3.58. Procrastinators Anonymous

DoD defeats all ten Faction Champions at once,
earning "Resilience Will Fix It (25 Player)",
Tournament of Champions

Sands Through the Hourglass

Blain wasted no time pushing Si Team toward achievement completion. He took hold of the 10-Man stagecoach with all the seriousness of his former 25-Man leading days that I remembered well. The last wintery month of 2009 saw our 10-Man's total obliteration of the first wing in ICC, a shower of achievements raining down in the process. Si Team's first official outing took place on the evening of Saturday, December 12th -- one day after the progression team's first exposure to Arthas' army. In that introductory run, we claimed victory over both "Boned (10 Player)" and "I've Gone and Made a Mess (10 Player)", but Blain wouldn't let up. The next two weeks were primarily spent alleviating the burden of "Full House (10 Player)", an annoyingly complicated kill in which the team artificially dragged the encounter out, spawning far more cultists than was necessary for a standard execution. Dispatching the cultists was easy...forcing an abundance of them to spawn while not being overwhelmed was a tad more vicious in difficulty. Still, Si Team had positioning and strategy polished by the 30th, knocking both it and "I'm on a Boat (10 Player)" out in the same evening.

Aside from the one signifying a full clear of the first wing, the 25-Man had not yet completed an ICC achievement.

Before you rush to condemn Omaric and Bretthew, however, allow me to add some context that may be absent from the story thus far. The dual 25-Man raid leaders had an entirely different mission to accomplish and were busy leading the flock to that end. As noted earlier, raiders who plowed through the Lower Spire were left with plenty of time on their hands, but this free time slowly trickled away as The Plagueworks' unlock date approached. Like a whiteboard from bizarro land, legacy boss names yet to be murdered still appeared in blood red. For Omaric and Bretthew, their immediate concern was to wipe the red away, and rewrite those names in black. Whatever held us up by this point -- gearing concerns, poor players over the holidays -- had to be put to rest.

---

Our tour of duty started on a cold evening in the middle of December, beginning with Faction Champions. Omaric and Bretthew led us through a granular, heavily micromanaged attack on the Alliance heroes. The goal was to have them all killed within 60 seconds of the first champion's death; the ten Alliance heroes would not make it easy for us. Not only were they randomly chosen from a pool of a possible fourteen, causing to us to adjust our strategy week-to-week, the fight unfolded as if we had dropped out of the sky and into an Arathi Basin blacksmith battle already in progress. Each enemy acted like a player would in PvP, they'd crowd-control, silence, fear, do everything they could to perplex the raid team. In order to pull this off, the raid team would have to demonstrate a bit of PvP savvy of their own -- street smarts that didn't often come naturally to players preferring PvE. Attempts to complete the achievement filled the majority of our evening, finally coming to a close at just three minutes shy of 10 o'clock. The Faction Champions lay at our feet on the floor of the coliseum, within the time dictated by the achievement. "Resilience Will Fix It (25 Player)" was off the whiteboard, the investment of time acting as a painful reminder that some of us needed to revisit Arenas.

The raid leaders weighed the differences in difficulty between what lay ahead in ToC against other outstanding red names. Their judgement was to shift gears once again. So, we returned to the snow-capped peaks cradling Ulduar. We hopped off our Ironbound Proto-Drakes to enter the ancient titan city, making our way deep behind enemy lines, through ancient twisting architecture, arriving at the sealed door marked by four elements. Omaric pressed his virtual hand up against the lock where four symbols were marked: a green leaf, red flame, white snowflake, and blue bolt of lighting. The locks beamed brightly upon activation and spiraled apart; the enormous doors slid open to reveal a massive chamber of stars. We approached via a long causeway, and the floor itself became glass as our insignificant selves collected near the circular platform. We were in the Celestial Planetarium, home to a timeless Titan guardian charged with observing the "Azeroth Experiment" in the absence of his creators.

This was Algalon the Observer, the solitary hard-mode only encounter in Ulduar.

DoD defeats Algalon the Observer,
earning "Observed (25 Player)",
Ulduar

Astral Walkers

When not fielding the excitement of homeless people suffering heart attacks at my front door, I had the luxury of attending a 10-Man defeat of Algalon a few weeks earlier. Much to the delight of the raid leaders, a sizable chunk of the 25-Man progression team shared similar exposure. Ostensibly, this first hand experience would ease us into a flatter learning curve for the more significant 25-Man execution on deck. The gamble paid off. No mechanics significantly differed between 10 and 25. The only noticeable change was the most logical: everything hit harder, the go-to stratagem Blizzard employed when attempting to scale raid difficulty. In many cases, scaling damage while keeping all other mechanics intact was a viable solution, the effect of which produced a "lite" version in 10-Man mode, perfect for those guilds who chose to approach raiding with a less serious amount of dedication. On the flip side, being exposed to this simpler version gave 25-Man raiding guilds an edge in learning the more brutal implementation. Like add-ons, I saw the 10-Man versions as tools, and we would take advantage of every tool we could in order to maintain competitive 25-Man progression.

Algalon attempts were noticeably tighter. One might predict this behavior was a result of the looming timer hovering atop the raid's UI -- a permanent reminder burned into all eyes that every second was precious...and slipping away. With only one hour of attempts per week, attempts had to be efficient, recoveries quick. It was imperative that the mechanics of the encounter remained fresh in players' minds from week to week. The more new faces we took each week, the tougher the challenge grew as we revisited mechanics: dodging the cosmic smash, watching out for the living constellations, being aware of black holes and their tendency to appear underfoot. Indeed, December was focused heavily on ridding ourselves of Algalon, and after what seemed like an eternity, he fell on the fifth week of attempts, two days after Christmas morning. To us, Algalon seemed to stretch out the fabric of time, but for the Celestial Guardian himself, it was a mere four hours and eleven minutes in a room with Descendants of Draenor.

Algalon's defeat by the 25-Man progression team marked our official completion of Ulduar in its entirety. To this day, it remains one of (if not) the most remarkable experiences ever put in front of us. The addition of a final "hard mode only" boss provided an unmatched level of polish to Ulduar. It was a final, significant challenge to sate the hunger of progression-focused raiders, giving them one last chance to push themselves to new levels, ones they most likely never thought achievable. In the changing landscape that was raid content in World of Warcraft, where "hard modes" were optional, and standard clears were a mindless endeavor, bosses like Algalon sent a message back to the raiding community:

We know that not all raiders share the same dedication to tackling difficult content, and that shouldn't be a barrier to entry...

...but some of you are still out there. Let's see if you have what it takes.

The 25-Man progression team poses after their defeat
of Algalon the Observer,
Ulduar

Descendants of Draenor took up that challenge, and became Astral Walkers for our efforts. "Hard mode only" bosses would show up again in Cataclysm and beyond, but Algalon the Observer would be last hard-mode only boss that Descendants of Draenor ever completed in 25-Man during its relevance in raid progression.

DoD keeps everyone from staying impaled over 8 seconds
during Lord Marrowgar, earning "Boned (25 Player)",
Icecrown Citadel

Cramming

A blue post confirmed our suspicions. The second wing of Icecrown Citadel, the Plagueworks, would unlock on January 5th, 2010. We'd spent December diverting all our efforts into ToC and Algalon; we had some catching up to do. The final weekend before the 5th saw the 25-Man progression team shifting into overdrive in an attempt to make up lost time. The first checkpoint was "Boned (25 Player)", an execution of Lord Marrowgar in which no member of the raid team remained impaled longer than eight seconds. Rogues and warlocks dominated this fight; burst damage exploded out of players like Riskers, Blain, Eacavissi and Mangetsu, essential to freeing impaled players. Sandwiched between their yellow and purple bars sat our lone boomkin Bulwinkul, bending the night sky to his whim as gestures painted in the air forced blasts of moonlight into Marrowgar's three heads. Meanwhile, I continued to focus my attention on improving DPS, noting that Hellspectral -- a fellow death knight whom had only just respecc'd to frost -- was quickly gaining on me. Without serious improvement on my end, he'd surpass me, a lathe continuing to shave off what little credibility I clung to as a means of justifying the first Shadowmourne.

Five different cultists are on deck as Lady Deathwhisper falls,
earning the 25-Man Progression team "Full House (25 Player)",
Icecrown Citadel

From there, we moved to Lady Deathwhisper, forcing the same artificially drawn-out kill that Si Team had, weeks earlier. We struggled to get the Lady in position, her green Death and Decay painting the floor as players leapt out of the way. Ghostly apparitions headed toward us like ticking time bombs as we called out for shields and freedoms. Melee proved the greatest threat to this achievement's execution: if targeted by a Vengeful Spirit, sprinting away from the tank was the immediate emergency maneuver. An AoE explosion produced by a Spirit reaching its target would most certainly kill the tank, taking out a chunk of other melee as collateral damage.

The Alliance Gunship is blanketed in explosions
as DoD earns "I'm on a Boat (25 Player)",
Icecrown Citadel

Omaric and Bretthew struggled to maintain control while handing the Lady off to one another. Her threat suppression mechanic increased Deathwhisper's likelihood of turning and swatting melee during this touchy transition. As we neared our completion of Full House, both Blain and Riskers had been dealt a fatal blow. Moments earlier, our warlock officer Eacavissi fell alongside Larada the hunter in a similar ghostly explosion. But the 25-Man team persevered. Lady Deathwhisper gasped her last breath surrounded by a myriad of cultists, and the golden bar flashed up on our screens indicating success.

Twenty-five swarm scarabs are destroyed in under thirty
seconds, earning DoD "The Traitor King (25 Player)",
Tournament of Champions

"I'm on a Boat (25 Player)" immediately followed, requiring little coordination beyond our standard setup. The cascade of explosions billowed out as the gunship lost control and plummeted downward to the glacier below. We then engaged Saurfang, burning every cooldown available, racing for a kill before he completed three casts of Mark of the Fallen Champion. We pulled it off with two hours to spare, granting us "I've Gone and Made a Mess (25 Player)". We immediately folded those remaining two hours in the Tournament, killing Anub'arak alongside twenty of his insectoid friends, a feat that granted us "The Traitor King".

---

As the final grains of sand trickled through the glass, our plate was in much better shape. We'd taken a huge bite out of the achievements in ToC; Algalon had also been devoured. We took a deep breath of relief and prepared for our entry into The Plagueworks. After the rush of challenging encounters behind us, I thought Team Si's first venture into the second wing would be a breeze.

I thought wrong.

3.55. Nine One One

Patch 3.1 - The Secrets of Ulduar
Official Artwork (Algalon pictured)
Copyright © 2009 Blizzard Entertainment

The Incident

Talk to enough World of Warcraft players and eventually you'll get the story about "that one night". A player remains fastened to their chair while, two rooms away, an unattended skillet of bacon catches fire. The stove ablaze, the player recounts the boss's health trickling down, staying just long enough to secure loot before brandishing a fire extinguisher. Whether dull (drove around stealing my neighbor's wi-fi) or disgusting (puked in a bucket next to my computer through an entire night of attempts on Sapphiron), sooner or later, a raider lives through such an experience...and our guild wasn't exempt. A car crashed through one raider's living room wall, another raider was escorted away from his computer in handcuffs. These bizarre raiding-under-duress stories resonate deep in the hearts of players who've experienced such circumstances themselves. 

In today's blog post, I join those ranks.

---

The weekend before patch 3.3 landed, there was an incident.

I hoped for a laid-back weekend. Guild issues consumed most of my attention in the weeks leading up to the next big content patch. My attempt at appointing a new Alt-25 leader led to an almost immediate shitcanning of the player, damage quickly repaired thanks to the help of Mangetsu (his efforts earned him the Avatar rank in the process). Bheer had dropped a bomb on me, walking away from the 25-Man progression team and his Elite rank, providing neither forewarning nor explanation. And my finely crafted loot rules were about to get their first amendment, something I hoped to save until the end of the expansion. It was a lose-lose scenario: avoiding the loophole would have compounded its effect, but changing rules ad hoc carried the stigma of a dictator arbitrarily "playing" his people to suit his own needs. With these latest upheavals, I gladly welcomed a weekend with no surprises. 

I was about to get one I would not soon forget.

It was Saturday evening when the text message arrived from Blain,

"10-Man Algalon?"

The progression raid had only spent one weekend in the Celestial Planetarium thus far, a star-filled room locked tightly in the recesses of Ulduar. Our attentions had been divided. Focus shifted to the Tournament of Champions once our Ironbound Proto-Drakes were in hand, yet loose ends dangled in Ulduar. Algalon the Observer was a unique hard-mode only boss, and few 25-Man guilds on the server had wrapped him up by this point. We were going to have to bite the bullet soon. Blain's text optioned a chance for me to get more hands-on practice with the Observer, get familiar with his airtight tuning and mechanics. With luck, we could leverage that experience in the 25-Man, communicating his subtleties to the remainder of the team. The night was a blank slate. The kids were busy entertaining themselves in the living room, and my wife was out running errands. I rarely got the chance to raid on nights I hadn't scheduled real life around, and so thumbed a text back to Blain,

"BRT"

Excerpt from "World of Warcraft Comic - Special #1
Beginnings and Ends"
Copyright © WildStorm / Blizzard Entertainment

Celestial Assembly

The invite dialog popped up as Mature materialized on screen; I glanced at the assembled team while popping into Ventrilo. Omaric was present on Ikey-bear; I saw no other tanks...which meant the plan most likely pointed to me for tank No. 2. Healers appeared to be Neps via his paladin Jlo, alongside the 25-Man healing officer (and Eh Team member) Gunsmokeco. As for DPS, familiar faces stood next to Blain. Turtleman was present, as was Crasian, my "departing" death knight who hadn't quite cut the cord. Was he back already? Had he even left? It wasn't clear. Borken the shaman, a long-time veteran of DoD, offered up his power over the elements. Also present was Shiftr, a druid dating back to TBC, he had taken time off and was now back, lapping up our recent successes. Rounding the team out was Razzy, a player often seen chumming it up with Neps in PvP during the off-hours. Raz boasted multiple characters; tonight, he chose the retribution paladin. So, the final role call consisted of:

2 death knights: one blood, one unholy,
2 druids, one feral, one boomkin,
2 shamans, one restoration, one elemental,
2 paladins, one holy, one retribution,
1 fire mage,
and 1 assassination rogue.

Then ten of us headed to Ulduar while Vent lit up on the topic of strategy. How were the healers going to coordinate a rotation on the Big Bang tank? Should Crasian retain sole responsibility of the living constellations? Would the tanks be moving Algalon near a black hole in prep for Phase Punch? The conversation was almost entirely tactical, peppered with occasional reminders about the fateful one hour limit. Once we loosed our first arrows upon Algalon, the clock began to tick. From that point forward, we would only have sixty minutes to defeat the boss. Sixty minutes of attempts, wipes, running back, cleaning up, and getting mistakes straightened out. Baby steps, the core ideology fueling our progression since Molten Core, was no longer a viable option on tonight's agenda. We would have to move swiftly, adjust on the fly, and play with surgical precision. Repeating mistakes would waste precious minutes, so for the purposes of speed and efficiency, we did away with the politically correct formalities.

Tonight, it was about not fucking up.

As the first seconds ticked off the sixty-minute clock, the team jelled with synergy. Those present from Eh Team already claimed first-hand experience, calling out as many live adjustments as possible. I watched my health spike as the titanic guardian laid me out; Algalon hit like a truck. Every ounce of willpower bubbled to the surface in an attempt to keep me from spazzing out. I reached for Icebound Fortitude as he bashed my skull in, but resisted as Guns and Neps kept me alive. That cooldown needed to be ready for Big Bang while the rest of the team escaped the incoming celestial blast. Any and all mitigation was necessary to withstand its power; without IBF, I'd surely die. We survived the first transition, but a series of mishaps led to a healer death. This prevented Ikey from receiving much needed protection during the second Big Bang, ending the attempt in a wipe. 

With the clock ticking, we rushed back to the Celestial Planetarium, buffed, and prepared for a second pull. This time, it was well into the attempt before things fell apart. Someone stood too close to a Cosmic Smash, its AoE damage lowering their health just enough to be picked off by the implosion of a collapsing star -- further AoE damage which tore a black hole open in the planetarium. We judged the death too early in the attempt to recover from, so decided to call a wipe and raced back for our third attempt. 

Fifteen minutes of sand had already slipped down through the hourglass.

I heard the familiar scrape of the computer room door behind me, its hinges clung for dear life into a frame boasting multiple repair jobs...none of which had been successful. What intruder dared enter the cave during raid time? Hunter, my eleven year old son, stood there. Across the room, his older sister Ariel glanced up from the Alienware laptop I won four years earlier at BlizzCon, images of Invader Zim flashing off the display. Hunter's wide blue eyes prepared to deliver a message he wasn't entirely sure how to deliver.

I lifted my headphones off just as the sounds of Blessing of Might and Arcane Intellect echoed in the distance, and I gave my son a foreboding "Yes?", intent on conveying the severity of time at this very moment. I expected a request of ice cream or a new movie to be queued up.

"Dad, there's someone at the door. He says he's having a heart attack."

My headphones hit the floor.

A Denver Emergency vehicle not unlike the
one that showed up at my door during Algalon

Paramedic Equation

I slammed my hand down on the 'talk' key, fumbling to grab the headphones' mic off the ground.

"Guys, I have an emergency. I think. BRB."

I kicked my chair away and nearly ripped the door from its rotted frame, racing past Hunter to the front door. Swinging it open, a stranger stood there in the cold Colorado night. He looked about six foot two inches tall, late fifties, hair wild like a mad scientist and beard disheveled and unclean. A tattered, filthy dark green jacket struggled to keep his frail body warm, and his jeans were caked with patches of mud. He swayed uneasily as drool dangled from his mouth, and his left hand clutched at his chest. Unintelligible sounds gasped from his mouth; the only ones I could decode bore a vague resemblance to "help".

I guided the old man out of the cold, kicked the door shut, and helped him to the couch several feet inside. He slumped down like the weight of the world had been taken off his shoulders, yet continued to grimace in pain. I spun around to face my kids, now both standing and staring wide-eyed. Pulling out my phone and reaching for the only three numbers anyone dials in a situation like this, I pointed at the cave like Steve Jobs calling out his critics, "Hunter. Go tell them I'm calling an ambulance for someone having a heart attack. Go! Go!" He tore into the computer room with his father's assignment. In moments I was rattling off my address to the 911 operator, explaining the situation. An emergency vehicle was on its way.

"And can you give me the name of the person who needs assistance?" she asked me.

I stared at the old man on the couch, still grimacing, unable to articulate.

"I have no idea. He is a complete stranger."

Not two seconds after we were disconnected, I heard the wail of sirens spin up in the distance -- a convenient side effect of living in the downtown area. Red lights pulsed from the street, soon painting my living room through the main window. One by one, medical personnel flowed into into my living room, each with a different mission. One began shining a flashlight into his eye, another held his wrist, listening intently for his pulse. Still the paramedics continued. "Hey how are ya?" "Hey thanks for coming." "Hi come on in." "Hey there, he's right over here." 

What was this, the clown car of ambulances? How many paramedics can they fit in one of those things? The room swarmed with medical staff. One shorter, female paramedic began drilling me for more information. Oh, this homeless dude that's a complete stranger to me? Here's his entire medical history!

"It's like I said on the phone, I have no idea who he is. Just showed up on my doorstep."

Notes were scribbled onto paper attached to boards. Blood pressure cuffs went on, then came off. Black leather emergency kits were unzipped, and produced medical tools of various sizes and shapes. Before long, they had the old man back up on his feet, and were hobbling him off to the ambulance waiting outside. I stood there for a few minutes, stunned, not realizing that the last paramedic was heading out, shaking my hand on the way, thanking me for making the call. 

And just like that, my living room returned to silence.

As I began to mentally process just what in the hell had transpired, a surreal daze set in. Hunter walked up to me.

"Dad, they're still waiting."

Fuck. Algalon. Sixty minute timer.

I ran back into the computer room, grabbed the headphones, shuffled them onto my head, and pressed the 'talk' key.

"OK. I'm back. Sorry about that."

Digital voices on the other end of Ventrilo spoke hesitantly, "So...Hunter said you had to call 911?"

"Yeah. There was a homeless dude having a heart attack on my doorstep."

"Oh my god! Is he gonna be OK?"

"I'm not sure…I mean, I think so. He was able to limp out of here on two feet, with help from the paramedics. That has to be a good sign, right?"

The digital voices all agreed that 'walking' was a positive sign. An uncomfortable silence followed. I looked at the clock under the mini map. Thirty more minutes had clicked off. We were down to our final fifteen minutes of attempts.

"So...should we finish Algalon or…?"

I put their minds at ease.

"Yeah. Let's do that."

We made our third pull on Algalon. My senses seemed heightened, no doubt a result of adrenaline still coursing through my veins. I dodged cosmic smash a little easier, I brought the boss next to black holes a bit quicker. And I think everybody else seemed like they were sitting up a little straighter in their chairs. And in those fifteen minutes that remained of our original hour-long countdown, we defeated Algalon the Observer, the golden achievement bar flashing "Observed (10 Player)" up on the screen.

"So, now we know what it takes to get new bosses killed!" someone said over Vent.

"Please," I replied, "I think I've had about all the heart attacks I can withstand for one guild leadership."

Mature assists a crew in securing their
first 10-Man kill of Algalon the Observer,
Ulduar