Why bother

It seems that Caffeine's days as a budding stand-alone RP/raiding guild are over. We seem to be here mainly as a place to have a guild tag while gaining a bit of progression before finding a "real" group to raid with.

Maybe I'm overreacting. However, in the last month nearly everyone in the guild who raided regularly AS A GROUP has accepted posts in other guilds. Oh, you love us and you leave us an alt as a bone. I love you too. I want to progress with you. I would love to see a Kara group graduate AS A GUILD to start working on Mags and Gruul and to help new Kara raiders in our guild.

This just isn't going to happen, it seems. We are being left behind.

This really eats at me. I am not even sure I want to keep this guild going anymore. Part of the reason I pay my monthly dues to Blizz is to be able to progress with my friends, and all my friends on here are moving on.

Maybe it's time for Caffeine to move on.

Not only this, but ask yourself: how many of us actually RP?

How many of us are registered at http://AD-RP.com and get involved with the RP community?

How many of us get involved with storylines that other players in other guilds are involved in, and how many of us try to bring more of us in?

This is an RP guild and a raiding guild. We are an army. Not an army of one. Not an army of Thaag. We are compatriots in our fight against the Legion with our own, unique, and quirky flavor. But it seems the taste is not enough.

Like I said, maybe I'm overreacting. But it seems like there's been a trend over the last couple months. There's a lack of cohesion. It's my fault. I don't organize events enough. I work on alts half the time I'm on. I don't do enough to bond us as a guild. I've been a failure as a leader.

I just don't know what to do at this point.

Anyway, do what you feel you have to do.

This ship is sunk anyway.

{Ahem} if I may...

Not sure what this will be worth from
someone on hiatus and who doesn't plan to
raid, but I've noticed this situation going
on for some time now. It's sort of what I
was getting at in my other long-winded post,
albeit in my vague and noncommittal sort of
way.

Basically it seems that when people graduate
from Karazhan they also graduate from Caffeine.
The reason I suppose is that the big endgame
raids are, due to their size and insane difficulty,
dominated by a few big raid-grinder guilds
who only want to run with people wearing their
brand.

What I keep thinking is that if everyone who
left had stuck there'd be enough people in
Caffeine to do these raids. It was the same
thing with Karazhan - it took us forever to
get 10 people in there because just about
the time we looked ready a key person would
leave to go with a bigger guild.

But, I suppose it's not fair for me to expect
people to wait weeks or even months to do the
only official content thing left for them to
do at uber-70. Maybe it's not fair for me
to expect people to care what guild tag they
wear either, as most people in guilds are more
or less strangers thrown together very much
like in a workplace environment, and they
don't care whether it says Burger Barn or
Taco Loco on the sign out front.

This is why I never said anything when
people left, and still don't blame anyone
(although as far as Bhug is concerned, when
you leave Caffeine, you leave Caffeine if
you get my drift). I do care what guild I'm in
however and would much prefer Caffeine
to be something unique and cool and worthy of
solidarity instead of just being another revolving
door through Karazhan.

What to do about it? Well, I'm not the leader
so I won't break out my pie charts and manifesto,
but I will tell you where I am in this game and
why I joined Caffeine, and hopefully others will do the
same, and maybe some consensus can be reached.

Honestly the official endgame content of WoW
has left me rather flat. It's all about raids,
and I just don't enjoy them very often. I used to
like battlegrounds but at level 70 that too is
dominated by full time big-guild people in tier
whatever or arena gear. I'm not the hardcore
player I used to be, and the new PvP left me in
the dust.

So now I goof off. I fish, make
elixirs for folks, do some of the more fun
dailies, or set myself challenges like trying
to solo a dungeon using only totems, that kind
of crap. Sometimes I just ride around and see
the sights, maybe go out to Hillsbrad on a Friday
night and save a few little Hordies and watch
the carnage. Or I do BGs in the low brackets where
people can't outgear me all to hell. Basically I
play to relax and have a little fun in the world.

As for RP, I admit I have not yet gotten
involved much in the AD RP groups, but
that's not due to any reluctance to be in
character. My guys and I are who we are,
not terribly comfortable meeting a lot
of new people at once.

That's basically where I stand these days. I don't
know how closely that jibes with the sort of
members you want, but I hope the guild survives
and has some space for addled old shamans.
I joined Caffeine because I knew you (Thaag) were
one of the fun characters in the game and
figured this might be the place for more interesting
happenings than just the usual endless instance
grinding.

But I joined at a low point in the guild's history when
many of the founding members had stopped playing
and there were hardly any active characters. After
the Dark Horizon merger we suddenly had a swell
of people, and turned into a pretty conventional
midsized WoW guild - which is to say a AAA farm
team for the big guilds.

About the time I took off I got the feeling
the guild was slipping away from your original
intent. Maybe a sort of re-start is in order, with a
clear and focused mission statement of what you,
the founder, would like the guild to be.
See who wants on board, and make 'em prove it.

And shipmates, not speaking up now would be
a pretty good sign of not wanting on board.

And Thaag, don't kick yourself. I'm an officer
too and haven't done jack squat to organise
the guild. I haven't been playing because
I'm trying to stay as focused on RL tasks at
hand as possible these days, but if you need
any help with anything let me know. You tried
to do a cool thing making this guild, and I'd
hate to see it go down the bog.

You pretty much summed up my thoughts, but there's still a few points I'd like to make.

The ship may be sinking, but it hasn't hit rock bottom yet. In fact, we still have more members then we ever had before the Dark Horizon merger.

I had not done much while you were gone because I was afraid you might not like my decisions. That was incredibly stupid. I had basically allowed the guild to slowly dissolve due to lack of activity.
Know what? The exact same thing is happening right now, and I don't want to repeat my mistakes.

Sure, a lot of people left. I believe we should see that as an opportunity to get a fresh team instead of grieving over it. Everyone's playing alts instead of recruiting and actually doing something with the members we still have. I'm just as guilty of this as everyone else.

It's time to wake up and act.

CHEER! ty bhug! words of wisdom as usual