3.63. Algor Mortis

"Tauren Druid",
Artwork by Thiago Almeida

Applying Yourself

"Hanzo, I'm really starting to feel worn out with the tanking thing."

I listened quietly as Omaric spilled.

"It's not really holding my interest as much as it used to."

"I see," keeping as much emotion out of it as possible, "so, you'd like me to start looking for a replacement for that role?"

"I mean, if you can...it's not a HUGE deal at the moment."

"You won't keel over dead tomorrow if I don't have a replacement by Friday?"

"Heh, no. I think I'll live past Friday."

"Well, that's a relief!" I gently joked, hoping to keep the conversation light. My strategy with humor has always been to weave it carefully through the tapestry of politics. It's my go-to tactic in winning over anonymous players in the heat of an argument, and has surprisingly good results, even if we truly don't see eye-to-eye on a particular topic of interest. The human mind is funny that way.

"But maybe just sort of look out for someone who may want to come in and fill that spot? That way I can start moving into more of a kitty DPS position."

"Alright, let me sift through our applications. We should have you doing kitty DPS in no time."

I wasn't looking forward to what came next.

---

Delete.

Delete.

Delete.

I clicked through my email. App after app appeared on the screen, and I scanned the answers to my standard recruitment questions. What is your character name? How old are you? What role do you play? How did you hear about us? Tell us a story about your raiding experience. Why choose DoD over any other guilds? One by one, I read the applications that flooded in on a weekly basis, each one more useless than the next.

Some applications ignored the very first rule on the list: Do not apply if you're under 21.

Ah, wonderful....here's an 18 year old.

Delete.

Oh, nice, this guy's 16.

Delete.

Next up were continuous applicants who demonstrated a complete and utter lack of attention to detail. I needed raiders that could truly comprehend my expectations -- many of our raid strategies came from complex guides that required exacting attention. So, I wove a trick into my application process to cull the herd: You don't need a forum account to apply -- the application is filled out and emailed to me. Yet, there before my eyes was the very thing I hoped to prevent: people unable to read carefully. It made for an easy email filter.

"Hey I can't figure out how to create an account to apply."

Delete.

"Can you give me a hand creating a forum account? I'd like to fill out an application."

Delete.

One by one, the apps hit my virtual trash bin, until none remained. Snake eyes, again. Everybody wanted to get their foot in the Descendants of Draenor door, but nobody was willing to put the time or effort in. I sat there with an empty inbox an overflowing trash bin, and felt nothing but disgust.

"Capturellamaphobopolis",
Hanzo's contribution to The CTF Expansion Project

Setting the Standard

I leaned back in my chair and stared at the pinhole sized dots scattered across the ceiling. Perhaps I was being too hasty, perhaps a good handful of these applicants weren't nearly as bad as I made them out to be. A conversation popped into my head from a year earlier, the weekend before I left on a trip to Dallas, Texas on business...the same trip in which I drafted an officer's termination letter.

"I think you should think carefully about being overly critical of players that can't write particularly well."

"Jul, he writes like a kid. I mean, how is that supposed to demonstrate any sort of leadership?"

My wife shrugged, "Well, some people can't. You can go to school and learn the basics of grammar, spelling, and punctuation...but good writing is inherent. Does he have other skills that would qualify him for the position, though?"

"I dunno. I feel like he comes across as an amateur. As he's not leading by example. I need him to!"

"Have you considered the possibility that maybe he can't? Maybe he is prioritizing things in real life more than the game. You said yourself that a game/life balance is something that's important to you. Maybe it's important to him as well."

"Ok, so that should stand in the way of fundamental sentence structure? Maybe he could give me just a little more effort?"

"Shawn...some people don't care as much about WoW as you do."

---

Memories began to swirl, fading in and out across a cloudy spectrum of images. I was transported back in time to a conversation I had with a friend, years before Blizzard would ever announce their intention of creating an MMO. It was 1998, and I was sitting at a desk in a room purposefully darkened by the IT staff. Our collective introversion confined us to the server room; I was a webmaster. On that day, however, I was distracted by a side-project I had assembled: The CTF Expansion Project. It was a collection of Capture-The-Flag maps for the popular Threewave CTF mod for Quake, built by my friend Zoid. I'd known Zoid since even before Quake, playing 2D Fighting games at his apartment in Vancouver...Super Street Fighter II Turbo, Samurai Shodown II. I'd met hardcore game addicts on Vancouver Island before, but Zoid was different. When he picked me up at the Horseshoe Bay ferry terminal, I immediately recognized the music playing over his car stereo: the soundtrack to Darkstalkers.

I thought I was the only person in the world that listened to video game music. There are others like me.

To celebrate the success of Zoid's popular Threewave mod, I did my part by coordinating a handful of expert map makers to come together and assemble an expansion pack of capture-the-flag goodness. The CTF Expansion Project enjoyed moderate success, eventually finding its way into a larger production known as All-Star CTF. I felt it was a great collaborative effort, but the true test would come from Zoid's own critique of my map selections. When I pinged Zoid, famous for his short, to-the-point responses, I asked him what he thought of the pack. I remember his response well:

"It was OK. You need to set your standards higher!"

I'm certain Zoid meant it as encouragement, but it felt like a crushing defeat.

A Slight Reduction in Body Temperature

My focus on the office ceiling resumed. Were my standards too high? Or not high enough? I debated relaxing the rules, and giving a few more of these applicants a chance, players whose applications weren't spit polished to a military grade. Right on cue, my gut chimed in.

Do you want to create more drama for yourself? Did you like the way things ran during Vanilla and The Burning Crusade? Perhaps you'd like to go back to neglecting your job and family to spend every waking moment in game, dealing with their shit.

I shook my head and alt-tabbed back to work. I wasn't going to sacrifice our guild's integrity and current standing to let the dregs in. I'd fought to get rid of the stigma that we were a stepping stone guild, and it was apparent from the flood of applicant emails that DoD was no longer perceived as such. We would be their last guild. To that end, I owed it to the members to retain that which I held in high regard: the expectation that you come to this guild prepared to do whatever it took to keep us successful. I'd rather have the team suffer with 24 or 23 players in the roster, than force several people in "just to be warm bodies".

Dead bodies are warm for a short time too...but aren't very good at contributing.

I sat for a moment, lost in thought, contemplating the loss of Dalans and proclamation by Omaric revealing his increasing apathy towards tanking, and began to consider the possibility of solving the problem myself.

Oh, nice. So that whole bit about not forcing players into a role they didn't enjoy, that was all just a line you were feeding them? And yourself? Gonna go ahead and return to tanking, then? Tanking with a Shadowmourne? Bet that'll go over real well with the guild.

I needed a new tank. Someone to emerge with the expertise of a hardcore player, yet could assimilate into a guild insistent on mutual respect and treating others with a quiet dignity. Someone who was already fully geared, and who kept their armor polished, with their point-of-view squarely focused on raid progression through raw efficiency. And someone with a solid grasp on the game's mechanics, to mentor others, to take charge of duties, and to be someone I could count on week after week.

So, basically...I needed a miracle.

The ping of an arriving email rung through my earbuds and I glanced back down to the inbox. My eyes darted from left to right, reading the application...and grew wide in excitement. I flipped open the guild forums, pulled up the private messages, and quickly drafted up a response to Omaric:

"May have found a tank replacement for you. Stand by for further instruction."

2.12. The Accidental Florist

"Crying Tree of Life"
Artwork by Okha (Oksana)

Fauxliage

Kerulak was all I knew.

Since the game's launch in November of 2004, all of my end-game knowledge and expertise as a healer had been funneled through my Tauren Shaman. Like many players, I had a number of alts on my account, to break the monotony and see the world through a different pair of eyes. But my alts were low-level and I looked upon them as a hobby in-between polishing Kerulak's gear, assisting with attunement runs. My priority was first and foremost my shaman, Kerulak, so the prospect of putting him on the bench was unnerving and left me feeling a loss of control. My muscle-memory had long been cemented around totems, chain heal, and big single target greater healing waves. Earth Shield was still relatively new, having been added at the start of TBC, and was technically my only legitimate HoT (albeit one that lay dormant until reacting to damage). That is, if you don't count the pathetic heals-over-time that came from a Healing Stream Totem.

I feared the pain of breaking down that muscle and rebuilding it.

Part of the problem was that I was spaz. As far back as I can remember, I struggled with keeping my shit straight as it began to hit the proverbial fan. In emergencies, microseconds before death, I was at my absolute worst from a play perspective. I had a habit of freaking out and spamming a multitude of buttons as I scrambled for my life; in many cases they were the wrong abilities in the wrong order. In order to prevent myself from tripping over my own branches while playing on Breginna's character, it was important for me to keep shared functions in the same places. That muscle memory was all I had to rely on when adrenaline was pumping and I was about to flip out on the keyboard and mouse. I needed to ensure I was a contributor, not a detriment, by bringing this Druid to raids. Embrace the spaz.

My strategy in approaching the adjustment from Shaman to Druid was based around a single concept: Both are healers, so find whatever similarities you can, and map Druid abilities by function to the same keybindings you use with your Shaman. The starting point was the spell both the Shaman and the Druid shared: Nature's Swiftness, granting an instant cast to an otherwise long-casting spell. With Kerulak, the macro was mapped to Greater Healing Wave. This time, it would be Healing Touch. Kerulak could perform an emergency pool of mana regeneration through Mana Tide Totem, so I took my keybinding for it, and changed that to Innervate. Since Healing Touch had taken the place of Greater Healing Wave, I looked at my options. Chain Heal was more of a staple than Lesser Healing Wave in my eyes, and for the Druid, Rejuvenation seemed to follow suit. As a result, I chose to map Regrowth to Lesser Healing Wave, and made Rejuvenation my base spell. I reasoned that, since Earth Shield is what I'd use to protect a tank, I converted that mapping to Swiftmend -- with the expectation that I would have said tank loaded up with HoTs as the prerequisite.

As I wrapped up the changes, all that remained was Tranquility, taking the place (far more significantly, I might add) of Healing Stream Totem. Like an anal retentive chef, I dragged the metaphor even further, replacing Ghost Wolf with Travel Form and Revive with Ancestral Spirit. By this point, abilities were varying wildly, but it came down to function more than naming convention or even the difference between instant and non-instant cast. As for Ankh, a passive triggered upon death, the paradigm shifted the furthest in the form of a druid's Rebirth. This clutch ability was something the raid would rely on me for, so I needed the ability bound front-and-center. When the spazzing began, someone would need to come back from the dead while the raid remained in combat. I stuck to mapping functions in this manner in the hopes that re-learning healing from the ground up would be painless and quick.

Just like how Magtheridon intended to end our pathetic lives.

The Druid Talent Trees during The Burning Crusade

The Feels of Heals

Healing on Breginna's Druid was an entirely refreshing experience. I took advantage of the perpetual-motion machine that was everlasting attunement requests, and leapt in to help as much as possible. I was amazed at how much simpler it was to keep people alive. The freedom to heal while moving was a luxury that Druids took for granted. One can only know the pain of having to keep a Main Tank alive and stay out of the fire at the same time by playing a healer other than a Druid. It required extreme discipline to shuffle around as little as possible in order to maximize cast time, but all those restrictions went out the door with the Druid. With a Disney-like innocence etched into the bark that was the Tree Form's face, I pranced around 5-man heroics like The Arcatraz, The Steamvault, and Shattered Halls, waving my twig-like arms in the area, dolling out HoTs like they were candy, while bouquets of flowers and nature flourished behind me.

This was how the other side lived.

When it came time to return to Gruul's Lair for our weekly run, Ater and company had already been briefed on Breginna's story. The sudden loss of Kerulak from the raid turned the attention of a few raiders, and that was to be expected. I explained myself in Vent and waved to them all from my bird's eye view, gliding down out of the Blade's Edge sky and shifting into humanoid form at the entrance to the Gronn's cave. Yes, there was ribbing, and that was to be expected, but I took it in stride as this is what we did for one another in a family setting. Breginna may have still been new, but she was no less important than the players who had been with us since as far back as Blackwing Lair. We looked out for one another, and joked about each other's ability behind the wheel. We did this because if there was ever truly a legitimate concern about someone's incompetence, the jokes would be a little less playful, would sting a little more...have a little more bite.

They were certain to leave teeth marks.

Behind the wheel of Breginna, High King Maulgar was a bit less stressful, a little less chaotic. I got the hang of layering up Lifebloom to smooth out the otherwise jagged health bar that sat just below Ater's name on my screen. I was the only Resto Druid in the raid, so when I heard a call out for a battle rez, there was no need to debate or question who was being addressed. A button click later, the dead were back in biz, rushing toward the Ogre King with blades in hand. Gruul was equally less taxing. Moving out of the cave-ins was a cinch, as I shuffled the little wide-grinning Tree out of harms way, flinging its arms into the air for heals as I went. Other healers would run low on mana, call out for help, and without giving it a second thought, out came the mana-regenerating magic imbued within Innervate. When I took on the task, I wasn't sure if I would acclimate to the Druid as quickly as I had, but keeping my button functions the same pounded the learning curve into a flat pancake. The High King and Gruul were once again down, and I bid on items on Breginna's behalf, keeping her geared and growing in strength while she was away.

Hanzo plays Breginna during her absence for work,
Gruul's Lair

Magtheridon's Lair

April had come and gone, and with it, the task of digging into TBC’s raid content had finally commenced. But to say we were progressing would be a stretch. Three weeks of the High King and three weeks of Gruul landed us squarely at the beginning of May, and we still had not yet completed Tier 4. Yes, there were issues. Two pieces came from Karazhan, a 10-Man raid not officially on our roster. Two pieces came from Maulgar and Gruul combined, but with only three King kills and a single, solitary defeat of the Dragonkiller on our belts, Tier 4 equipped raiders were still a long way off. But as Blain had taught us, gear did not make a bad player good, so we repeated this mantra every time we slammed up against another wall.

This time, the wall was about to come down on us.

The remaining piece in Tier 4 would come from the pit lord Magtheridon, a pit lord shackled deep beneath the bowels of the Blood Furnace, where Illidan drained his blood as a means to fuel his army of Fel Orcs. If there was any shred of a doubt in the back of my mind that Blizzard misjudged the difficulty for their entry level raids, that doubt was excised from my brain once we set foot in the pit lord's lair. I was none too thrilled to dig into this fight. Word had spread among the raiding community about the sheer ridiculousness in difficulty the boss posed. A few short weeks after The Burning Crusade launched, I remember reading an article on WoW Insider about how Death and Taxes themselves said, not in so many words…

"Fuck that."

DnT leap-frogged past Magtheridon entirely, diving into Tier 5, uninterested in wasting any time dealing with the foolishly designed mechanics of a boss that desperately screamed out to be re-tuned. The High King and Gruul were tough and unforgiving, that was never in question. But they were doable with a raid comprised of team members that were sharp, took accountability for their own actions, positioning and performance. A pro-team could absolutely take out these pro-bosses.

But even professional teams make mistakes, yet still come home with the championship trophy; it's because the game might be complex and technical, there's room for error and recovery -- there's room to breathe.

On the twelfth night of Magtheridon attempts, I felt like I was drowning.

2.11. Divergent Paths

Twitter.com, circa 2007
Source: SXSW

The Latest Fad

"Check out this new website."

I tilted my head to the side, peering around my work monitor, revealing Ater. His gaze remained fixed on his own computer's monitor, the clacking of keys producing a steady hum from his side of our collaborative desk arrangement.

"What's the url?"

"twitter.com. I guess it's been around awhile but I heard about it through South by Southwest. It's bizarre." Ater got up, walked around to my side, and pointed to the registration link. "Here...set up an account."

I clicked the link, filled out my info, waited for the confirmation, and then logged in. A lone window greeted me, with a single label above it: 

What are you doing?

"This is weird. Who would care about what I'm doing?"

"I know...crazy. But I bet people would use this for all sorts of things." He walked back around to his desk and took a seat, "Maybe even like having public conversations."

"That's just creepy, though. Following people's conversations? I mean, I can have a conversation over the Internet in IRC if I want to."

"Right," Ater shot back, "but how many people use IRC?"

"A hell of a lot of nerds, that's for sure!" I laughed.

"Nerds, yeah. But not the masses. Think about what you have to do to get into IRC. Gotta know what server to connect to, and then deal with all the lingo. Figure out what channels to go into. IRC is still pretty underground...at least for the general user. IRC is great for people who are tech like you and me. But not very usable for the masses. That's the difference."

I looked back at the website, and then looked at Ater. It was as though every time he spoke, there was some deeply insightful message that just seemed to be as plain-as-day to him. The masses? General everyday users, uninterested in technology, barely knowing the difference between Yahoo! and Google? They're going to be the ones having public conversations where strangers eavesdrop on one another? 

If it had been anybody else making such a bold prediction, I would've laughed them out of the room. The masses have never flocked to technology. As long as I've been alive, non-tech folk have always expressed frustration and dismissal when it came to technology. Cool for us...confusing, boring, and dull for them. Even at the agency where Ater and I built websites for customers specifically paying for technology, we struggled with training them. Things were too complex, too many terms to learn, too many buttons to press and an awful lot of "why doesn't it just work."

I couldn't help but be reminded of the plight of the casual.

Two Separate Roads

Every so often, a lone forum post would pop-up on the Battle.Net forums about why there weren't more raids like Karazhan. Smaller, less oppressive raids, allowing players to rely on fewer of one another to accomplish the same tasks. Most often, Blizzard wouldn't respond to these complaints. The folks in charge, namely Tigole, tuned it out as white noise. Raiding was never meant to be for the masses, the great majority of players that were confused by basic concepts like moving out of the fire. Should it have been any wonder that Tigole himself came from a background of hardcore late-night raiding in EverQuest, ranting on his guild's website about the undeserving whiners who were slowly forcing EQ into a watered-down grave. Raiding was a privilege, not a right. You want it? You get off your ass and you do it. No complaining of size or of having to interact with other people. You take that energy you'd normally use to bitch and moan about how you have it so hard...and you simply go and get shit done. Anybody that complained of raids being too large, too many things to learn, too many buttons to press...didn't belong in raids in the first place.

I looked back at the website, asking its presumptuous question. Ater did have a point. It was simple and accessible. Certainly something that far more users could take advantage of. IRC was involved, did have a lot of techno-babble baggage associated with it, and I got how it could turn the masses off, scare them with horror stories of pedophiles and pornography and pirated software. This...Twitter site definitely made things a lot more accessible. And it certainly wasn't going to replace IRC by any means. They'd serve different audiences -- maybe even both! But they would ultimately maintain unique purposes. If all you cared about was posting a public thought, this new Twitter thing would serve that crowd beautifully. Tell Twitter you're playing a video game, and maybe get a couple of followers as your reward. But if you wanted to take it a step further, dive deep down into the depths of IRC, get your hands muddy with mods, channels, binary file transfers and bouncing between servers, stuff you would never get through Twitter -- IRC was still an option.

One action with two separate levels of effort and two separate degrees of reward.

The Twitter thing suddenly made a lot more sense.

---

"I could only imagine someone like Blain using this. How goes the search for a Blain replacement, anyway?"

Ater glanced back, "I've been talking to Volitar. He might be interested in helping out."

"Ah, nice. Volitar's a good choice."

That damn site was still up on my screen, the dialog box practically begging me to type something into it.

"Twitter, eh?"

Ater smiled, "That site is gonna be huge. Keep an eye on it."

What are you doing?

I clicked into the box and typed a response:

Completing Twitter registration.

I closed the browser and went back to work.

Hanzo's Druid alt, Oxanna,
Thunder Bluff

Breginna

I logged in that evening, checking to see who needed assistance in completing their attunement, when Breginna shot me a tell.

"Can I chat with you for a bit?"

"Sure, of course! Let me hop into Vent."

I alt-tabbed and fired up Ventrilo. Breginna was one of our newest raiders, our lone Restoration Druid. In the wake of a myriad of class changes that The Burning Crusade gave us, I struggled to find quality healers of the druid affinity. Many, as was the case with our very own Dalans, had felt forced and betrayed into a role of healing during Vanilla. They wished to take advantage of all of the bestial forms they'd been granted by rolling the class -- and that meant inside raid encounters as well. But in Vanilla, Druid tanks were clunky and difficult to get right, and their feral and balance DPS wasn't up to par with the purer DPS classes. So if raid progression was the goal, Druids were expected to heal -- and many didn't like it.

Come TBC, Druids gained far more viability in their multiple forms, and they -- like Dalans -- said good-bye and good-riddance to healing. Great for them, horrible for me. The pool of available healing druids withered away to practically zilch, and this was not good. Even with all the changes that TBC brought to the table for the variety of playable classes in the game, Restoration Druids still dominated one very specific niche of heals -- the ability to stack a multitude of HoTs on targets. Between Rejuvination, Regrowth, and Lifebloom, Tanks that normally experienced huge spikes of damage would have their health bar changes smoothed to a much more tolerable level, which in turn, eased the minds of the remaining healers and kept us from having an aneurysm.

"Hey, Hanzo." Breginna's voice was refreshing. In the sausage factory that was Descendants of Draenor, having a gal in the guild was a relief from the daily testosterone fueled chat. It was fine most of the time...but even I needed an occasional break from random bouts of excessive profanity.

"What's up, Breginna. Everything OK?"

"Yeah! Yeah...everything's great. Getting settled in to the raids now, really psyched about Mag."

"Yes. Mag. He is going to be a tough one. You'll absolutely be key in the guild pulling that off."

"Well, that's why I wanted to talk to you..."

Oh, God, no...

"You're not leaving the guild on me, are you?"

"Oh no no, no not at all!"

Jesus H.

"Thank God! You scared me!"

"No, I am going to be around for a long time, if you'll have me! The reason I wanted to talk to you was to let you know about an upcoming event in my schedule that I need help with..."

"Sure, anything! What can I do?"

"Well, I have a job coming up that I have to travel for, and it'll be a couple of weeks at least. So, I'm not going to be able to raid, I expect. I mean, I don't think I'll have access to a computer that will be WoW-ready."

Well...shit.

"OK, well...hm, that sucks. But how can I help with that?"

"Well, I was thinking...what if I give you my account to play on? I mean, do you think that is a possibility?"

Uh...

"Yeah. I guess that could work." I stumbled a bit, lost in a train of thought as I attempted to deal with this curve-ball. Awkwardly, I blurted a thank-you back to her, "That's extremely generous of you to offer up your account."

It could work. She wouldn't fall behind in gear, and Kerulak pretty much had everything he needed from the content we were able to complete thus far. And as the lone Resto Druid blanketing the raid with HoTs, her presence was going to be pivotal in our success -- never mind the fact that it was one more battle resurrection we desperately needed.

"Alright. Let's do it."

I had some Druid homework to attend to.