This was my first thought on reading the thread 🙈 I’m so glad I knocked that out when I was like 11, no way my mid-30s ass is staying focused enough for a challenge like that now.

This was an interesting read for me the other day, pretty much exactly what you’re describing: https://www.wired.com/story/i-went-undercover-secret-onlyfans-chatter-wasnt-pretty/

Head First Design Patterns really helped me untangle the spaget

Yeah casual guilds don’t really have those issues because the requirements for skill at low raid tiers are so lax. Honestly the game kinda lends itself to toxicity when you play in 25-man groups, and it only takes a single person messing up in a mythic raid to ruin the pull for everyone. When it’s like that, isolating the “problem” player is going to be pretty common, and people tend to be more elitist and toxic in general when they are hiding behind a computer screen.

That’s not to say a high level guild can’t be positive and supportive, though. One of the things I like about watching RWF is that most of the high level guilds seem to have such a tight bond, and they never point fingers over a single raid wipe. They’re all in it together and come up with ways to compensate for each other’s weaknesses. But it probably helps that every player is highly invested in playing absolutely perfectly, and I’m sure getting a guild to that point requires aggressively cutting out a lot of weak links along the way 😐

Part of the problem is that UA is such a massive airline, odds are any alternatives would involve quite a bit of sacrifice. Not many people would be willing or can afford to take an extra 2 layovers or 50%+ extra travel time or cost in order to get to where they want to go 🫤 That’s not to say I won’t try my best to avoid UA though, I was already sick of them after my last trip and now I find this news.