Like Harpy and Nathan.
Anyway I thought I’d add something to the reason. Every guild I join uses a DKP system where the person whom has the highest dkp gets the first pick at items that drop and it costs them basically nothing. Then the next highest and so on.
I remember a while back Sunny said that on Good Game they looked at the difference between the way guilds function on the USA servers vs the European servers. One of the differences was that the guilds on the USA servers acted alot like guilds in Asia.
Anyway what I’ve found is that guilds have created in effect senority systems much like the way the Japanese ran their economy leading up 2000 and possibly still now. The longer you’ve been at a company the more you get paid. They’d recruit people right out of collage and you’d have a job for life within the company ending way up in upper management with a large pay packet if you stayed long enough.
The problem is that your pay is not linked in anyway to your ability or anything you’d bring to the company when hired. It becomes next to impossible to recruit people into anything but a starter role and having to pay a bloated middle management section of the company. Meaning that companies were just not performing as they should.
A nice article I found called Jobs for Life and Seniority Traditions Are Dropped for Western Models : Rules Change as Japan Inc. Downsizes illustrates the point.
The reason I bring it up is because thats exactly how these guilds are functioning. Not only that but they have the whole us and them mentality of gangs much like I sterotypically see Japanese businesses as having. If you leave or question the status quo then your dishonoring the company/gang and must be vilified as an example to anyone else whom thinks of following your example. Doubly so if your point is valid.
Anyway the reason I’m leaving WoW is because I’ve already leveled up so many characters to 60+, spent a ton of time in BGs and don’t really feel like paying $15 a month to PvP for gear when I could buy a full priced game which is specifically tailored to PvP such as an FPS shooter which doesn’t require me to spend days and days worth of time farming gear to become competitive vs other players.
But probably most importantly if I buy a PvE game such as Oblivion or NWN I don’t have to enter some sort of politcal PvP ring in order to see the end of the game which is how WoW is done now via raiding guilds at the moment.