I started playing on Shadowsong because I had friends there, but as time progressed, many of them have lost contact or moved on in some way, for one reason or another. My playtime has become rather solitary, and I don’t like that one bit–but it’s still so hard to leave behind old friends.

Umm yeah !!!!!!! The answer to both of those is YES !!!

Games ……. they come and go … Bandits, last forever ….

oh well, call me a tad bit biased.

What you mention makes logical sense.

Let me just say though, the heart wants what the heart wants,

Earlier this year i got upset about a few trivial things and left the guild.

Not one day that I left and played on a differnt server or guild did I not miss my family

Many people may come and go in your gaming life but your family, gaming, real life or other lives in your heart and they will always bring you home, I found that out the hard way.

I have no idea if this helps at all,but,be well and take care !

P.S, great blog bro, i love reading it as i have rolled a druid over on Cho’gal. keep up the great work.

We’ve had several people who’ve been mainstays of my guild move a character or 2 to a more raid timing-conducive guild. We actually have a separate chat channel for just that reason, to keep everyone “together” per se, but allow people to have alts in other guilds if it fits their schedule better. That obviously wouldn’t help in a situation like yours though, where the guilds are on 2 different servers.

I’d say at least keep either your hunter or your main with your present guild. Transferring both would mean you seldom play with your old friends at all, which would be a huge bummer. It’s your call obviously but I think you’ll have some guild withdrawals if you don’t keep one of your 70′s over there. Play a bit on your priest with the new guys, make sure they fit you well, and then considering another character other, I’d suggest.

Hope that’s helpful…that’s a really hard decision to make

I definitely don’t have any REAL issues with my guild as you did. Mine is more a question of convenience.

@Moobar–

Thanks for your thoughts. Basically, the way that I am able to raid is just like the way I’m able to play at all. I schedule my time to do so, and schedule it for when the baby and wife are already in bed. This plays into the problems I have, as I’m almost never on during my server and guild “prime time.”

@Din–

Certainly, at least some of this has to do with the lack of people playing right now, but actually this only set off what I’ve been thinking for some time. I’ve always kind of been “out of the loop” with guild events, always. One of the things that has really kept me going is the times we are raiding with Slack. I can work that into my schedule pretty easily.

@Barona–

One of the options I am considering now is to just leave my raiding druid where he is. I’d hate to miss out on seeing further progression in T5 content, and it would give me an avenue of still playing with my old guild when I wanted to.

@Valthan–

Again, splitting time is an option right now. I’m just not sure HOW I would split that time.

@Ease–

You do make a compelling argument that I should go whole hog if I’m going to do it at all. My playtime is limited, and splitting that already limited playtime by server/guild could make things worse for me. Also thanks for the kind words.

@Clest–

I linked to the post right away so everyone could see, as I thought it was just as easy as doing it twice. I largely live my WoW life through this blog, now, and part of that is sharing my experiences and thoughts on the game without reservation. I also made a point to PM Amy before I even began writing the post to give her a heads up.

Although it is true we’ve been through this before, even during the good times my schedule puts me on the fringe. I don’t think I’ve EVER been on a guild raid beyond Kara, and I was the first bandit to play WoW. (And I still remember some people getting testy about me singing its praises too much!)

If you want to be able to play at the same time as (more) other people there are a couple of choices – try and make connections with more people playing the same times as you on your server, or take the plunge and make new friends with new people on a new server. Could I overuse the term ‘new’ any more? The point is – making new friends doesn’t mean losing the old ones imo

3 things –

1 – when TBC came out Bandits were running 5 mans and things into the early hours of the morning. Why? They were super excited about new content. Why aren’t they doing that now? They are bored. When the expansion comes out I can almost guarantee they’ll be back in all over again.

2 – splitting your time between two servers is silly. You are a very consuming person, which is fine, and one of your characters will get all your time and energy.

3 – like Ease said, “you know your guild”. You also know that this is a cycle of a casual guild. It’s happened before, it’s happening again, and undoubtedly it will happen in the future.

We will always be here, in some form of game. You just need to decide what to do with your time.