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.

Why Raid Teams Fail

In early 2008, I read a book on team management. Shortly after reading the book, I imposed a number of changes to our rules, which would go on to form the foundation for a restructure of the guild. It is my belief that those changes paved the way for our defeat of Archimonde, which is detailed in this blog post. For your enjoyment, here is the refined forum post I made, months after Archimonde's defeat, at the start of Wrath of the Lich King. It is, in essence, the World of Warcraft raider's interpretation of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.

---

Raid teams, like any group of individuals working together as part of a business organization or sports team, can be prone to dysfunction. This dysfunction typically manifests in five ways, each one acting as a catalyst for the next. They are:

• Absence of Trust
• Fear of Conflict
• Lack of Commitment
• Avoidance of Accountability
• Inattention to Results

What follows is a description of each, along with examples. As well, I provide a number of solutions for each, as you attempt to solve those problems with your own raiders. Dysfunction begins with trust...or lack thereof.

Absence of Trust

Trust is a fundamental part of what makes people work well together. When players in a raid do not trust one another, it leads to issues:

• They are unable to admit their own mistakes, and prefer hiding them in anonymity
• They rarely ask for help from others regarding their class and play
• They typically do not offer assistance outside their own area of expertise
• They are quick to jump to conclusions when considering why other raiders are making certain decisions, without asking for clarification
• They hold grudges
• Eventually, they avoid signing up for raids

In order for a team to function correctly, and increase the level of trust between raid members, players need to consider:

• Admitting to mistakes and their own shortcomings, without fear of alienation or rejection
• Ask for help
• Openly accept suggestions/recommendations on how they can improve
• Give fellow raiders the benefit of the doubt before arriving at some predetermined negative outcome (ie. "He died in the fire because he always dies in the fire--he's a shitty player"...when in fact, the player in question just received news about an ill family member)
• Take risks in offering feedback to others
• Appreciate the value of other raiders' expertise, and take advantage of their knowledge
• Focus effort into valid issues (ie. "How can we better optimize moving ghouls from spawn to off-tank in Phase 1?"), not into wasteful politics (ie. "All of our attempts are going to fail because we have two Paladin tanks, and we have to have at least one Druid tank!")
• Offer/accept apologies without hesitation (this relates DIRECTLY to the first point)
• Look forward to future raids in which to implement the points above

In short, foster an environment where players are encouraged to speak, ask for help, and admit mistakes without being publicly humiliated...a task best started with YOU. Don't judge (unless you're a Paladin), and keep people focused on growth, improvement, and what better progress will be made when you return to the raid next week.

Fear of Conflict

When a team has an absence of trust, they become fearful of producing any sort of conflict. Conflict is not always a bad thing; it is normal in most relationships and organizations, and is a healthy part of an engaged team environment. It opens up the channels of communication, and gets members passionate about what they believe to be important. In raids, conflict often manifests as a result of failing to kill a boss. A raid that avoids conflict usually looks like this:

• Completely quiet in vent. Often dull/boring
• Play environment encourages politics and personal attacks (ie. Vent remains quiet, while /officer chat lights up, blaming a bunch of individuals for a particular wipe)
• Controversial topics critical to raid success are avoided (ie. Continuing to support/enforce/rotate in a failing Tank that is key to the success of the raid, rather than speaking up)
• Other members of the raid are not considered for their opinions, many of which may be valid, but are suppressed due to the first dysfunction - Lack of Trust
• Wasted time pouring energy into defending one's own position rather than tackling the real issue at hand (ie. "Well, I healed through that Unchained Magic because the damage is trivial and I can control it" - instead of - "We all need to be actively watching Unchained Magic and holding our casts to the best of our ability")

In order to allow conflict to become a healthy part of a raid team, players must:

• Have interesting, lively raids, where people communicate openly and easily. This is one of the reasons why we've never enforced a "raid-vent-silence" channel, where only one person speaks.
• All raiders' ideas/opinions ought to be polled on strategic solution, regardless of how significant their perceived contribution may be. This is why the Raid Leader works with the Role Officers in order to resolve boss failures, rather than do it all himself. In many cases, individual Raiders also contribute to strategy resolution.
• Keep politics to a bare minimum
• Attack the most important issues first, and solve them quickly

Conflict is not to be swept under the rug; it's vital to every well-rounded team. Raiders are no different. Keep communication flowing, but be firm and educate your players when the appropriate time to speak is (you're not cracking jokes while listening to raid calls; save the chit-chat for trash clears). When a raid wipes, get to the heart of it. Speak up about what you've observed, but don't be negative, just objective. Be respectful. And if you call someone out, make an effort to bring a solution along with you, not just the problem. Scrubs complain. Expert team members solve.

Lack of Commitment

Once a team is resigned to avoiding conflict, the decisions they make permeate into a behavior that lacks any sort of commitment to the raid at hand. Commitment is an absolute requirement of raid success, no questions asked. The raid leader gives an instruction on a particular boss, and when you decide for whatever reason that you don't feel the need to meet that expectation, you are setting up the entire team to fail. A raid without commitment:

• Causes raid members to be ambiguous about what they are responsible for (ie. "Uhhh....so, I'm not really certain about what I need to do when I get marked for an ice-block during Sindy, so...I guess I hope I don't get marked!!")
• Loses opportunities to improve/solve a problem while issues are over-analyzed and unreasonable delays occur
• Encourages raiders to stay quiet, and not admit when they make mistakes, thus delaying the resolution for future attempts, as well as eat away at the player's own confidence of being able to execute at all.
• Constantly goes over the same issues. Again. And Again. And Again. And Again.
• Causes raid members to second-guess one another (ie. "Oh great, we have so-and-so in the raid again, well...here goes any hope of completing the heroic achievement on Sindy!")

In order to combat the lack of commitment, a raid team must:

• Create clear and concise expectations of raiders. This is why we have role officers, and why they are in place to create healing assignments, which side of Valithria the melee needs to be on, which foot melee needs to be on for Festergut, etc.
• Focus the team on the common goal (kill the boss!)
• Develop the ability to learn from mistakes: Acknowledge it. Ask for/receive clarification (without prejudice). Make the change. Problem solved.
• Take advantage of opportunities before other guilds do. (read: Opportunities, not EXPLOITS)
• Move forward on decided-upon strategy, without hesitation (ie. "Well, we've done Strat A on Heroic Lich King for two weeks, and now the Raid Leader changes it to Strat B...he must have a good reason, so I'll make these changes on my end as well")
• Adapt and/or change strategy as needed, without hesitation or guilt. As much as we can avoid, we typically do not change strategies on a boss mid-raid, but sometimes it is necessary (and typically the RL makes the right call on this)...and when it happens, EVERYONE needs to be on board.

Be committed to the end result. Narrow your focus on the goal (but don't play with blinders on and die in the fire!) If you make a mistake, don't be silent...ask for clarification, make it crystal clear in your mind. And if you have opportunities to gain insight, whether it be researching strategies on the web, watching videos, or reaching out to fellow raid guilds -- don't turn your back on these options. Take every legitimate opportunity you can to make the end goal reachable.

Avoidance of Accountability

A team that fails to commit produces a bunch of wishy-washy, less-than-adequate players who take no responsibility for their own actions; they avoid accountability. Raid teams that avoid accountability:

• Produce resentment among raiders who have different standards of play
• Encourage people to play at a level we can only consider 'mediocre'
• Allow players to miss raids without consequence
• Place an unhealthy amount of stress and burden on the raid leader as the sole source of rule enforcement

If you want to build and enforce more accountable players in raids:

• Ensure poor performers have incentive to improve. This is why we have the guild rank/reward structured as we do. Mini-goals are achieved based on performance, and rewards are then showered on the player to celebrate the accomplishment.
• Identify problems quickly by openly questioning other members' approach without hesitation (ie. "So-and-so, I see you are still casting while you have Unstable Magic, what's going on there? I thought the deal was to stop casting...")
• Establish acknowledgement/respect for raid members who are held to the same high standards (relates to the guild ranks listed above), thereby validating the effort of those players who are truly committed
• Delegate the handling of individual groups' expectations, which are clearly defined and explicit (ie. Our role officers handle each subsequent group in healing, melee, and ranged DPS. A healing officer, therefore, can be expected to state: "Healing assignments are posted - if you fail to heal these people, you are removed from the raid - Questions? /w RL, the healers are ready...").

Players that demonstrate accountability are truly a sight to behold in action. They jell with extreme efficiency, communicate clearly, and see the success of the entire team as it is their own personal responsibility. This builds a healthy balance between raid leader and raiders, and provides incentive for players to improve, grow, and eventually gain rank and status within the guild. In turn, this will cause your raid team to gain status on the server (or perhaps beyond).

Inattention to Results

A raid full of players that couldn't care less about what they do is a sorry sight to see. Their individual poor performances lead to consistent raid wipes for a multitude of reasons...many of which are easily identifiable and solvable. But nobody cares about solving them. Their attention is elsewhere--whatever is on TV, what the current score is during the Football game. It's sad and pathetic to watch, and painful to be a part of. Raids that don't care about their success or failure:

• Fail. Period. They do not improve, nor care to.
• Are beaten by other guilds in progression.
• Cause the very best raiders in the guild to begin looking elsewhere for a guild
• Encourage individual raiders to focus on themselves instead of the team/guild as a whole.
• Are easily distracted--(ie. cracking jokes and spamming ASCII-art macros in General Chat while inside a raid).

When raid teams care about what they do in a raid, and make an effort to examine the finer details of raid strategy, they:

• Retain the best and brightest players
• Minimize individualistic behavior (ie. "The healing assignment went out, and I'm assigned to heal X, but I'd rather inflate my numbers on WorldOfLogs.com, so I'm going to do XYZ instead!")
• Are able to enjoy both success and failure, because they fully understand that each is needed, and leads to growth
• Benefit from team members' skills whose personal focus shifts to the success of the team (ie. "Wow, if it wasn't for that one DK who Chains/Gripped that Blood Beast, I'd have been killed for sure. His DPS went down a bit, but...well...we killed Saurfang!")
• Avoid Distractions (ie. I can only imagine how many wipes we have avoided by not being in General Chat and missing some crude/stupid joke or macro that catches the attention of a key tank or healer, causing the entire raid to die).

There it is. Start repairing your raid team by building the foundation of trust, encouraging conflict, driving commitment, enforcing players to be accountable and ultimately driving the quality of what they do onward and upward. If you succeed at applying these rules, I guarantee that you will kill raid bosses with great efficiency, because you will have a great team.