In late 2022 I, along with many others, had the itch to come back to the World of Warcraft. The stinging disappointment that was the Shadowlands expansion still lingered, but it was mostly a dull ache as October rolled around.

I decided that I wanted to jump back into the world of Azeroth and handle some unfinished meta achievements that I'd left half-completed. I made short work of them, got some decent gear and still had the itch to play. After all, Dragonflight was just around the corner. Maybe I stick around and see how that first tier pans out.

And so I did.

I joined a guild called Chalk Outlines that was (and still is) based on the Tichondrius server with the intention to get some normal-tier raiding in and see how the content was as many of the new evergreen features like talent trees, revamped professions, and dragonriding felt.

Long story short, it was fun! I enjoyed myself, but... it was a rocky start. I'll save you the boring details, but the initial run of Chalk Outlines was cut short due to some internal drama and through all of that came a new guild. Inky handed me the reigns of the guild, we formed the group that would run things (the Admins), and changed the name.

<Aggressive Lusting> was born, and we treat the new year as the official founding date. January 1st, 2023.

Quite some time has passed now and the revolving doors that are <AL> have seem many people come and go. Some have called it home for years now, and others for just a month or two. We're grateful to anyone who has spent their time with us regardless of how long it was for -- and over the years our philosophy as a guild and group has shifted in many directions, and I want to talk a little bit about how and why we've landed where we are, and what it's like to helm it.

Raiding at it's core is a very simple thing to do in WoW. You and some friends get together a few times a week and set out to clear every single boss in a raid. That's a pretty linear goal; just about as straightforward as it gets. Start with Normal difficulty, then move to Heroic. The natural progression of things. It doesn't even matter how many people you have in that group. It's flexible and respects your time as a piece of content. Who can get 40 people together anymore anyway? It feels like a staircase where the top is completely visible... until it's not.

Mythic difficulty is where that staircase starts to get a little hazy at the top. Cutting Edge? Maybe just a few bosses? What dictates when we're "done"? Wait, we need 20 people no matter what? Hold on, what happened to that flexibility we just had? We spent all that time on Normal and Heroic and all of these stipulations weren't present! What if we don't have a backup player to fill a healer spot? What if someone loses interest?! Man. This just got so much harder.

This was an internal discussion I had with myself as the guilds raid leader during the third, and final (regular) tier of Dragonflight -- Amirdrassil, the Dream's Hope. Amirdrassil was the guilds first steps into Mythic raiding of any kind. We ended up downing 4 out of the 9 bosses in the raid -- not too shabby. For some guildies it left them itching for more and they had the drive and desire to push and go for a Cutting Edge. More power to them! For others, they realized that the fun was in doing that handful of bosses and letting the interest slowly fade. For the rest, there was no interest in mythic at all in the future.

For myself, I realized that I simply didn't have the time or desire to raid lead into Mythic. There's a lot more planning and organization that goes into handling those bosses, and there's a much more rigid framework that has to be met, like I mentioned above. 20 players, every week, no more no less. If you're down one you better have a backup or you're stuck trying to get someone to fill in as a PUG. Then you'll spend a few pulls letting that new person see how you run it and what to expect, and that takes a lot of time, and 9 times out of 10, they'll leave after a few pulls anyway. Rinse and repeat.

Fast forward to The War Within. Our second expansion launch as a guild! We had grown tremendously over the past year and nine months. So much so that we had two fully fleshed out raid teams. The guild collectively was raiding 4 nights a week, with the second team being the one that wanted to push for CE during that first tier -- Nerub-ar Palace.

I was still heavily on the fence about Mythic for myself and the team that I led, and didn't really have any intention of pursuing it, though many of my raiders often brought it up as we worked through that first tier.

It was during this season that I realized what the issue was for a lot of the people that had come and gone over the last almost-two-years. Our goal wasn't concrete. I wasn't being clear, and the objective, much like the top of that staircase was hazy and clouded. How could I expect people to stick around and raid with me if I didn't even have a solid idea of what their future looked like in terms of raiding?

I had to make it clear. Team Time Warp (my team) was a full-stop AOTC group. Show up, slam, get your AOTC and then go do your own thing. Whether that's Mythic+ or just playing another game, that's all I needed out of you. This wasn't without consequence, however.

This mindset led to a lot of players not really playing for the "team". That "get in and get out" mentality that I was fostering turned into, well, exactly that. There wasn't any real reason to foster relationships or engage in content outside of the raid. This wasn't the environment that I wanted, but it's the one that I got.

The rest of the War Within was much of the same, but with some key details that I'll outline below that directly impacted the guild and our direction.

• The Admins decided to shrink the guild down. It had become unruly and had a ton of conflicting personalities.
• The second raid team, our Wednesday/Friday group, dissolved due to management issues on an individual level.
• Scheduling got ugly and we weren't able to get our guild AOTC during the final tier of TWW.

There were some other smaller things that happened, but those 3 are (arguably) the biggest.

Now let's fast forward one final time to March 2nd, 2026. The second expansion in The Worldsoul Saga is releasing -- Midnight -- and it's time for some big changes. Maybe even Mythic raiding is on the table?

We had recruited and kicked, built and torn down, tried and failed. Many of those original players we had recruited in the early days of the guild were still around, and they deserved a chance to express what they wanted out of the guild as we approached the fresh slate that would be the first raid releases of the expansion.

I took as much information as I could to heart over the downtime between The War Within and Midnight and put everything that I could to use. Many of these things were hard pills to swallow because it meant that we were doing something wrong. Now the title of the post will make a bit more sense as I outline the HOWS and WHYS.

THE WHYS?

• Why do people not stick around for entire, or multiple tiers?
• Why do people get frustrated over gearing?
• Why do people get bored so quickly?
• Why do people not feel included?

These are just a few of the questions that the Admin team has been faced with, not just in the past few months, but over the lifetime of the guild. They are pretty simple questions on the surface, but difficult to fix in practice while also not pushing us over the threshold of being a "Hardcore" guild. We've never wanted to be the kind of place that doesn't foster growth, or to be the kind of place that simply recruits the best and kicks the worst. Now I'll discuss HOW we've worked to fix these things, in the order that the questions were asked above.

THE HOWS?

• Build a team of raiders that is invested in the growth of each other outside of just the raid environment.
• Work with one of our longest tenured raiders (shoutout Nerzumi) to develop an entirely in-house gearing structure that allows each raider to prioritize specific pieces of gear each raid week via a website and in-game addon. Mandatory reclears also push this further, ensuring that everyone can and will get the gear they need.
• Create fun, inclusive, and incentive-based events throughout the entire season both in-game and outside of WoW. Focus on giving our raiders and guildies a reason to not only log in, but to also join us in Discord outside of raid nights.
• Launch a program designed to build people up and include them organically -- The AL Academy. Spend time outside of the normal groups you would be in to offer some time and knowledge to someone who's actively seeking it. Whether it's a specific class, role, or just general info about M+, or anything for that matter, there are people that are ready and willing to help.

All of this to say that we take everything to heart. Every decision that's made is made to benefit the needs of the many. New ways to handle gear, new ways to keep you interested, new ways to get people involved.

The engagement I've seen this tier so far has been nothing short of incredible. Full Discord channels almost every single day, multiple groups running keys, playing other games, together, or just shooting the shit. I like to think that it's a direct result of the changes we've made in the recent months. I'm proud of that.

I know this is super long winded, but the growth of the guild, maybe not in a numbers sense -- but generally, is something that I take a lot of pride in. Myself and the other Admins both past and present have remained dedicated to keep this place cool, functional, and worth logging in for, and that wouldn't be possible or worth it without everyone who's called <AL> home over the years.