How do you keep your guild busy during the pre-expansion lull?
It's become something of a cycle over the years: An expansion is released, servers are glutted with players eagerly devouring content. As the expansion goes on, patches are released with more new content to play. But eventually, all good things must come to an end -- and when the last patch of an expansion is released, guild leaders have to contend with players who get ... well, flat-out bored, really. With nothing left to look forward to until the next expansion is released, it's hard to keep a guild entertained.
As far as my guild goes, we keep ourselves amused by going back and completing old achievements or clearing old content. Any raid mounts that we may have missed along the way are picked up for all. In between that, people run old-world raids on off nights for transmogrification gear and other achievements. But in every guild I've been in, there's always a lull at the end of expansions. Once you've beaten that final boss and dinged that last achievement, what do you do to keep your guild entertained when the expansion is drawing to a close?
There's a thread over on the Raid and Guild Leadership forums that discusses exactly that, including a lot of entertaining suggestions for various types of amusement. Some highlights from the thread include steeplechase mount racing -- as pointed out, the circular nature of Ironforge is just perfect for this -- guild hide and seek (which requires nameplates to be turned off), and of course, the usual run of scavenger hunts and riddle contests.
Personally, I love the idea of Guild Darts. One player -- the GM, in the suggestion's case -- leaps from a tall building to his or her death. The rest of the guild follows suit, trying to aim their corpses closest to the first player's. The closest corpse gets a prize. If you perform these antics in a populated area, the commentary from nonparticipants ought to be a prize in and of itself. Random players falling from the sky to their deaths sounds entertaining to me, anyway.
The thing I really like about these suggestions is that they don't necessarily just involve the guild; there are plenty there that offer a moment of surprise spontaneity reminiscent of flash mobs or improv groups. I'm a big fan of guerrilla improv like Improv Everywhere, which specializes in creating scenes in the middle of ordinary, everyday life. It's entertaining for those who participate, and it's entertaining for those who are lucky enough to witness the scene when it happens, too. Why not bring some of that random fun into WoW, too?
What do you do to keep your guild amused while waiting for Mists, or when you're just having a ho-hum day? Go ahead and share -- and while you're at it, pop in and share on the original thread, too!
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