Evidence of that is people quitting the game, taking a break, logging on less, and just not trying even when they are on. Guilds may fall apart or go backwards in progression. Sometimes people just stop focusing on raiding and do other things like stockpile gold or finish off long abandoned quests.
In vanilla I didn't see the expansion blues happen that hard. I think it was because no one had known just how worthless your hard earned gear would feel upon your first completion of a quest.
In BC the expansion blues hit hard. We all had been playing for years by that time and hated for our efforts to feel like they were worth less for the remaining months. I even fell pray to the blues and dedicated my time to playing my level 1 twink.
Now that WotLK is winding down people who would put much time and effort into this game are taking the chance to recharge their batteries.
In my guild we had a pretty big exodus right around the time that finals happened in the schools. If there was no expansion looming those people who left would already be back. As it is we have had a few trickle back but most aren't coming back till Cataclysm. For me, this is fine. I don't begrudge anyone the right to pick up or drop this game at any time for any reason.
Because of this exodus we had stalled in our progression run for about 2 months and just recently got back to downing new bosses. We recently killed heroic putricide and sindragosa marking the first forward progress in a long time. The fact is that over half of the people on these kills were recruited after the exodus.
Lately I have been hearing some frustration in the ranks about the attitude and ability of other members. When I hear this sort of thing my hackles get raised. We are a progression guild but not a hardcore guild. For some this is a hard balance to live with. We will kill the content (eventually) but we won't be ruthless about people who under-perform.
Instead of a "sink or swim" mentality its more of a "get everyone in the boat and teach them to row together" mentality. Guilds with the former attitude tend to go through recruits, but down content quicker. Guilds with the later attitude try to make every recruitment count, it just takes longer to get the content down. I personally prefer more of a performance based system and strive at all times to be the top of my game.
In a thread on our forums our GM summed it up nicely
There are two sides to the argument that has come up:
1. You can't raid without 25 people
2. 3-4 months ago a bunch of our current 25 man raiders wouldn't have been accepted into the guild...
...We were never meant to be a guild that taught people how to play and I rarely accepted people into this guild that needed a lot of help/training but with the current state of content (gogo 12 months of ICC by the time Cata comes out) it seems like a necessity.
Really what it means is if you want your guild to keep running content you must make room for people who have potential to be good. And if you are guildless or unhappy with your guilds current progression, it is a chance to move up to a better guild while other players take a break.
Or, you know, you could always just take a break till the expansion and hope your spot is still there when you come back and reacy 85.
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