Hey Purified, welcome back! I don’t know how long ago you played, but I agree, the general sense of realm community has fallen victim to the cross-realm action, and I do miss that sense of community, but there are still a bunch of solid guilds full of active and fun people. I can offer mine, certainly, but if we’re not your speed, there are others doing other things, and I think that’s where you’re going to be most likely to find the community you’re seeking.
(Disclosure, we are not a Blackhand guild, we were on Galakrond prior to the merger!)
Here’s a bit of my recruitment copy pasta, please feel free to reach out in game!
Aegis (http://aegis-galakrond.guildlaunch.com) is a social guild that supports raiding, rather than a true raiding guild, so our primary goal has always been to create a stepping-off point for whatever adventures our members dream up. For us, playing wow is about the relationships we build with other players (in some cases literally, I married one of our raid leaders about five years ago and we had a bunch of guildies at our wedding.) Aegis has been home to some of us since 2009 but we also have and value many newer members, so it’s not just an insular group of old hats… The guild has significant numbers of active players from Eastern to Pacific (with outliers further afield) so there’s usually folks on daytime and evenings tend to be active well into Pacific evening.
We have been fielding current-yet-casual raid teams since Wrath of the Lich King. In Battle for Azeroth, we have four, three heroic progression teams and a casual free-for-all. All of our raids prefer to take the player, rather than the class, and encourage you to play what you enjoy, but specifics are up to each individual leader, so if you get the raiding bug, I’m happy to get you in touch with the relevant personages upon request!
We also have plenty of non-raiding members who are active in guild chat (and Slack/Discord) and will enthusiastically join you to push mythic keys, farm old content, level new alts, just go fishing or whatever you dream up. It’s a nice mix of people who like to talk shop about class mechanics and people who can’t stop drinking the altohol with a seasoning of achievement obsessives thrown in. We are an adult guild, average age somewhere in the 30s (based on the totally unscientific guild chat approach to polling…) and we all have real lives and other interests, and we like sharing those with our guild family as well. (A few members got together for a Spartan race last year, but you will not catch ME queueing for that particular instance any time soon. I could probably be convinced to join the guys who went to Vegas together this weekend if they do THAT again though!)
If any of this sounds appealing, our website can give you an idea of our guild culture, or I am available at btag Simsarah#1655 (or just a /who Aegis and ask anyone which of my million alts I’m on) to field questions, comments, or cutting remarks. Good luck finding the right place for you!