An Unexpected Journey, and a Welcome Destination...

Because of course, as soon as I make one decision, another gets made that redefines the situation...

"Hey guys, we're thinking that transferring to Horde might be an idea..."

After the collapse of Anything is Better in early October, I briefly transferred my Hunter & Druid to Horde, in order to seek greener pastures. The reasoning for this being that the raiding environment on the Horde side of the fence is a much richer one. A far bigger pool of players, better overall quality of players (insofar as a generally more serious approach to endgame), and a general overall feeling of being on the right side for endgame PvE.

That sojourn lasted less than a week, as I was head-hunted by the GM of my previous Alliance guild, F A D E.

He wanted me back, both as a raider and as an Officer, as they were short of both, mainly good reliable and regular-playing Officer material.

So, having to wait out the 3 day cooldown on Faction transferring, I transferred back and re-joined F A D E (eurgh, don't even get me started on the cost involved!).

A month or so later, the lack of good recruitment material on Alliance started to take its toll, and on a regular basis too. We were left sometimes having to pug a couple of spots for mythic farming, and later on a few occasions, mythic Painsmith Raznal progression!

Painsmith Raznal is a hard boss. Like, really hard. If your guild isn't co-ordinated like a marching band or flash mob, then it can be ultra-painful.

And we are about as co-ordinated as a herd of drunken cats.

So, after a combination of hurting for players every raid night, and 5 weeks of constant re-visits to Mythic Painsmith, we started lacking serious numbers, as some people quit playing, others left for guilds elsewhere and so on.

It was looking rough. As a result, we decided to call a raiding break. Now we usually have a break over Xmas and New Year anyway, but this was about 2-3 weeks early, around the start of December.

As it turned out, that was our last raid as an Alliance guild...

As a result, my interest in playing the game sank dramatically. I play WoW for endgame content, specifically to raid. I don't really do much mythic+ or PvP, so raiding is my niche. Without regular raids, I started to become disillusioned with WoW, and I decided to take a month away from the game, from 12th December until 13th January. That helped a bit, but there still wasn't much to do without raids, and no real prospect of getting regular raids going again as a guild...

"Hey guys, we are thinking that transferring to Horde would be an idea..."

This was a shellshock suggestion from our GM, after a proposed guild merge fell through.

A guild faction transfer is a big step. It's one that frequently fails, as usually not enough players make the jump along with the guild in order to be a viable prospect on the other faction in any reasonable timeframe.

But we polled our membership, and a good 20 or so players voted positively for the move, with 7 or so dissenting voices. As it turns out, of those dissenting voices, a few have made the jump on alts regardless!

So with ~75% of our voting members agreeing to the move, we did!

So as of January 16th 2020, F A D E ceased to operate as a raiding Alliance guild on Silvermoon, and are now a raiding Horde guild on Tarren Mill!

Personally, this is a big win for me. Returning to Horde is something I'd been itching to do for 6 months or so even prior to AiB collapsing, so as soon as AiB folded I made the jump. In hindsight I should've waited a few days and saved myself £184, but hey-ho, eh?

This time though, it's £92 well spent, as the rest of the core raiders have either already transferred, or will transfer over in the next few weeks (payday being a big reason for delays there, as a faction transfer is bloody expensive!).

Coming back to Horde after several years away (one tier playing as both factions in Battle of Dazar'alor in BfA notwithstanding) since T H U N D E R ceased raiding on Kilrogg in Emerald Nightmare, has been like coming home.

My Hunter is of course once again an Orc Female:

And my Druid, is of course, a majestic Tauren male once more :)

For me, this has been the shot in the arm my enthusiasm for the game sorely needed. My interest in playing had waned severely over the past couple of months on Alliance, but the prospect of being able to tap into the wealth of resources Horde-side is a juicy one :D

With regards FFXIV, I remain of course committed to playing through the entirety of the MSQ. I'm into Stormblood now, having finished Heavensward with more than a few tears shed (not something that WoW's narrative has ever been able to do!), and a feeling of "damn, that was one impressive expansion"!

It'll still be a hell of a while before I manage to get through the remainder of 3 expansion's worth of Main Story Questlines mind you, but with FFXIV for me it's more about the journey, whereas WoW has always been about the destination.

And then of course when I finish Endwalker and hit max level, the true FFXIV endgame begins...

So, in the end, an unexpected last-minute reprieve for World of Warcraft.

And to top it all off, tonight, 3-4 days after transferring, we managed to get our first raid going!

By god did I miss raiding with these eejits! :D