Friday 15 August 2008

A Mother is sad when her children leave

I get sad every time someone leaves the guild, or stops playing for a bit, or transfers realm, or is on holiday or whatever.

This week has been a very sad week. My guild has 6 Council members to lead it (I am one). Currently one is on extended holiday while he moves him and his family from Paris to Malta. I doubt he will be playing until the middle of September. Another one has taken a month off to do his studies. One announced this week that as we aren't doing much progression wise and stuff that he's bored and will stop playing until WotLK comes out. The other more active member is on holiday for a week, then away on business for a week. The last one is our least active Council member - he's about a bit still.

At the moment I'm feeling like the whole world rests on my shoulders and I'm not enjoying it. We made the Council so no one person would have all the responsibility, but currently it seems that I do.


We have such a range of people in our guild it's hard to please everyone, but as a Mum that's what I end up trying to do and it's very, very stressful. One guy left recently to PVP. Another left for more progress. Someone left because she came online and only 2 of the 18 online said Hello to her. A bit harsh, yes, but not the only one who has complained to me that people don't say hello. One has a beta key... the list goes on for why people aren't doing stuff.

How the hell do I inject some more life in there when I'm feeling lacking in that life myself? Hmmm. Think I might need some more sleep - will someone wake me up when September is here - I think I'm going to estivate (yeah - a Mum and a teacher - go look that one up).

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey Seph, sorry to hear you're not getting much help from the others due to various reasons, I hope you're not being too hard on yourself trying to please everyone at the same time.

Sad as it may be, I think the game and the guild is suffering because of the age of the game. Sure, it still is the most played MMORPG, but I think that a lot of people all around the world are still playing it just because they have made a lot of friends in it, and because there isn't much to replace WoW with yet (although that is soon to change, with WAR coming in september and Aion early next year).

The biggest problem of WoW as a game is the content, or lack thereof. Take for example the previous expansion, The Burning Crusade. Sure, it gave us a lot of new things, but at the same time it made all the old content obsolete. On top of that, no new classes were added, which I still think is a huge mistake. The same thing is going to happen again with WoTLK (although now they finally added new classes, after more then two years ...). They will introduce new content, but at the same time all the old stuff is obsolete and forgotten, and simply because of this, the game bores fast.

Take a look at FFXI, this is much less of an issue. Yes, they also raised the level caps with new expansions, but they instead made instances and quests with level limits, and when attempting these things you simply get temporarily reduced to the max allowed level for that particular quest of instance. Also, because of the job system it is a lot easier and more fun to play other classes besides the one you picked initially, and on top of that all your old equipment stays useful and can always be reused at a later time when playing with a different job. This and many more things make the game a lot less boring, but the biggest problem there is that it is too difficult and can't really be played for short periods at a time.

Anyway, my point is that it is not your fault people are leaving or not showing up much anymore. Likely many are, like me, bored of the game which is sadly mostly Blizzards fault, but since we are all still paying them for a game many are now really just using as a glorified chat-room and little else, things aren't likely to change. WoTLK will again be a lot of fun for a month or two, but then it will be exactly the same again as it is now.

Anyway, I do miss playing with you a lot, its always fun talking to you which sadly we don't do as much anymore now, and playing with you was always a lot of fun as well and we achieved some great things. Maybe someday soon I'll renew my account again, and we can take a shot at that one tank one healer Kara run, or maybe I'll see you in a different game someday. If anything there is still MSN :D.

Hmm, sorry for rambling on about nothing, didn't mean to steal your blog :P Anyway, talk to you soon!

Love, Peter

Anonymous said...

I still think leaving a guild because not many people said hello to you is plain retarded. People could of been AFK, busy, missed the initial "Hi everyone" or, like me, not feel the need to constantly say hi to everyone, even people I don't know.

As for the people leaving, I've been massively tempted a lot of time, but I don't really play any other games and TV is rubbish so I tend to jump on just to pass the time in the evening when I have nothing else to do, will I get more active in WoTLK? I'm not even sure I'm buying it so no comment.

As for the state of the council, if you're the only one of them around, I wouldn't bother trying to arrange anything, I've known many guilds fold because there was only 1 'GM', if you enjoy the game play the game you want to play, make a forum post saying while there's only you around from the council you're not arranging anything, everyone is free to go off and setup their own raids or whatever still.