As in every world, online and offline, crisis happens. As I mentioned in my previous post (here) I was playing in a dutch guild. One of our biggest successes also was a milestone in my own career in WoW and I wanted more, something I couldn't wish for from the members of the guild I was playing with.

As a guild leader you're also in contact a lot with other guild leaders, talking about what's going on on the server (a server is usually populated with around 8000 users) and how progress is advancing. We also talked a lot about members progressing, usually to bigger guilds. I called this process "natural progression", usually players joined our guild, learned a lot from our experiences, geared up their character and left to a bigger guild. Usually prepared thanks to what they learned, but leaving a gap in the existing guild. Filling that gap costs a lot of energy, and as experience learned us, sometimes the gap is getting that big that continueing progress is no longer possible. Key players leaving (players that usually attend al guild events, involved with management etc.) will break morale of other guild members, ultimately leading to a guild collapse. Something I had to experience several times in Bomen Zijn Relaxed.

I left when we had the best morale ever, after slaying that bad ass boss we worked so hard on together.


I moved to "fractured", A well known guild on our server with passionate, dedicated players. A level I never experienced before, but I had the pleasure to play with, usually in the deepest of the night, turning of my PC at 3 AM was no exception, hooray for being a student.

My role back then was a "healer", trying to keep people alive, something average players call "dead easy", but with the right attitude a more rewarding role then others. My reputation and effort rewarded me a spot in Fractured.

The step I took to move to fractured killed my previous guild, they tried and tried again, but progress came to a bleeding halt, even after cooperating with several other guilds.

After 5 weeks I left fractured, moving back, but it was already too late. At that time I decided to quit. For some months.

Blizzard announced it's first expansion pack for World of Warcraft, called The Burning Crusade. I bought it on the day of release and started playing, with only one goal in mind: Experience ALL content, from first to last boss, no matter what the cost.

It almost cost me my relationship, my job and my student life, but somehow I managed to keep them all together with minimal effort, sessions of 14 hours a day of WoW playing weren't an exception, and I was eager to reach the goal I set for myself. Unfortunatly, the restart of "Bomen Zijn Relaxed" wasn't the place I had to be to experience all that progress. Also some of our keyplayers left and there where no stand ins ready to help out. The "Main Tank" is usually the player that maintains the pace of the evening, guiding players in what to do and usually taking split-second decisions (see movie) deciding the faith of 24 other players if they fail or succeed in their common goals.

I decided I should take that role, I was ready for it.

So I stoped playing my previous character, where I already spent over 3000 hours of playing on.

I resurrected myself as "KooZ", class: Warrior, race: Tauren (a cow like race) level 1.

I'm hoping to tell you more about where it went from there, in my next blog. Exceeding server-wide connections, getting a "moviestar" alike status and even persuading teachers to give me credits just for playing WoW... And it worked...