A Sarnak, a Goblin and a Burynai walked into a bar, and seeing all were of an adventuring type, decided to form a guild together. They went on many adventures, and after awhile, realized that though they really liked each other, they had different goals. The Sarnak loved exploring and seeing new places. The Goblin loved battle, and would fight anything. They Burynai liked finding shiny things. And so each would make excuses not to do things together, so they could do more of the things each loved best.
Kind of feeling the same way about my guild. The guild leader quit the guild day before yesterday; probably to go to the PvP server full time. The guild news page, when it was updated, was often updated to show how he was doing over there, instead of any of the guild’s accomplishments, of which we had few. But then, he did blaze to level 80 and buy all his masters, so maybe he’s just left to join a lot of the old hardcore EC people over in Deus Ex Machina.
All this came up yesterday while I was in Unrest, desperately trying to level (and I did, Ding 75!), when we had a guild meeting in Ventrilo. What it basically came down to, was we weren’t being hardcore enough about leveling, or logging in to do KoS zones. I immediately brought up the soul-killing seven day a week raiding schedule; no person with a real life could ever do that, and I hadn’t been for a long time. EQ2 is not my life, and four-five hours a night, every night, is not “hardcore”, it’s crying for an intervention.
I mentioned that only kids have that kind of time, and was immediately jumped on by a kid who said he didn’t have that kind of time EITHER.
They reluctantly agreed to perhaps consider that at some time (this has been an issue for a lot of people leaving the guild, and I’ve considered leaving as well because though I don’t raid 7 days a week, playing an alt to avoid being required to raid when I would like to play my main for fun for once can’t be a good thing).
The leadership (what remains of it) seems to think we are the Eternal Chaos of two years back; the top guild on the server and one of the top guilds server-wide. We aren’t. Those people all burned out. And those who DID eventually return to the game, mostly joined other guilds. Those of us in the guild now like to raid, but EQ2 is not the core of our lives – we want to see everything, but it doesn’t have to be tomorrow. We like to work on hard content, but not every day.
That was the guild I was looking for when I joined. The constant turmoil of people leaving because we’re not hardcore, or because the raid schedule is unrealistic, or for other reasons…
Sigh. In other (game) news, Dera, my cleric, dinged 73 and picked up some new spells. The night before last, I did my first raid two boxing troubadour and cleric, and, as expected, I ended up focusing largely on healing, with my bard just plinking arrows from a distance. I’m not sure I want to make that my regular way to play.
I also finished the three language quests in Kylong Plains and Fens of Nathsar and got my action figures :) Placed them on my bed stand table, where the cat will probably knock them over. The cat, or the mantis, or the naga, or the flying clockwork, or the harpy, or the…