So what happened, one might ask? First, lets look at the goals I had set out for the guild before I even came up with the name.

1) Put together a solid 10man core before Cataclysm launches.

2) Get us all coordinated with each other and figure out our weaknesses.

3) Try to keep all the fat out of the guild, people who weren't serious, and only have a few select casual people in guild.

4) Push to 85, Heroic gear level and into Raids as fast as possible as a guild.

5) Be competition for the top 10 or 15 10man guilds on the server.

Well, we were a few core members shy of 1 when Cataclysm launched. We barely, in my opinion, got very far into 2. 3 went as planned until right before the end.

Then Cataclysm hit. It was a Cataclysm for us, not just Azeroth. Over half the guild either disappeared from the roster, gquit, or just didn't log on. Now there was some speculation as to why including people were only in guild for LK kills and had no intention of following through to push progression deep into Cataclysm content.

After a week of Cataclysm, very few of us were even 85. I think, roughly four. Which made me furiously angry, considering one of the guys who should have been first to 85 didn't even get there 'till some weeks later. On top of that, it became clear that guilds who didn't have a dozen people online and active weren't hitting the EXP cap each day. When we were level 4 and others were level 6, I started bringing in casuals.

I took as much as I could get out of Ascent Mechanics trying to fill that gap each day but in the end our guild level was 5 while others were 8. Trying to recruit had become almost impossible because all but maybe two conversations ended abruptly when they heard how far behind "the leaders" we were in guild level.

Then we lost our number one performer we had left who was active, and I threw in the towel.

So in conclusion, a lot of people who gave me bullshit stories regarding their eagerness and availability to tank for us who never even logged on back in the last month of Wrath... Should have been a foreshadowing that most of the people who I told a dozen times my intentions of building the guild to push CATACLYSM content hard and fast, wouldn't be around to follow through in cata either.

Hey, at least we got a bunch of people their Tribute to Mad Skill and Kingslayers with surprising ease.  Too bad they didn't stick around to push Cata content.  Pussies.

I tried, and I'm sorry for anybody's December I messed up. In regards to guild rep / guild activity / anything like that. That's on me.

-Ponderance / Neininch / etc.