4.61. Bless The Beasts and Children

One of the less offensive
exchanges I was able to find in
League of Legends chat

The Gamer Parent Dilemma

As a gamer parent, I struggled. While the balance between gaming and real life was much better now, the threat of setting an inappropriate example constantly loomed. I did not want to fall back into my old "yelly" ways. A patient yet headstrong wife kept my profanity in check when around the young. Guilt from auto-piloting through my kids' formative years kept my conscience perpetually stung. This, too, kept me on the straight-and-narrow. But the struggle was real, a greater test of will than any month long crusade wiping to a single raid boss.

I feared repeating my Mother's mistakes, walling me off from video games for the most trivial of infractions. Mom's militant methods and illogical reasoning made no sense to a child whose only wish was to drop another quarter in the machine. She held foolish, paranoid beliefs: kids in dark basements rolling D20s and succumbing to the "horrors" of a degenerate lifestyle. A high profile story hit the news in 1979, telling of a Dungeons and Dragons player that had killed himself; it didn't help. The stage was set for an entire era of misunderstandings around that culture, long before I was old enough to defend myself or my hobby. Years later, now a parent myself, I refused to take the path Mom took.

The tables turned. In some sort of crazy, alternate dimension, gaming culture appeared to be gaining mainstream acceptance, no longer seen as a dark underground of brooding teenagers. And with its rise in popularity came new studies proving what we suspected all along: video games don't cause violence, no more than a book or a film or a musician would. This was all the evidence I needed to defend my parental stance that video games were a perfectly healthy medium to expose kids to.

And yet, "problems" persisted.

Sociologists and psychologists didn't point at video games...they pointed past them. Years before Nintendo became a recognizable brand in North America, experiments performed in labs and on college campuses demonstrated that human problems manifested under the right conditions. Deindividuation bred with online anonymity granted a temporary pass to scathing, racist, sexist behavior. Already a group susceptible to wielding the binary logic of a button press to pass judgement, gamers cared little about their words and actions. They shamed newcomers and threatened opponents with physical violence. If they faced an impeding loss, their uncontrolled anger transformed them into profane beasts. Gaming was rich with children who never grew up, partaking of a enabling hobby. Patch notes were mechanisms of vitriolic entitlement baked directly into the system.

And so, I struggled. Because I wanted my kids to love and enjoy games without the restrictions I suffered through. I knew that games weren't the source of the world's malevolence, but was a medium that allowed it. Cruelty without consequence. Following the herd. A culture of not caring. As a gaming teenager, I rallied behind the notion that video games didn't cause bad behavior. As a gaming parent, I now wondered why video games did nothing to prevent it.

In-game screenshot of a match in action,
League of Legends

The League of Extraordinary Douchebags

"Dad, come check out this game! You need to install this and play with me, it's free!"

I wandered over to my son's monitor and glanced at the playing field. Although the artwork was different and the UI unfamiliar, I saw what this game was going for. A thick green grassland was represented in the minimap, with a home page constructed in both the lower left and upper right corners. Further inspection revealed the map was a mirror image of itself, divided horizontally along a river-based axis that drew from the upper left to lower right corners. The focal point of my son's screen reflected the area of the minimap currently outlined; a zoomed-in view of just a small portion of the entire playing field. Small, unremarkable minions departed each base at a steady but mild cadence, heading towards each other; an inevitable death march. The entire scene smacked of an alternate-reality Warcraft III.

"Whatcha got here?" I asked.

"This is League of Legends. It's so fun."

Synapses fired as I started making connections.

"Ah, yeah, yeah. I remember Cheeseus and Sixfold talking about this on Vent awhile back. It's DOTA, right? Like what that Swedish guy was singing about...crap, what's his name....Basshunter. That guy." 

I leaned down over Hunter's shoulder and looked closer at the units. He clicked the map and directed a creature into a thick brush, attacking some creatures which hid among the trees. The creature bore a resemblance to a troll with a severe drinking problem; his engorged, reddish facial attributes looked exaggerated, even by gaming standards, and the creature swung a large, wooden club. Another purplish creature headed towards him; it was unmistakably scorpion-like. Hunter pointed at the insect.

"That's Skarner. They just added him." His eyes were wide with excitement as his face drew near to the screen.

"And who's this guy you're playing?"

"This is Trundle."

"Got it, got it."

I watched in silence as my son clicked on the map while tapping keys in rapid succession. Trundle and Skarner engaged.

"...so will you download it?"

I glanced down to the lower left hand corner of the screen, my primal gamer instincts scanning for threats. Sure enough, a chat window displayed the last few lines communicated among the group. One line, typed by another player, caught my eye.

[08:20][All] kydex3 (Sion): your supposed to be fucking mid retard. uninstal and kill yourself

"Classy community you've got here."

The excitement melted away from Hunter's voice. "I just ignore that."

What to do? Ban him from the game because of someone else's bad behavior? Continue to expose him to this and risk dissolving any mature, respectful behavior we'd already trained him to demonstrate?

I put my hand on his head, "You know it's never ok to behave like that, right?"

"I know."

"If it ever gets to the point where you feel like typing something like that, I trust you'll step away for a breather, instead. It's just a game."

"...yep."

It's just a game.

I patted him on the back, then returned to my desk and downloaded the League of Legends installer. As the file progress filled up, a random thought of the TV show Dexter popped into my mind. I remembered Dexter's father, trying to guide his son through life, training him how to suppress his rage, how to deal with a diseased mind craving human blood. Thank God I didn't have to worry about taming homicidal instincts. All that weighed on my shoulders was teaching my son how to navigate life as a gamer without growing up to be a complete and total asshole.

Mature fields next-level trolling from a player whose
10-Man team was denied access into DoD,
Orgrimmar

The Young and the Worthless

We discussed the option of which heroic to pursue next: Beth'tilac or Lord Rhyolith. At initial glance, the choice seemed obvious. Raiding guilds knew the challenge Beth'tilac posed -- already a gear check in normal mode, the arachnid would most certainly be our undoing. Flawless execution would matter little if we couldn't hit our numbers.

Lord Rhyolith, by contrast, posed little risk. Already a gimmicky fight that the roster was consistently annihilating in normal mode, any concern for Rhyolith would likely fall into the realm of communication. If anything, Rhyolith would demand the DPS teams pay closer attention to which foot was receiving what percentage of damage. DPS, in short, would be (indirectly) responsible for tanking the volcano with legs. We made the decision to focus our attention on Lord Rhyolith beginning that Sunday, August 21st, less than two days after our first defeat of Heroic: Shannox.

After clearing past Beth'tilac, Baleroc, and Alysrazor, Blain flipped the raid lock difficulty from Normal to Heroic, and we sank our first two hours of work into Lord Rhyolith. This, like all bosses, started with getting a feel for the differences, polishing the strategy used on normal mode, and tweaking where needed. We made little progress that night. The heroic strategy demanded grace and finesse in positioning. A Romanian gymnast we were not. 

Eventually, we converted back to normal, to secure a kill w/ loot. The team's morale was good; they were un-phased by the loss. One shots were rare (especially heroic ones), and this was the same process we took with every boss: practice and refinement. We worked until we got it. Some bosses were more obstinate than others, none of this was a surprise. There was absolutely no cause for concern at this very early stage in learning the encounter. Spirits were high and the roster kept a positive outlook.

---

The second weekend of work on Heroic: Lord Rhyolith began on the weekend of Aug 26th. We reset the lock and first cleared Beth'tilac, Baleroc, Alysrazor and Shannox, all of which were executed in the first hour. This freed us for three hours of work.

It did not go well.

The count of attempts is now lost to a haze. What memory remains intact is not one of the rapidly accruing attempts, but of the outside distractions permeating their way into my raid roster and its morale.

It was standard DoD raid law to keep distractions to a bare minimum. We'd come a long way from having to berate Ouleg for watching Nip/Tuck while trying to do work on Morogrim Tidehunter, but never disappeared completely. I had to keep constant tabs on the risk of waning attention. The most notorious source of distraction, surprisingly, was not Ryan Murphy-produced television, but instead, something built directly into the game client: cross instance chat. 

Blizzard's chat infrastructure was designed such that, even if you were in a separate instance dedicated solely to you and your team of players, chat still extended out across all the instances, allowing for multiple raid groups (each in their own instance) to chat amongst one another in a shared lobby. These instance lobbies would not cross content instances; Discord raiding Bastion of Twilight could not chat with Pretty Pink Pwnies raiding Blackwing Descent. But...if both The ORLY Factor and Costa were raiding Firelands, you can bet that they were sharing /general chat.

I sent messages directly to guildies and ordered them out of /general if I caught them chatting up. This meant I had to be in /general -- it was the only way to monitor for the behavior, culling it as quickly as it appeared. Lucky me. In order to keep the peace, I had to wade in to the filth, forced to listen to other guilds rant and rave in there inimitable Deathwing-US style. I tuned it out, yet it was a distraction nonetheless, always catching my eye, causing me to look away from Mature's positioning, watching for a recognizable name and being forced to deal with it.

I did not expect what I saw next.

[2. General] [Drecca]: Woot! Heroic Lord Rhyolith down!!

[2. General] [Bheer]: Yay us

I have to admit, for a brief moment, I was shocked. But then, I wasn't. Not really.

[2. General] [Drecca]: Wow that boss is easy

[2. General] [Drecca]: Any guild struggling must be awful

In retrospect, that behavior did not surprise me at all. Not one bit.

3.9. Outselling The Competition

Mature sets his title to "Twilight Vanquisher"
after completing The Twilight Zone,
Dalaran

Comparative Pricing

How do you become the "Top Guild on the Server"?

Is success measured by the design of the guild's spectacular website? What if players can't be bothered with a site (or don't know how to set one up), then maybe the lack of a website is more enticing. The ability to communicate and treat others with respect and maturity could be a good measure, but mutual respect could also be the exact opposite of what a player wants. Maybe they are introverted and don't want excessive communication, and prefer to be left alone, speaking only when a very specific question arises. Perhaps a reflection of the guild's goals and ideals, then, and how they approach the discipline of raiding (or PvP) is what floats a guild to the top. Maybe the top guild on the server demonstrates fantastic discipline! But, what if you don't want that? What if you thrive on trolling and griefing, and after a hard day at school or the office, the only comfort you get out of life is ganking noobs as they quest in ignorant bliss? Maybe the top guild on the server is the definitive griefing guild, and you salivate at the mere mention of being a part of that. Maybe I'm overthinking this...perhaps it is simply a measure of size. Yeah, that must be it. The top guild on the server must be the largest, no question about it, the top guild on the server is the largest...

...or...is it the smallest?

This philosophical question spent time in general chat nearly every day that I played WoW. Someone always wanted to know who the "top guild" on the server was. And you'd often see the same patterns of names fly by. After a smattering of comedians spammed their own unknown guilds as an answer, trends typically started to show up. During Vanilla it was Depraved; around The Burning Crusade, it became Pretty Pink Pwnies. Occasionally, a troll would spam support for the Alliance, and we'd see guilds like Inertia or Costa show up. In an anonymous medium lacking moderation, the various responses I read often boiled down to the same opinion:

"Our perception of the top guild on this server is the one that's furthest progressed in raids."

Conveniently, that answer didn't speak to how those guilds carried themselves. Some were comprised of genuinely cool people. Others set the standard for a new level of douchebag. In many cases it was a melting pot; a guild with good intentions containing bad seeds, and the only differentiating factor between guilds was how askew their decent-to-douchebag ratio was unbalanced. Whether arrogant leadership led timid yes-men (and yes-women), or officers with a moral compass led a gang of hoodlums, the variety of guild options on Deathwing-US was anything but. Yet the one consistency that remained was the continued perception of the most coveted guild on the server being a measure of their dominace in PvE.

I knew what I was up against on a daily basis; my reminder scrolled up automatically through general chat. Chuck Norris jokes, insults, political arguments, profanity...all arbitrarily intermixed with raw demand. Smithies looking for work. Need help running this Heroic. Need help with this one quest, hey can anyone tell me where Mankirk's wife is? Where do I turn in these tokens for gear? How the hell do I get back to Orgrimmar from Dalaran? Hey, how do you get that bizarre mount? Hey, how do you get that title?

Hey. What's the top guild on this server? I am LFGuild, thx.

"Enigma"

"LOL its Enigma"

"Top guild si Enigma, tlak to Fraya"

I knew what I was up against.

Fraya stands among Kerulak and other various players
on Daetwhing-US, after defeating Emeriss,
Ashenvale

Market Leaders

Fraya had been on Deathwing-US since the early days of WoW. We had bumped into him several times since Vanilla, where his time was mostly spent in Admonished Prophets. My ex-warrior officer Annihilation clocked the most time in Fraya's presence. According to him, Fraya was a good kid, loved to PvP on his druid, and had helped us out killing world bosses like Emeriss and Azuregos, back in the day. By all accounts, Fraya was good people. We even tried to nab him a couple of times, but no...he respectfully declined. Said he had big plans to start a raiding guild. Wanted to make a name for himself. See how far he could push a team into progression. And soon after the release of Wrath, we saw what he was up to: the guild name Enigma started to spread quickly throughout the Horde community on Deathwing-US. As promised, Fraya would be making a name for his new guild, and I had every reason to be concerned. Depraved had poached players from me during Vanilla without giving it a second thought; the same was true for Pretty Pink Pwnies during TBC. But back then, my attitude was one of disbelief, shock, disgust, surprise. How could another guild treat us like this? Weren't we all in this together?

It doesn't work like that. Not on Deathwing-US.

In the business of building a raiding guild on this backwater server, you take what you want. I'm often curious what the general feeling is on this topic for European guilds; my locale limits me to being exposed only to the North American servers. Perhaps a mutual respect exists on a handful of other servers here in the US of A. At least as far as Deathwing-US is concerned, guilds treat each other like Corporate America treats greed. There's no honor among guild leaders; hell, I'd be surprised if any of the guild leaders on Deathwing-US even knew who I was...or cared!

But I wanted to know them.

In the corporate world, public relations and ethics are barely enough to keep people virtuous. Pretend for a moment that you are completely protected by a thick shell of anonymity, free from the repercussions of doing whatever the hell you want, saying what you want, and acting how you want. Nobody's hand can be held to the fire, because nobody knows whose hand to force into the flame. Now, surrounded by that lack of a moral code, more and more join in with that behavior, one gigantic hive mind of douche.

Well, now you have a general idea of what it's like to be a raiding Guild Leader.

We touted ideals and morals in DoD, and four years in I had a pretty good handle on setting the standard behind our walled garden. My guild had made a name for itself, helping each other without being asked. They'd go out of their way to be respectful to players in other guilds, no matter how ignorant a response they got in return. A strategy I particularly enjoyed was killing trolls with kindness; responding to players that had gone way overboard in the what-is-appropriate department with hugs, apologies, and bubblegum candycane hearts. It only drove them into a greater fury.

I loved that.

Behind the scenes, I kept a close eye on the competition, because I knew how the "game" was being played on our server; rules of engagement were non-existent at best. The grand majority of players I brushed shoulders with would never see my website, never read my rules, never once get to know me or my guild, and learn about our ideals or values. They would never come to see how we tried, every day, to separate ourselves from the herd.

...and they couldn't care less.

The only exposure to Descendants of Draenor they'd ever see were those things right in front of their virtual faces: gear, titles and general chat. I already committed to keeping my opinion out of general chat (and compelled DoD to do the same), so that left me with only two concrete selling points. For the masses, I hoped to impress upon them our degree of progress, reflected by what we wore and the titles that displayed next to our name. If they happened to see us flying a coveted mount, it would be icing on the cake. Then...and only then...could I hope to make a pitch on exactly why it would be lucrative for them to choose Descendants of Draenor over another hardcore, further progressed guild:

Perks.

Mature chats with Beercow while
Scruffiebear converses in guild chat,
Argent Pavillion

Added Value

Hardcore raiding guilds were known for keeping a short leash on their raiders, and this included the raiders' individual schedules. Guilds competing for world-first and server-first titles were expected to clock long hours, raiding many nights per week. We couldn't compete with that. We had jobs, wives, kids, responsibilities -- all the wonderful things that like to jam the gears of a hardcore raiding machine. We had to sell that deficiency as a perk. Rather than force you to raid inappropriate hours during the week, we'd give you the option to maintain a more flexible raiding schedule. In order to make this happen, I made it a rule to handle the rotations myself and work very closely with the players to accommodate their schedules. Various guildies were notably concerned about my heightened expectations in our updated Wrath rules, but I assured them I would do my very best to make the schedule work.

One raider in particular, a feral druid named Beercow, expressed his concerns to me over IM. He desperately wanted to be a regular part of the 25-Man progression team and earn his way up to the "Elite" rank, but felt stifled by the fact that there was no room to consistently bring him in the tank role. Beercow was an old-school veteran of DoD; he had raided with the 40-Man team on his warlock Kragnl. After taking time off for TBC, he returned to consume content with us in Wrath. Players that helped us get where we were today held a special place of importance in the guild. Hence, it was important for me to find a way to carve a spot out for him in the raid roster. Abstaining from trying to convince him to play something we needed, I fished out another interest: Enhancement Shaman. I saw a need for that role and told him he'd easily be able to prove his Elite potential by choosing that unique position and sticking to it. He obliged, and Beercow -- now Bheer -- became the only regular enhancement shaman we saw week-to-week in progression.

Another player I made allowances for was a long standing player in DoD, one who had become a regular face in progression and was a player we all knew by many names. He had a multitude of characters on his account, and fashioned himself a PvPer at heart; he had spent many late nights cruising through Alterac Valley, Arathi Basin and Warsong Gulch with some of our other veteran PvPers like Neps and Annihilation. He jammed his foot in DoD's door via his brother, the warlock Ouleg (also a PvPer) who had been known to contribute to raids from time to time throughout TBC. Ouleg never demonstrated to me any real significant amount of loyalty to the raid team. I recall nights that we would wipe incessantly in Serpentshrine Cavern, only to hear that "something's come up, I gotta go", and conveniently, Ouleg was gone from the raid. It was the general sort of douchebaggery I came to accept as par-for-the-course when leaning on our PvP crowd to wrap up a raid.

So, when Ouleg's brother stepped foot in progression, I set my expectations appropriately. On occasion he would miss sign-ups completely, or he would show up late and miss the raid invite, so I didn't go out of my way to weave intricate tapestries around his spot. But when he did bring a toon to the raid, whether it be his boomkin druid Scruffiebear or his shadow priest Aeden, that boy would unleash hell on our enemies. He was an unexpected sharpshooter, a hardcore player in every sense of the word, and yet, was simply a laid-back, fun-loving kid that liked to drink and party. He became the guild mascot, known by everyone and liked by all. Rather than call him by the many names of his toons, DoD simply referred to him by his name in real life: Ben. I did what I could to make room for Ben in the roster, as his jokes always kept the raid's spirits up, and his damage was nothing to laugh at. But, I didn't have high hopes that he would ever see a rank beyond "Raider".

While it pleased me to see returning faces and find ways to work them into the roster, some names required a bit more thought during consideration. I'm referring, of course, to those faces who left DoD under bad terms, the bridge burners. But were they bad people? Or was their exit strategy simply marred by bad circumstances?

How does a Guild Leader decide when it's OK to bring someone back across that burned bridge?