Implosion

I fear I may be witnessing the end of a raiding guild.

I joined Anathema last November, I think it was the 2nd of the month. At the time, Anathema had downed Lurker, walked past Hydross a few times, and had flown past Tempest Keep a couple of times.

I never claimed to be a hardcore raider, only making about two raids a week out of four. Sometimes more. Recently, thanks to work and this bullsh!t *DYNAMIC* work scheduling thing called “Coreflex” (read, everyone takes it up the arse), I can barely make it for one raid a week.

Nonetheless, I was there for our first attempts at Hydross. I was there when we decided AoE wasn’t going to work. I was there when it still took us four or five tries to down Lurker. I was there for our first Void Reaver kill. I was there for our earliest wipes on Al’ar. I was there when we decided to take a stab at Leo, and got stabbed back.

Goddamnit, I was there, and even though, technically, I have very little invested in my guild, and barely even count as a casual raider anymore, it still hurts to be there for what could very well be the end of the only group of people I have ever raided with.

Within the last 24 hours, Anathema has lost our raiding resto druid, one of our rogues, our top of the line beast master hunter, one of our two core resto shamans, a shadow priest, a mage (who managed to go almost the entire history of his time in the guild without missing a single raid), and a pair of warlocks.

I’m not mad about them leaving. I was (and still am) excellent friends with some of them, and at the worst, on good terms with the rest. They’re done with the guild? It’s cool, I don’t mind. All the power to them. You got real life to work out? Got Crohn’s disease? That I understand fine.

What’s painful is looking back on the good times we had. The first time the healers realized that they didn’t have LoS with one of the Al’ar tanks. The time when I was mistakenly Misdirected to in a HKM pull (note: mages tank Krosh, not Maulgar himself =D).

It was fun. A grand ol’ time, if you will.

And I don’t want to see it stop.

The thought that all this, all these months we’ve spent at work, all these experiences we’ve chalked up, could simply become a thing of the past.

That the Leotheras kill won’t become something I can look back on and say: “Yeah. That was US. We’re a raiding guild. Hell yeah!”

It becomes: “Yeah. Wasn’t that fun back in those days… /sigh”

The pain is seeing a guild that you’re a part of, a guild you helped to progress, the people in the guild, shattering.

What makes it worse is coming home after work, logging in to the guild forums to see if your main tank posted a Rick Roll disguised as your Rage Winterchill kill video, and seeing NINE raiding members disappear.