So now what

I think there comes a time for many players where you need to make a serious change to progress. I came into this game as a complete noob to play with my friends. It was a casual endeavor to pass time when I was bored. But as I got into the game, and started catching to them in leveling it became more of a hobby and it was more competitive to progress. I was a late comer near the end of Burning Crusade, and most of the guild was fairly casual - mostly ever doing 5-mans. By the end I was the one pushing to try a guild Karazhan run. I was the one heavily studying my gear and trying to tank heroic dungeons (and failing miserably). And yet at the end, I was by and far light-years ahead of them in terms of gear. I religiously followed Emmerald's gear lists. Since I mostly focused on being a cat, I had a fair amount of badge loot, crafted epics, my good old boe epic staff, and 2 pieces from Karazhan. Other than that silly quest crap from 3.0, no one had this kind of gear. The one warlock had made his epic tailoring set (just like my Primal Intent set), and many had their welfare epics from grinding AV all day. But in terms of PVE gear, I was very solid.

Then comes Lich King. And once again it's me leading the way for the guild. I wasn't the first to 80, but I also got the upgrade a few days after they did and played the DK all the first day. Needless to say though, I caught right up and was the first person well prepared and starting heroics. Lick King made heroics a lot more accessible than BC (e.g Easier), so a lot more of the guild got into them. Nowadays I'm still one of best geared and accomplished members of the guild, but there a few others in the same boat. But the guild has radically altered. What was once a friendly casual guild all of which had some sort of personal connection to each other, now has random strangers as members that raid together. We've gone from that casual group, to the hardcore raiders, and now we're at the burnout point and back to casual friends with a few realm stragglers who can tolerate us (lol). It took some of those of those new strangers to our inner circle to actually make any raiding progress. Now we're back to square one.

So what to do now? I've done everything short of spamming trade chat to try to develop and build this guild. There's one other member who has done his part, and the GM also does a little too. All in all, I'm at a breaking point. I don't know to write this all out to convey my confusion so I'm just going to stream of conscious bullet point it.

- My guild doesn't actively show it wants to progress. But I do.
- My guild is comprised of a lot of good players, many of whom are real life friends that I enjoy playing with.
- For me, it's just a pointless grind to nowhere without guild driven raid progress
- I can't progress my gear very reliablely pugging raids.
- My server does not have much going for it in terms of Horde progression with lots of solid guilds and players. It's not all suckage, but you won't be seeing much in the way of hardmode stuff.
- I want to do hardmodes.
- 10 or 25 man raiding. I love to raid lead for 10s. For 25s? I just want to kill things. I've lead guild run 25 man naxx pug runs and I hated it. Every bit of it.

My options?
1. Soldier on where I am and hope for some good RNG in re-sparking the guild.
Cairne is bloated with tons of small crappy guilds that each have a few good players. We were lucky with the S8 absorption, but that was short lived. Getting a second chance here might not be so good.
2. Join a guild on my own server. There are many I am sure I could easily get into.
This is very realistic option that I'd pursue IF the current guild more or less calls it quits. I'd feel awkward if I just left and stayed on Cairne with them still plugging along.
3. Transfer to another server, and take my chances in the wild.

I guess I actually got to be on with the other officers (at least the 4 main people doing shit) and make a call. Then we'll see what's next.