“We’re an older guild with real life commitments, and aggro-generating spouses, that come before any video game. Our philosophy is the real life is always more important than WoW. You can count on us having 8-5 jobs or attending school. We’re full of nerds, dorks, dweebs, and geeks; but we do have the occasional girl and wife playing. Like all things in life, we enjoy our time in WoW as well as time outside of WoW. We aren’t hardcore players, and have a general feeling that the game is fun cause it’s with friends. Most of our foundation is built in Colorado, horray, with most of our officers living there. We must always remember, that any member should have fun with us. And Rez will try and provide the opportunity for everyone to have fun in a guild enviroment.” — Jmantoo, Guild Master, circa pre-WoLT WoW
Wow. I was astonished when I read this. I had totally forgotten about it. This was a creed from my first “real” World of Warcraft Guild. Resurrection had been my entry into the MMO Raiding scene and I have never realized until last night how much this guild really shaped my outlook on how a guild should be run (or how I’d like to see it run). Jman also classified our guild as a “Dedicated (read: not hardcore) Raiding Guild”. To us this meant simply that we raid every week. It wasn’t a demand of 100% attendance or 5 nights of raiding. Just as Rhii had pointed out in her post Gear to Raid!, some guilds seem to only be chasing after the next upgrade, while others simply enjoy the toppling of another tyrant bent on world/worlds/universe/multi-demential domination. I think I can safely say I’ve been to both sides of this fence and prefer that which is focused on dethroning baddies rather then frothing over a new gear piece that completes your avatar’s hideous ensemble. I don’t care about being a server first. I don’t care about bringing only the “best” players. I care about everyone in the guild benefiting from what we can accomplish together.
Resurrection was a guild of friends. And like the true nature friends, we always had room for more. You were given a guild auto invite simply if you were a friend with someone in the guild and wanted to be a part of our growing success. Others were simply invited because they expressed interest and fit with our play style. If you left the guild, it wasn’t because you weren’t worthy of hanging with the cool kids. In Jman’s creed above he pointed out that we aren’t the cool kids. We are the nerds, dorks, dweebs, and geeks who have real life commitments that stress us out and wear on our attitudes. We sit down and log in to help release those burdens. We have a good time. This is how I would have built my guild should I ever decide to use my fictional guild charter. Resurrection wasn’t about having an exclusive clique within the guild. Everybody was given the opportunity to improve their play experience how they saw fit. Everyone was engaged and contributed to the guild and thus the guild benefited as well as the members. We ran events such as lowbie night where if you had an alt (or main) that needed some help with group quests or a instance dungeon run, we had level capped players on standby to help you get that done. If we didn’t have the right makeup for a Karazhan, we’d queue for WSG just to play together. I can even remember assisting players in reputation grinds just because it gave us a chance to hang out and have a good time. It didn’t matter what we did so long as we had fun.
I’m saddened as I look back on the history of Resurrection and I realize that we suffered a few collapses but I suppose that can happen with any guild for any number of reasons. What encourages me most about Resurrection is that the players are still around and are friends both in and outside of the guild and of WoW. I still run instances and a raid now and then with old friends from Resurrection as well as play other games such as L4D:2 on steam. The guild still exists on Kel’thuzad but we only have 2-3 members on at a time. Just yesterday I saw Jman had returned from his account hiatus and is in the low 70′s. He mentioned another Rez alumni who had started playing with him again as well. My shaman healer is one of the guild officers at the moment. Perhaps its time to evoke the guild tag’s meaning and start rebuilding for Cataclysm.
No formal plans yet…just tossing around the idea as a possibility. PST if interested. =D
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
I initiated myself to the World of Warcraft about a year ago and immediately started a human frostmage who has been my main ever since. I started really following a bunch of blogs a few months ago as I pushed into Outland. The more I have read and the farthur I push in game (Now at 72 and beginning my adventures in Northrend!) I have realized that raiding is something I would love to try. It seems like a catch-22, however, with a necessity of being in a guild to get a raid put together, and a necessity of having done raids (and having the l33t gear) to join a guild. How does a n00b (albeit a well researched n00b) go about finding a guild such as the one described to dip their feet in the raiding waters as I near the promised land of lvl 80 and Dalaran portals?
Blizzard sent non-raiding players the ultimate blessing in patch 3.3 with the LFG Tool. Couple this with every boss now drops Tier 9 tokens and you've found a way to easily gear out your main (or alt) with most ilvl 232 items. This is the same as being geared out in ToC10 man gear. While this won't get you into every ICC 10 man (with ilvl 251 drops), this definitely puts you within reach.
As time goes on and other raiders start regularly clearing ICC instances (because they have better gear or due to the standard Blizzard nerfs all raids eventually see), you'll find the "Oh don't take anyone with ilvl 232 gear!" type players ease up on their self made restrictions and invite lesser geared players. Point is you'll find your way into the "Badge of Frost" raids soon enough.
My "Just dinged 80" exercise program consists of running regular Trial of the Champion(the 5 man) until the LFG tool allows you to select Forge of Souls, Pit of Saron, and Halls of Reflection. Farm those on regular because they have some great drops as well as provide Tier 9 Badges of Triumph. Regular modes you can do unlimited times a day. When you feel geared enough for those, Do the heroic versions (again all should have awesome upgrades) and run one random daily heroic quest for the 2 Frost Badges. Once you exhaust the upgrades that can be found in heroics and T9 badges..you should be ready to rock
What's frightening about your guild post is that it almost word-for-word describes the guild I've been running for the past 5 years…right down to the Colorado part. We also have jobs/lives/families. We can't raid 5 days a week nor expect that from anyone. Fun is always priority 1, and it is our goal for you to have more fun in our guild than any other on our server. There *are* guilds like this out there…they absolutely do exist. And kudos to the GLs that can pull this off.
Thats awesome…maybe Colorado just attracts these kinds of guilds
Your guild is at the top of my list should I ever decide to leave KT
Rez sounds like it was a fun bunch of people. Glad to hear your old GM is back around!
If only I could find a guild like this on my server. It sounds absolutely perfect for me. I've been running around guildless for far too long now.
Sounds like an excellent guild philosophy, although I'm a little insulted that as a girl I can't be a nerd, dork, dweeb or geek
What else is there?!