2.8. What Rolleth Downhill

Kerulak faces the fel reaver Negatron
while completing "You, Robot",
Netherstorm

"WANTED: RAIDERS. MUST BE KEYED"

After bandaging the wound in the guild that was the result of Dreadlocker's exodus, I returned to the day-to-day grind of recruiting players for the 25-Man Progression raid. Part of this process involved (among other things) ensuring that players were "keyed" for raids. Attunement gates were a constant thorn in my side, having first dealt with them in Vanilla. The attunements in Vanilla were trivial by comparison and played a very important role. Keying ensured that players were ready for raid progression, keeping players out that couldn't be bothered with the effort necessary to gear up and qualify themselves as a player capable of what lay deep underwater in Serpentshrine Cavern, or housed behind the arcane walls of The Eye. The thought was: If a player had the capacity to complete a series of dungeon-related tasks (some of which were quite challenging), this keying process would ultimately vet the player -- it would prove to the game that the player was prepared to raid. From a casual perspective, raiding was not easy. It required finely tuned talents, gear, and skill. If you knew what you were doing, if you were adequately prepared...raiding was a straightforward part of the game.

Attunements were a clever design to vet players, and even provided them with an implicit order-of-execution for raiding. Players would connect the dots, and rarely waste time slamming their head against a wall, raiding content in dot B before they had wrapped up their work in dot A. So while attunements were a clever design to funnel the appropriate players into raids as needed, they also served to act as a non-stop stream of headaches to raid leaders and guild officers charged with recruitment. With Vanilla, attunements were quick and easily knocked out, even the worst of which (the Naxxramas rep grind) could be subsidized by guild coffers. In The Burning Crusade, however, there would be no subsidization. Finding the right people became a full-time job.

The first problem with keying in The Burning Crusade was that there was absolutely no concept of guild-related keying. Even if you had a core raid team of 20-ish players all keyed for a raid, there was no concept in the game to "grandfather in" the remaining five players. Everybody had to be keyed, period. For a cut-throat hardcore raiding guild with players clamoring to be given a shot, perhaps this wasn't an issue -- perhaps their experience was more of a fire-and-forget system. Once their core team was keyed, they were slicing Naga into sushi and never looking back. But for a guild like Descendants of Draenor, where we strove to be a little more caring toward fellow players, the burden rolled downhill to the existing core team. It became a repetitive, mind-numbingly tedious task for them to endure, re-keying players as the roster gained and lost members. Even for the most resilient, carefree of my guild...the seeds of burnout had officially been planted.

Kerulak assists more players working
on their attunement chain,
The Arcatraz

Sapping the Will to Live

Even if the roster wasn't losing players, Descendants of Draenor still faced the short end of the stick when it came to raid attunement. We didn't kick people to the curb if they missed a single raid. To us, the onus wasn't on the player, but on the guild, to wrap a warm blanket around you, keep you warm and comfy, in the hopes you wouldn't look elsewhere for another home. And because we took players of all shapes and sizes, never once dictating who could or couldn't come to a raid, we were forced to maintain a much larger pool of players. New players were joining all the time. So the keying process never ended. It was a constant, ongoing struggle that ate away at our souls and dulled our enjoyment of the game. God forbid, what would happen if a real-life issue were to come up, causing you to lose a core member of the raid team? Back to the start of the keying process you go.

It gets better. Keying also didn't carry over across a player's account. If we had players with multiple alts that wanted to provide different services (healing on one character, tanking on another, etc.), it wasn't enough to key one of those characters...we had to key all of them. This was certainly a perk that hardcore raiding guilds lost out on. I'm not suggesting that hardcore raiding guilds didn't gear alts for progression. To the contrary, it was plainly obvious to me from posts on their guild websites that guilds like Death and Taxes and Vodka wouldn't even bat an eye when discussing the possibility. To them, rolling an alt at the drop of a hat...just to lock in a world-first kill was a decision made as easily as being asked whether or not you want to super-size your meal.

The difference was: they were re-keying their same people. That same core team. Players who were already so exceptional at the game that keying was a mindless endeavor, a task done while they watched an episode of "Lost" on a second monitor. We weren't re-keying the core team. We were keying people that wanted to raid, and didn't have a chance in other guilds because of it. It was that double-edged sword of trying to establish a guild that gave a shit about people over progression.

Like many guild leaders, I dealt with this by demanding requirements up-front for new applicants:

"MUST BE KEYED FOR KARAZHAN, SERPENTSHRINE CAVERN, THE EYE, ETC."

It was a pipe-dream at best. Like a tech recruiter asking for an applicant with a degree in Comp. Sci., the best I could hope for was an applicant that wasn't completely drooling over himself. Other servers may have fared better than us, but on Deathwing-US, it was the equivalent of looking for a needle in a haystack, only to find out weeks later that there was never a needle to begin with. In many cases, applicants came to us because their previous guilds didn't have the capacity or interest to key for raids. Opportunities to recruit former world-first raiders was a rare luxury. I wished that there was a way for us to attract that type of recruit. Until that day arrived, we swallowed the pill...keying new folks until our eyes glazed over like zombies.

Kerulak assists ex-Priest Officer Haribo in keeping
Ater alive, while Goldenrod dishes out DPS,
Karazhan

My Kingdom for a Raid

Two months after Descendants of Draenor passed through the Dark Portal from Azeroth into Outland, things were looking nearly raid-ready. It was the second week of March 2007, shortly after the release of the movie 300, that Ater informed me we had the people necessary to begin our work. Unofficially, raiding had already begun, thanks to the bizarre dependency that Karazhan imposed upon us, dropping Tier 4 Gloves and Helms. For the shoulders, chest and legs, we would return to that which was most familiar to us, the raid composed of a much larger group of individuals, all working together in tandem to execute the threat that towered over us.

When the twenty-four invites were finished, and we swarmed around the entrance to Gruul's Lair, I have to admit...I felt a sense of loss. A monarch looking out across his kingdom laying in ruins and on fire, razing his peasant villages in order to rebuild a new city of marble of stone. 

The Forty is dead...long live the Twenty-Five.

But my crumbled kingdom had another threat to deal with, another monarch ready to usurp the throne: High King Maulgar. Maulgar was a council encounter, one of many in World of Warcraft. A council-style encounter comprises multiple bosses being engaged at once, rather than a single central Internet Dragon. We'd handled bosses with "guards" in Vanilla as far back as Molten Core -- Garr was protected by a ring of eight Earth Elementals; Sulfuron Harbinger had four priests healing through our damage. But a true council is one comprised of a myriad of mechanics, each threatening to end our progression with its own individual talents and specialties. 

High King Maulgar was exactly that. 

While the King bashed away at Ater's shield, Kiggler the Crazed hurled Shamanistic bolts of lightning at our raid, Blindeye the Seer would be off-tanked, waiting for the moment when he would cast a giant heal. He would require his own Power Word: Shield to be purged off, lest the heal be uninterruptable. Olm the Summoner, a Warlock, would set upon us with a Felhound -- we would use our own Warlocks' powers to enslave the Felhound and turn it against its master. And as for Krosh Firehand, a Ogre-Magi casting spells suspiciously reminiscent to that of a Mage, we would turn to our own Mages as a solution. They would ranged-tank him, spell-stealing his Fire Ward in the process. Without the boon of Krosh's spell-stolen Fire Ward, our Mage tank would die in a single blast of fire.

...which is exactly what happened. For weeks.

2.3. Gearing Toward Gruul

Ater's weapon of choice,
the Nostromo

In the Shadow of a Giant

I pulled over to the pickup lane at Denver International Airport, and popped the trunk, my palms stuck to the wheel with sweat. Quickly, I wiped my right-hand off on my shirt as I felt the thump of luggage hit the car. The passenger door opened, and he swung in with an outstretched hand. "Welcome to Colorado!", I said with a handshake, his grip like a vice. This was real. He was here. The guy responsible for leading my raids, for introducing me to Blain and becoming a part of the crew that dug into all of Vanilla's content with the dedication and passion I could only dream of possessing. And now, I was driving him back to my place to stay for the next several days, while he interviewed for a web development position at my company. It was happening.

The drive back downtown was as you might expect, a non-stop Q&A session. World of Warcraft. Descendants of Draenor. Vanilla. The Burning Crusade. ColdFusion. Programming. We talked non-stop...well, Ater talked; I shut the hell up and listened, for fear of saying something moronic or childish. Ater was excited about the prospect of joining my company. We were on the verge of taking on some great new projects, but I felt I didn't have the right peers to guide me in new directions, challenge my way of thinking. Teach me. Ater could be that peer. With his insight, I was certain of the value he'd bring to our company, new ways of thinking about development, new techniques to bring in clients. I already knew he'd be good with people.

When we finally arrived at the house, and I went through the introductions to my wife and kids, we proceeded to the computer room. After all, there was still business to attend to. I sat down at my computer and logged into the game. Ater stood to my left, towering over me at a height of nearly six-foot-four. The difference may have been slight, but to me, it felt like a giant had entered the room. A giant in game and in life.  He began to set up his laptop, unraveling his headphone wires. WoW would be a special treat for the next few days -- there was a celebrity in the house. As he started to plug cords and cables in, I glanced over at his rig and noticed a bizarre device: a controller that was half-keypad, half-gamepad, resting where his mouse ought to be.

"What the hell is this?" I asked, picking it up.

"A Nostromo!", Ater replied, "The only way to play this game."

He proceeded to detail out all the crazy assignments he had programmed into the controller. The curtain was pulled away. His extreme level of control as our main tank now made a lot more sense. I had never even heard of a Nostromo before Ater produced one at my house that evening. There was always something he had to teach me. As he jacked in to the network and donned his headset, I kept glancing over, stunned that he was not only in my presence, but was soon to be a part of my regular work day. I felt intimidated, insignificant. For many months, I'd looked to him for guidance of my guild, he was always ready with an answer that seemed so simple, so straightforward...and why hadn't I thought of it? When faced with him, I wasn't even sure what to say or how to act. I was nervous, I was....

....fffrrraap.

My eyes widened. The sound of a terrific fart came from Ater's side of the room.

"Uh oh!" he exclaimed in innocence, "What was that?!?", his gaze never once darting from the laptop's screen.

I laughed. There was no need to be nervous. He was just a guy, like me. I was lucky to have him aboard my guild's crew. I was proud to call him a colleague and a friend.

Unsurprisingly, he knocked the interview out cold.

Kerulak battles Dreadwing in The Singing Ridge,
Blade's Edge Mountains

Potential Raiders

By day, Ater and I sat across from each other, planning out the development of new projects, discussing the latest tech news, and taking lunches to chat about Warcraft, the guild, and leadership. By night, the conversation would continue as we raced to 70, slowly working out of the deep blue swamp called Zangarmarsh, and further into Nagrand and Terrokar Forest. While the guild continued their quest to discover the ancient ruins of Auchindoun, and track the infamous Rexxar to his location deep within Blade's Edge Mountains, I was busy resuming my recruitment duties, finding new players to replace those that had left us, looking at each new day as an opportunity to find a new potential raider for progression. 

New faces began to emerge during this time. One of our first female players, Breginna, joined our roster. She had a knack for a playing a healing Druid, and healers were always in great demand, so I brought her in and pressed her to think about the 25-Man raid. A head-banging Rogue by the named of Chopliver joined our humble crew, and always got a laugh when he spoke in Vent. His style of speech could only be described as a healthy mix of metal-head and California surfer. "Dude" and "Bro" aside, Chopliver was a machine of death at the hands of his Undead Rogue, and I looked forward to putting him in the 25-Man roster. In the caster department, we gained a young Warlock named Eacavissi that did extraordinary damage -- he jokingly denied the existence of aggro. The only way to manage threat on targets, he reasoned, was to simply do more damage. And, I swooped up a new Mage named Goldenrod whom I had seen many times in general chat during Vanilla. A long time player on Deathwing-US, he was looking to step up his game and join a progressive raiding crew.

And, old faces from the 40-Man continued to ding 70, renewing their interest in joining the progression team. Zyr the Priest, infamous for his "cricket" sounds in Vent whenever someone told a bad joke, was soon ready to return to the roster. So, too, did the Shamans Gunsmokeco and Deathonwing, brothers in real-life that had contributed to A-team and B-team as we could fit them in. Another Shaman from Vanilla was Ekasra; he joined DoD too late in the game to become a regular in our 40-Man team. But his youthful energy (and identifiable lisp over Vent) could be counted on for heals at nearly every request in-game, and he made it clear that it was his goal to join us on the 25-Man progression team.

As the roster continued to grow, our attention turned to raid attunement. As it had been with Naxxramas months earlier, our raid team would have to complete a series of quests in order to unlock access to the more difficult raids in TBC. Our sight was set on Gruul's Lair, the first 25-Man raid of the expansion. It didn't require an attunement, but instead, was itself a part of a larger attunement chain.

How much larger, you ask?

Stupidly large.

The Raid Attunement path for
The Burning Crusade (2nd rev.)

Attunement Absurdity

When I first pulled up the attunement diagram that someone had contributed to the Elitist Jerks forum, I thought it was some sort of joke. The flow chart read like a Zork dungeon map. A maze of arrows connected from one requirement to the next, flowing back and forth across both normal and heroic dungeon clears, never shy to toss in a reputation grind for flavoring. The first tier of content in TBC, Tier 4, was spread among two 25-Man raids (Gruul's Lair & Magtheridon's Lair) and -- in a bizarre move I do not understand to this day -- one 10-Man raid (Karazhan). However, once through Tier 4, in order to begin work on Tier 5 in Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep: The Eye, we had our work set out for us:

1. Start the Karazhan Quest Line
2. Start the Arcatraz Quest Line
3. Clear the Mechanar (Normal)
4. Clear the Botanica (Normal)
5. Obtain a key to the Arcatraz (Normal)
6. Clear the Arcatraz (Normal)
7. Clear the Steamvault (Normal)
8. Clear the Shadow Labyrinth (Normal)
9. Start the Caverns of Time Quest Line
10. Clear the Caverns of Time: Escape from Durnholde (Normal)
11. Clear the Caverns of Time: Black Morass (Normal)
12. Obtain the Karazhan Key
13. Grind to Revered with the Sha'tar,
14. Obtain a key to the Arcatraz (Heroic)
15. Clear the Arcatraz (Heroic)
16. Grind to Revered with the Cenarion Expedition
17. Obtain a key to the Steamvault and Slave Pens (Heroic)
18. Enter the Slave Pens (Heroic) and obtain the quest for the key to Gruul's Lair
19. Clear Karazhan (10-Man Clear)
20. Clear Gruul's Lair (25-Man Clear)
21. Complete the key quest, thus obtaining the key to Serpentshrine Cavern (Attunement 1 Complete)
22. Start the Shattered Halls (Heroic) key quest.
23. Grind to Revered with Honor Hold
24. Obtain a key to Shattered Halls (Heroic)
25. Start the Tempest Keep: The Eye Quest Line
26. Clear the Shattered Halls (Heroic)
27. Grind to Revered with Lower City
28. Obtain a key to Shadow Labyrinth (Heroic)
29. Clear the Shadow Labyrinth (Heroic)
30. Clear the Slave Pens (Heroic)
31. Clear the Steamvault (Heroic)
32. Complete the key quest, thus obtaining the key to Tempest Keep: The Eye (Attunement 2 Complete)

What was the purpose behind this complexity? I understood the basic need for gating content, a conversation I had with Kadrok not too long ago. Gates acted as a preventative measure to squelch an unhealthy volume of complaints from the masses -- the casuals that would cry "too hard" and "nerf raids!!", forever diminishing any real challenge to the seasoned raider. But to this excess? What were they attempting to vet? Our raid competency...or our ability to deal with incessant bullshit?

When I looked back at this diagram and saw four grinds in place of one, the Naxxramas attunement seemed tame in comparison. The sheer volume of attunement requirements in The Burning Crusade seemed excessive to such a degree, I couldn't help but wonder how much it would impact our casual/hardcore raiding roster the further we dug into the content. If I lost a Main Tank in the middle of Tempest Keep, it would mean starting the process over again from scratch. Certainly not something that could be completed in time for the weekend raid.

We chipped away at this Shawshank attunement with our rock hammer toons. Weeks passed before Ater was able to start fielding a Karazhan group. Once word began to spread among the guild, that spark of of raiding excitement returned. Players started to reach out, get their foot in the door, do whatever they could to start polishing up their gear. And while I was caught up in the excitement along with the rest of the guild, I failed to take notice of a simple oversight regarding communication and setting expectations.

That first week of Karazhan proved to me that after two years...I was still hyper-focused on myself, and not on the needs of my guild. My continued immaturity in leadership would cost me my first loss to a competing hardcore guild, and leave the faucet open to leak further.

1.16. Paying the Entrance Fee

DoD surveys The Twin Emperors,
The Temple of Ahn'Qiraj

Options Dry Up

Attempts on Twin Emperors were not going well at all. One week earlier, the 40-Man raiders had successfully exterminated Princess Huhuran, earning the first set of "real" rewards in the instance. From Skeram up through Fankriss, loot was on-par with that of Blackwing Lair (for the most part). Blizzard tried something new with Ahn'Qiraj: instead of issuing our set pieces directly from the corpse of a boss, we'd collect tokens to be exchanged for the actual gear. These Qiraji Bindings were shared among multiple classes, which added a layer of complexity to our fixed-cost DKP system. It was already an administrative nightmare to catalog every item, estimating its worth to a particular class. Now we had to consider the value of the exchanged item, normalizing the cost between the classes that shared it. Players regularly dismissed their assigned loot, opting to pick-and-choose random off-pieces to maximize their play -- which only made the administration worse. The good news is that we finally had some Tier 2.5 tokens to our name, thanks to the death of Huhu...

...the bad news is they would be the last AQ tokens that Descendants of Draenor would see.

The problem of AQ40 was becoming more painfully clear upon each wipe at the hands of Emperors Vek'lor and Vek'nilash. First and foremost, we'd run out of time on the schedule. B-team became more prolific at leaving us "cleanups" as they failed to empty out Blackwing Lair. Instead of starting AQ40 work fresh, A-team continued to sink precious minutes into Nefarian kills before moving to Silithus. And, A-team themselves had issues with farm bosses. Our first kill of Skeram was months behind us, yet we still struggled with execution, and the same held true for Battleguard Satura. We regularly skipped the bug family to shave time off clears; the change was negligible. Even a mistake or two on Fankriss meant re-doing the gauntlet that proceeded him. Let us not forget about The Princess whom had already proven to us she was going to require multiple attempts per night; the self-proclaimed queen of the 1% wipe. After A-team swallowed all of that, precious few hours remained to work on The Twin Emperors, and we were only now digging into the tough content. For behind The Twin Emperors nestled Ouro and Viscidus (both of whom could be skipped) and the ultimate evil behind all of Ahn'Qiraj: C'thun. We'd heard the horror stories of world-first guilds burning week after week after week on the final boss. Two days a week was no longer enough.

So, there was the problem of time; a lack of a viable schedule. There was the problem of loot, that being nearly every boss we were killing en route to The Twin Emperors producing nothing of upgrade value. There was the looming expansion, still in development by Blizzard but in the forefront of our minds every day. A release date wasn't yet set in stone, but we predicted that it would be soon, and we wanted as much off our plates as we could stand.

And, of course, there was the issue with Naxxramas.

Kerulak and the 40-Man team gets Power Word: Fortitude
in preparation for the nightly work in Naxxramas,
Eastern Plaguelands

2.5 vs. 3.0

An entire raid instance still existed that we hadn't even set foot in. The ultimate raid in Vanilla, a devastatingly oppressive instance that only the dedicated few raiders of World of Warcraft could claim a victory over. We knew by pouring over the Elitist Jerks discussions and examining the loot tables buried within thotbott.com that Naxxramas was, coin-for-coin, worth every bit of energy put into it. Items that dropped off the first bosses alone put our existing gear to shame, and with most players in A-team built on Tier 2, the prospect of leap-frogging out of AQ40's pathetic 2.5 side-grades straight into Tier 3 made our core raiders drool with anticipation.

The only other possibility to increase our progress was to come to an agreement with a competing guild, one less progressed than us. These less progressed guilds whom were able to clear the first half of AQ40 were starting to "give up" their raid locks to more progressed guilds, who would swoop in, inherit the half-cleared instance, and then power through the remaining second half. The price on the "sale" of these locks varied from handfuls of gold, and/or promised loot if it dropped, to "carrying" several of the lesser-progressed-guildies along for the ride. None of these options sat well with me. They all seemed like forms of selling out. Could we actually say we cleared AQ40 if others were doing half the job for us? It didn't matter what I thought, anyway. There were no half-eaten AQ40 raid locks to assume on Deathwing-US. Whatever inter-guild agreements may have been on-the-table got scooped up by other guilds with greater desperation and less conscience.

After The Twin Emperors made it clear we would be spending weeks working on their encounter, and with our options dwindling, the officers and I came to a difficult decision: Our work in Ahn'Qiraj was over. Princess Huhuran would remain the final boss defeated by Descendants of Draenor in AQ40, and all of our efforts would now be turned towards the necropolis that floated above the Eastern Plaguelands.

Some of the officers didn't take this news well. Kadrok was particularly angry by this decision, and felt his voice hadn't been heard enough. An old school EQ player, he was unsatisfied with an incomplete instance on our track record. Trying to outline the logical reasons why we left AQ40 only reiterated to me that it was a decision not made lightly. But as an honorable officer, Kadrok bit his tongue and stuck to the assignment, continuing to lead and shape the Shamans into a respectable crew of healers. I encouraged him at every opportunity I could, but I could tell he was not pleased with leaving AQ40 behind. I wished there was a way that everyone could be happy. There wasn't. And for those of the raid team who couldn't stand AQ40, celebrating our decision with virtual backflips, Kadrok and like-minded completionists only grew more disgusted at our choice to throw in the towel.

Kerulak takes some flak from a non-raiding player,
Orgrimmar

The Need For a Gate

Before we set foot in Naxxramas, we needed all of our players to gain access, a process known as "attunement". Molten Core and Blackwing Lair both had an attunement that was easily digested: run a long dungeon and collect a quest item at the end. AQ40, meanwhile, had no attunement whatsoever (save the server-wide unlocking of the entire instance). But Naxxramas had a different plan in store for us. Stationed in Light's Hope Chapel stood a series of NPCs revealing the attunement quest to us. There was no challenge, no dungeon to run or quest item to return -- in fact, the attunement was completely free...

...if you were exalted with The Argent Dawn.

Now, if it turned out that you hadn't run 10-Man Stratholme or Scholomance a billion times already, no problem! You could also gain access to the floating necropolis for a small fee of 30 gold if The Argent Dawn saw you were at least Revered. Even those who were only Honored could buy their way in, though the cost was raised to 60 gold for these less dedicated folks.

Let me take a moment to propel you back into a game where having gold was practically unheard of. In those days, there was no such thing as a daily quest -- a quest you could repeat over and over, racking up vast amounts of wealth. In Vanilla, once you walked the entire surface of Azeroth, completing every quest in every zone, quests no longer became your primary source of income. From that point on, money came from either playing the Auction House, or farming high-level mobs until your eyes bled. And when carrion grubs in the Plaguelands dropped 2s each, it was a long, hard road to 30g.

The grinding became so incessantly awful that I often forgot why I was there in the first place, gaining temporary bursts of insanity that caused me to make bets with myself on what I would hit first, the reputation or the gold cost. In a burst of craziness, I'd scribble down some notes on how fast I thought I was earning reputation, then compare it to the insanely low income of mob farming. Gold...it was definitely going to be the Gold that wins out. Ha ha! I told you, game. I told you!! I'm totally going to get the gold before I max my rep. 

Reality would quickly snap back like a bucket of water being dumped on me as I sat at the computer. What the fuck was I doing? Was this why I swore never to touch another MMO again? Why hadn't I listened to myself? Who considers this 'fun'? Didn't I learn my lesson in EverQuest?

"If they know what's good for them, they'll ditch any and all concepts of attunement in the expansion", I typed into guild chat.

"They do it to gate the raid," Kadrok replied, "Not everyone belongs in there."

"Nor should they be! But for God's sake, can't the player's skill...or lack thereof....be the gate itself? There has to be a better solution than this."

"They should just do it off of your gear", typed Gutrippa, adding to the conversation.

"Yeah, exactly! This makes perfect sense. Examine a person's gear. If you don't have the gear, don't let people in the instance!"

Blain typed his two cents into guild chat, "Gear doesn't make a bad player good tho."

In that brief moment of lucidity, the Naxxramas attunement made sense. For all the technology that WoW was bringing to the table, a good ol' fashioned grind was the most practical way to keep non-raiders at bay. A casual would look at a grind like that and give it the middle finger. There'd be no complaints of 'the instance is too hard', or 'we can't figure out these bosses', because players who used those excuses as a crutch wouldn't even get a taste test. The rest of us might bitch to ourselves quietly...but then knock it out. Besides, players that didn't raid had other opportunities to take their jealous rage out on us, spitting on us in public at the sight of our gear. A /spit is much easier than, say, getting off your ass and making it happen. They were unwilling to pay their entrance fee like the rest of us. Those players would always exist, but the logistics behind these gates diminished their opportunity to bitch. Of what little animosity that remained towards our progress and success, we ate.

---

I won my own bet: the 30 gold pieces accumulated first. To this day, Kerulak is still not exalted with The Argent Dawn.