WoW'ers stand up and be counted!!!

[The_Dude 1,142]

When I read this - about this microscopic raiding plan, where you are only allowed to participate in a few fights where it will be to everyones advantage - I just shake my head.

How can you stand it!?

Well I guess you can't - which is why you are guild shopping - the first time that happened I would have quit the guild.

I can't stand it, but there really aren't any other guilds that raid when I am able to, so there isn't much I can do. I started on the realm 2.5 years ago because it was the one that my wifes sister played on. I really didn't have any preference at the time and had no interest in raiding at the time, so i didn't care. My wife and I really don't play with each other in-game. She hates raiding and I love it, she's horde now and i'm alliance. I guess now, i'm looking for a specific situation and i'm going to need to do a lot of searching to find it.

[Andy and Kayla 45]

Those kinds of guild and raid leaders, who feel like these extremely specific, optimal raid compositions are the only way to down content, drive me crazy. Of course a good leader should always put some consideration into their raid make up, but if you need the absolute-best, constructed-down-to-microscopic-detail raid composition to down content, you're doing something wrong. Or you're just a douche bag. I can maybe place some more importance on the composition in 10 mans, because it matters a little more with fewer people, but I still don't think you need to be microscopic about it. The only case I can think of where I would be a little picky would be maaaybe if we were doing a hardmodes run in content that was still pretty new, but never in a general raid.

What used to be so great about raiding was, IMO, the teamwork, the comradery and the feeling at the end of it that you guys accomplished something. In a 40-man raid when a piece of loot dropped and peoples' responses were NOT full of entitlement and sulkiness if they didn't get the item, but instead along the lines of, "Oh, player X has really wanted that for a long time, you deserve that, gratz!" When people worked as a unit instead of just constantly trying to one-up each other.

I blame the first part on Arena, mainly because Arena has made people used to picking up loot a lot more quickly than they did in Vanilla endgame. It makes people feel like any piece of loot that they could use should be given to them, and that hurts the game a lot, to be quite honest. Of course not everyone fits in that category but that mindset is there for a lot of people that didn't raid pre-BC and it sucks. Raiding, for me, is about seeing the content and progressing. If I happen to pick up a piece of loot, awesome, but if not, I'm happy as long as we're getting content down. There are some jerky Loot Councils or corrupt DKP systems, but a lot of guilds genuinely try to do their best with loot as we did and it hurts guilds overall when that loot-####### attitude is present because it creates constant tension. I also blame Arena for a lot of class mechanic issues due to Blizzard trying to balance PvP and PvE but that's a separate issue.

I blame the second part on things like Recount and GearScore because I've seen it far too many times where a DPS will stand in the fire or pull aggro or won't switch targets when necessary because they're too busy watching their Recount meter to notice or worse, they will notice and just won't bother to do what they're supposed to because they don't want drop to second or third place on the chart.

Don't get me wrong - as someone who helped lead raids and helped lead a guild, I realize the value in Recount because it gives you so much information beyond DPS/HPS and it is definitely a good tool for tracking who's doing what, who's improving, who's really trying, who's on the wrong targets and who's clearly too busy watching TV tonight. That being said, Recount is not and should not be the be all and end all of raid skill. I know some disc priests that are beyond awesome but Recount doesn't show a lot of that skill just due to the mechanics of it. Recount doesn't tell you how good a tank is doing kiting something. Someone sitting at the top of Recount with 6k DPS looks great, but I will always take the guy doing 4k DPS who know how to get the hell out of fire so he can continue doing 4k DPS the rest of the fight over the guy doing 6k DPS, because that guy is now dead and doing me 0 DPS. I would also take the guy who keeps doing his interrupts properly, or the guy who knows not to tear into a mob before the tank touches it.

GearScore is iffy - I used to check wow-heroes.com for gear before GearScore was prevalent, but it was more a general check than a deciding factor unless someone was noticably bad or undergeared for what we were doing (like someone in quest blues or mostly blues and a couple heroics pieces wanting to come to an Ulduar run or something). I think it's an okay thing to look at, but there are a lot of people like myself or Andy, who are sitting at just under 5100 GS who miss out on a lot of those raids because people want 5400+ GearScores for almost everything (seriously, yesterday we saw someone putting together a 25 Ony run and they wanted 5200+ GS. I mean, really? If you need that high of a GS to down it...) Our GS's are lower, but we haven't raided since November; someone could come along with a 5300 GS and some achievements we don't have, but be a terrible player who's been carried or who's had some good luck on rolls, or both. GS is no guarantee of intelligence and so while I can see taking it into consideration when making a pug raid, it shouldn't be the deciding factor.

/rant

[The_Dude 1,142]

Those kinds of guild and raid leaders, who feel like these extremely specific, optimal raid compositions are the only way to down content, drive me crazy. Of course a good leader should always put some consideration into their raid make up, but if you need the absolute-best, constructed-down-to-microscopic-detail raid composition to down content, you're doing something wrong. Or you're just a douche bag. I can maybe place some more importance on the composition in 10 mans, because it matters a little more with fewer people, but I still don't think you need to be microscopic about it. The only case I can think of where I would be a little picky would be maaaybe if we were doing a hardmodes run in content that was still pretty new, but never in a general raid.

What used to be so great about raiding was, IMO, the teamwork, the comradery and the feeling at the end of it that you guys accomplished something. In a 40-man raid when a piece of loot dropped and peoples' responses were NOT full of entitlement and sulkiness if they didn't get the item, but instead along the lines of, "Oh, player X has really wanted that for a long time, you deserve that, gratz!" When people worked as a unit instead of just constantly trying to one-up each other.

I blame the first part on Arena, mainly because Arena has made people used to picking up loot a lot more quickly than they did in Vanilla endgame. It makes people feel like any piece of loot that they could use should be given to them, and that hurts the game a lot, to be quite honest. Of course not everyone fits in that category but that mindset is there for a lot of people that didn't raid pre-BC and it sucks. Raiding, for me, is about seeing the content and progressing. If I happen to pick up a piece of loot, awesome, but if not, I'm happy as long as we're getting content down. There are some jerky Loot Councils or corrupt DKP systems, but a lot of guilds genuinely try to do their best with loot as we did and it hurts guilds overall when that loot-####### attitude is present because it creates constant tension. I also blame Arena for a lot of class mechanic issues due to Blizzard trying to balance PvP and PvE but that's a separate issue.

I blame the second part on things like Recount and GearScore because I've seen it far too many times where a DPS will stand in the fire or pull aggro or won't switch targets when necessary because they're too busy watching their Recount meter to notice or worse, they will notice and just won't bother to do what they're supposed to because they don't want drop to second or third place on the chart.

Don't get me wrong - as someone who helped lead raids and helped lead a guild, I realize the value in Recount because it gives you so much information beyond DPS/HPS and it is definitely a good tool for tracking who's doing what, who's improving, who's really trying, who's on the wrong targets and who's clearly too busy watching TV tonight. That being said, Recount is not and should not be the be all and end all of raid skill. I know some disc priests that are beyond awesome but Recount doesn't show a lot of that skill just due to the mechanics of it. Recount doesn't tell you how good a tank is doing kiting something. Someone sitting at the top of Recount with 6k DPS looks great, but I will always take the guy doing 4k DPS who know how to get the hell out of fire so he can continue doing 4k DPS the rest of the fight over the guy doing 6k DPS, because that guy is now dead and doing me 0 DPS. I would also take the guy who keeps doing his interrupts properly, or the guy who knows not to tear into a mob before the tank touches it.

GearScore is iffy - I used to check wow-heroes.com for gear before GearScore was prevalent, but it was more a general check than a deciding factor unless someone was noticably bad or undergeared for what we were doing (like someone in quest blues or mostly blues and a couple heroics pieces wanting to come to an Ulduar run or something). I think it's an okay thing to look at, but there are a lot of people like myself or Andy, who are sitting at just under 5100 GS who miss out on a lot of those raids because people want 5400+ GearScores for almost everything (seriously, yesterday we saw someone putting together a 25 Ony run and they wanted 5200+ GS. I mean, really? If you need that high of a GS to down it...) Our GS's are lower, but we haven't raided since November; someone could come along with a 5300 GS and some achievements we don't have, but be a terrible player who's been carried or who's had some good luck on rolls, or both. GS is no guarantee of intelligence and so while I can see taking it into consideration when making a pug raid, it shouldn't be the deciding factor.

/rant

I really only look at gearscores when I have to do heroics, or pugging, and even then, I only use to weed out people trying to do 25 man ICC with greens on (#######). It is also easy to manipulate. I was doing a pug 10 man ICC two weeks ago and this guy claimed to have a 5500 gear score. Cool, we're good to go. Well, it turns out he had a 5500 gearscore with his fury gear set on. When he put his tank set on to be the OT, it was 4100. That same PuG, there was a DK with a 4600 gearscore. Not really indicative of his skill or anything, but just a minimum gear level you'd need to put out DPS to be a real contributor. Well turned out that he had a 232/245 pvp set, so he was only doing about 2.4K DPS. That is why I dno't put too much stock into gear scores.

I will always take the guy doing 4k DPS who know how to get the hell out of fire so he can continue doing 4k DPS the rest of the fight over the guy doing 6k DPS, because that guy is now dead and doing me 0 DPS. I would also take the guy who keeps doing his interrupts properly, or the guy who knows not to tear into a mob before the tank touches it.

That is the type of guild that i'm looking for

[trailmix 77]

Definitely be careful with lower progression realms - I would recommend taking extra care to look at the population and how many guilds exists for that population. Our old server was lower progression but it had a low population and too many people trying to run their own guilds, which resulted in two-three higher-end, good but overpopulated and very demanding guilds and a whooooole bunch of guilds with some really talented players but not enough people showing up to raids/staying in the same guild to get anything better than progression at a snail's pace. When we looked at xferring, we noticed this trend on a few servers with that population level.

Just something to watch out for,

Our progression is pretty snail paced

There are a couple of people who care, so they pug 25 mans etc - we generally can't get 25 people to go at the same time - sometimes we do. We only raid Friday and Saturday nights though - Friday we do the weekly and then usually carry on to something else - it's open to everyone. Saturday is the progression run and right now we are working on 10 ICC - it's fun.

I see the draw of being in a focused progression guild - but I would never fit in there. We have this one guy in our guild, who did come from one of those guilds and didn't like it. He is actually a pretty funny, nice guy - BUT - I was in one raid where he was leading and i'll never do it again. He barks orders, he is patronizing and he says stuff like 'we need to burn that guy down faster' - and 'ok now you run' (like from that one boss in TOC) - like you wouldn't know to run if he didn't tell you because you haven't done it 20 times and you are too stupid!!

/rant

Now that is two people I can't run with if they are running the raid.

Generally though we all get along really well.

[Andy and Kayla 45]

I really only look at gearscores when I have to do heroics, or pugging, and even then, I only use to weed out people trying to do 25 man ICC with greens on (#######). It is also easy to manipulate. I was doing a pug 10 man ICC two weeks ago and this guy claimed to have a 5500 gear score. Cool, we're good to go. Well, it turns out he had a 5500 gearscore with his fury gear set on. When he put his tank set on to be the OT, it was 4100. That same PuG, there was a DK with a 4600 gearscore. Not really indicative of his skill or anything, but just a minimum gear level you'd need to put out DPS to be a real contributor. Well turned out that he had a 232/245 pvp set, so he was only doing about 2.4K DPS. That is why I dno't put too much stock into gear scores.

Oh, definitely. The other thing is GS doesn't take gems or enchants into account - only socket bonuses. So as a hunter, I could gem spell power and hit a socket bonus and get a boost in my gear score, but if I gemmed agility and it didn't hit the socket bonus I would lose out, or I could have a bunch of improper or PvP enchants and it wouldn't make a difference. It also, as far as I know, doesn't take PvP vs PvE gear into account.

And it definitely doesn't tell you who knows how their class works and the hows/whys of a good rotation, and it also tells you nothing about spec (which I don't see many people doing checks on since GearScore got popular).

I see the draw of being in a focused progression guild - but I would never fit in there. We have this one guy in our guild, who did come from one of those guilds and didn't like it. He is actually a pretty funny, nice guy - BUT - I was in one raid where he was leading and i'll never do it again. He barks orders, he is patronizing and he says stuff like 'we need to burn that guy down faster' - and 'ok now you run' (like from that one boss in TOC) - like you wouldn't know to run if he didn't tell you because you haven't done it 20 times and you are too stupid!!

Yeah, I've seen some people like that. Great people, great raiders, but not someone you like having in charge. A lot of people confuse being a clear, leading force RL with being snappy.

As far as some of the orders go, try not to take it too personally. You'd be shocked at the number of people who ran the same raids every week with us, downed it with us every week and still didn't know to get the hell out of the giant Yeti's way - he is NOT trying to give you a hug.

We've never really aimed to be in one of those top three guilds where everyone's cranky and it's like a job, we've always just aimed for being able to see all the content and progress with a group. Our biggest issue with our old server wasn't so much the speed of progression, but the speed of progression for no better reason than people not showing up or gquitting because we didn't loot something to them (even though they might have gotten an awesome upgrade over someone else the week before). I like guilds that keep it fun, keep it laidback, but know how to focus when you need to, know what you're looking at when it comes to your raiders (gear vs. skill, who's doing their job and not just topping the charts, who's flexible when we need it, etc) and FFS have a good attitude about loot - no one is going to get everything, if we gave it to someone else over you we probably have a good reason and we'll be glad to share it with you if you ask instead of throwing a hissy fit and if you show up again next week, it'll probably drop again.

We used a Loot Council system for a few reasons: we tried free rolls for awhile, but we saw over time how much of a gear drain it was becoming. We thought about DKP but we had some people who's RL obligations wouldn't work with it, and these were some of our most loyal and well-known raiders so out of respect for those players we tried to do something else. Our Loot Council was between all the officers in /o and we based it on things like attendance, who else has gotten an upgrade recently, will it be a minor upgrade or a huge upgrade, is it better for one class over another, etc. That's a pretty short list, we also used it as a way, sometimes, to reward someone who'd really been bending over backwards and who hadn't caught any loot for a few weeks, maybe someone who kept respeccing so we could have enough healers or tanks for example. We took a lot of things into consideration and our LC system was one of the things I was most proud of in that the officers and GM (Andy ) were well-geared, but the regular guild members who just showed up and worked hard were actually better geared than us, and we were okay with that and they felt secure that we weren't being greedy. The only exception was one officer who was also our main tank, and well, that's because he was the main tank.

[The_Dude 1,142]

I really didn't know that gearscore didn't take into account gems, only socket bonus'. I think I only have a few socket bonus' because the slot color for the warlock sets are absolute #######. Blue gems? Seriously? I've actually stopped being lazy and use wow-heroes for checking people for pugs. It does account for chants and gems, and even shows gem types.

Loot Council actually works pretty well, but it is completely dependant upon the integrity of your loot council. I think free rolls ends up pissing people off, and a DKP system really only rewards those who show up, and doesn't take into account skill, or upgrade value. My guild, shifted from a fun guild that was very high in progression, but not top 3, to one that is only focused on progression. Last night, two healers left the guild. There has been about 8 people leave the guild in the last month since we shifted to a hardcore guild. I can see a few more leaving in the following weeks. It's really sad to see it go this route. The people in the guild were really cool.

LoL Trailmix, I don't know why, but I actually appreciate a raid leader who barks orders. I learn boss fights in a visual manner. No amount of reading or watching strategy videos will really get it for me. So sometimes, I need someone to just tell me to move.

[Andy and Kayla 45]

That transition is definitely rough - the same thing happened in our original guild. We started out as two separate, casual-but-progressing guilds, merged them and slowly shifted towards being a little more hardcore. But only half of the guild wanted it that way and the other half wanted to continue keeping it a little more casual and that plus some bad GMing on our old gleader's part caused way too much turbulence and it ended up falling apart after about 6 months. It's definitely a tough thing unless everybody is on board.

The other thing that killed us was that some people preferred the 10m runs and the guild wanted to focus on 25m. I like both, but I would have liked to see the 25m progression, but the guilds that we both started in were 10m guilds and so some of our original members missed that a lot.

[trailmix 77]

LoL Trailmix, I don't know why, but I actually appreciate a raid leader who barks orders. I learn boss fights in a visual manner. No amount of reading or watching strategy videos will really get it for me. So sometimes, I need someone to just tell me to move.

Yeah, I don't take orders well - never have. Plus he goes so overboard. It's not just me that feels this way either. My Husband normally runs the raids and while we were travelling those two weeks up from Florida, this other guy ran some raids and everyone was so happy to be saved from him when we got back online.

My Husband is patient and calm with people and everyone seems to respond really well to that - although he may not be so patient or kind on this side of the screen, they don't need to see that I guess.

This other guy has quite the temper, he has had to leave a run/raid more than once because he was so angry.

He does come back and apologize afterwards though.

[The_Dude 1,142]

Yeah, I don't take orders well - never have. Plus he goes so overboard. It's not just me that feels this way either. My Husband normally runs the raids and while we were travelling those two weeks up from Florida, this other guy ran some raids and everyone was so happy to be saved from him when we got back online.

My Husband is patient and calm with people and everyone seems to respond really well to that - although he may not be so patient or kind on this side of the screen, they don't need to see that I guess.

This other guy has quite the temper, he has had to leave a run/raid more than once because he was so angry.

He does come back and apologize afterwards though.

A good raid leader is a hard thing to find. I think they need to be a good combination of patient and stern. The worst thing i've seen in a raid leader was a tenative one who really didn't have control. In raids with a tenative raid leader, you get the more alpha personality people trying to take over and it ends up in chaos with people randomly calling out for Heroism/bloodlust and stuff like that. Another thing that I've seen that is horrible for a raid leader is the use of an addon I think it's called raidfail or soemthing like that. It sends a raid chat announcement for every time someoen screws up like standing in fire or things like that.

That transition is definitely rough - the same thing happened in our original guild. We started out as two separate, casual-but-progressing guilds, merged them and slowly shifted towards being a little more hardcore. But only half of the guild wanted it that way and the other half wanted to continue keeping it a little more casual and that plus some bad GMing on our old gleader's part caused way too much turbulence and it ended up falling apart after about 6 months. It's definitely a tough thing unless everybody is on board.

The other thing that killed us was that some people preferred the 10m runs and the guild wanted to focus on 25m. I like both, but I would have liked to see the 25m progression, but the guilds that we both started in were 10m guilds and so some of our original members missed that a lot.

I like doing 10 mans for the mere fact that I can see the general movement and flow of a fight much clearer. I tend to like the really technical fights the most, those are the ones where it feels like a real team effort. The fights I despise are ones like Faction Champions in ToC when there is a resto healer. Our raid leader will give out the directions and tell everyone to adjust their targeting macros, blah blah blah, then he gets to locks: Locks, alternate banish/fear on that druid for the whole fight. yay. I too prefer 25 man content because the gear is much better, and I feel more of a sense of comraderie.

[Andy and Kayla 45]

A good raid leader is a hard thing to find. I think they need to be a good combination of patient and stern. The worst thing i've seen in a raid leader was a tenative one who really didn't have control. In raids with a tenative raid leader, you get the more alpha personality people trying to take over and it ends up in chaos with people randomly calling out for Heroism/bloodlust and stuff like that. Another thing that I've seen that is horrible for a raid leader is the use of an addon I think it's called raidfail or soemthing like that. It sends a raid chat announcement for every time someoen screws up like standing in fire or things like that.

I definitely agree here.

As for the add-on, I believe you're thinking of FailBot. We actually utilized that add-on in our second guild, the one that we ran, but we had to set up to report to /o as opposed to /raid. We used it as a way of monitoring what was happening if we kept wiping, who was struggling, etc. as opposed to a way of calling out people who made mistakes. We actually wouldn't even mention anyone by name if we noticed people making the same mistakes repeatedly in a fight - we never said into vent, "Player X and Player Y, you guys keep making such-and-such error" and instead would say, "We seem to be having trouble with such-and-such error, a lot of people keep doing A and we really need everyone to focus and do B." If the problem consisted with the same person, we would send a private tell, politely explaining what mechanic they seemed to be having trouble with and what they should try to do instead.

[The_Dude 1,142]

I definitely agree here.

As for the add-on, I believe you're thinking of FailBot. We actually utilized that add-on in our second guild, the one that we ran, but we had to set up to report to /o as opposed to /raid. We used it as a way of monitoring what was happening if we kept wiping, who was struggling, etc. as opposed to a way of calling out people who made mistakes. We actually wouldn't even mention anyone by name if we noticed people making the same mistakes repeatedly in a fight - we never said into vent, "Player X and Player Y, you guys keep making such-and-such error" and instead would say, "We seem to be having trouble with such-and-such error, a lot of people keep doing A and we really need everyone to focus and do B." If the problem consisted with the same person, we would send a private tell, politely explaining what mechanic they seemed to be having trouble with and what they should try to do instead.

Yes, that is the add on I was thinking of. I remember that someone in the guild first used it on one of our first nights at trying Yogg +0. You should have seen the spammed chat logs That night, I think I spent like 200g on repairs. That bot, and that night is the reason we call our main tank "Cloudstrider" That night is also the reason why spamming recount or using failbot was banned. I finally had to set recount to disappear while in combat, it was just too distracting. That reminds me that I need to find an ironbound proto drake group for this weekend :lol:Still have a couple of achievements to get for that one.

[Kimbear 53]

Nintendodogs? I had to look that up

Kimbear - I see a lot of burnout from people who have been playing wow since day 1. As to your question about how things are when you move down to the u.s., no, it's not always like that. You've got to remember that you're not going to be able to work for an extended period of time. WoW is one of the best time vaccuums out there. I remember in the month before Mel's interview last March, I kept saying that we were probably going to quit wow to spend more time with each other. But as it turns out, we are broke, and wow is cheap entertainment, except when you have a wife who faction changes all her toons and every other month wants to change their names or race (Just kidding sweetheart, if you're reading this).

I was doing my realm research last night, while sitting out a raid, and my wife joins in. I don't think she thought I was serious about changing realms before. So while I'm doin my reading about each realm, she was going to each realm and seeing if her favorite names are available. :lol:She's not going to transfer any toons, probably because she has like 8 lvl 80 toons. I really am undecided about what to do. I'm leaning towards a more laidback, lower progression realm. But I'm going to have to do my homework first. I'm not going to transfer and end up joining a guild that wipes on Saurfang regular mode. That would just piss me off. One funny thing I noticed last night, most west coast realms seem to be heavily slanted alliance. Some realms were like 70-80% alliance.

Hmm ya the not workign thing is gonna drive me nuts sort of..thing is we will be with davids parents who are retiring in May so i'm pretty sure they will find stuff for me to do LOL. easier to pay 15 / month for Wow then go to a bar move restaruant etc. Ugh i'm already feeling bad about not being able to work and stuff and i haven't even moved yet!

Oh your wife has Character ADD too? So does David. i mean i have 4 80 chars..he has like 5 and a bunch of alts he plays as well and on diff servers too. i swear..he plays one for 2 hours..gets bored swaps to another one. same reason why we cant quest together..he gets bored of the quests and wanders off And if its not Wow hes playing its Eq or EQ2 or L4d..lol majoj game ADD and i bug him about it all the time

I've switched servers..umm 5 or 6 times i think? 2 of which were free xfers off my old full crappy pvp realm. Was originally on Burning Blade. along the way i did research..warcraft realms.com to see pop balances, logged on realm forums to read posts see the general attitude. even created lvl 1 alts to talk and stuff. In the end i decided on Exodar, had a guild that invited me..and said to make an lowbie hang out on vent etc. to get a feel for the place. And i loved it. xfered both my rogue and druid over and stayed 6 months, also it was a pve server..omg what a diff..i could lvl in peace and not get ganked every 2 mins!! Had to quit wow for a while due to family stuff.

Came back felt out of place cuz they had progressed so far etc. so i went back to my original realm where my RL friends / coworkers were. lo and behold..thats when and where i met David. 6 months later, we xfered off, due to realm stability issues and ppl in his RL that were being jerks, this time we went to kaelthas, a lower pop realm and truth be told we had fun, did some progression and just relaxed..until we became officers and the guild fell apart and we got blamed for it..like i'm sorry but i'm not gonna log in 24hrs a day to deal with game stuff..i do have a RL...so by bye Kael and drama and i finally went back home to my old guild who had moved to a new realm also. this is where i currently am on Fizzcrank.

once you start server hopping etc..it becomes easier. course now i realize these are all ppl i dont know so i dont get attached as much as i used to. i learned the hard way that ppl are one way in game and another in Rl...alot of them use the anonymity to act like jerks and be very outspoken..and of coure they know it bugs me so they do it on purpose and i bite the bait every time. lol.

[Duders 0]

FFXI FTW LOL

[trailmix 77]

once you start server hopping etc..it becomes easier. course now i realize these are all ppl i dont know so i dont get attached as much as i used to. i learned the hard way that ppl are one way in game and another in Rl...alot of them use the anonymity to act like jerks and be very outspoken..and of coure they know it bugs me so they do it on purpose and i bite the bait every time. lol.

Well not all of us are kim! Then again a lot of the people in our guild know each other outside the game, so maybe that has some effect, not sure. Plus we are very careful who we invite, no one acts like a jerk for long - because we remove them from the guild if they do (we have had a couple).

Ok this is really weird. We have a couple in our guild, her name is Kim, his name is Dave and he has character ADD - in fact it sounded like you were describing them

There was one thing that happened a couple of weeks ago that I might have predicted - but didn't. This guy who we have been in 2 guilds with over a couple of years just disappears. All this characters gone, from our guild and from the server

So I email him and say, wow, I thought you would at least have said something.

He writes back that he did email me and my Husband (we never received any email), that he has decided to quit the game completely as he has other stuff to do and he needs to just stop playing. Now, that's fine, but the weird thing is, he left without giving anyone his stuff or gold or anything - not like him at all. Basically no one believes him, which is kind of sad.

[Andy and Kayla 45]

Well not all of us are kim! Then again a lot of the people in our guild know each other outside the game, so maybe that has some effect, not sure.

I think that was one of the things we used to really enjoy about our original guild, before it all went to hell. There was a group of 6-7 that all knew each other or were family from the Tuscaloosa, AB area, a group of 4-5 of us from Ontario, a couple brothers from Oklahoma and then a bunch of people that knew someone in one of the aforementioned groups for years in-game (some for 7-10 years, though they obviously met playing other games - Andy knew the two brothers from first-person shooters originally, for example). It made things a little political once in awhile, but more often it made things pretty fun. I really miss those days, tbh, maybe moreso than when we made our own guild. I definitely liked how we did things in ours, but a lot of those original people had stopped playing and it was a different atmosphere - also because we were trying to make things a little more focused.