Two roads diverge.

I'm undergoing a slight crisis of faith.

... No, not that kind of faith!  I'm still a devout atheist (if that isn't a complete contradiction in terms).  No, this faith pertains specifically to my long-held conviction that when it comes to raid progression, it isn't the pace that matters: it's the people.

Surreality, then.

When I created Surreality, our tag-line was "fun and friendship first; progression second" — and we truly meant it.  We scheduled raids around our members' availability, and since we quite literally had players in every hemisphere of the globe (and in such far-flung places as Argentina, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, England and Italy), we compromised liberally on days and times.  An odd kind of Tuesday-Saturday-Sunday schedule emerged, along with the highly fluid, merry-go-round raid roster you would expect of a small, social guild that was determined to include as many of its members as possible in the fun, and largely without regards to skill or gear.  (We were just starting out, after all.  Most of us had never raided before, so the assumption was that skill and gear would come with time ... which they did.)

As unlikely as it sounds with this kind of foundation, we were successful.  Progression was slow but steady, and while we were "months behind" — due in part to our late start, and in part to our determination to "leave no raider behind" (which often led us to farm content for longer than was strictly necessary) — we were having fun.

Everytime we entered a new raid, it felt epic.  The first time we zoned into Mount Hyjal, a palpable awe settled over the raid and more than one player whispered me joyfully to profess "I never thought I would see this!"  (Or, in the case of a certain warrior-turned-rogue of my acquaintance, "OMG LOREGASM.")

It was an amazing experience — and the fact that it was shared forged bonds that I would never imagined possible between strangers in a video game.

Unfortunately, the game has changed since then, and so has Surreality. 

Please understand: the occasional rant notwithstanding, my sense of self-worth is in no way tied to the ilevel of my purple pixels.  I understand and even support Blizzard's decision to make the end-game more accessible to the majority of the player base.  For most people — including, I imagine, many of my friends and readers — it was a good decision. 

But for us?  ... Not so much.

You see, it just so happened that at the same time that the game as a whole was becoming easier, Surreality's raiders were becoming better. 

With time, determination, and patient support from the guild, even those players we initially feared were "hopeless" were coming into their own.  By the time we started Mount Hyjal, the hunter who couldn't have laid a trap to save his life in Heroic Sethekk Halls was kiting Scourge through the Alliance camp to engage Jaina's forces.  At the same time, a mage who had once trailed tanks on the damage meters found herself flirting with the threat cap, and even the resto shaman whose action bars consisted of nothing but Chain Heal (Rank 5) was starting to develop an efficient healing rotation.

As a guild, we cleared Black Temple through the Illidari Council two weeks before the 3.0 release.  Illidan himself was on the verge of defeat — and actually fell the night after the patch in a thoroughly anticlimactic battle that left us painfully aware of how close we had come to "winning the game" (and all the more determined to take Northrend by storm).

Surreality, now.

Suddenly, with the gear reset that was Wrath of the Lich King, we were no longer "months behind."  We were an established guild with a proven formula and accomplished core, supported by a large pool of casuals we had always made a point of rotating into our raids on an as-needed, as-available basis. 

Like so many other guilds in our position, we hit the ground running, cleared Naxxramas in a few short weeks ... and ran out of stuff to do.

Literally overnight, the entire game had become more casual than we were!  There was no internal paradigm shift; we never decided to "stop" being casual raiders and become hardcore instead.  The spectrum simply shifted beneath us, and we were forced to adapt.

Because we are explorers at heart — players who are enthralled by new challenges and new experiences rather than simply new loot — we decided to focus our attention on hard-modes and achievements.  It wasn't about "e-peen," nor was it about competing with the truly hardcore guilds on the realm progression thread.  It was a decision born out of desperation, because there was nothing else to do.

It wasn't long before we realized that hard-modes are, well, hard.  And, understandably, not everyone is motivated to wipe for hours at a time on "progression" when it looks and feels exactly like farm content. 

We started to bleed members — not to more progressed guilds, because progression as we knew it no longer existed, but to other games and even Real Life™ as more and more our members realized that the game they were paying for wasn't the game they wanted to play.

For me, personally, raiding has always been about the people ... and enough of my people were willing to ride it out that I decided to rebuild rather than simply disband. 

As a guild, we discussed our options and made a deliberate decision to "serious up" for Ulduar.  Most of our truly casual players had either left the game or moved on to 10-man guilds to play with real life friends, so we set our collective sights on 25-man hard-modes and opened recruitment to similarly motivated players.  Over time, we raised our attendance requirements, shifted our raid times to encompass peak hours and became increasingly particular about gear, talent choices and raid performance when evaluating potential recruits. 

The Guild Leader's Dilemma

As deeply and personally invested in the guild as I am, the one thing I have been unwilling to do in the name of progression is compromise on the character and quality of our members.  Our code of conduct — which has been codified from almost the moment of our inception — encourages mature, honorable behavior.  It also affirms our commitment to prioritize people above progression and real life above WoW.

There have been many times that I have turned applicants away because, as impressive as their raid performance was, they just weren't a good fit for the guild.  These include the obvious rejects — the trade channel trolls, drama queens and known ninjas — as well as those who struck me as immature, arrogant, inarticulate or simply unkind.

My standards have always been high when it comes to character, and low when it comes to gear and prior raid experience. 

Because of this, our guild culture has remained remarkably consistent over the last two years.  Like any family, we have our spats — rivalries emerge; cliques form and break apart; members lose their patience and, occasionally, their tempers over misunderstandings and perceived slights — but, on the whole, we have stayed true to our vision of "fun and friendship first," and even maintained a flavor of our old determination to "leave no raider behind."

This has been a source of pride for me, as well as a source of frustration. 

In the past, I have refused to bench underperforming raiders, either because I believed they were capable of improvement or thought they had more to offer the guild than subpar DPS.  ("The old Surreality would have worked with them," is something I tell myself often.)  I have also declined applicants who in all likelihood could have made material contributions to progression, because I didn't think they understood, appreciated or were ultimately on board the guild's overarching vision.

I have always told myself that the occasional (and temporary!) setbacks in progression that result are a small price to pay for the integrity and long-term health of the guild.

And yet ...

And yet last night, one of my raiders approached me in Dalaran in the aftermath of our thwarted raid.  (After completing no less than three new hard-modes last week, attendance dropped again and we were forced to call the 25-man raid after Sarth 3D — we're farming drakes — and run two 10-man ToC's rather than resume attempts on Heroic Jaraxxus.)  He is seriously considering leaving for a newly reformed guild that is apparently the amalgam of the best members of several progressed guilds that are currently stagnating as we are. 

This isn't a new member.  This is a veteran of Mount Hyjal, who has friends in the guild and has been sincerely invested in our success.  From time to time he has even taken advantage of our (perhaps overly?) accommodating natures, /afking for significant lengths of time during raids and occasionally stepping down to a casual raider rank to focus on things other than the game. 

These are things that many raiding guilds wouldn't tolerate, let alone encourage, and yet — in keeping with our RL > * philosophy — we do.

He wasn't the last person I would expected to leave for the promise of a more progressed guild ... but if I had been keeping a list, he would definitely be closer to the bottom than the top, and so his announcement (as infailingly polite as it was) (he is, after all, Canadian) has me more than a little shaken.

Has my unwillingness to compromise protected my guild and helped us to retain that which makes us good and unique: our character?  Or has it thwarted raid progression and contributed to our decline, if only by allowing us to stagnant during these long lulls when less discriminating guilds are clearing content?

I honestly thought that my guildmembers supported me.  Attrition has always been low, with members leaving for other games or Real Life™ but very seldom to other guilds.  Until now, I have taken that as a sign that I was doing something right.

Now, I'm forced to wonder.