a very small guild, and being GM would not be much of a stress, I'm planning on leaving that job to the couple who came up with the whole idea.

I'm hoping we can occasionally team up with some of our old guild mates for instance runs and the like. I plan to create a private channel and give it out to all my friends, so that we can stay connected and "PuG" from that channel rather from the general masses.

While I'm happy about being stress-free and excited about new possibilities with this new guild, I am also feeling rather down. I helped build AEAE from the ground up - I was in it since it's inception. It's a bit embarassing to admit it, but the feelings I have right now are a lot like breaking up with a boyfriend/girlfriend - even though it may be for the best, it can be really depressing and make you sad to think about all the memories you built together. Even if you broke up on good terms and will stay friends, something is still ending and it hurts.

My friend (who does not play) seemed shocked when I told him this story. He never suspected that WoW had drama. I laughed when he said that. Guilds have drama galore - as a guild leader you just have to try to minimize it and keep it between only those involved. Hopefully in a smaller guild where all are good friends and where I am not an officer, I will see less drama from now on!