Hi, This is my second ever post here and first ever topic, so I pray I am not breaching any protocols with the subject matter and format. This is something of a personal dilemma and thusly, some will feel no interest, however, I am somewhat conflicted and in need of advice from raiders and gamers and possibly even guild masters who are far more experienced than me.

Around two months ago, I reached the level cap on a relatively new server, Aerie peak. I joined a raiding guild called Reborn, and together we have shared some enourmous successes. When I joined, the largest raid that we had ever taken into Molten Core consisted of twenty-eight people. We would clear to Lucifron with some effiency, down him, and go clear out Zul'Gurub. We did this for about two weeks until we managed to down Magmadar with twenty-three under-geared players. Word of our success spread, and we experienced a recruiting boom. Two weeks or so later we defeated Ragnaros, and not long after, cleared Blackwing Lair to Nefarian. Everything seemed amazing!

And then the turmoil began. During our maddening and incredibly aggressive push through Ragnaros and into Blackwing Lair, the guild lost quite a few members due to the changing season and academic responsibilities, as well as a few who were lost to personality conflicts with the guild leadership. To make a long story short. I feel as though the guild leadership is less interested in progress and more interested in loot. Our guild masters at present, do not have any experience past Nefarian in Blackwing Lair. We continue to lose many of our new recruits once they experience a serious wipe night in a place like Anh'Qiraj, and those people are being replaced by many who have never raided before.

The decision to leave would be an enormously selfish one, however I joined the guild with the expectation that I was joining a hardcore raiding guild, and while some of the players are very dedicated, some however, are not. I do not wish to continue putting forth my best effort in a guild where people are rewarded for only being partially committed. I contacted a friend in the furthest progressed guild on our server and told him of my difficulties, and that I was considering a switch, after which, he informed me of one vacancy in my class. A day later, I was approached by an officer who definitely would like me to fill that spot. Would I be wrong to leave?

To complicated matters, I spent all my dkp on our guild's first perdition's blade three nights ago. I have two drops from Ragnaros out of only four kills, and I am the rogue class leader. I was selected, for the role, but still, I feel responsible. I also have friends in the guild, and fond memories, and, maybe this was simply a bad week.

Our first week in Blackwing Lair we pushed to Firemaw, on our second, we made it to Nefarian. On this past wednesday, we failed to kill Broodlord on our first attempt, and called the raid due to time. Maybe I am simply spoiled. Maybe this guild will progress as far as C'thun before the expansion comes out, but honestly, I feel that there are glaring issues from the leadership down, that will hinder our progress. Would it be wrong to join a guild that is already attempting Naxx? Am I simply being spoiled? I am willing to admit that maybe I am expecting too much from my guild at present, but historically, the times my heart has told me to quit, were typically the right times to say goodbye, though I typically stayed despite the difficulties.

Thank you for reading this. I apologize for the lengthy post. I open myself to you. What do you all think?

Think about it from a professional standpoint. A lot of people tie up a lot of very crazy notions into organizational attachment, but ultimately it comes down to this:

The organization (guild) asks itself constantly if it's getting its worth out of having you.

Why aren't you asking if you're getting your worth out of having the guild?

Communicate with leadership. Express your concerns. Do what's necessary. If you do so honestly, and professionally, then only a fool would have a complaint. When I went to leave my hardcore raiding guild, we were suffering attendance issues. I stated I would happily maintain my usual attendance for two weeks so they could have time to recruit around me.

Whatever loot system your guild uses should be something vaguely fair. DKP or OAL, when you leave, you should be leaving with what you earned, so again, anyone having a problem with your leaving is being irrational (which, yes, happens). If, on the other hand, you say to someone, "Please don't bid against me on that," then you've unfairly won loot and should probably earn some DKP/OAL-love as a form of karmic pay-off for that.

Be professional about it.

I guess that's all more to the "how" then "when", but really, they amount to the same thing.

If you're not happy, you're not happy. If you are happy, you are happy. And there's no two ways about that. If the progress isn't enough for you but you like the loot enough to stay, hello - you are happy. Deal with it. If not, then you're not, get on with it.

The glut of rogues has cleared up lately as the FOTMers rerolled warriors.

Also, as an edit: to my above post: Shouldn't this thread be titled, "Best Practices: Leaving a raiding guild"?

What is the point of playing if you aren't having any fun? I understand loyalty is important to a point, but if you have made an effort to help the situation and it seems like no progress is being made I would say you have every right to leave. Until someone is paying your monthly fee for you, they don't really have a right to say where you should or shouldn't be.

General rules that I follow(ed):

1. Am I having fun with the game?

If no:

2. Could I be fun having somewhere else?

If yes:

3. Can I get to that place without compromising my personal morals?

If no to 2 or 3:

4. Why am I playing WoW?

If you don't know, do what I did and stop wasting time half-heartedly raiding, where you really don't do any good to anyone, and wait until the Expansion.

Do what makes you happy. try to be nice/professional about it. dont cold shoulder your old guild when you get in the new one. occasionally stop by on vent and what not.

however, i have to ask, how/why is your guild trying aq40 when only having ever downed rag 4 times? you guys must be grossly under geared.

My personal opinion (someone who recently left a guild on its last legs):
1. Loot at your levels will soon be replaced.
2. 25 man raids will require a need for more guilds, or making other guilds more hardcore, to support the current player base.
3. The impression you leave on people is 2x as important as your gear, skill, etc.

If you are moving up one instance tier, perhaps being phased out once the guild you are joining hits expansion levels and no longer needs extra rogues, and making a large amount of good people feel betrayed...what good is this move going to accomplish?

I'd advise you to wait and see what happens at 70. You can survive 2 months at 65% happiness.

The problems you described seem universal to all kinds of guilds at all levels of content. While the desire for progress is great to have, a young guild may be limited by gear so it is understandable for leadership to sacrifice progress for gear at some point. The only red flag that I caught was "personality conflicts with the guild leadership".

In a new guild you will find that while the bosses and items are different, many things will still remain the same. Perhaps in time you would even grow dissatisfied with the progress of your new guild and look for better on another server.

Progress is all relative. One could even say that the newer younger guild has more opportunity to progress with all the unbeaten content before them. Though in reality I think younger guilds frequently fall victim to their better geared players being poached away by the more 'advanced' guilds. This is unfortunate.


Changing over would allow you to escape your responsibilities in your current guild. Could it be that the burden as a class lead in a fledgling guild is too stressful?

The grass is always greener on the other side. While the idea of being able to 'upgrade' your guild may sound nice at first, know that some things will verily remain the same. It seems to me that you will be betraying your friends for what amounts to a gamble with a new guild. Think long and hard about what you really want from the game and what brings you enjoyment and if changing guilds can really give this to you. I think most would find that their perfect guild does not exist.


Some things though can not be remedied short of changing guilds, or breaking guilds. If you want to spend 30 hours per week raiding and working on new content while your guild most definitely only raids 15 hours per week then a change of guilds seems reasonable. If the goals and motivations of your guild and its leadership differ too greatly from yours that also is a difficult situation to remedy sort of changing guilds.

With BC on the horizon I would be very cautious in moving. The nature of some guilds will change with this expansion and friends may be a safer bet than 'progress'.

There comes a point eventually,when your an officer or leader that you will have to step down if its eating you. Its exactly like Rl and work,eventually you burnout.

One of the best things you CAN do if your an active person is leave before you get in too deep. I made this mistake,with my old guild. I went from member to officer to raid leader to defacto guild leader. No one else was willing to make the choices and fix the problems or take responsiblity. I successfully led them through C'thun and couple nax bosses ( Ty to these boards for C'thun ^^) and we had a fairly bright future,despite minor loot dramas.

When i burnt out however,due to Rl issues and just being sick and tired of being the raiding focus of 50+ i ended up quitting. After my final day the guild fell apart within the week. Going from C'thun farming to BWL wiping. I still feel oddly guilty,as i ruined 50+ people's day in a fairly big way but it was effecting RL issues and nobody should be a damn martyr,

Loot shouldn't be a big problem unless you have funky dkp system. You were there raiding,killing etc you deserve the loot you got,end story.

best way to look at it is this IMO

Am i having fun?
Have i taken unfair advantage of the raid?
Did you take steps to resolve issues?

If those are 2 no's and a yes go forth with no moral or ethical worries.

most hgave already said it, if you're not having fun then there's no reason to keep at it. One thing you may consider is that along any raiding road there will be bumps. I'm not sure about your raiding past, but to keep progressing in a manner as you have through bwl and mc is unrealistic. You guys just may need to get some gear on your and then see how your progressioin goes.

No kidding. You go from Luci to Nef in a month and your guild is having issues? 0_o

Yeah, until you get geared up you're gonna have some wipe nights. I'm amazed you were able to drop Vael with so little in the way of purples(in fact, I'm suspicious that many of the people in your guild have cleared this content before with previous guilds, which would make up for lack of gear to a large extent).

You might try getting everyone Naxx attuned and dropping Anub and Razuv for extra gear to help you progress in AQ. Guild PvP nights might also help out a bit. Try not to burn everybody out wiping on stuff that you don't really seem to have the gear for yet.

Oh, and one more thing: WTF @ the intro to your post. Kaubel's not THAT scary, is he? The worst you might get is a custom title mocking your ineptitude, which would actually be kinda cool =P