Death of a guild

'ATHANATOI will cease to exist in its current form on May 3rd, 2009.'
And so, the message was out. Of course, the officer team knew this for a lot longer already. When our GMs became bored and stressed out by WoW, we still kind of managed, guild council style. Some officers shared the feelings of our GMs and also spent less and less time in WoW, some just had a lot of real life stuff going on.

The killshot, if you will, was probably when our raiding officer tried to quit WoW. He came back after a week or so, but refused to have anything to do with his officer position. Fair enough. We instated some of our unofficial (non-officer team) raid leaders, and some officers also had a shot at raid leading.

However, unknown to the members base, there was also a Ventrilo officer summit discussing the state of the guild. Everyone including the inactive GMs and officers were present. The GMs proposed to disband and move on. We asked for another shot at saving the guild, and were given the chance.

Hence, in the eyes of a guildie, the future was clouded, but a new lightray shone upon the guild scene. In the eyes of an officer, dark clouds were gathering. We cursed as problems such as 'What to do with Val'anyr' and 'who can raid lead the sunday progression raid this week?' surfaced.

We held on for a few more weeks. Then, things sped up rapidly. One of the remaining officers posted a long explanation on why he needed a break from WoW and how he felt about the state of guild in the officer forums. There were mixed replies, and another officer gquit over it. In the end the conclusion was easily made: most of the officers were inactive or had quit. We had failed.

And so, a two year old guild dies.

The future

Because I'm going to Japan for ten days, and I have exams when I return, I won't be resubbing for a while. I will use this time to think about what I want to do. There's several options:

- I have been asked if I would want to join the new guild that some ex-officers are now creating. It would be a more casual version of what Athanatoi was.

- I could reroll. I had joked many times to my guildies that they 'made me play Alliance', and this is true. Even Horde alts on the same server never got far, because I missed the crowded guild chat too much. With Athanatoi gone, it may be a chance to let myself be tempted to join the Horde.

- I could join another guild. I have a great reference, we had some great inter-guild relations.

I guess I have to ask myself where I want to go with this game. In all honesty I'd love to get back into tanking, so I might drop my rogue as my main.