Project Lore

50 DKP minus if you don't get the reference.

It's hard not to get attached to guild mates when you spend hours on end online with them working though complex strategies and making friendly jokes at their expense. On top of that, add on real-life friendships with said guildies and you've got one heck of a bond. That's been my WoW world ever since I first started out in Vanilla. During a hiatus from playing, those same friends were groomsmen in my wedding. And when I picked up the game again after WotLK came out, we picked up where we left off in-game. There were a plethora of benefits of having a guild of just friends from RL. No awkward getting-to-know you phases, no hesitance of saying something which may offend them, basically no drama, and a hell of a good time. But there also were drawbacks: the main one being that rarely were there more than five of us on at a time, so any 10-man or more content had to be PUGed. We struggled with how to remedy that problem for months. For a while, we were hopeful that we could find another small guild to partner up with for 10-man content. That didn't pan out. We also spoke about starting to recruit, making our core group the officers and bringing in more members. But that also seemed to take away the point of us having a friends-only guild. I also worried whether newcomers might feel left out from all our inside jokes and already-forged bonds. Finally, it came down to it, and a couple of us decided to look into finding another adult, somewhat casual raiding guild, and see how many of us they would absorb. I did a little research and found the friendliest bunch of players I could, and ran a couple of trials with them. My husband went first. A couple of our original guild mates didn't like the idea of playing with people they didn't know IRL. I stood torn for a couple of days. Not wanting to betray my friends by leaving, but also wanting to see more content. I really shouldn't have worried so much. After I decided to switch guilds, a lot has stayed basically the same. We still do a lot of 5-man content together. Now, 4 of us original buddies are in the new (to us) guild, and a few decided to stay behind. We're building up new friendships with a group of really fun people, and have been running 10- and 25-man raids regularly. But more on that later. So, what's the point, you may ask. This whole experience has reminded me how emotional this game and all of its different aspects can be. I was so incredibly torn about switching guilds and changing that little name plate that hovers above my toon. It's amazing, in a way, the sense of camaraderie  that develops between groups in-game. Already, from playing with this new group for about the past month, I can see that it's not just between people with real life bonds. The in-game ones also can be quite strong. Has anyone else felt this sense of uncertainty when it comes time for a /gquit? How did you decide whether it was time to move on?