Guild moves, Faction Transfers and WoW's Future.

So, another guild, another collapse due to recruitment issues. What now?

So about 2 weeks ago, a few days after becoming an officer, we had to put Anything is Better, our Alliance guild, out of its misery.

Recruitment had been very hard, and we had been bleeding members, either to other guilds or people just quitting the game completely, due either to boredom or because of the Blizzard situation of the past few months.

Then, in the space of a week, we lost about 5 members, which was the death knell for the guild's aspirations.

AiB lasted a mere 7 months, but during that time we got to 7/10 Mythic Castle Nathria in 4 months, and 4/10 Mythic Sanctum of Domination in the latter 3 months. Pretty good for an Alliance guild, especially when we were having to cobble together 20 people, often last minute, which inevitably led to less than optimal comps, which itself hampered progression.

Realistically we should have been 6/10 Mythic Sanctum if we'd had our best comp stable and raiding, but it wasn't to be sadly.

As for me, I'd intended to go Horde, and had quickly transferred my Druid & Hunter to Horde. However the day after I'd transferred I got head-hunted by my old Fade GM, asking me to come back!

Personally I didn't think I'd have been welcomed back, after leaving to help form AiB, but that luckily wasn't the case, and as of now both my Druid & Hunter are back in Fade on Silvermoon, and both characters are now sitting at 4/10 Mythic Sanctum progression. My Hunter surprisingly as she was only 233 iLevel to start with, but I think she'll need a good bit more gear in order to progress further. We were progressing on Mythic Soulrender, but I was getting one-shot by mechanics due to lack of gear.

One of Fade's main tanks will be leaving in a month in order to go back to Uni, so at that point I'll be back on the Druid, but until then I'll be raiding on the Hunter, and getting her geared and collecting her shards and upgrading her current rank 4 legendary to rank 6.

It's always sad to see guilds fall apart. I guess I got spoilt when I started playing WoW more seriously in 2009, as I joined a Horde guild (Thunder) that stayed together and raided for over 10 years, even though our server was low pop (Kilrogg). Raiding there only stopped in 2018 at the beginning of Legion, after having formed back in 2006. Thunder still exists to this day, but is just a small social guild now.

I guess I've been chasing that sort of stability again for a while, whilst still trying to push progression quicker. But given that every guild I've been in since that has aimed for possible CE has imploded within a year or two, I guess I should, at this point in WoW's lifespan, be content just to have a stable guild with regular raiding.

And in Fade, I've got that again. They've been around for 9 years now, and are also on 4/10 Mythic Sanctum, and can use both my Hunter and Druid, which is good for me 😂

As for me, I'm 46 now, and while I'm not exactly collecting my pension, I am an older player. While my reactions haven't dulled (much), I don't think I have the time or energy to put into pushing for CE any longer. I'm just going to be happy from now on getting to play twice a week, with friends, in a game I still love playing, despite its many problems both internal and external. Not to say that I'll be going casual, but I'll be raiding Mythic and just taking whatever progress comes as it comes.

9.1.5 is coming on the 2nd/3rd of November, bringing with it a LOT of Quality of Life changes to the game. Changes that should've been made during the Shadowlands Beta (which cynics state we've yet to leave), but better late than never I guess.

Blizzard certainly has a lot of work to do over the next year or so in order to fix their situation.

They have a long way to go to have faith in them restored, for reasons both internal and again external to the game itself. It's not entirely certain at this point if they will ever manage to attain that goal, and in some ways it feels like the game is in its sunset years. It felt like it had been coasting on previous goodwill since the start of Shadowlands, as people will generally tolerate one bad expansion, but not two in a row.

The rise of FFXIV, which can be argued is attributable directly to the fall of WoW over the past 3-4 months, looks less like a temporary blip and more like a prolonged or permanent situation. While the initial increase of interest in FFXIV can be attributed to WoW's fall, the continued interest in Eorzea is attributable only to Yoshi P and the rest of the devs over at Square Enix. They've done an amazing job, and both their attitude and demonstrable gratitude to their players sits as a demonstration to Blizzard how listening to the players of your game will reap boundless rewards and loyalty.

And with Endwalker, the new FFXIV expansion, out in roughly a month's time, the momentum is certainly with the team at Squenix.

Blizzard, for the first time ever, is in critical condition and on the back foot, and the Devs will have to play a serious amount of catch-up in order to right the ship.

As for me and FFXIV, my sub is still active, but I admittedly haven't played for about a month or so. I intend to fix that over the coming weeks, but having recently re-started my degree studies, my time is limited, but I want to make the effort to get to max level and experience all the content that FFXIV has to offer.

And the more serious issue for Blizzard here is that while 9.1.5 is due out in just over a week, it is only a minor patch, shoring up systems and some class balancing. In fact the only real content it brings is Legion Timewalking, and the return of the Mage Tower, albeit with new appearances (thankfully).

WoW's next major content patch, 9.2, hasn't even been mooted by Devs yet, and as such may not be released until the middle or so of the first quarter of 2022! It's also quite likely 9.2 will be the final major content release of Shadowlands, with no x.3 patch in a similar manner to another problematic expansion, Warlords of Draenor, where content was cut and the expansion cut short in order to move on to a hopefully more successful expansion. In WoD's case that was Mists of Pandaria, IMO WoW's best expansion (after the first patch).

10.0 is going to have to pull out all the stops and be absolutely spectacular, and do something incredible to restore WoW to its former glory.

A hell of a tall order, but not impossible...