Syzygy entered our first expansion, Legion, with certain expectations: we needed to all get gear from sources outside of raids (dungeons, quests, crafting), reaching something like ilvl 845; we were going to raid mythic difficulty and do as well as we could; we were going to do ‘split runs’, which means each person needed 2 characters that were decently strong (one main, one alt). Split runs come with benefits and pitfalls: that each person has 2 characters allows us to do the raid two times a week, and get twice the amount of gear, which means we can become stronger much faster. However, it means a much higher time-commitment, as just getting one character up to par could take 20 hours a week when the expansion starts. All the top guilds did it though, so we were planning on doing it too.

Individually, on the other hand, it appears people had all sorts of different expectations. Continue reading →

I had decided that I would really build a guild at around early to mid July, 2016. I’d made announcements to that effect in my PUGs, and some people had started preparing to swap servers to join me. Though I had raid led hundreds of mythic raiders by this time, and had maybe 20-ish regulars, not all of them planned to join my guild (some out of loyalty to their own guilds, some because they only liked to PUG). I probably had about 10~15 people who said they would commit from early on. I expected that with time and with work, we would gradually have enough (a high end raiding guild requires at minimum 20 people, but most like to go for 25~30 people, for each raiding group). I named my guild Syzygy, partly because the idea of stars coming together in alignment seemed fitting, and partly because it’s just such a cool-looking word.

In early July, we started doing ‘guild activities’ by selling raids. Continue reading →