4.64. Play Different

DoD defeats Heroic: Beth'tilac,
Firelands

Round Pegs

Back into the fray, the progression team diverted immediately to the western side of Firelands, satisfied that they never again had to cast their gaze eastward. Those blackened hills along the west corridor snaked upward into a hike that ended at Beth'tilac's lair. I prayed for a quick death -- either her own or my guild's, rather than suffering the torment of another month long encounter. No player deserved to repeat such indignity.

Other than the requisite "has more health, hits harder" changes we'd come to expect in heroic encounters, Beth'tilac's Cinderweb Drones now randomly fixated on players, forcing healers to treat them as mini-tanks for short bursts. Cinderweb Spinners would flail while dangling from their strands of fiery silk, causing bursts of magma to spiral out and stun random members of the raid. Also worthy of note, Engorged Broodlings scurried towards random players at high speed, detonating with significant AoE damage once reached. 

Beth'tilac was already a DPS check and one of the tighter encounters of Firelands. It was anyone's guess as to say how many attempts these changes would impose on the progression team. It ended up being roughly a dozen pulls. Three hours in, DoD claimed its first defeat of Heroic: Beth'tilac.

"We should've just done Beth'tilac second," said Klocker.

"Somebody please shoot him," I replied.

"Happy to oblige," said Blain, "Klocker, send me your home address."

"It's easy to remember. I actually live at your Mom's house now."

---

Sunday, we were down a healer. Lexxii's permanent absence stretched the thin membrane of the roster even further. With no replacement, I leaned heavily on the goodwill from others in order to keep the machine humming. The commitment I made to DoD to provide them with a stable raiding guild felt more like a fraud with each passing week. Suppressing this growing guilt was a far more dominant thought in recent months. Whatever it takes to get the job done. Your rules are in place to keep repeat offenders on the straight-and-narrow. You're not undermining your own authority. You're negotiating.

The brothers shaman were out for a camping trip the entire weekend, putting me up against a management wall. Do I continue to grant them the freedom to take time off for a job well done and put progression at risk, or guilt-trip them into staying late like some pointy-haired boss who cared more about the menial work than an individual's mental health?

As it turned out, both Gunsmokeco and Deathonwings returned from camping with only minutes to spare before the start of the raid. After flipping a coin, Guns offered up his heals for the twenty-fifth spot. I showered him with thanks for his generosity, and made no mention of his on-going resistance to install add-ons -- mandates meant for the ignorance of amateurs, rather than to patronize the experts. I didn't even bust his balls about continuing to raid on a MacBook, as he was one of the few Apple nuts among a trove of PC master race folk. It was neither the time nor the place.

We headed straight for Alysrazor. The chaotic four-phase fight bearing traits of both Pilotwings and Star Castle remained almost entirely unchanged in heroic. Phases two, three, and four presented no new obstacles to learn; it merely asked us to take the stone we already had, then squeeze just a bit more blood from it.

DoD defeats Heroic: Alysrazor,
Firelands

How It Works

Phase one, however, took on a new mechanic. Several gigantic meteors would plummet to the ground, then slowly roll across the cavern floor, not unlike the meteors from the Ragnaros encounter. They had low health and were easily dispatched, but rather than explode and disintegrate when killed, the meteors simply stopped moving, converting to a semi-permanent obstacle that hindered us. Or...from a different perspective...protected us.

The addition of the meteors were a component to Alysrazor's new Firestorm ability: a blast of fiery winds pummeling players with enough force to incinerate them on the spot. The trick, then, was to use the now-dormant meteor as a line-of-sight shield, hiding behind its girth while a sheet of flame painted the entire cavern floor. 

But...from which direction would the winds come? The only way to know how to position oneself was to look at Alysrazor herself, observe her position and angle at the moment preceding Firestorm, then adjust around the meteor appropriately. There was usually less than a second to adjust before a torrent of flame drained your life.

Positioning ourselves around the meteors was chaotic; someone always ended up making a bad call, diving when they should have dodged. But the progression team had dealt with much worse torture for far longer. They stuck it out, until Heroic: Alysrazor finally fell with 30 minutes to spare on the evening of Sunday, October 2nd. DoD had dangled at the bottom of server progression lists at an embarrassing 1/7 for an entire month. Over the course of two raid weekends, we shot up to 4/7. Kicking and screaming, my guild clung to life.

"MVP goes out to Guns for this one, folks," I added in Vent, "thank you for stepping up and filling in at the last moment."

"Just a good thing that I got back from camping in time," he replied.

The outdoors are highly overrated.

---

Wednesday, October 5th started as an otherwise ordinary day. I went to work and focused most of my time on preparing training materials that I was scheduled to deliver at my company's El Segundo branch. Seven months after being hired as a senior developer to support legacy code, I now found myself in the position of managing two teams of developers on two separate products, while putting an actual process into place for a third.

It never failed to amaze me how a multi-billion dollar organization still managed to retain so many dysfunctional teams. Red tape has a habit of obstructing one's ability to get shit done. Some might argue that excessive rules help keep the herd from wandering off the cliff, but structure is only one prong under the leadership umbrella.

I kept my plans simple to understand, straightforward to execute, and left little room for guesswork. Check these files in. Run this deploy script. Verify these tests. When they fail, it isn't anyone's responsibility but yours to fix. Own it. There was no rocket surgery in my training. It was a programmer's ode of Move Out of the Fucking Fire.

Personal responsibility was a common theme in my process plan, but so too was another equally important concept: the ability to adapt. If process is becoming an anathema to productivity, learn when it is appropriate to detour. If rules feel like they're suffocating you, certain situations call for personal discretion. You might actually have to slip past the guards once or twice, get into that burning building...and come out a hero. That can only happen when you know your stuff inside and out. Be an expert. When the day arrives that you no longer need a healing add-on to provide world-class healing, then...and only then...will you be in a position to make such rule-breaking judgement calls.

My phone buzzed and vibrated across the white desk. Messages arrived from several people at once. The ambient conversation at work also began to pick up around my cube. I glanced at the phone, reading the text message, demanding that I pull up the news immediately. I ventured online, pulled up the news, and stared dumbfounded at the headline.

The awful news that spread across the Internet,
October 5th, 2011

The Man in the Machine

The passing of Steve Jobs sent a cascade of unchecked emotion through me. Sadness. Regret. Frustration. Anger. Technology was my life, and Steve very much shaped a part of the industry that I held dear. And because of how much of a role tech played in my life, you can probably imagine the sorts of beliefs I harbored towards the famously opinionated CEO of Apple.

I was not, what you might call, an Apple "fanboi". I detested the overpriced hardware, seeing it for what it was: a sham, meant to trick the layperson out of additional hard-earned cash for equivalent processing power. I saw his stubborn finger-pointing antics as theatrical, meant to add a dash of controversy to an ostentatious bisque that was Apple PR. And it goes without saying that I saw an always inadequate lineup of games. I didn't dislike Apple because they were disingenuous, but that they were disingenuous and wildly successful.

Steve's attention-to-detail was unparalleled in the industry, he noticed the little things far more acutely than the average person. He understood the complexities in design at a level most others could not. This foresight manifested as technological prophecy: he knew what people wanted before they even knew themselves, a master trick in any magician's repertoire. Those who worked with him spoke of his ever present "reality distortion field" -- an otherworldly power that convinced ordinary people they were capable of extraordinary things. 

Steve's many critics point out that these are the traits of a narcissistic master manipulator; I consider myself amongst that camp. But while that may be true, I could not, however, deny the end result was a message steeped heavily in my own ideology. Do whatever it takes. Make it happen. Jobs may have been outlandish, and an awful people manager, but his approach was practical for a leader who consistently saw a picture far bigger, and with much greater clarity, than the many individuals he chose to realize that vision.

I clocked out of the office a bit later than usual that night. The streets of Denver were emptier, as I drove home in quiet contemplation. I thought of Steve and of Apple, of his vision and insight, of his miraculous turnaround of the company he built. And while I may have detested his hardware or his methods, I was thankful for Steve's inspirational impact on a great many people in this world...a few of which who might never have set foot in DoD otherwise.

4.55. Casualsplaining

"Rune Deformation"
Artwork by 10Z (Liu Hao)

Spoiler Alert

I drew another line through a long list of names. Fourteen had been whittled to seven, then to four, and now to one. My questions were formulaic and terse; their answers were unabashedly byzantine. I debated the usefulness of the exercise, but pressed on, dialing the last number on the list, greeting the stranger on the other end of the phone, and walking the script.

"Describe to me a 'Relational Model'."

Each answer came at an uncomfortable cadence. An awkward pause at the start, followed by a reading back of the original question. Then, a nervous yet surprisingly articulate response -- all delivered in a thick East Indian accent, pauses littered throughout.

"So...eh...the thing that you wanted to know about...eh...was the Relational Model. It...eh...is an approach...to managing data using...eh...using a structure and language...consistent...with first-order predicate logic processes...eh...that are repeating items in a self-similar way."

"Perfect, thank you for that. Okay, next question. Can you tell me what a 'memory leak' is?"

"...So...eh...the thing that you asked about was...eh...memory leaks…"

"...right." Move it along. I know my own damn question.

"...which is...eh...is a type of resource leak that occurs...when a computer program incorrectly manages memory allocations...eh...in such a way that memory which...eh...is no longer needed...eh...is not released."

'Computer Program'? Why not just say 'code'?

The charade wore thin. I pulled up Chrome, headed to Wikipedia.org, searched for memory allocation, and pulled the result up. As I looked at the page, I spoke. "Got it. Thanks. And can you tell me what exactly is 'memory allocation'?"

"Eh…."

Kill me.

"...Memory allocation?"

I hate my life.

"Right. Memory allocation. What is it?"

I followed along, reading the Wikipedia page, as man with the thick accent gave me "his" answer.

"...the...eh...memory allocation is the...eh...act of managing computer memory at the system level."

It was word for word. He wasn't even bothering to paraphrase. Just Googling everything I asked him, and reading its response, verbatim.

There was a time when not all answers were Googlable. You had to bounce between a litany of search engines in order to maximize your results. AltaVista, HotBot, Lycos, Yahoo!...hell, even America Online had its own search engine. After feeding your keywords into all of those engines, you still might not find you were looking for.

WoW was like that once, too. Well before MMO-Champion, WoWDB, Wowhead, even Thottbot...the only way to tell if someone had mad skills was if they knew the answers to end game stuff. When the 40-Man Naxxramas went up on the public test realm, world first guilds looking to do meaningful research kept wannabes out of their exploratory pick-up groups by drilling them with skill testing questions.

"You been to Blackwing Lair?"

"...sure, sure I have!"

"What happens at the start of phase two of Nefarian."

"...uhh…"

Yeah...that’s what I thought. 

No amount of Googling was going to save you that day. Even if you were able to hit all the search engines at once...the delay would be enough paint you as a faker.

The world before Wowhead was gone, upended by a suite of websites whose engines ran on data-mined fuel. Every new PTR release exposed every asset and revealed every last secret. No mystery was left in want. In the information age, spoilers were simply a subcategory of answers, and the only effort necessary was reduced to typing keywords and click "search".

Oh, don't forget about the "reading" part. That appeared to be important, too.

The effect produced when two
mirrors face one another

Two Mirrors

I sat up in my office chair, and cleared my throat. It was time to divert from the script.

"Explain to me what recursion is, please."

The tell-tale delay. A faint typing of keys. More effort to maintain the facade.

"So...eh...the thing that you wanted to know about was Recursion...eh...which...eh...is is a method where the solution to..eh...to a problem depends on solutions to smaller instances..."

"...Sorry," I interrupted him, "I'm going to stop you there. Let me clarify: I'd like you to explain it to me in layman's terms."

"Eh...sorry?"

"I'd like you to make your answer more accessible, please."

The pauses appeared to grow in frequency.

"Eh...well...the...eh...type of the...eh...solution...is that of a kind of solution that is...eh...one that is larger...but that...eh...works with...eh...smaller solutions."

"You just stated the same thing a different way. I need you to dumb it down for me. What does a recursive function do that makes it unique from other types of functions?"

I sensed panic on the other end of the conference call.

".......eh, well, it is smaller...er, sorry, it is larger...than others kinds of functions…"

Wrong.

"...and...eh...it is the...eh...type of the function that can then call others that are...eh...they are smaller, no?"

No.

"I'm sorry, was that a question?"

"No...eh...that is my answer, yes."

I'd heard enough. "Ok, thanks very much for your time, today. We'll let you know if we have any further questions."

I took a long sigh and crossed the last name off the list. A recursive function calls itself; two mirrors facing each other, reflections repeating forever into infinity.

---

"There. Link's posted in the forums." Vexx's Australian accent hacked through the Ventrilo conversation with obvious frustration.

An impromptu five minute break followed, allowing folks to review the video. We spared individuals the embarrassment of calling them out. Maybe some were having a bad day. Perhaps some were deficient in the dexterity department. As it is with pluralistic ignorance, their reasons aside, players failing were too self-conscious to admit it publicly. You can diminish the effect by directing everyone to do it...

...but I whispered them individually. If you're not watching the video now, you should be.

By the end of the fourth hour, cracks began to show in the seemingly impenetrable array of Blazing Winds, but not enough to get a solid grip on and wrench open.

"C'mon! One more! One more go! Famous last pull!" The guild spirit was strong with Bonechatters. His youthful enthusiasm was enough to fill an entire roster.

"Nope," replied Blain, "Done for the night. We stop on time, those are the rules."

Boney wouldn't give up, "I heard a rumor rules were meant to be broken!"

I piped up, "Thanks, folks. Good work tonight. See you all back here Sunday."

Call it what you want. Lag. Server instability. Bad players. Bad connections. Sometimes a kill just isn't in the cards. I wasn't feeling it. Neither was Blain. The famous last pull wouldn't be our savior that night.

DoD defeats Alysrazor,
Firelands

Keep It Simple Smartypants

Rosters in heavy flux rarely get the same line-up. For all the benefits DoD boasted throughout WotLK, this was a downside. In the bizarro world of Cataclysm, deficits became benefits. The perfect set-up for learning a new boss, in Blain's eyes, was to bring the same people back. And that's exactly what we had for Sunday, July 10th. Whether we liked it or not.

Everyone present had seen all three phases. There was nothing left to teach, and no surprises to catch us off guard. If DPS had neither seen nor played Pilotwings before, I didn't want to know about it. I wanted to look up and see a squadron of Pilotwings experts on Alysrazor's ass. I wanted tornado dodging like it was second nature. And I wanted an explosion of damage on that bird the likes of which hadn't been seen since our Illidan kill.

Blazing Winds sawed through the raid on every attempt. Nobody was safe. Each of us blew it at least once. But, as it had with so many bosses before, patterns emerged. There were definitely people in the raid who were clumsy, still struggling, still having those same spatial awareness issues that had long been a burden on our roster. It didn't matter the reason. What mattered was the result.

"You can't chase them from behind. They move too fast. You have to actually move in between the rings. From the outer to the inner one."

"That's not true, you can chase them."

"Yeah, but I'm not getting the speed buff.:

"You don't need the speed buff to pull this off. Seriously, is it really this difficult?"

I remembered the 'insanity' bit Blain liked to quote to players: People doing the same things over and over, expecting different results.

Doing things the same.

Things.

Like play...

...or explain.

"It's like this," I spoke into Vent, "The tornados are cars on a freeway. You're a cop. And every tornado is a car you want to chase, but you can't chase them for long. The ones coming towards you...in other lanes...are even bigger catches than the one you're chasing."

"Sounds like a crime wave."

"Shut up a second. Listen. You're chasing a tornado...a car...until another one passes you in the opposite direction. That's when you switch lanes. Crank the wheel, change lanes, chase the car that just passed you. Just like that. Rinse. Repeat."

Slowly, surely, we got back on track. Players formerly failing on the tornado...were less so. We kept at it. Three tornado deaths. Two tornado deaths. One tornado death.

No tornado deaths.

In the third hour on the second night of work, the 25-Man roster cleared the hump, and having only lost a few players across two full tornado phases...it was enough to burn Alysrazor through her 2nd phase three. She fell that night, with an hour to spare.

As I lined up the roster, and snapped a kill pic for the forums, Blain shot me a message.

[From: Xane] Car chases?

[To: Xane] Hey. Whatever it takes.

4.54. The Grand Allusion

The 1980 arcade game Star Castle,
produced by Cinematronics

Screen Burn

November 12, 1982

Water rushed across metal brackets and pullies, ran along spouts and into buckets, through gears and over bells, eventually splashing against four large pendulums, one to each side of the towering clock. Woodgrove Center had opened only a few months earlier, and The Water Clock was both impressive and bizarre. I glanced over the glass enclosure, towards the pool at its base. Beneath the surface, along the tops of the submerged blue tiles, hundreds of pennies came in and out of focus, while the clock churned on -- water filling up buckets, overflowing then dumping into the moat, forever maintaining motion. Plenty of pennies...but no quarters.

The clock kept my attention for all of five seconds.

"Can I?"

Grandma gave me a nod and a smile. I was gone.

Speeding towards the food court, I craved no Orange Julius, hungered for no Taco Time. I ran past the the families in the midst of chowing down, until the hallway narrowed. Faint sound effects could be heard, filtering out from the end of the hall. I slowed, approaching the dark entrance.

They'd really gone overboard with the sci-fi theme at this new arcade. Tubes of running-board lights lined the edges of the floor, illuminating the path to righteousness. Screens flickered and burned a glow out into the darkness. A bright blue light radiating out of the TRON arcade controller caught my eye, but only for a moment. There was more to discover. I'd be back for the lightcycles.

Figures towered over me as the scan continued. Teenagers and adults all melted together into a haze, their backs to me, blocking my view of the screens. I was a short kid, but not too short to step up to an arcade game. I already knew the drill. Get your quarter on the glass to hold your spot. I'm next. What's it to you?

Donkey Kong Jr., Satan's Hollow. Some machines looked familiar, some not so much. In the back, a bizarre cabinet: two steering wheels -- one in the front with a seat, the other in the back, forcing the player to stand. What is that? A two-player fire truck driving game? I glanced at the screen. Black and white. Wow. What genius brought that relic in here?

I turned from the fossil and zeroed in on a cabinet whose screen seemed to pulse with blues, yellows, and oranges. I immediately thought of Asteroids, a game with a distinct look: simple shapes comprised only of lines whose endpoints seemed to glow like the running-board lights of the Arcade itself. But Asteroids was black and white, another relic like Fire Truck. When had they added color to these line-drawn video games?

Once I got a closer look, the trick became clear: there wasn’t really any color at all -- the illusion of color came thanks to blue, yellow and red cellophane-like overlays covering the screen. Nice try.

I leaned in closer to examine the multi-colored overlay, which is when the shields caught me in a hypnotic stare. A spaceship, nestled safely in the center of the screen, was protected by a series of rings, rotating opposite one another. The innermost ring rotated clockwise; its immediate parent ring rotated counter-clockwise, repeating a third and final time.

My eight year old eyes stared blankly at the three rings, spinning in opposite directions, permanently burning their mesmerizing pattern into my brain, and into the very phosphors of the screen itself.

The 1991 video game Pilotwings,
produced by Nintendo

Flight School

September 6, 1991

VHS tapes wallpapered the inside of the rental store. "Hot" titles were a nightmare to get your hands on. No matter how many copies the store’s owners planned to stock, it was never enough. I tapped my foot, wondering how much more time the clerk was going to spend, and eyed the wall’s latest title gap.

Edward Scissorhands had already been out on video a few months. Seen it. Home Alone was just the month prior. Meh. This month's hottest release: Dances With Wolves. An entire row of tapes, missing in action, snatched up by the Moms of the town, desperate for the chance at escaping to some fantasy with their boy-toy Kevin Costner.

I couldn't care less about movies at this particular moment.

The clerk emerged from the back room, carrying a silver briefcase-like container. "You got it?" I asked, tapping my fingers on the counter like an addict entering the first stages of withdrawal.

"Yep. Brand new, never been rented." The clerk was nonchalant and it drove me mad. Even a shill would be better than this apathy. C'mon, man. Do you realize what you hold in your hands?

The clerk swung the silver case up and onto the counter, flipped open the buckles, then gently raised the lid. Inside sat a small white box. Gray lines accented its cubist design. Near the front, two large purple buttons sat parallel to each other; one was marked "Power"”, the other, "Reset". Inset between the two purple buttons was a dark gray eject button, for popping the cartridge out of its slot. I inhaled deeply. It smelled of plastic, fresh from the mold.

"This is probably the only Super Nintendo in this entire town!"

"Probably," the clerk nodded, unimpressed, "you'll be the first to rent it."

You couldn't care less, could you? It's all just "kids stuff" to you.

"So whaddya got for me?" I rubbed my hands together.

"Well, we only just got the two games to start. Super Mario..."

"...World, yeah, yeah, I know," I grew impatient, "it comes with the system. What else?"

"Uhhh….hmmm, it looks like...."

Please be F-Zero. Please be F-Zero.

The clerk pulled up the cartridge from behind the counter, showing off the label. The title was written in shiny purple cursive, floating amid billowy clouds. In the foreground, a ring of green dots could be seen. I glared at the option with disappointment and disgust.

"......Pilotwings???"

You have got to be kidding me.

"Yeah, you fly through courses."

"I've seen the reviews in EGM. They're marked with these dots, and you fly through rings. It's like an airborne slalom."

I hated skiing. I hated sports.

"Yep, that's right. Boy, the kids were up all night playing this one. Beat it and everything."

Your kids are like, what...8 and 9?

"I thought you said I was the first renter."

"Oh, you are...you are. But, we took it home the night it arrived to let the kids have a go."

Son of a...

I shook my head, staring at the cartridge I wouldn't otherwise go near. But I wasn't about to let a couple of toddlers show me up.

"Fine. I'll rent both."

The clerk smiled as I shelled out twenty bucks for the system, six bucks for the two games...and another twenty for a damage deposit, in the off chance it might return to the rental store smashed into little fragments of cream and purple colored plastic shards.

Now, why on Earth do you suppose they would think that might happen?

"Alysrazor",
Artwork by Cargorabbit

A Moltres of Our Own

July 8, 2011

[From: Vexx] I'm losing it!!

I smiled as I typed my reply.

[To: Vexx] lol. This is only the first night!

[From: Vexx] Don’t understand why people are having such a tough time with tornadoes. It’s so easy!!!

[To: Vexx] This is nothing. We used to spend weeks on a boss.

[From: Vexx] This feels like weeks.

We'd been at it for two-and-a-half hours. Hours earlier, Blain clarified expectations with his own state of the union post:

A quick poll of our raid will quickly show that a good number of our current raiders would rather try to gear up and slowly overpower content through the acquisition of new gear from "farm" bosses rather than a yearning to be on the forefront of the content in older gear. With that understanding of our raid members I began to resent some people for their raiding philosophy and that resentment has been hovering over me through the last raid content. Personally I was disappointed in our progression team in BWD and BoT. I know we struggled with a solid, consistent group of folks but I still felt we should have had at least 2 additional heroics down prior to 4.2. As a leader I chose to take the more popular route of attacking the bosses we had on "farm" and leave the other stuff for when we had additional time. This choice was based off of a prior post that I made concerning raid direction, feedback for players, etc and I personally believe I failed you all by going along with the masses and giving up on harder heroics just because of the complaining naysayers.

The part that caught me off guard was Blain accepting responsibility for the lack of progression in the previous tier. Blaming himself for not keeping to his original plan of pushing raiders as he had in the days of yore wasn't a way I would typically characterize Blain. Yet in this unorthodox move, Blain cleared the raiding palette. Mistakes were made. We account for them. We move forward. No more excuses.

It worked. When Blain extended the raid lock that evening so that we could push past the four bosses we flattened the week previous, not a hint of snark could be detected. Nobody on the progression team pushed back or complained of "missing out on loot upgrades". They took the extended raid lock, and rushed headlong into our next challenge, determined to spend the entire evening working on Alysrazor.

We needed it.

World of Warcraft's version of Moltres was broken up into three phases. Phase one divided the group into two ground teams, working on opposite sides of a ring. Each tank stood next to a fiery egg, which exploded into a Voracious Hatchling -- a skeletal bird engulfed in flame. These birds imprinted onto their nearest target, so anyone (particularly those not paying attention) could quickly find themselves tanking. Voracious Hatchlings would occasionally fly into a rage (as hungry newborns often do), and sating their hunger was fulfilled by dragging the baby birds to their nearest lava worm. The hatchlings' rage subsided, and the flow of lava spewing from the worm was stanched in the process.

Back-up continued to arrive throughout phase one, in the form of Druids of the Talon. I broke off with melee to deal with these, as they had a tendency to wind up a Pyroblast and (if not interrupted) begin chain casting them with ever increasing power. Hells and I worked as a team on one side, with Jungard and Bonechatters on the other, taking turns interrupting as we burst them down.

High above us, Alysrazor circled the arena, and a third air team followed closely behind, "swimming" through the air. Thanks to Alysrazor's molting, players could touch burning feathers and (with three stacks) take flight, DPSing the bird while airborne. In order to maintain flight, players had to fly through burning rings that appeared through the air, as if navigating a course.

One might go so far as to describe it as an airborne slalom.

The 25-Man spent the first couple of hours getting accustomed to phase one. Gotchas kept slipping through. A druid of the talon might get off the occasional Pyroblast, and for some targets, it meant instant death. The voracious hatchlings had to be killed...but not too quickly. Killing them early would force Alysrazor to lay more eggs, in turn, forcing us to drag hatchlings with us into phase two, which was suicide.

In phase two, the attention of every individual player had to be turned to one thing, and one thing only: avoiding tornadoes. Alysrazor summoned Blazing Winds, a series of fiery tornadoes that moved quickly across the landscape, picking up anyone caught in their path. They moved too quickly to run away from. We could not cheat by pressing ourselves up against the edges of the map and avoiding them altogether. There wasn't a clear way to help each other; sharper players couldn't really help out players that weren't "getting it". Every single player had to avoid the tornadoes...or die.

Alysrazor's Blazing Winds moved in a very predictable, easy-to-understand pattern. The outermost tornadoes moved clockwise. The next set of tornadoes, falling into a narrower circle, moved the opposite direction, counter-clockwise. The third set, narrower still, moved in the same direction as the outermost set...again, clockwise, and this repeated one more time, for a total of four rings. Four concentric circles of fiery tornadoes, rotating across the playing field. Find the gap between the tornadoes in each ring, and move between them. That's all there was to it.

It was not a new pattern, but the team was falling victim to its mesmerizing grasp.