Short for a little something I like to call...New Guild Syndrome.
Every time you switch to a new guild, you tend to feel a bit left out. It's nothing intentional on anyone's part, but of course when you join a group of people who have been in the habit of doing things together (such as tank X always does a random heroic with healer Y and DPS Z) you can't be expected to be included in everything.
It's been a little over 2 months since I joined this new guild. To be honest I simply switched to this guild because 1. they raided at the times I could make, and 2. had a decent progression. I loved my old guild, but when official raids died, only to be replaced by a secret "by invite only" raid, I said my goodbyes. I play to raid, and when I'm not raiding I'm a sad panda.
Here in the new guild we DO raid. They are official guild raids and usually everyone is invited - heck, we're often short a couple people so sometimes we bring in pugs or ask one of the social members to come along. So basically if you want to raid and have decent gear, you get to raid.
The trouble is we only raid once a week. Officially there are three guild raids on the calendar for the week, but people seem to only show up for the first of the three nights. So we manage to fill up 25 spots for that night, then subsequent nights it's usually just a 10man run. Tuesdays (the first night) are generally farm nights, where we just kill the same 6 bosses until we call it a night. Wednesdays and Thursdays, the 10man nights, are the true progression nights where we down end-game bosses. We've already got Cho'gall down and pushing Al'Akir!
It was a real bummer for me at first because I didn't get invited to these 10mans. There are a few reasons and none of them are personal, so I didn't take it personally. Blizzard decided to make it so that the hard fights require a lot more ranged DPS than melee. Basically there are only 1-2 spots for melee available in these fights, and since the guild already has another rogue, I generally don't get a spot. The raid leader is nice enough to ask everyone in the guild if they need loot from any specific bosses before forming a group, which is very kind of him, but since I don't need any gear, I also can't speak up and ask to go.
The first month had me regretting my decision - why did I switch guilds to avoid getting excluded when the same thing was happening here?
But after seeing the 10man group beat their heads against the wall for 2 hours without downing a single boss made me realize that it wasn't such a big deal. Call it progression if you want, but at least now instead of wasting 2 hours and 500g of repair bills and flasks, I can work on achievements! I can farm mounts, I can work on my reputation gains, I can do archaeology!
Sure, it would be great to get a spot but if I don't there's always plenty to do. I know I'll eventually get to kill these bosses at some point, whether it be in the next major patch or the next expansion. And once the current 10man have gotten their gear farmed up, they do offer their spots to other players. I finally got to even go on a council fight the other week when the other rogue gave up his spot for me, which was pretty cool.
Most of all, I still get one solid night of raiding - that has been pretty consistent throughout my time here. It's not an uncertainty either, I'm pretty much guaranteed a spot. And that makes all the difference in the world for me. I would rather get one night of raid per week for sure, than sit around aimlessly wondering week after week. That was really what bothered me most about the old guild.
A couple nights ago though they invited me on Al'Akir! We didn't down him but we got him pretty low. I think it's a good sign since 1. now I'm one of the people who has experience on the fight (making me a more likely candidate next time we're pushing progression), 2. I stayed for the entire three gruelling hours of wipes, which shows that I don't just bail on progression, and 3. it helps cement my place in the guild as a "regular", increasing my chances of getting in on future runs as well. So things are looking up for me. The first couples months were rough, what with the NGS and all that, but I guess now I'm finally settling in...
