I was DROW in EQ2 for a long time. When I made the late jump to WoW I went guildless for the first toon, to 70, and then 38 Studios happened along and we formed a guild here. Since moved most of my toons to AIE and The Earthen Ring because the play style is as perfect as anything I could ask for.
Incredible group, huge group, of players that allow my kids and I to play together and me not have to worry about F bombs in guild or vent, and at the same time a large very hard core group of high end raiding folks with spots open pretty much 24/7 to get into any content you could want.
Last night I organized a 25 man raid, never been in anything above 5 man, and we went into Tempest Keep. 14 of the players had never raided before.
We got to the Reaver before calling it a night, but it was pretty cool to be with a group of people who were experiencing raiding for the first time, and hear them all fired up after we downed the first 6 pull on the 2nd shot. I enjoy that part of MMO"s. I"ll eventually get the gear I want if I want it bad enough, but the cool social stuff that can happen is fun for me, in a geeky sort of way I guess.
You can have your min/max f bomb dropping DKP minusing raids. I"ve done that and would rather beat the crap out of the raid leaders than the mobs most times. There is zero fun in that for me. Finding a group of people that are fun as hell to hang with AND can take down high end content has always been the challenge for me.
I can get a group/raid up and organized inside of 30 minutes for pretty much anything on the planet. What I can"t do, and probably won"t ever do, is know the exact need for every class in every raid spot of a raid. I did that before, not interested, too much work (but I loved doing it when I had time).
Last night I was MA and had a blast. One epic screw up when I thunderclapped and broke a sheep, but other than that it was fun as hell. I am dead set on learning how to MT end game content, and that"s not something you can just get gear and show up to do. You need to be with folks that get the whole "learning curve" thing and aren"t going to make life hell on people to the point they just won"t raid.
I did find it funny though, that last night as I was doing this, someone joined raid only to inform us there was no way they were going, they had no interest in repair bills. But we managed to run Mech, and afterwards get a 25 man in raid, to TK and in the instance with instructions inside of 30 minutes. Given that there are close to 2000 people in the guild the lack of drama and the enormous amount of people that are just out to help others makes it an incredibly unique experience and has really re-energized my fun meter.
Going to run SL tonight, and maybe set foot in kara for the first time