A little over a week ago, on the Tempest guild website, I suddenly saw a post referring to the guild server transferring.
It came as something of a shock.
As the demographics of WoW have changed over the years, the population of Gorgonnash has steadily decreased. Tempest was the only guild on the server to maintain a 25-man raid all through Cataclysm, continuing into MoP. As time has gone on, it has been more and more difficult for the officers to fill their recruitment needs. It finally got to the point where their only recruits were coming from off-server, and even then, some changed their minds at the last minute, not wanting to transfer to such a sparsely populated server as Gorgonnash. The officers made the difficult decision to transfer the guild, in the hopes of keeping this long-established raid alive under the changed circumstances.
For 3.5 years, Tempest of Gorgonnash was my home, and for the last 15 months or so, I've kept in touch over the website. Although I haven't been playing, I've felt like I've still been a part of the family, so to speak.
But with the server transfer, there is a feeling as if the ties are severing.
No longer is it Tempest of Gorgonnash. This week, the guild transferred to Cenarius, wearing the temporary tag of "Last Pull", as the name "Tempest" was unavailable and did not meet the requirements for a GM to release it. It is expected that this tag will not remain, but the guild has not yet decided which one to adopt.
(Interestingly enough, it took me a moment to figure out why "Last Pull" was the temporary tag. Then I remembered the Tempest tradition of performing grand achievements or excelling on the last pull of the evening . . . and I laughed with the memories.)
On the bright side, with the guild gone, I will no longer feel even the slightest temptation to activate my subscription. It's kind of a pain to be torn here and there, knowing academically one thing and yet having nostalgic reminisces contradict that knowledge. So having to accept the departure of the guild, much as I've had to accept separation from friends my whole life, as I or they have moved from place to place, makes my life simpler.
Good luck, all my friends! No matter what name you decide upon, you will always be "Tempest" to me!
And I'll always be cheering for you.
Regular reader of your SWTOR blog here; just stumbled across this post after clicking on your name on a comment you left elsewhere...
ReplyDeleteI just wanted to comment because this post really resonates with me as well. The first couple of months after I quit WoW were kind of difficult because even though I knew that I didn't enjoy the game anymore, there was still a bit of residual pull provided by the people and fond memories. My old guild didn't transfer servers, but they did decide to merge with another guild under a new name (which I personally find terrible, incidentally)... and while I still check on their forums every now and then to see how they are doing, that last connection I had has definitely been severed by that change, and I was actually oddly relieved by that.