I took a bit of a hiatus from the more casual style of play in February, when I left my social levelling guild and joined a 25-man raiding guild for a while.

In that time I got to experience the joy and sorrows that are part of taking on content with that number of people, and it was interesting.

But, it took too much time commitment and was causing stress in the rest of my life because really, I’ve got other things to do with my committed time, and I quite enjoy being a casual player of World of Warcraft. There’s enough content to keep me amused that I don’t need to raid 2-4 times a week.

So now I’m out of that raiding guild, and I actually created a guild just for my own characters and even bought and set up a couple of tabs in the guild bank for the organization and maintenance of shared resources. Yay for another way to keep my playing toons’ inventories as clear as possible for collecting more LOOT to make more money with!

Benefits Of My Own Guild

When some people think about the benefits of a guild and being in one, they probably think quite differently than me right now.

My benefits are this:

• Silent guild line. In this case, Silence Is Golden
• Shared bank space in the form of a Guild Bank
• A Guild Tag under my name - look less like a gold farmer

The main reason I created my own guild instead of joining someone else’s should be clear from the name of the guild itself: “Silence Is Golden”. The raiding guild had a lot of members, which translated to a lot of spammy conversation that was hard to sift through on the guild line. I’m happy to have a silent guild line.

A second reason I created my own guild is that I already have a handful of friends on the realm with whom I hang out with nightly on Vent (voice chat), and another handful from my brief raiding guild experience as well, so I’m not looking for new buddies to play with. Plus, I’m very comfortable with joining Pick-Up Groups for my dungeon and gearing needs, nevermind using the Trade channel to find a crafter who can take my materials and my tip and craft me whatever it is I require.

The Guild Bank is probably what’s going to keep me in this “guild of one”, too - how nice it is to slap all of the commonly-used elements into a bank tab and save up space for my playing toons! Right now I’m using Tab #1 as my “sell this junk please” tab, and Tab #2 is shared stuff between my toons - cooking quest mats, potions and elixirs, cloth, buff foods and the likes.

Back To Levelling

One of my goals to reach before the Expansion comes out is to have three or even four level 70 characters to head into the new lands with in order to join the new PUGs.

I’ve already got my 70 Hunter and 70 Mage, so now I’m working on my 63 Priest for the most part, with my 62 Rogue getting attention on occasion as well. The Priest is a healer, and I’ve already got 2 DPS at 70 so I’m pushing her through more quickly than the Rogue by sheer attention.

I’ve also got a wee Druid back in Azeroth that I might spend some time burning off rest bonus on now that I don’t have my evenings scheduled for me when I *do* get a chance to play.

So, in conclusion, Raiding is a fun part of the game, but I’m glad to be out of it and its expectation of loyalty and commitment, and glad to be back in putzing around in the game and feeling freer to write about my experiences because those I write about will likely never read my blog or at least never know it’s me or who I’m really talking about.

Tags: be your own guildmaster, creating a guild, silence is golden, warcraft raiding, world of warcraft