Friendships lost, friendships gained ; and the real world.

Matt, I told you I’d blog something non-WoW sometime. =) The second half of this post is gonna be that blog.

I’m gonna start this somewhat non-orthodox post off with a short retrospective on things that have happened since shortly before I left Neo Imperela for Cloudy Day’s raiding environment.

The restructuring of the guild that Biochemistry did was perhaps a little extreme for most people. I saw good players like Reanimator get screwed by the new ranks, and the guild’s raiding suddenly got A LOT more intense. Mymichelle started yelling at more people–I don’t know whether by not being GM she felt less responsible for the emotions of guildies or what, but that’s what started driving the guild apart. Wasn’t helped at all by the extreme approach taken to Kara and Bio’s sometimes caustic attitude towards formerly casual raiders.

It was around this time that I started getting ridiculed a lot more in Vent, and also when I thought about leaving guild. I did ask whether there was a way I could give my raid spot to someone who needed gear, but that was never really an option, unfortunately.

Reanimator and I had talked about leaving NI (and possibly transferring servers) for a while. Re left a couple weeks before I did (to Mal’ganis), and I left shortly after, staying on server. My decision was basically made once I talked to Bio about our chances for progression, and he replied that we had 0% chance of hitting 25-mans and not much of a chance of breaking into ZA.

I heard that shortly after I left, a guildie asked where I had gone, and Michelle said something along the lines of “I DON’T FUCKING KNOW, WHY DON’T YOU FUCKING ASK HIM YOURSELF?!” Needless to say this isn’t really the reaction I expected from someone who I had respected as a GM.

As of the writing of this post, no officers of Neo Imperela have logged in for 9 days; most have been offline for longer than that, and Michelle, I know, has gone back to playing Alliance. The guild didn’t die wholly because of this, but certainly it was the deciding factor in a lot of guildies’ decisions.

After I left, I kept in touch with as much of the guild as I could. Most of the raiders are still on my friends list. There were about 3 separate groups that eventually split off of NI; I had been talking to most or all of the people that left before they actually /gquit about the situation. I think things were handled fairly professionally in the situation, and unfortunately Michelle has chosen to shun me and other people that left the guild, as was evident when I asked her to come to a Kara raid a couple of weeks ago, and got absolute silence in response; in addition, Galistul, who had left long before us for reasons of progression, had been shunned by Michelle for a while on Vent when he came by to check up on us. =S

I pulled my alt out of NI today. Last I checked, out of 80+ accounts previous to the disaster, less than 30 were left in guild. Fortunately I have kept in contact with most of the people who I knew in NI, and have actually gained better friendships with many of them–even to the point of organizing a “Former NI Members” run tomorrow.

Although I have lost some friendships from that guild that I valued (Michelle, for example–sorry things ended up how they did), I have gained/deepened others. Reanimator’s coming back to the server, and it’ll be good to get back to doing stuff with him. Shoutouts to Tril, Sfc, Eradicator, Demuerte, Maerad, Carolynz, Amph, Sini, Galistul, Re, Fingan, Det…all you guys that I met through NI and am now better friends with. If I left anyone off the list, let me know =)

Not only have I been talking to all my former guildies, I’ve made a ton of NEW friendships in Cloudy Day. Shoutouts to Rêpentist, Vidaire (Have I mentioned you’ve sounded really familiar since I first started raiding with CD? Did we talk at some point before my CD raids?), Bisu, Eff (how could I leave you off the list?), Nino of course, Johny, and everyone else who I’ve started building a friendship with. Great to meet all you guys, and I hope to spend a long time continuing to hang out and play WoW with everyone!

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Well, that turned out longer than I expected. With the advent of WOTLK, I’ve been getting pretty bored, which is probably where all of these posts have been coming from. I’m really starting to run out of WoW related material due to simple boredom with my mage. I’ve been playing some alts, but have had difficulty finding groups. That said, I’m looking forward to all the new content out in Northrend, and don’t intend to stop playing my mage–lots left to do!

Life outside of WoW has been very hectic recently. As a music major, I end up having a lot of commitments, and sometimes have trouble taking care of everything, as is the case right now. I was sick recently and missed nearly a week of classes. I’m trying to get back into the swing of things, but it’s tough. (As an aside, I was asked if I had ever considered journalism after a friend read my post on how MMOs are not addictive.)

One complication that I don’t need right now is a relationship. As nice as it would be to have someone that I could really open up to on a face-to-face level (Sometimes a keyboard just isn’t enough), there’s a lot of time commitment involved that I simply can’t meet right now. Next semester should be better as I’m taking very few credits due to schedule conflict and having extra credits, but I still think I’d have to find someone who either plays WoW or understands why Thursday through Saturday nights are bad nights for me, and the chances of that happening…well, let’s just say they’re not too high right now. Part of it could also just be me being leery of relationships–I’ve been in one before, and it wasn’t successful.

Relationship troubles aside, life is getting pretty stressful–I’m feeling pretty weighed down with the extra work that I’ve been having to do in order to get by in class recently. I’ve got some serious projects going now in a couple classes, and that’s making things a little harder.

However, despite all of that, I think things are gonna turn out alright. I’m just hoping for the best right now.