3.22. Preparing for Ulduar

The Influx of 3.1

"fallen Ulduar",
by Jian Guo

The gray sky above Ulduar was all at once broken by the flock of twenty five players swarming the entrance. Flying mounts of all shapes and sizes swept in and down towards the meeting stone, perched near the base of the entrance to the newly opened raid instance. Ulduar was an ancient titan city, its tall marble pillars bearing the weight of Azeroth's origins, and other dark secrets intended to be left alone. I was enamored with the history surrounding Uldaman, Ulduar and Uldum, and how these three ancient cities buried clues to the very creation of the world we played in, day after day. When I first caught wind of these cities during Vanilla, I dug up any shred of information in existence that would reveal those secrets to me. I even purchased a pen and paper RPG book issued by Blizzard, "Lands of Mystery", which confirmed my suspicions. Ulduar lay embedded in the Storm Peaks of Northrend, home to a multitude of titan artifacts, along with other...horrific nightmares. As soon as we knew the next expansion was set in Northrend, I called out a prediction to the guild that we'd see Ulduar and that it would be incredible.

"Incredible" wouldn't even begin to do Ulduar justice.

The broad strategy Blizzard put into play for Wrath was working: by now, knowledge that WoW had become more approachable was spreading out far beyond the scope of the game. This, coupled with their aggressive marketing strategy of cleverly inserting celebrities into TV commercials for WoW began to surge the subscription base upwards. Even more international versions of WoW were being delivered, and the worldwide subscription base grew healthily as a result. So, by the time of the release of 3.1 and the Ulduar raid, we saw an even greater surge of interest in raiding. As was with my own nerdy infatuations, more players were available, and sought to jam their foot into the door. While many raiding guilds stuck to their age-old ideals of fixing a roster on the same 25 folks, I employed a different tactic -- one necessary to the success of Descendants of Draenor.

Balance of Power

We may not have completed Heroic: Glory of the Raider during Tier 7 at the start of Wrath, but this tiny embarrassment in an otherwise respectable progression didn't hamper recruitment any. Each week I'd receive two-to-three new applications via e-mail, and in-game, players continued to inquire on how we achieved the "Twilight Vanquisher". I continued to advocate "selling the guild": hook folks at any opportunity,  give them the pitch, offer them some cream with their coffee...and then reel them in. This was the plan all along: aggressively recruit, be constantly on the lookout for fresh meat to pad the raid rotations with, and broaden our pool.

For us to succeed, there was no other option.

We weren't a hardcore guild, at least in the traditional sense, and couldn't maintain a roster of the same 25 folks week-to-week -- our core was built on Elites while Raiders rotated week-to-week. In the early days, I didn't do an exceptional job of communicating what our expectations were for both groups. This produced a raid often comprised of players who performed poorly, were quick to make excuses, and had to be told over and over what to do. The power rested with the raiders; I couldn't hold them accountable because there was nobody in line to replace them. At the start of Wrath, I was determined to shift the balance of power back where it belonged -- in the hands of officership. I needed to be able to make a commitment to the guild that the double-standard would no longer be tolerated: if you were a shitty player and incapable (or uninterested) in improving, you'd be gone. But without becoming a hardcore, fixed 25-man group, I had to employ another tactic to enforce that accountability. That tactic was constant, aggressively recruiting.

By retaining a large pool of players that yearned for raid progression, I could at last hold them accountable for their actions; if they carried themselves like amateurs, they'd find themselves on the bench. But it wouldn't just be talk -- I'd make certain they would physically see the lineup of people in the queue, week-to-week, names of players gunning for their spot. So, I ensured that there was a constant inflow of new faces and kept our web-based signup sheet public and spammed throughout our forums and guild chat. There would be no mistaking what that pecking order looked like, no way for a player to make an excuse about "not knowing". For our guild's design, this was the only way to ensure we could prevent double standards: a bullet-point list of requirements for players to adhere to, fully documented, easily accessible on our forums...and a line of faces that was completely out in the open, ready to get their chance to join the 25m progression team.

Fresh Meat

By now, some names had become a regular in the 25m rotation. Bulwinkul, a Boomkin Druid named after the famous cartoon moose had joined the guild at the start of Wrath, and had been proving himself as a capable raider. Thanks to the efforts of the PvPer Ben, who himself had been boomkinning on his toon Scruffiebear, a knowledge-transfer occurred which very quickly placed Bul at one of the top DPSers of the raid. This freed Ben up to return to a class that helped make a name for himself in Descendants of Draenor: Shadow Priest. He and I had melted faces side-by-side throughout various pieces of content during The Burning Crusade; he on Aeden and I on Zanjina. Returning to his Shadow Priest in preparation for Ulduar meant a serious amount of face melting would be on the menu.

Another up-and-coming face was Crasian, a Death Knight who originally sought passage into the guild during TBC via his Shaman, Uliz. He heard the calling of the new class in WotLK, however, and made a name for himself as the first guildy to complete Glory of the Hero, a grueling set of 38 achievements that forced the player to defeat 5-man heroic bosses in strange and unorthodox ways. His demonstrated completionist mentality was a sure win for the 25-Man progression team, and I carved out a spot for him when the opportunity arose. Before long, he was a regular in the rotations, and his always competitive Unholy damage was sure to lay waste in Ulduar.

It was near 3.1 that we also saw some brand new faces to the guild. First on that list was Bonechatters, a young rogue who managed to finagle his way into Descendants of Draenor sidestepping my age restrictions. The new structure dictated we no longer accept anyone under the age of 21. Boney had come our way via Turtleman, and Turtle himself was one of our younger players, having been grandfathered in during the restructure at the start of Wrath. Much time would pass before I would catch on to Boney's "deception", but by that time, he had long since proven his worth. He caused me no drama, so by not having a need to scrutinize his behavior, he continued to fly under the radar. The purpose of the age limit, after all, wasn't about maturity -- it was about goal alignment. And he was aligned with the guild's goals, not his own personal agenda.

Uncommon Sense

Along with the faces that continued to bolster our progression team, there also came certain names that would cause us grief. During Vanilla and TBC, while I was still getting my feet wet in the leadership department, there would be times when something just didn't feel right. A certain behavior was observed, a certain sentence was typed out into guild chat, or a certain thing was spoken into Vent -- very casually, as if nothing was out of the ordinary. Just your typical average everyday conversation. But when I would observe this behavior, or be quietly listening to a conversation in which these events would unfold, I would stop what I was doing and just stare at the screen in disbelief. My eyes would narrow, I'd shake my head from side-to-side, and form the words with my mouth without actually speaking

"What...the...fuck?"

When my gut spoke to me in the past, I was never really sure how to handle it. No formal rules existed that told me what to do when my instincts began to sound off like a siren in my head. How should I handle a situation when my gut contradicted our standard business practices? During the restructure, I felt very strongly that I needed to consider my gut more, as it often ended up being more accurate in the long run than I gave it credit for. So while I was drafting up the new guild rules during that Summer of '08 at my Dad's farm up in Hudson Bay, one of the exercises I completed was to transcribe every single moment in time I could remember throughout the life of the guild in which my gut warned me that something wasn't right. Upon reviewing it, I made the decision to include it as an official post to educate my guild on those simple little common-sensical things...that aren't often as common-sense as we like to think.

I titled the post: Red Flags.