It is with a heavy heart that I announce my guild, Blackfathom Deep Dish, has (as of today) ceased actively raiding.

The guild began in 2015 as an effort to make raiding fun again in the worst World of WarCraft expansion to date. We raided through the original raids, grabbed the Herald of the Titans achievement along the way, and eventually cleared the current expansion's content to cap it all off. Unfortunately, while interest going into Legion was incredibly high, many raiders decided to drop out shortly after launch for personal reasons (focusing on school, getting new and/or more demanding employment, health issues). As a result, we've been largely unable to field a group of 10 for the last two months.

Those of us that were left formed an alliance with the guild FoE, which is also short on raiders. We've been doing well (as of right now, we're half-way through Heroic Nighthold), but I've still wanted to get back to running our own raids again. Today, however, our number has officially dropped to 3 raiders. Since none of our recruitment efforts inside or outside of the game have paid off, it's become apparent that running our own raids is simply not going to be possible.

I don't think there's anyone to blame for this. Raiding in WarCraft has been changing over the last year or so: Most people seem to prefer not being in a guild now and simply joining pick-up group (PuG) raids that are being run through the Group Finder or listed on websites like OpenRaid. The general population of the game has also been in decline and it doesn't look like Legion has caused Blizzard to retain much of its post-launch population boom. It's not just us that's having problems with recruitment and retention - FoE and other guilds like us on our server are in similar situations.

Ultimately, I've just come to the conclusion that it's for the best. While I had a ton of fun running raids and, later, running the guild itself, I've got a lot going on at the moment and having some extra free time is honestly a welcome change. I appreciate the time I spent with the guild and everyone in it, but I think I've now gotten what I needed out of the experience. Hopefully, others enjoyed themselves, too. Thanks, everyone!

UPDATE (2017-03-28): Legion's new patch (7.2) was released today and I've actually decided I'm simply unsubscribing. Despite not having to run a guild anymore, I'm still going to be spending roughly the same amount of time on the game. Artifact power requirements for continuing to upgrade my weapon have increased and, as of this patch, are once again critical for raid performance. This is further complicated by the fact that, despite doing a large amount of eligible content, I have yet to receive any top- or high-tier legendary items. I simply can't keep my main character's gear at a level that will remain competitive without a significant time investment that I'm not sure I want to make at this point. The ratio of time-to-fun for World of WarCraft simply isn't high enough to be worth it. I might re-subscribe after DEFCON Finals this year - we'll see!