So the past 3 weeks has been pretty bloody stressful, with guild drama upon guild drama meaning I quit Thunder.
The 2 weekends before last (one of which was even after I’d quit) were very difficult, and saw us bleed members for a short while.
A lot of drama caused by someone (an officer no less) who liked to bully and manipulate guild members but took offence at being punished for doing so!
On his way out he tried (and failed) to smear the remaining officer structure and sow mistrust in those left, in order to try and destroy the guild. So he was removed, but not before causing a huge amount of drama and taking a lot of his clique with him. But the whole drama also sadly caused some long term members of the guild to leave for other pastures as well. I’m still hopeful we can get some of these members to reconsider and return soon.
After I quit I received a tonne of forum PM’s, whispers, emails, Facebook messages & posts etc all asking me to reconsider my stepping away from the guild. Given how much the people still left there showed how much they care, I decided that I would come back. However this time things will be different.
For a start, we’ve re-instated the Guild Council, of which I am now a part. We have 5 people now back in charge of the guild, rather than it all resting on one person’s shoulders. Being sole GM of a guild like Thunder was too much stress, and it burnt out the 2 people to hold the role, so the council structure works best for us. We’ll be running with a smaller officer core as well, covering those roles not already covered by members of the GC. Our raid leaders, previously officers, will no longer be part of the officer structure, as skills required for one job (RL) didn’t necessarily automatically mean that the person was going to be a good officer. It worked for a while, but then people started thinking that they were untouchable and could treat others however they liked, no matter how badly.
So asses were handed, doors were shown, and we lost a fair few bodies.
However, Thunder survives. It has done for 9 years and will continue to do so. We resume raiding this week now that the dust has settled and we can begin again, as we do with every guild split that we’ve undergone during those 9 years. I’ve been in Thunder now for 6 of those 9 years, and I’ve been through this same situation about 7 or 8 times now, and each time we carry on, resolute. The same can’t be said of the majority of guilds birthed from Thunder, and no doubt, somewhere down the line, we’ll get some of those that left looking to come back. In fact we’ve already had a few return already
The people who stayed (and there are still plenty) are the core of what I consider makes Thunder the great guild it’s always been: Mature, relaxed, fun to be around, and not prone to drama!
So that’s why I’ve been quiet for the past few weeks. Dealing with drama llamas and the shit that they attempted to fling.
And in order to help me deal with the stress, I’ve moved my druid to Alliance on a PvP server, and joined a small guild there with some Thunder guildies and some new people. It’s a nice change, and the server seems pretty cool as well, fairly mature and not full of kids spewing bile like quite a lot of other PvP servers whose populations I’ve had dealings with. I’ll probably move my Alliance Hunter over there as well. Not that there’s a lot of world PvP happens (which is good for me, being the PvE Care Bear that I am), because the server population is split something ridiculously skewed like 1,000:1!
So I expect I’ll be splitting my time between Horde & Alliance now, especially more so as I level my druid (and probably the hunter too) up to 100 and begin gearing. Not that I’ll be raiding there, but it always helps when soloing old content and making gold
Anyhoo, drama over, stress relieved and time to return to the regularly scheduled programming!