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?

2.30. No Easy Out

Vashj, the Highborne Night Elf,
before the War of the Ancients
Artwork by Jonboy Meyers

Inflated Self-Worth

Before she commanded legions of naga in her Coilfang army, siding with Illidan to wrest control of Outland, Vashj was the prime handmaiden to the head of the Highborne night elves, Queen Azshara. The Highborne were aloof and carried themselves with inflated feelings of grandeur; they believed their royal bloodline granted them great beauty, strength, power, and knowledge; traits not unbecoming of nobility. Yet to the untrained eye, the quel'dorei appeared to be no different than that of any other night elf of the Kaldorei civilization. They had the same tell-tale deep violet skin, the same sharply pointed ears, and even the same affinity for magic. In every measurable sense, the Highborne were no better nor worse than their commoner counterparts, yet their inflated sense of worth led them down a path of undoing. This unending superiority complex led them to side with Sargeras during the War of the Ancients, a terrible mistake that ended with their exile deep into the ocean as the Well of Eternity collapsed. Their pride led to their aquatic transformation, shedding purple skin for green scales, and sacrificing beauty for Medusa-inspired horror.

I much preferred humility over pride, not just as a way of life, but as a strategy in dealing with others. I don't feel it was due to a lack of confidence or skills. I simply preferred to walk a path as far away from douche-baggery and ignorance as possible. And nothing says douchebag quite like an inflated ego layered atop an otherwise ordinary human being.

Alongside Blain, Neps, Cattledrive, Chopliver and Turtleman, I assisted Depraved in several attempts on Lady Vashj that evening. Each try produced a few mental notes I filed away in the recesses of my brain, but most of the work was as straight-forward as Blain's initial strategy. There were subtle changes in the way they handled communication, coordinating the conveyor-line tainted core transfer, for example. They were noticeably cleaner in their execution of colifang elites, more elegant in their kiting of striders. Yet for all the additional organization and hardcore raiding experience this guild brought to the table, multiple attempts at clearing Vashj ended in wipes. The members of DoD that were present had never given me any reason to doubt their capabilities, and there really was no true point-of-failure for any given attempt. We chalked it up to the fact that this was a Depraved "alt" run, comprised of players pushing a second character through progression. Perhaps they weren't as geared as they needed to be.

Blain's motto rung in the back of my mind again. Gear doesn't make a bad player good.

As Depraved threw in the towel, I shot a /tell over to Blain.

"Did it help?"

"Yup," he replied, "Got what I needed."

Excellent. The raid began to dissolve, so I took the opportunity to thank Depraved before they left. Speaking into Vent, I began with:

"Hey guys. Want to thank you all for giving us a chance to see Vashj today, it's going to really help us out a lot..."

An unrecognizable voice interrupted me,

"Jesus Christ, shut up! Sounds like you guys are a bunch of fuckin' faggots..."

Depraved was a veritable cornucopia of class.

Zanjina surveys members of DoD assisting the
guild Depraved in a kill of Lady Vashj,
Serpentshrine Cavern

The Riot Act

Upon leaving the raid, I was immediately paged by someone in Vent.

"What are you doing in Zangarmarsh?" he asked in an irritated tone. It was Annihilation.

"Uh..." I paused, trying to assess what it was I had made a poor decision on, "...nothing?"

"Were you just in Serpentshrine Cavern a minute ago?"

"Yeah. Blain and a few of the guys wanted to see the Vashj strat, and they asked me to help."

"So you went in there to help Depraved kill Vashj?"

I stumbled. "Well...I mean, they were offering to show us the strat. So I figured the first-hand knowledge..."

He cut me off, "But you were helping them, right?"

"Well, yeah...if you put it that way..." I saw where this was going.

"Kerulak, Depraved doesn't need our help, alright? They've been raiding perfectly fine for years now. We don't need to give them any assistance."

I felt like a kid who'd been caught playing video games after being grounded from them.

"So, what was your plan if you beat Vashj in there?" he asked, rhetorically. He was being a wise-ass for good reason. Anni knew I wouldn't have a straight answer to this. It's what should have made me think twice about my decision: if we had killed Vashj while helping Depraved, a number of us would've become locked to the instance, unable to work on it later in the week. If the 25-Man progression team made it that far.

"Well, the chances of that were probably pretty slim, but it was worth a shot for the experience", I replied hesitantly, "but even if we managed to kill her, we could just end the raid early on the weekend if we make it that far."

Wow. A very shit-poor response from a guild leader, upon reflection.

"...and then you would've had to explain that to a bunch of your core raiders, people who have been busting their ass working on Vashj for DoD already. Nobody on the team is going to be happy to hear that, Kerulak." He continued to refer to me by my shaman's name, even though I had been playing Zanjina for several months now.

"The guild busts their ass every week in there, and then you and Blain and a bunch of random people sneak in early and get a kill that they aren't involved in?" He followed his own question up with his trademark chuckle. Not a chuckle of amusement, but of disgust in the human condition. It was painfully clear by now that I hadn't thought the decision through.

"Look," I interrupted him, "the goal wasn't to help them. Blain wanted to take advantage of the opening and see if he could learn anything by watching their strat."

"Kerulak, we didn't need Depraved's help when we were working on Nefarian. Or any of the bosses we killed in AQ40 or Naxx. Yeah, we got a few hints from Omura and people like that, but ideas over Vent or tells are one thing. Doing another guild's dirty-work is entirely different. We're a competent raiding guild. We always have been. Have some faith in your players and in yourself. We don't need to have our hands held like that."

I listened on in silence.

"Part of the reason we're as successful as we are is exactly that...because we don't have to have our hands held, y'know? And go out of our way looking for hardcore guilds to come and do the job for us. That's not going to do anybody any good. You're just going to piss off a bunch of your team that has been giving everything they can to nail Vashj, for what...a chance to see some other guild's way of doing things?"

He was right. I sucked.

The Right Decision

Without thinking, I made a bad judgement call that could have ostracized a significant chunk of the core raiders. DoD was a team. We had earned our current level of progression by relying on nobody but ourselves, and even though the roster did have a degree of churn, it was only from within our ranks. Any progress we made, any accomplishments we had to our name, were from us and us alone, and while that may not have seemed like a big deal...it was. I became so focused on getting the raid progression to end its streak of stagnation that I put our guild's integrity at risk. All of our effort making DoD a different kind of guild -- treating each other with a bit more respect, giving anyone with the gusto a shot in the raid team -- would've been for naught. What was the point of putting all that effort into building a successful raiding guild, if it meant turning the guild into another hardcore class act?

I circled back with Blain and let him know we wouldn't take part in anything like that ever again. When he asked why, I told him simply, "We don't need their help", and he was perfectly fine with it. We never again took assistance from another hardcore raiding guild "walking us through a strat". If things looked bleak and there was no progression in sight, we would pull ourselves up by the bootstraps, go back to the drawing board and work through it on our own -- no more easy way out. Once we completed the task, we could look back with a quiet sense of dignity, knowing that it was rough...but we managed it on our own. Together. No complaints. No begging for hand-holding. Just hard work.

---

We returned the following weekend to Serpentshrine Cavern, and in that third weekend, managed to land the killing blow on Lady Vashj. Blain's adjustments did the trick, regardless of whether Depraved's way of doing things validated his theories...or invalidated them. Whatever the case ended up being, the Lady Vashj kill was satisfying, and I was humbled that our team made it happen without having our hands held. More importantly, I was relieved that everyone involved played a part in the first official DoD Vashj kill, rather than making it the first kill for a handful of players who weren't online when Depraved had an opening in their wildly successful "alt" run.

In the midst of a chat a few days later, Annihilation slipped in an interesting observation, reflecting on our earlier conversation

"So Depraved has an alt-run? I bet I could pull something like that together..."

2.29. Raiding With The Enemy

"Lady Vashj"
Artwork by Jianing Hu

Lady Vashj

Now that DoD's raiding expectations were public and ready to be consumed by the varying personalities in the roster, I felt slightly less anxious about the dark shadow hovering over the team. 5/6 in SSC, the final big, bad gal remained: Lady Vashj, a serpentine Naga with coils of snakes for hair and a penchant for ending the career of many a casual raiding guild. Vashj boasted one of the most complex set of mechanics we had to work through in WoW -- which made it that much more important that our members were intimately clear on what we expected of them. The Lady would require patience, practice, and a significant amount of communication in order to pull off a kill. Thus, work began immediately as we lifted the great seaweed-laden bridge out of the cavern, water gushing out the sides and back down into the murky depths.

Lady Vashj was divided into three distinct phases. Phase one was a non-factor: tank-and-spank her at the center of her podium-style room, paying attention to her Entangle, as roots would sprout up from the ground and lock several players (including the tank) in place, dotting the targets with ticking nature damage in the process. Mitigating this was simple: A Blessing of Freedom rotation was set up by the various paladins, freeing the tank to resume control of holding Vashj in place. The only other concern was Static Charge, placed randomly on a player. As the debuff persisted, AoE damage would eat away at the host and anyone around him as well. Afflicted players had to run to safety, far from the raid, reducing the ambient damage healers dealt with. This phase lasted until Vashj's health dropped to 70%, and was so trivial that the raid had mastered it within several pulls.

Phase two is where the complexity arose. Lady Vashj returned to the center of her podium, activating an impenetrable shield that rendered our attacks useless. The shield was powered by four generators encircling her, and it was our job to destroy them in order to finish her off. How this was accomplished made Magtheridon's Lair look like Magmadar in comparison. The cavern's water level had risen to the base of the steps surrounding the Lady's podium. From this water henceforth emerged Eeementals, moving slowly up the steps, responding to their master's beck and call. If any water elemental were to reach Vashj, they would dissolve and transfer their power to her, granting both strength and size. Letting too many through would guarantee that she would one-shot the tank...

...if we made it far enough to release her from that protective barrier.

Tainted Core to: %t !!!

While the raid spread out around the circumference of the podium, they watched for elementals, killing them before they reached their master. Raiders had to keep an eye out for a specific elemental:: corrupted and green, much like Hydross when pulled from his purifying beams. These tainted elementals were pivotal to the destruction of her shield; killing them produced a Tainted Core, an object we needed to loot and use to disable each generator. The trick was that by looting a Tainted Core, a player became affixed to the floor, unable to move. By being at the base of the steps, this positioning guaranteed they were completely out of range. Therefore, the raid team had to coordinate a series of Tainted Core tosses, in which the crucial object was handed from player-to-player, up the steps, eventually making its way to someone near the generator...blowing it up and getting us a step closer to phase three.

Tainted Core tossing was a complex task even by description. Performing the tactic itself was a nightmare of coordination -- of yelling in vent and of spammed macros announcing who was getting the core, who was tossing it, where it was going to. And this didn't speak to any of the other obstacles continually throwing a wrench into the mix: the coilfang elites that needed to be picked up, tanked and killed, the coilfang striders that needed to be kited and killed by ranged DPS. Anything caught in melee range of a strider would instantly be feared across the room, and elites hacked away at players if not picked up quickly. Phase two was the stuff of nightmares; cube clicking seemed tame by comparison.

Blain had a plan, but it wasn't coming together quite like he had hoped. DPS was falling behind on elites and we'd often have two up instead of one. Choosing who would kite the coilfang striders was still up in the air. Who was the best suited for the task? An elemental shaman? A frost mage? Maybe neither, perhaps a hunter brought the right kit for the task. On our first weekend of work on Lady Vashj, much of our time went into trial-and-error on many of these variables. As always, I deferred to Blain's expertise in matters of raid strategy, keeping the faith that he would soon have it nailed down with whatever modifications were necessary for Descendants of Draenor to make the boss killable. But with such a finely tuned encounter, and a series of players still struggling to come out of their shell and fully exemplify our new expectations, the margin of error was still too small, and Blain began looking at other options to validate his theories.

Depraved

A few nights after our first weekend of work, my priest officer Neps sent me a whisper, "Do you have a few minutes to help with something?"

"What's going on?"

"Blain's helping Depraved with a Vashj kill. He says they have a few spots open. Can you come??"

I paused a moment to contemplate. Depraved had made a name for themselves during Vanilla as the number one progressed Horde guild on our server. It was Depraved's guild leader, a warlock named Phayder, that boasted the title of Scarab Lord, gained by banging the gong on Deathwing-US many years before and opening the gates of Ahn'Qiraj. Depraved had blown us away in Vanilla, as there was no viable way a non-hardcore raiding guild could compete; we certainly looked like children tripping over their feet in comparison. But by The Burning Crusade, Depraved was beginning to lose market share to Bru and Pretty Pink Pwnies, so their days of keeping a glorious stranglehold on our server's Horde progression were behind them. And perhaps they didn't care.

PPP was a constant thorn-in-my-side in terms of stealing away my best raiders, so any act of faith a competing guild chose to toss our way would be a boon...at least at initial glance. To even consider for a moment that a hardcore raiding guild would ever give us the time of day to share a strategy was unheard of, let alone being extended an invitation to participate, to watch first-hand, and to learn how to "do things right".

But as I typed a response to Neps, doubt lingered in the back of my mind. If hardcore raiding guilds didn't really give a damn about others...about us...why the sudden interest in allowing us to participate? Why come to us to fill a few extra spots? Why not Admonished Prophets or Thunder Billies or any number of other guilds on the server that hung below PPP? A sense of paranoia washed over, catapulting me back into Vanilla as I struggled to assimilate guilds, ever teetering on the edge of complete and total collapse.

Was Depraved going to quietly vet my best players and lure them away?

The question remained: do I join Blain and the others in seeing how to fix our mistakes and risk players being poached? Or do I demand that Blain and crew stand down from Depraved's self-serving "gesture", while continuing to burn weeks of trial-and-error wipes on Vashj as a result?

It was time to roll the dice.