I normally wouldn’t talk about guilds breaking apart, but I have some points to make regarding this particular guild “death.” Death and Taxes officially announced their demise this morning. We all saw it coming, considering they hadn’t posted about progression in months. But what grates my nerves is the reason Xi gives for their breakup.

Somewhere along the line people got the idea that they were bigger than the guild. That what they wanted was more important than what was good for the guild. That somehow they deserved respect just for being around.

This is curious, considering insider sources said the reason they died was because interpersonal guild drama had permeated beyond their web site and forums and into the raid itself. I’m not one to capitalize on such drama, so I’m not going to go into detail about it. If you really want to know, you can research it yourself. But know, for your sake, that the content of such drama is definitely not work safe. Avoid it if you don’t care for such drama or your boss would fire you over viewing nude pictures.

Watching Xi try to fabricate some ambiguous reason is really abhorrent and a disservice to responsible guilds and the WoW community as a whole. Or maybe he’s not fabricating the reason, and he’s just oblivious as to what some of their members really thought of the entire situation. In the end, I’m not surprised people undermined him. He’s an abrasive figure with outlandish opinions. And I’m not surprised they didn’t get enough quality recruits, because who wants to join a guild where potential drama is going to cause the guild to explode? That’s right, no one. Especially not when you have so many quality guilds to choose from these days.

As amusing as many people thought the entire situation was, people recognized the fact that publicizing personal problems within your guild is a terrible policy to hold. Especially when progress takes a backseat and people would rather continue to talk about the unfolding events, instead of why they were wiping and how to correct the problem.

The ship went down faster than the Titanic, but the rats were bailing out before the iceberg was ever even in sight.

As an outsider, it seemed to me that Death and Taxes was the iceberg that sank its own ship. It seemed to me like a guild led by terrible people with horrible public policy. They were a blight within the raiding community. That’s not to say they didn’t have some really awesome members during their time. But I’m glad some of these people recognized the abomination they were supporting by simply being a part of the guild. Good on them for having the balls to move on and cause the house of cards to come crashing down.