There comes a point, sometimes, when a person wants to leave a guild and
move on to a guild that's progressed further into the game. There are a
couple of ways of doing it. The person can tell their guild that they're
leaving, deguild, then apply to other guilds. I think that's the honest way
of doing it. But it also leads to feelings that the deguilder abandoned the
guild, and some people will go to any lengths to avoid feeling guilty. So
they will pounce on any excuse to leave a guild, however trivial. They just
want something to get angry about - any excuse will do. Then they can leave
in righteous anger and join another guild without feeling guilty.
In my times, I've seen an awful lot of the former method being used. Some
examples:
Back when I was an officer in Avengers of Honor, we were raiding the arena
in Kael. While there the raid leader got a tell from some members of the
uber-guild, asking if we could vacate the Arena for fifteen minutes so that
they could kite Vindi (this was way before PoP). The raid leader agreed,
which seemed reasonable to me. We stopped pulls and moved down the ramp to
wait the fifteen minutes. It was somewhat lateish, and a few members
decided to log. Since that would leave us seriously underpowered - this was
a guild of people hovering around 50 - the raid leader called it, and we all
gated out and went on with our lives. The next day about ten people
de-guilded. Their reasoning: we had allowed a higher-level guild to push us
around. That just boggled my mind; since when is trying to be considerate
and work with another guild considered being "pushed around"? Not
surprisingly, all of those people who left joined the same higher-end guild.
I still disagree that we were being "pushed around", but after that we
refused to stop our Kael raids if someone else was pulling another mob. In
fact, shortly after the mass deguilding we did another Kael raid, and the
uber-guild once again asked us to leave so they could use the Arena to
attempt the Avatar of War. We told 'em flat-out, "No" and continued
pulling. They ruded us and pulled AoW. I watched from a discrete distance
as we continued pulling our own mobs, and as the uber-guild began wiping we
all logged to clear any possible aggro. Then we continued on.
(As an aside, to show what a difference PoP made: on the Fourth of July we
had very few people online. Still, we decided to go to Kael on an
unofficial raid and kill Vindi. Then we killed the statue. Then we pulled
the idol and AoW. There were people who were saying that this was
absolutely nuts - we were 28 people all told, eight of them bots. But we
pulled him, positioned him, and down he went without ever losing the MT.
Who knows... maybe AoW will eventually be single-groupable.)
In my current guild, the most famous case of deguilding for stupid reasons
belongs to a cleric. One night when we were doing Vex Thal, we killed AHR
and she put her name in for the neck piece. It was awarded to a bard. She
went nuts, demanding that the officers justify their decision to award the
neck piece to the bard instead of her. When they refused, she deguilded and
joined the uber-guild. The sad thing is, if she'd stayed in the guild she
surely would have gotten the next AHR neck piece. But she was so incensed
that someone "less deserving" was awarded the loot that she felt she
couldn't stay in the guild. (The officers later explained their reasoning
to the guild - they showed loot history and recent attendance. It sure
seemed like a reasonable decision to me.) That happened several months ago
and still remains *the* prime example in our guild of someone being a loot
whore.
We had yet another stupid deguilding last night. During a Plane of Water
raid, an elemental plate bracer mold dropped. Everyone put their names in
and a paladin was awarded the mold. Everyone congratulated him... except he
didn't respond. He didn't loot the mold. He just stood there. The minutes
ticked down on the corpse and still he hadn't moved or responded. With
thirty seconds left on the corpse, the officers awarded the drop to someone
else who managed to loot it before it rotted. The paladin was upset, of
course, but if you're going to put your name in on a piece of loot and then
go afk for an extended period of time, you have to expect that. The paladin
then assumed that he would be defaulted the next plate mold that dropped.
When that didn't happen - when the next plate mold was awarded to someone
else - he deguilded and joined the uber-guild.
Amazing what people choose to get upset about. But then, in my experience,
anyone who deguilds for reasons like this would have eventually deguilded
anyway, so better sooner than later.
Anyone else got any stupid deguilding stories? =)
-Richard
Monual Lifegiver
Archon of Rodcet Nife
Silent Tempest
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All stories and art work are Copyright@ by the origial owner/writer.
Most, if not all stories, were taken from newsgroup alt.games.everquest (AGE), I recommend that anyone who gets a chance to read it should!