/Hug Tempest

Every so often, something happens which reminds me how glad I am to be a part of Tempest guild.

Before I joined Tempest of Gorgonnash server, I had been in two other raiding guilds, both on Warsong server.  The first was The Shadow Guards, which, quite frankly, didn't raid on a regular basis, had a high turnover of people, and did not have posted policies.  But I am a loyal type of person, and I stayed with them for a full fourteen months, until an incident happened which proved to me that the guild leader was not loyal to me.  (By that time, only the guild leader and the webmaster predated me in the guild.)  The second was Disciples of Redemption.  They had a regular raiding schedule, more organization, and the general trappings of a successful progression guild.  But I was quickly shocked by the subjects of guild chat or raid chat, particularly the chat from the raid leader.  I put up with it, because I wanted to be able to raid with the group, especially as two of the raiders were former Shadow Guards with whom I had kept in touch.

When the time came to move on from Disciples of Redemption, I was at a crossroads.  I had been, more or less, a failure as a Druid tank, and I had decided to change focus to healing, which I had done in The Shadow Guards before the first expansion pack.  I had picked up a decent healing staff as off-spec while tanking, but I did not have a lot of armor suitable to healing.  So I did what I had always done when faced with the requirement to gear up quickly:  I played on the battlegrounds and picked up whatever gear I could get by that avenue.

After narrowing my guild search to Pacific Time Zone PVP servers, and deciding what times I wanted to raid, I started reading on the Guild Recruitment forums.  Anyone who has ever read the classifieds in a newspaper, looking for a job, will have some kind of idea how tedious this can be.  At last, I found a posting by a character called Namelessone for a guild called Tempest, looking for a Restoration Druid.  So I went to the website listed and posted an application.

I did not think about checking the guild or realm culture.  I did not know to make a level one alt, run it to a capital city, check out the auction house and listen to Trade chat, just to get a feel for the server.  I did not know to ask to sit in Vent on a raid progression night, to hear how the members interact with each other.  I was pretty much flying blind.

I knew I would be considered less than ideal by many because of my battleground gear, but Namelessone decided to take a chance on me.  So I decided to take a chance on Tempest.  I got lucky.

Time has shown that the culture of Tempest is a good fit for me.  (And over time, I became a much better healer than I was when I first zoned into Black Temple with them.)  The people are good (and those who aren't, don't stay long), the leadership tries to be fair (nobody will ever agree what is perfectly fair), and the organization is good enough to allow for decent progression.

Which brings me back to my original statement.

Although I am not looking for a new guild, I do find myself evaluating the cultures of other progressed Alliance guilds on the server.  I've already managed to avoid the "grass is greener" syndrome by the simple process of listening and reading.  One guild's members come off as very elitist on the forums, which reminds me how happy I am that the majority of Tempest members are helpful and courteous.  The guild leader of another guild posted a statement about some of his policies on the Guild Relations forum which reminded me how glad I am for Tempest's policies.  Another guild puts forth effort to maintain an image with which I would not want to be associated, which reminds me that while Tempest may not be considered the top guild on the server, at least our name is unblemished.

Today the leader of another guild posted a link on a forum to a song someone in his guild had written about the guild.  The song was full of profanities and unsavory images, and I could not listen to it.  (Reading the lyrics was bad enough.)  As my stomach turned, I became more thankful than ever for the guild culture of Tempest, and I wanted to give everyone a collective hug.

/Hug Tempest