When Guilds Lose Their Way – Death and Taxes
One of World of Warcraft premier raid guilds, Death and Taxes has disbanded. These guys always seemed a bit of an oddity to me as far as raid guilds go; they seemed to be a group of guys (and gals) in it for the right reasons: to have fun, enjoy the game with a group of friends, etc.
They’ve now broken up and one of the guild’s leaders has made a post over on their forums that illustrates better then anything I’ve ever seen before the importance of never losing your way as a guild. It is very important as guild leadership to know what your group of people is about and what you want to accomplish as a guild. Even if you aren’t one of those “formal” guilds that has a charter – I’d highly recommend a mission statement. It’s such a shame to see a guild who’s worked so hard on progression just evaporate.
Progress doesn’t happen all in 1 night, but apparently some people that we had here didn’t understand that. They thought bosses just fell over the first night because of the tag over their head, and the most important thing was how much damage they could do at all times. Newsflash – it doesn’t work like that. It’s pretty ironic that the first people to jump ship when progress wasn’t going fast enough, were the same ones jerking off in the 5man, and holding up the raid on the first day. Progress takes time, and world firsts don’t fall from the sky, they’re the result of a lot of hard work, and effort. The reputation of this guild was built on the backs of a lot of hard work and dedication from EVERYONE. The guild was bigger than any of us, and we knew it.
…..
Once upon a time we had pride. Pride in our guild, pride in ourselves, pride in what we’d done. Pride is showing up and giving your best effort, ESPECIALLY when you don’t want to be there, because your guildmates deserve that. We didn’t always get world firsts, it’s impossible to always be first, that’s just not how the game works, but we showed up every day, EARLY and busted our asses, and we were proud of what we accomplished, be it world first or world 1000th. We didn’t whine or complain about our fucking groups, or worry about loot. We killed bosses. Period. We gave our best effort because those around us deserved it, because the guild deserved it. We had pride about what we had done, not what those before us had done. But we also didn’t have false pride. Once upon a time when people couldn’t or didn’t want to keep up the raiding schedule, they had the guts and decency to let the rest of us know. Now they slink off into the night without even a word.
Read the whole post here.
