Change is a constant. It’s the only thing that is consistent and stable. Everything changes, even War (sorry Ron Perlman).
So, as you’ll no doubt be able to tell from the above image, and from my recent Twitter feed, things have changed somewhat for me in Azeroth.
Damocles? The rope snapped and the sword fell 🙁
A few players had been playing up in the final few weeks, refusing to join Discord on raid nights, instead preferring to sit on another Discord altogether and chat shit amongst themselves. When forced to join our raid discord, well things got nasty a few nights, and eventually those players decided as a small group to leave the guild.
Following the transfer from Kilrogg to Draenor, that took us below what our already just-about-managing figures already were, and the Mythic raid for that night had to be called. The remaining officers were reluctant to try and rebuild so soon after going through with the realm transfer which was done in order to reboot the guild as it was failing on Kilrogg to recruit there.
So the officers and GM between them decided, without exception, that the guild was done. It was finito, over, an ex-parrot.
So that left me with a decision to make: Do I try and get another guild on Draenor, and thereby stay Horde and carry on, or make the change I really had been wanting to make for a while?
In my heart I’ve been wanting to go back to Alliance for a while. The only thing keeping me Horde were my Guildies in Damocles, and the great fun we had there.
However with the collapse of the guild and no chance of resurrection, that left the door open to seek pastures new back on the Alliance side of the fence.
So I had a couple of options first up with my Hunter. I could abandon my Horde Hunter, and use my lesser geared Alliance Hunter, or, I could, as I did, race & faction change my Horde Hunter and bring her Alliance side.
I also took my Rogue over, leaving behind my Warrior, Warlock & Monk Horde side.
At the moment I’ve joined my current Alliance guild on Magtheridon, Foundation, where I already had my Paladin and already existing Void Elf Hunter.
So yes, I now have two hunters in the same guild 😀
Raiding has been fun, and a lot more relaxed than in Damocles. Much less of a sausage-fest for certain, and we’ve already pushed further than Damocles managed before it collapsed.
So far I’ve got 2 mythic bosses down in Eternal Palace, with a 3rd hopefully following this week, but…
Classic launched just after I joined with my main Hunter and Rogue, and it appears to have siphoned off a good handful of players. Which was to be expected to a degree, but it has still made getting a viable 20 man team together for mythic tougher than expected.
Hopefully things will calm down in a month or two, and we’ll start seeing players coming back to retail and numbers will get a bounce.
Either way, we’re still farming heroic and I’m having a great time being back Alliance side again.
As mentioned on Twitter, I don’t think I’ll ever go back Horde side ever again. But in terms of races I don’t think that’ll be an issue, as I think Blizzard will take the greedy way out of dissolving the factions, and keep the faction barrier in place, whilst allowing players to pick whatever race they want in that faction.
Similar to how Pandaren players choose their faction either when boosting a new Panda (at the char creation screen), or per a new Pandaren, following a quest line.
Horde Gnome? Night Elf? Alliance Forsaken? Orcs? Possibly.
However rather than just remove factions completely, in order to forcibly restrict the player-base, meaning faction change monies still pour in, there will be an even falser dichotomy forced upon the playerbase. You’d still need to choose a “side”, continuing to restrict with whom, where and when you can play.
Cross faction communication though should come to pass, along with the cross faction racial freedom.
As for me, eventually I’ll probably bring my Void Elf Mage from Argent Dawn, Nelf DK from Silvermoon, Belf Monk and Mag’har Warrior, but for now I’m happy with what I have 🙂
