TLDR: My launch day guild is a dead guild on a dead server. I need to pick a server to find a new home but it's overwhelming. How do you find a guild? What do I do with my hands?! Help me Reddit! I need to xfer servers, but I also have to try to get my character name. Data up front, sad feels at the end. Should I... --Give up the Horde? --Give up being on a PvE server? --Give up being on a west-coast timezone, west-coast server? It seems like if you want to PvE on Horde, you have to be on a PvP server. It seems like if you want population, you need to be on the east coast. For west coast players that have moved to an east coast server are you able to find a west coast schedule? For small/mid sized server players that have moved to a large server, how do you find a community in the tide of people? For PvE focused players that have moved to a PvP server, how do you deal with the attitudes? --- SERVER SCOUTING I've spent a lot of time on wowprogress.com and wow.realmpop.com, but it's easy to get overwhelmed with options. I also build a tool in PHP to analyze guild activity, but that is just more information to get overwhelmed with. wowprogress doesn't necessarily show you who is active, just who has killed stuff in the last year. Below, I took a count of all the guilds on wowprogress that have at least done 14/14 normal SoO. UTHER (PvE - Mostly Alliance) 25m T16 = 5 guilds 10m T16 = 28 guilds Whirlwind BG / Phoenix Data Center - 63.241.138.161 + RUNETOTEM (PvE) 25m T16 = 8 10m T16 = 30 Vengeance BG - 12.129.209.68 Uther+Runetotem is where I am now. Uther used to be a good home to me, but Horde pop is down in the weeds. AREA 52 (PvE) 25man T16 = 92 10man T16 = 419 Retaliation BG - 63.240.104.93 East coast mega-server for horde PvE. I have a few friends over there, but they're distant or never on when I am anymore. I insta-90's a ret paladin over here, but it's just not clicking together for me. Latency seems noticeably different/slower. Trade chat moves fast and the town seems almost too big to be friendly. I think I could get my name here, but I worry about latency and the timezone difference. PROUDMOORE (PvE - Alliance) 25man T16 = 48 25man T10 = 298 I had some other RL friends play alliance here, but their guild xferred off and died out ages ago. I do have all my names saved over here. Proudmoore has a nice LA data center ping, and a large population of raiders. The only thing I worry about is that it's population numbers may be skewed up by being the old "Oceanic" server, plus the GLBT server. Those aren't problems for me... but for it's size it seems like it should be putting up more raids. Aside from that.. it's alliance. HYJAL (Horde PvE) 25m T16 = 34 10m T16 = 207 Whirlwind BG - 63.241.138.161 Same ping-times as my current server, better population. But still not a lot of 25man guilds here. Trade chat is definitely slower, but way better than Uther. This might be a good place to look for a home, but I worry that it too could decline into obscurity. KIL'JADEN (PvP) 25man T16 = 55 10man T16 = 250 Bloodlust BG / LA Data Center - 12.129.209.68 I don't know much about this server. Don't have any of my names here. Trade chat seems okay despite the PvP. This might be a good server. ILLIDAN (PvP Horde) 25man T16 = 134 10man T16 = 399 Central timezone, large raid numbers look promising, large population... no characters here, don't know a dang thing about the server temperment. TICHONDRIUS (PvP) 25man T16 = 20 10man T16 = 81 Bloodlust BG / LA Data Center - 12.129.209.68 Huge horde population, but low raid numbers. Seems super focused on PvP, trade chat moves fast. Once got kicked out of a SoO run by some folks from here. Learned that I should never mention that I haven't killed Garrosh on normal yet, despite knowing what to do. :X Seems big and busy, but a mean town. ---- MY SAD SACK JOURNEY, THE SHORT VERSION I've been playing since the F&F alpha of vanilla (friend of a friend knew the guy who did the eyeballs in the Duskwood bushes), ever since the initial announcement I knew that this game was going to be big and amazing, and I wasn't wrong. I started my own database site (goblin workshop), and furiously programmed and hand-typed in data from all the screenshots I could find. Uther-US was around on launch day, and my RL friends formed up a guild there. I started off on Stormreaver with my DaoC guild. I played melee huntard, not knowing how bad I was. After some core members started win-trading with the Alliance in the High Warlord races, I left them and joined another guild. Didn't really bond, so I rerolled as an Orc Rogue on Uther with my RL friends. I had really found both my character and my home guild with The Stonecutters. We had a long long run. We were far from the best, and raiding was a struggle. Burning Crusades was special for me and my fondest memories of the game were there. We fought tooth and nail to kill Gruul, cleared out Karazhan over and over and tried to put a dent in the Black Temple. I evasion tanked Magtheridon to the cheers of my guildmates on TeamSpeak. I always had a friendly rivalry with the hunters for who would be top DPS and it was always neck and neck. During BC I also found out I had Multiple Sclerosis. Between working full time, going to art school, being upset about the state of the world, playing wow and trying to run a website my immune system decided that my brain was a threat and it would try chewing on it for a bit to help out. I leveled an arms warrior alt while laid out on the couch from a spinal tap gone wrong. I could barely lift my head to fish but I got through it. I cut out school, my wow website and caring about the state of the real world. I healed and the damage became the new normal. Every expansion our guild would die back, but claw ourselves out of the ditch and press onward. Ice Crown Citadel was the last time I saw a guild 25man run. I used to hate Northrend so much, but Catalcysm made me nostalgic for it. We had decent progress Cata and I did manage to get my legendary daggers. I felt so proud, but one by one my old friends were hanging up their swords and staves and leaving for the real world. Our resto GM stopped logging in, so when the smack talking enhancement shaman grabbed the inactivity promotion he thought it was a hilarious joke not realizing that it was all according to plan. He quickly ducked out after that and the role of GM fell to one of those hunters that I vied with on the meters. I hated Mists of Pandaria at first. My rogue's wings had been clipped. Old abilities and talents pulled away from me, even with all my gear the starting zone mobs were giving me a pounding. For the first time I back-burnered the rogue and leveled a monk. I knew we would need healers. I got to 90, but behind the curve and never caught up. The first few instances were brutal, but the guild endured. I never felt like I had my mojo together on the mistweaver. I could heal-punch okay, but I just couldn't get dedicated healing to work. On Horridon in Throne of Thunder I had a meltdown and quit the monk. I just couldn't save people and I was getting outhealed by the prot paladin's self healing at the same time. I leveled up my arms warrior but by the time I got there, the prot paladin had hung up his crown and we were out a raid leader. I was also out an old friend and sometimes arena partner. Despite always loving arms, I just couldn't main-character it. I came back to my rogue and it finally felt like I was back in my own skin again. Hunter stepped down from GM. From the old guard, it was just myself and our stalwart food table summoner. He told me he would /roll me for the guild leadership. I told him that if I won, I would immediately give the guild a quiet burial. He agreed to be GM instead. Somehow we managed to pick up another five or so people interested in raiding, including a raid leader. Despite it always being a struggle, and being down to the bare bones we had managed to pull back from the abyss a little. We did SoO, but by now, it was like 3-4 people tops signing up on the game calendar for raids. More would show up at raid time, but we would sit around for an hour filling the raid on oQueue, then clear the first half of SoO before someone would drop and we'd have to sit for another hour looking for people. I didn't entirely care for our new raid -- it was loud, messy and raunchier than ever, but the new people were growing on me. One of our old tanks had come back, but some of the new folks were being grumpy about having to try and gear him up. One day, I logged in to mail the healer that usually puts the groups together that I should probably be out. I had been up all night with a work emergency and needed sleep. I noticed she wasn't in the guild anymore, then I noticed her entire clique wasn't. They had decided to go form their own 4 person guild to focus on Mythic raiding. The other segment of new guys took off for Area-52. It's just me and the mage left at the campfire, but it's down to a few embers. Sometimes we see a few old faces log in, but with no shared purpose there isn't much to go on. Ever since the middle of SoO, I knew Uther was dying. I had said that we needed to migrate elsewhere, or merge or do something.. but the others were too worried about the costs, or the loss of our long heritage to give anything up. We were holding out hope for the server merge, but when it finally came through it seems like it all it added was more tradechat trolls. We lost our PST timezone with the merge and then I noticed we were now in Phoenix instead of a Seattle data-center. No other guild on Uther raided for as long as we did. I don't think we'll grow back this time. Now to execute an exit strategy. --- So... tell me what you would do. I figure once I pick a couple of thriving servers, I can try and get my name unlocked on them. Once I find an opening, then I can keep my character and identity and start looking for a raid guild to try and bond with. (Tue/Wed 7pm-12pm PST is generally my availability) I'd really like to find something that fits that, but also isn't struggling all the time. I know I'm probably looking for something that is in the past now, but I've come too far to quit now. that