Last night, the unthinkable happened… an event that will have wide-ranging repercussions that will and resound through the very fabric of Azeroth, with echos in far off Outland. Compared to this, Cataclysm will be but a faint whisper of an aftershock. Dragon’s stopped in their tracks, and raised their heads, testing the swirls and eddies of magic that permeate the fabric of Azeroth. Garrosh Hellscream woke in a cold sweat, the vestiges of an un-recallable nightmare fading into the gloom. The Lich King in the middle of his speech to Svala Sorrowgrave, suddenly began sounding like Alvin the Chipmunk. Hogger suddenly went “Hrrrmmmmuh?” and fell dead after being hit with a staff by a level 6 mage.
Okay, it’s wasn’t that big a deal. But it was something that I really did not expect to happen. Nick and I joined Crits and Giggles.
As the post activity on my blog shows, I’ve been busy. Softball season ties up my Saturdays, but when all-stars rolled around, and my daughter made it, that went from “Saturdays” to “weekends”. I’ve bemoaned at length the normal challenges our guild faced, having such a small core membership, and apparently, the inevitable finally caught up with us. I wish everyone the best, have fun. That’s what it’s all about.
Meh, high-road be damned. It’s my blog, and as best I could tell, none of my ex-guildies ever read it anyway. I’m feeling something that’s a cross between hurt, bitterness, and just plain sadness. Nick and I have could have been in Crits or Apathy months ago, and been raiding our little hearts out, but we stuck with our friends. I’ve sat around Dalaran for hours, turning down raid invites, because I wanted to stay freed up in case my guildies showed up and we could put together a heroic. I cheered my ass off when our group cleared their first heroic. While my guildies were working the auction house, and buying gear because they were too shy to run heroics, I was spending my money on guild tabs, a tundra-mammoth so I could run lowbies to flight points, repair bots, etcetera.
And then I stopped being on every night of the week, and my weekends were taken up by my daughter’s tournaments, and I logged on to find our core group gone, without a word. When I asked, I was told “they had no one to play with”. Ah well. I hope you find people to play with, and I hope they can keep you amused. I do wish you the best.
And a friend of twenty-five years who never mentioned a word of any problems in the guild to me, who in fact had been telling me over the past few months how well I handled the role of “cat herder”, lectured me on my lack of leaderships skills and “selfishness” - when she could finally be bothered to even return an email. Yah, sweety, I hear ya. Thanks for “smoothing things over” with everyone, while keeping me in the dark. Hope you enjoy those glacial bags that I bought for you because you were bitching at me about people filling up the guild tab that you paid for.
::Deep Breath:: Ok, got that off my chest. Cathartic. And yes, I know that all that is MY perception, and they may see things entirely differently. It’s over, it’s done, move on.
And to return to our regularly schedule programming, move on we did. I managed to get the guild bank someone straightened out, and promoted Zachiel, my utility toon to GM, and then told RG she could pull the trigger. And it was done. And it was good.
After a chorus of welcomes from the Crits crowd, and getting Nick in, we did a random, then went for Magister’s Terrace, first normal, then normal again, because Sol and Nick didn’t realize they needed to complete the quest to get into the heroic, and then heroic. It was a learning experience. For example, I learned that despite the tank running around and chain-aggroing everything in site, there was in fact method to the madness, and that did not in fact mean that I should start long-range pulling mobs standing off to the side. Go figure. My bad.
And as RG mentioned in her post today, the Phoenix Hatchling dropped twice in a row, and she didn’t get it. Nick and I will have to start scheduling play-dates for our new pets.
After that, RG was off to help Hartbane, and I responded to a call from a guildie in WG, only to undergo multiple ass-handings. I see I’m going to have to rebuild my PvP set, and get back in the swing of things. That, and get my ‘lock leveled. I still enjoy the mage, but there’s no doubt who my eventual main will be.
Holy shit. It just hit me. I have a guild full of people. Lots and lots of people. There’s bound to be some toons around my lock’s level to play with. Don’t get me wrong. One thing I could always count on from my ex-guildies was help, if they were on. (Despite my self-indulgent rant above, don’t think for a moment that these are “bad people”. It was just a bad situation that was poorly handled all around. ) But I don’t always WANT to have an 80 running me through instances or quests. I *like* challenge, and learning to play my toon. Simple math says I’m going to see more of that.
Most cliche’s have at least some truth behind them, and my own life experience has taught me that when something happens that seems earth-shaking, and terrible, it’s likely just The Power’s That Be forcing you into the change that you already knew, in the back of your mind, that you needed to make. One door closes, another opens.
To all my new guildies… it’s good to be home!
