This is a post that has been a long time in coming but like most stubborn people it always gets put off until tomorrow but eventually, tomorrow must come.
I’ll start with a TLDR which is unlike me, but as my 23 year old son likes to tell me, I’m old, from a different generation and many people today won’t read a long post.
The TLDR is this, after almost 12 years Weekend Warriors is done with progress raiding. Rag is quitting the game and we’re entering a period of reflection.
The reasons for this are many, the state of the game, the age of the game, the ages of the key protagonists, the ever-faster attrition and burnout and the workload that always seems to end up being carried by the same people.
All the above factor into this decision which was first discussed seriously at the end of BfA, but in one way or another we’ve managed, rightly or wrongly, to put it off until now.
We resolved at the time that we’d make an experiment of Shadowlands, an expansion that thematically and content wise neither of us liked and see how far we could take it before not continuing to recruit against attrition and calling it a day.
We had hoped that this would come after Mythic Sylvanas, indeed that was the plan and so we have repeatedly broken the intention not to recruit replacements to try and get there, but as seems to often happen in the final boss of a tier these days, recent and continued attrition in the raid team have lead us to this point before that accomplishment could perhaps have become reality.
Therefore, rather than the usual retrenchment and rebuilding that has been the norm when challenged in the past, this time we’ve decided to go ahead early with that which would almost certainly have been the case in 9.2, a change of focus, personal, guild and gaming related.
Rag has decided to step down entirely from WoW. This personally comes as little surprise to me as he has been burning the candle at both ends and pushing himself to play this game and fulfil his obligations to the guild long after it had lost its appeal and this has a cost that is hard to bear for long.
This decision unfortunately impacts both raid teams as both teams will lose their raid leader.
Therefore, the guild will stop all organised events in 9.1.5 with an aim to restructure into a new phase for 9.2. To aid with the transition period and allow all those involved a chance to reflect, all officer and quartermaster roles will reset during this transition period with those who qualify by length and manner of service being assigned the Honour Guard rank instead.
Similarly, with the end of the current raid teams, Champions and Legionnaires will return to a single membership rank.
I know I have focused on Rag a lot so far, and it will be for him to make his own comments in his own way, but this focus on him was inevitable being as how mission critical he has become to all sides of the modern WW over the years to the point where his presence is required for it to continue to function.
From my own point of view, I personally have also been struggling to find a desire to play for some similar reasons and also for others that involve growing older in a game with a diminishing and increasingly younger demographic increasingly distant from my own.
Over time the game’s demographic and inevitably this guild’s membership have moved further and further away from that which it was when it started and which it was intended to serve to become a broad church that serves all ages, backgrounds and generations, but increasingly probably pleases few of them completely. Like it or not, the game’s age, our own age and natural IRL attrition effects the older player more often and returns to the game are increasingly infrequent, short and mainly of a social nature and this leads to people of my demographic no longer finding the fun interactions and shared experiences that once brought us to the game and kept us engaged. Keeping things going to support my son worked for me for a while, but with him now increasingly facing the same issues and wanting to focus on other things then what we’re left with no longer works.
So, what will this period of reflection lead to? Well, that will depend on a number of factors that can’t all be accurately predicted at this point. Certainly, the desire would be that we’d revert to a more casual and socially focused weekend N/HC raiding guild focusing on the older demographic once again, but that will need people to put in the time and effort into leading, organising and indeed playing the game which may or may not be found. It may be that we’ll end up as a smaller, purely social guild if that is not possible but again that depends on where the game goes and how this effects our desire to play and that’s currently a huge question mark not just for me.
In the meantime, we’ll be taking some time to relax and reflect, allow the rest of you to do the same and if necessary move on to pastures new which better fit what you want from the game and a guild, both today and for the future.
To all our members, in particular our raiders, we apologise for the obvious disruption and inconvenience at this frustrating point in progress which we had hoped to avoid and go out on a high note, but as the old saying goes, all good things must come to an end and for WW’s current incarnation, unfortunately this is that time.
I’ll keep you updated with any developments, but until then peace and best wishes.
Thanks for reading.
