Guilds! What are they good for?

For the most part Shao has had a bad time with guilds. Indeed, one of the major problems with this MMO (and i guess every other MMO, and every other online community) is that is full of a lot people that

1. don’t know how to act in a community
2. are rude and/or opinionated
3. are immature.

There will always be problems when you put a group of people like this together, and WoW is no different.

Now that’s not to say there aren’t any nice people to interact with in WoW, because they are, just it’s hard to filter out the kids from the adults.

Currently Shao find himself in Ad Adstra – a relatively large guild, but filled with people at polar opposites personality-wise. The mature, thoughtful people (like me! , and the immature angst-ridden people. It gets to the point where there really is no point these two groups of people playing, or socialising together because two two groups want different things from the game. A couple of examples.

1. talking to one particular hunter in the guild chat about recent or upcoming hunter changes, talent builds, stats to stack, gear, play styles etc. This is a normal thing to do within a guild – to learn where you’re going wrong, where you can improve. However to take the case of one guy’s, he gets very defensive, and idiotic whenever you try to chat with him about the class he plays. I hear he’s 17.. I’m twice his age, and as easy as it would be to blame him age, i have two brothers that age, neither of which are as stupid as he is.
2. Ad Astra don’t do anything together. This is partly because of the leader taking a break from the game at the moment for very good personal reasons. However, suggestions at doing things together – have not only fallen on deaf ears, but have resulted in me being openly abused in guild chat for suggesting such things. Hopefully the guild leader comes back soon, because every other guild I have been in play together to play together. Not to do things disparately.

I think part of the problem with the guild is that at the moment the game is not geared towards communal playing, or even much in the way of social interaction, and group effort. Back in the day raiding top level content required much more of a coordinated effort for a guild to progress. Mats collection, and farming running content over and over again to learn the nuances of an encounter, as well as a healthy amount of guild pride in the achievements that its members had accomplished.

Now this has all changed. Currently in WoW we see that almost all content can be Pick Up Grouped (PUG’d), and doing so will earn a number of people in that group or raid some end-game quality content. For example i ran 25-man naxxramas, and heroic HoL and took away two epic items.

When did the game become so easy? Why did the game become so easy? It’s sad because not only does the sense of accomplishment fall by the wayside but also because its so easy people do not need to work together, and bond as much as they used to.

As for Ad Astra, who knows. I find myself doing more and more nostalgic content at the moment (albeit for the achievement points), and I’m loving it. Why do i need a guild if 90% of them are idiots?