Subtle Irony – How it all started
This time I want to talk about our guild, how it developed, what we do and what our goals are. I figure that might shed some light on why I post what I post and give my findings an appropriate context.
Until two days ago we were seven people. Those seven people have formed a strong community over the last couple months. Let’s get back to the very start, which dates back some 2,5 years. When I quit WoW with BC’s release.
The very beginning
As a late starter I played on a server with a reallife-friend who had been in hardcore-raiding guild. They were progressing through Naxx and doing all the high-end stuff there was and I was fascinated. So I rushed a gnome warlock up to 60 to take part, but soon found out that raiding guilds don’t have much sense of “integrating new members”, especially if those members could by any chance want some of the epixx, or are not yet geared as to almost outgear the content. Not to speak of raiding requirements, like loosing your slot if you wouldn’t be there 3-4 times a weak, bringing in all those expensive-as-hell potions & flasks, that kind of stuff. Short version: It wasn’t fun to play with those people, it was work.
Next step: A break with WoW for long a time. Just this April I visited my brother, a hardcore WoWer since the very first day, and thought to myself that I should try the whole thing again. Funny enough that raiding-guild friend of mine had just started to play again too, so the three of us decided to start over. New realm, new chars, start from scratch. We knew the rushing and pressure play kind of WoW, but it was just fun to not care about anything and enjoy the game as is. So we would level along, switch character on the way and such.
Fellow adventurers coming along
Somewhen we got to quest with another guy who was into RP a bit and we had fun, joined up again and finally started to talk about forming a guild. Funny enough we ended up getting a guild up in the very same night, so we now had two guilds: My brother, my mate and I and Kalendros with three real-life friends of his own. It took us some couple days until we finally ended up merging those guilds into Kalendros’ “Subtle Irony”.
So that’s how the whole thing started: Two groups of real-life friends, same-minded and looking for the fun parts of the game. Perfect. On 70 we first were satisfied with 5-mans and finishing our questlines and that kind of stuff, but we figured that, at some point, we would need to start raiding or the endgame-thingy would really get boring. Lucky us blizzard was clever and focused on smaller raids, so we aimed to do Karazhan.
What now?
With the new Expansion release that came the time to make a decision. We weren’t geared up (or most of us weren’t) and we still were only 7, plus raiding at all went down with the release date coming up. The decision was to just start doing it. We do have two solid tanks and healers, so all there was to fill up were some dps – not a big deal.
Needless to say we didn’t progress fast or smooth, we had our issues and Aran still seems to have skilled 3/3 “wipe subtle irony”. But we kept our approach, so fun is what we’re doing all that for, and fun is what dominates our runs. This found some resonance, and as a result we’re now up to 9 members. How cool’s that? Now the thing is: We believe that the great mood we managed to keep up originates from few members with similar thinking, so we don’t want to expand much further. Keep it small, keep it simple, keep it fun.
What next?
There’s one thing to accomplish: Get a solid 10-man-group up and running for Wotlk, when we – as casual players – will finally be able to see all the endgame-content there is. With fun. Without raiding rules. Without teamspeak.
Really looking forward to that.