It's been a couple of weeks since the last update, and today's News is a little different format to usual. The guild has been shaken up a little, and I'm afraid there's one more shake still to go

Firstly raiding does still continue. There are 3 raids posted up for this weekend so please sign up!

You can't fail to have noticed that our Raiding has taken a bit of a hit lately with the loss of Gweryan, who did an amazing job at pushing HOTA into 25 man content and clearing most of Ulduar-10. With Gwer we also lose several of our most regular raiders, which is a shame, but we wish them well in their new guilds.

The upshot of this is that we no longer have a team that can seriously progress in Ulduar-25, at least for the time being. It occurs to me that, in trying to push our progression hard, we got away from the Mission Statement on the homepage which refers to "some casual raiding". HOTA is not a hardcore raiding guild and never will be, but we can still aim to be up there as one of the most progressed casual guilds.

I will therefore leave it to the Officer team to decide whether HOTA needs to switch focus to the 10-man progression path, and leave 25-mans open for people to PUG on off nights, or whether we will work the 10-mans for a while to build up experience and gear and then have another try at heroic raids once again in the future.

The Future of Leadership

A little less than a month ago I advised the Officers of my intention to step down as Guild Leader, starting from the 15th July.

I realised that from that date it’ll have been exactly 2 years since I accepted the reins from Bjornsangel, who wanted to step down herself when she was preparing to have her first baby. At the time I was one of the highest levels in the guild at somewhere close to Level 62, and raiding was far away on the horizon. Indeed I think we’d dropped down to about 20 members by that point with many of the old regulars jumping ship, and so I was full of ideas for reinvigorating the guild. I think I created this website the day after being promoted as the first step to getting the guild back on its feet, and the date of creation still shows on the homepage.

In those 2 years the guild has gone from strength to strength, having a valiant attempt at the Burning Crusade raid content (and being one of very VERY few guilds that successfully made the jump from Karazhan to 25-mans without falling apart and completely reforming), and our continued efforts in Wrath of the Liche King, where we continue to be seen as a well-respected and well-progressed casual guild. We are also one of the longest established guilds that are still going, and we watched as many other "more successful" guilds have broken apart over time.

I now think it is time for me to step down and let the Officers continue to do the great job they have been doing in recent months. I will stay in the guild but as a normal "Veteran" level member, and you will probably still see me organising the occasional guild event or retro-raid. At the moment I don't think the Officer team has decided whether one specific person will take over as "Head Officer", so for the time being it is likely to be a collaborative effort. Joining the current Officers will be 2 (possibly 3) new promotions, whose names will be announced soon. I am confident that the Officer team will be able to lead HOTA to new successes in this expansion and beyond.

The last time we had a Guild Photo event it was back in 2007 and only 20 people showed up. It'd be great to get a screenshot of the whole guild, and so before I step down I'd like as many people as possible to gather at Stormwind Cathedral steps a week next Saturday afternoon for a group screenshot!

The time is on the calendar and everyone is welcome, new member or veteran. Be there to be recorded in Heroes of the Alliance history!

Davarnus