A Cataclysmic Slump

“Oh look, a barbecue!”   Wanders away from raid.  We wipe on Sindragosa again.

Okay, it isn’t exactly like that, but some days it feels like that.  A guild is a community, and while we have reserves for weeks where someone has vacation, or gets overloaded at work, we don’t have the people to bring in when 13 people take the night off.

Fortunately, we’re not along.  Every summer WoW fans experience this.  I don’t know how our player base has such a selectively bad memory (you’re telling me you know every boss strat from Molten Core, but forgot we had a slump last summer too?).  It turns out the pasty white raid community loves the outdoors.  Myself, I’m a redhead.  We’re allergic to sun.

Somewhat related, we’re at the end of an expansion cycle.  Cataclysm is about to begin Beta trials, and with the exception of a small dragon and his pals, we’re not getting any more content this time around.

How is my guild handling this?  Well, we’re not doing it perfectly.  In terms of raids, we still have a 10 ICC that runs smoothly (if our perfect group shows up).  Our 25 has recruited some new people, and they’re fitting in well (although I wish I could offer them more).  There has also been suggested to me by a number of our members that we absorb/recruit a 10 player guild to fill out our roster.

I haven’t actively looked for this, but a few days ago a guild previously raiding 25 content and in a similar spot to ours suggested the prospect of a merger.  It would be tricky, as there’s a lot of pride on the line.  New members need to feel welcomed into guild culture, and old ones need to remain important.

If this is our answer to a raiding slump, to strengthen our membership and tighten our team for more Lich King progression, I’m willing to step up to that challenge.  Tomorrow, I’ll post on how I’d like to see this go down, ideally.