3.32. Implications

XT-002 Deconstructor's heart is destroyed,
earning DoD "Heroic: Heartbreaker",
Ulduar

Grief from the Hardcore

The truly hardcore players...the ones who did everything in their power to re-arrange their real-life schedules to be present...were the ones I had to fight the hardest when it made sense to cancel a raid. Father's Day weekend was fast approaching and, like Mother's Day, had a handful of people choosing to spend it with their folks. It didn't make sense to force the raid to happen when so many players would be absent. Yet I knew exactly what was going to happen the minute I proposed the cancellation.

"I want us to raid that weekend, why does it have to be cancelled?" Cheeseus typed over an IM to me.

"Look, we have a ton of people already standing down. You want me to fill it with a bunch of players that don't know what they're doing? That sounds like a horrible idea if our goal is now hard-modes."

"They're not that hard!"

"Not to you, they're not. But what about Prodigie?"

Cheeseus was over 1500 miles away from me, but I could feel him wince at the suggestion of rotating in Divineseal's druid.

"That is the reality of the situation. You want me to make the Father's Day raid happen? You’re going to be looking at folks like him in the roster. Hey, if you can make it work...”

I had already delivered the news to Divineseal -- he'd be raiding on Prodigie from here on out. To continue to allow his sub-par healing in rotations would be a detriment to the raid, especially as we were now working to knock out Heroic: Glory of the Ulduar Raider. The short-term strategy was simple: put Divine into raids under a different name and role. Healers were the glue that held progression together; attempting to short-change the raid of their ability to survive spurts of panic and chaos wasn't a very sound business decision. By bringing his Boomkin, he could do far less damage to the raid. Meanwhile, the long-term strategy was already in play. Continue to recruit, bloat the pool up further by bringing in fresh meat. Hopefully, a shining star would step forward and push his way up past Divine...eventually squeezing him out of rotations completely.

Cancellations continued as we pushed into July, and there was more down the road to make me nervous about. My annual vacation was approaching, wherein I'd return to my Father's farm in Northern Saskatchewan, leaving me out of the rotations for a week. Furthermore, Blizzcon 2009 would take place a week past that, and while I'd already made up in my mind that we would be canceling raids that weekend, I knew that I would more than likely have to face Cheeseus' wrath amid his disgust with not pushing forward. With Cheeseus' continued pressure on me to make a decision regarding Crasian, coupled with my hesitance to lock down an entire role -- risking the loss of that group in anger -- I was forced to go back the drawing board on my approach.

Descendants of Draenor defeats Ignis
the Furnace Master in under 4 minutes,
earning "Heroic: Stokin' the Furnace",
Ulduar

The Vacation Tactic

The Elite rank couldn't continue without an adjustment. I had more people to promote and no available slots to play with, at least not without locking an entire role out of rotations. My only option was to pursue a modification to the Elite expectations, changing the verbiage from "You are expected to be present at every raid," to "You are expected to sign up for every raid." This negated one of the primary perks of being Elite: their guaranteed spot. If the verbiage wasn't right...if I didn't handle it with enough delicacy, I risked a mutiny of the core 25-Man progression raiders. These being the very folks whom I sought desperately to prevent alienating in the first place. My tactic would be to do it in such a way as to make the player feel that they were making the choice.

I had finally arrived at a point where a full roster of Elites for a particular role were in my hands. My guild's current ruleset dictated that they should all be expected to show up each week. This provided no floating spots for Raiders to be rotated into. With no Raiders floating into raids week-to-week, they would grow bored, neglected, and begin to seek shelter elsewhere on Deathwing-US. It was imperative that I took a handful of Raiders each week; I could never bring a raid fully comprised of Elites. But Elites were required to raid every week, per my explicit rules. I didn't want to take their guaranteed spot away. They'd feel betrayed, their hard work which separated them from the "casuals" tossed aside, making them feel insignificant.

I insisted on keeping the line between Raiders and Elites separate.

I thought about what Cheeseus had suggested -- that while I chose Raiders to be rotated out week-to-week, Elites themselves would be the ones to choose. This implied a focus on the player taking vacation. The model of Elite was already based on what struck me as the perfect employee: someone who is communicative, hard-working, goes above and beyond the call of duty. This was something Ater had pointed out to me in those many lunch hours we spent together in '07. So, in approaching Elite as a star employee, I focused my attention into the most noticeable perks of their loot, title, and guaranteed spot. What I needed to do was highlight another important part of what keeps a loyal, dedicated employee happy: time off.

It was time to crunch some numbers.

---

"You know all of the requirements around Elite, right?"

"Yup. Yeah, I read through, seems pretty straight forward," Crasian replied in Vent, "So, like, with time-off, I can take that whenever?"

"Absolutely. One night off every three months of raiding you accrue. But keep in mind any hours you've banked as a Raider will be available when you get promoted."

"Ah, sweet. So, do you like...track that on the website, or…"

I lied.

"Yup. Yes, it's all woven into the DKP. I cross-ref it with a spreadsheet I store on Google Docs. If it isn't clear, you know you can ping me. Just let me know ahead of time and I'll adjust it automatically."

Something I clearly planned to do reactively.

"Sweet." 

Crasian liked to punch his T's hard. Listening to him was like reading the phonetic pronunciations of each word in the dictionary. According to him, Sweet had three syllables instead of one.

"Now that more Elites are coming into the roster, there's going to be a need to move back and forth between various Elites, so that everyone gets a shot. Of course, you'll still always get priority over a Raider…”

"...oh, no doubt. No doubt."

"Yeah. So, if you want to sit for another Elite, y'know. Just come to me. Let me know ahead of time so that I can work it out on the schedule. Likewise, if I have to move people around, and you have to sit for say…"

I grabbed someone from The Eh Team.

"...Omaric, then you won't have to worry about eating into your vacation hours. I won't dock you for the ones that you don't step out of on your own. Make sense?"

"Totally", replied Crasian, "Should work great."

"Alright well...gratz on the promotion, Crasian. Welcome to the Elites! Let's see a little bit of that Eh Team skill in these 25-Man hard modes, eh?"

I pressed the "Promote Member" button. Mission accomplished.

Thorim is defeated while DoD is under the
influence of Aura of Celerity, earning them
 "Heroic: Who Needs Bloodlust?",
Ulduar

Proving Worthiness

As we worked our way through the rest of June, the 25-Man team scratched more achievements off the list. The weekend after defeating Yogg-Saron produced a two-tower kill of Flame Leviathan, and a Heroic: Heartbreaker. Killing XT-002 Deconstructor in hard mode was a sprint we narrowly hit with our gear level...so the addition of Crasian to the roster didn't hurt at all. His Death Knight was a damage dealing machine, and previously unreachable goals were once again within grasp. The final week of the month claimed two more achievements. The first was yet-another-sprint: Heroic: Stokin' the Furnace, defeating Ignis the Furnace Master in under four minutes. The other, Heroic: Who Needs Bloodlust?, forced us into a gimmicky kill of Thorim, one that had our priest Arterea mind-controlling a Dark Rune Warbringer, granting nearby allies Aura of Celerity for the kill. We punched out our time card at the end of the month, and thanks to the two sprints, our Heroic: Glory meta tally was at three of the needed thirteen. 

The weekly achievement spam made it feel like we were further ahead than we actually were, but no less motivated despite it. Ulduar overflowed with achievements...and this was a good thing. In the wake of Wrath's raid difficulties plummeting to unrecognizable lows, a steady stream of rewards flashing onto the screen was a constant reminder that we were doing something a little bit better than the average raiding guild -- pushing ourselves a little bit harder, straining ourselves to reach for that carrot. Ostensibly, this is one of the reasons why Ulduar remains so vivid in the memory of longtime World of Warcraft raiders. Though the first tier of Wrath (Naxxramas, Eye of Eternity and Obsidian Sanctum) did have their own hard mode achievements, Ulduar was the first to truly embrace them. The performance of a highly skilled raid was tied directly to the activation of some of these hard modes. It wasn't just a raid setting in the UI. You flipped the switch if...and only if you could reach it. 

Many could try, but only raiders that brought the complete package to the table would have a shot at reaching for the switch to activate a hard mode. This is why Ulduar felt like it had real purpose and challenge layered into its depths. In the old days, the requirements to raid were severe and not for the casual-at-heart. Attunements alone kept most players far, far away from the floating necropolis, or the commandeered Auchenai spaceship floating above Netherstorm's cracked remains. But come Wrath, the flood gates opened wide, and so many long-time raiders looked upon the new instances with contempt and disgust.

And yet…

Ulduar kept secrets beyond that of what simply resided in the lore, for it contained a far more impactful gating process -- one not tied simply to quest execution or an arbitrary gold sink. At the dawn of a new era of raiding which embraced the masses, Ulduar's real challenge lay protected behind gates that only the accomplished and proven would reach. Unlike Naxxramas, The Eye of Eternity, or Obsidian Sanctum, where players could throw themselves at hard modes without having a shred of competency to stand on, there were specific encounters in Ulduar that tested your worthiness. It was not the type of instance that favored smashing your head against a brick wall -- again, and again, and again.

You had to have the DPS necessary to break XT-002's heart. 

You couldn't destroy any Saronite Vapors. 

You needed to get to Sif before she left Thorim's side… 

...You had to defeat Yogg-Saron minus keepers in order to craft Val’anyr.

These tests of worthiness, in turn, bled their consequences over those remaining hard modes activated by more trivial means. Raiders were compelled to choose those hard modes judiciously, to be prepared...as opposed to raiders of the past, mindlessly throwing themselves at Patchwerk in blissful ignorance, wondering why they were nowhere near the 3-minute kill achievement. In Ulduar, progression was palpable, not a thing used to describe an abstract concept, a quantity of boss kills, or a toggle on the UI. It's path was very real. You could see it. You could reach out and press it, as if it were a gigantic red button, buried deep within the Spark of Imagination.

Pressing it...had implications...

3.29. Entropy

Mature aids a group of players from
DoD to defeat Keristrasza without gaining
more than two stacks of Biting Cold,
The Nexus

Too Lean a Mixture

Elites were making things difficult.

As originally designed, my newly promoted "cream of the crop" players had been guaranteed a spot in the weekly progression raid. The side-effect to this should be obvious: the more spots that were locked-down each week, the less flexibility I had to rotate lesser-ranked players (Raiders) through. My two-cycle raiding engine only ran at 100% efficiency if I maintained a healthy mixture of both Raiders and Elite. If the fuel-to-oil mix was too one-sided, eventually things would seize up. Part of what went along with this understanding of my need for a balanced ratio of Raiders-to-Elites was the hard truth: As I promoted more Elites, fewer Raiders would get in. Every promotion had to be thoughtful. What role was I locking down? What did the pool look like? Who would be squeezed out by this promotion, and would those floating Raiders be necessary to keep the engine humming at idle?

"There is no reason for Crasian to not be Elite" popped the message into my IM window. I sipped my coffee. We'd been over this already. I typed back to Cheeseus.

"I'm still not comfortable locking down all the melee spots."

Six melee is what we were taking to Ulduar. The Warriors Jungard and Abrinis were Elite. Sir Klocker still held the Old God rank, which carried with it no expectation to raid, but he and I had an understanding. He was raiding every week, the rank was for show. Cheeseus was the Raid Leader, so for obvious reasons, he would be in attendance every week. Bheer was our fifth and final locked-down melee spot, bringing Enhancement Shamanism to the raid. That left a single floating melee spot from week-to-week, an already oil-thick mixture. Promoting Crasian meant a full lock-down of melee, all gears being greased...with no fuel to drive the engine long-term. Promoting him meant no contingency plan when emergencies arose. Take only Elites week-to-week, and the Raiders will feel neglected and leave. No more Riskers. No more Bonechatters.

I stuck to my guns on Crasian's promotion. Cheeseus was annoyed. He stated the obvious, "Ensuring Elites raid every week is gimping us. What happens when we lock down all roles? New amazing players just get left behind?"

"Which is exactly why I can't promote them."

He pressed further.

"We have 1 elite tank, 1 gm tank, and 1 whatever rank Dalans is tank, yet we're able to rotate in Bretthew, while still knowing we have access to Dalans / Omaric, as we saw when Taba had that family emergency 2-4 weeks ago and let me know last minute. This is what Elites should be. Sign up for every raid, do their job professionally, sit out on occasion to allow new people the opportunity to run/get loot, but always at the end of the day, be available for the raid."

I pointed out the flaw in the his logic, "Sitting out on occasion is what the Raiders do," I replied, "that's the difference between a Raider and an Elite."

"No, the difference is that you choose when the Raiders sit out. When the Elites sit out, it's their choice. Sort of."

I got what he was trying to say. The question was how to make it work without making Elites feel like I was stripping them of their permanent spot. I was going to have to give it thought. I added it to my mental to-do list -- a list Cheeseus had become quite adept at piling things on to.

Mature hams it up for the camera with his
newly acquired Chef's Hat and title,
Dalaran

In Flux

When not struggling with what to do about looming Elite promotions that would lock out an entire slot of players, I had many other items on my list to keep me on my toes. Yogg-Saron, of course, was the primary target. Our speed-burn through Ulduar had ground to a dead halt at Yogg, as we transitioned back to our age-old plan of slowly picking away at the boss, baby-step by baby-step. I was also fielding changes in the roster. Ekasra, finally achieving a sense of accomplishment through his Warlock Nestonia, had decided to throw in the towel. He surprised me by this move, after having put so much energy into a Warlock and making a lasting, memorable contribution in Wrath. Alas, the journey has to end for every player at some point. Ekasra's exit was tough because his absence not only ate into the 25-Man roster, it was sure to affect The Eh Team as well. Cheeseus was certain to have a load of fun looking for a qualified replacement -- and with his rigid expectations on perfection, it would not come easily.

Another loss came in by way of Lix, a long-term Resto Druid who diligently filled the role of a Raider, rotating in and out week-to-week. Lix came to me one evening and confessed that she'd made the life-changing decision to join the Navy. I applauded her courage and nobility to serve her country, but would have preferred that she remained serving me. Damage dealers were a dime a dozen, but quality healers were always hard to come by; the loss of Lix would be another blow I'd have to take in stride.

Other fluctuations in the lineup continued to remind me of the Elite problem. Mcflurrie's schedule was changing and he came to me requesting a demotion, unable to maintain the consistency I asked of Elites. In an alternate dimension where Elites weren't required to be at every raid, but still enjoyed the luxury of taking a priority spot, this demotion could have been avoided. 

The Elite problem manifested in the other direction as well, as players lobbied for promotions...as was the case with Turtleman. I had grave reservations about him. He may have dominated the Mage DPS charts unequivocally during his tenure in DoD, but Turtleman had red flagged himself on numerous occasions -- the most recent offense being the cancellation of his signups mere hours before a raid. This was a behavior he'd beeen warned about; it was not representative of one who was striving for Elite. Still, he was one of the longest running guild members, and had never given me a moment of doubt when the loyalty of the guild was in question. Even in our darker days when the guild hemorrhaged away quality players, Turtleman remained steadfast in DoD. I took a risk with Turtle and gave him the promotion to Elite, with my gut screaming at me the entire time. Too many red flags. People don't change. This is a mistake. I get it, gut...I get it. I'll work with Turtleman just as I have with Ben. He is worth the effort.

When the dust settled, I was down a Lock, a Shaman, and a Druid, but managed to limp away with a locked-down ranged DPS. Bouncing back and forth between our queue of applications and WoW Lemmings, I was able to pick up a new Hunter named Cenadar, and a Paladin named Aetherknight, both of whom I knew little about, but that seemed like a good a start as any.

A start at staving off the entropy.

After juggling the problems of the fluctuating raid roster, pondering the conundrum of my Elite rank, and trying to remain focused on Yogg-Saron, I couldn't wait to see what was in store for me next.

Mature scores his 10,000th honorable kill while
Ben (via Fluffykitten) points out how behind
the curve he actually is,
Alterac Valley

Dunning-Kruger in Full Effect

Cheeseus brought it to my attention one morning, linking me to one of our World of Logs reports.

"This is where he does his best. Notice anything suspicious about it?"

I glanced at the logs, scanning down the list of healers' performances.

"It's subtle", he added.

Cheeseus was pointing me to the trash pre-Mimiron, a festive group of mechanical spider-like miniature tanks called Arachnopods which sprayed us with napalm while we struggled to mitigate the burning damage. Arachnopods had a clever gimmick: As they reached low health, they ejected their pilot allowing us to jump in and control the Tank ourselves, turning the tables on the clockwork gnomes. I wasn't seeing it. This is why I didn't lead raids, but delegated the responsibility to people who could read between the World of Logs lines.

"Something more closely related to deaths", Cheeseus continued with his clues.

A group of players were dead from massive flame spray coming in from the Arachnopod Destroyers. Meanwhile, massive healing had been put on to the Destroyers themselves. So much healing, in fact, that it had pushed an inconsequential Paladin into the number one healing spot.

"Healing done on the Destroyers is incredibly high," I typed back to Cheeseus, "about 64% vs. 10% on Omaric and ~1% on everyone else."

Divineseal was casting Beacon of Light on the Main Tank and spamming heals on the person driving the Destroyer, catapulting his overall healing done in an attempt to not look like the worst healer on the team. Other healers did this as a joke to see what they could inflate their numbers to. Divineseal was using it as a legitimate tactic...and failing.

"I like the deaths during his high healing area," Cheeseus concluded, "clearly his priorities are straight."

I have to admit, it was an impressive attempt to try to sate Cheeseus. Our raid leader had been complaining about Divine's numbers as long as the pants-looter had been raiding Ulduar with us. Impressive...and dumb. I wasn't even sure if I could consider this manipulation. How can one purposefully cheat if one still doesn't fundamentally understand the rules of the game? It's the sort of behavior you'd see from a player that was trying to confirm what they already believed to be true: that they were right and the rest of the world was wrong. But as players like my ex-Warrior officer Annihilation spelled out plainly,

"Divine is only bad because he thinks he is better than he really is."

Psychologists call this the Dunning-Kruger effect. It grants people an inflated assessment of their own skills, while at the same time, preventing them from understanding how truly unskilled they really are. A vicious cycle of ignorance that protects oneself from one's own incompetence, perpetuating never-ending mediocrity.

It was an all too familiar scene. Players that didn't like to take advice, that got defensive when it was suggested they didn't know what they were doing...would specifically seek out information from other skewed sources that backed up their own false claims. You seek out the "truths" that make you feel better, rather than face the fact that you may not know anything at all. It happens every day to people that have never even heard of World of Warcraft. So Divineseal sought to find ways to improve his own skewed poor healing strategies, and all it served was to point out how exploitative his techniques were. It wasn't that he didn't care -- he wanted to be a successful healer. He just didn't know that he wasn't one.

In his mind, Divineseal's job was to fulfill Cheeseus's request: stop being at the bottom of the meters.

---

I logged in and scanned for Kelden to see if he was available to chat about the Divineseal issue. Kelden whispered me first.

"Hey", he shot over to me, "Got a sec?"

"Actually I do, let's hop in vent."

The news he had was not good.

3.14. The First Elites

Newcomer Abrinis joins a handful of his guildmates
in Zul'Gurub (20-Man) during Vanilla

Homogenization

There's not much you can get wrong in a glass of milk. As a kid, you poured it on your cereal; perhaps later on in life, you drank it for the reported calcium benefits. Wherever you went in life, if they didn't have your drink of choice, at least you knew what you were getting if you asked for milk. The various brands of milk differ more in label than they do in flavor. Grab a gallon off the shelf at the grocery store -- any brand and all -- and you’re pretty much guaranteed the same taste and texture. Milk is milk, what else can you say about it? So when it comes time to reach for the jug, the only thing that really separates one from another is brand loyalty. You stick with the brand you know because you've always bought it; second-guessing your decisions only adds anxiety to a normal, consistent life. But milk is only consistent because of homogenization, a process that prevents the cream separating from the skim. The cream is special. People see it as a luxury; milk in your coffee is plain, but cream...that's a taste reserved for those who appreciate the finer things in life.

Throughout Vanilla and The Burning Crusade, our raid team was not unlike a glass of milk.

The players that were poured into our raid team were a mixture of all different talents and styles, of varying degrees in skill and play. But without a system to incentivize players, to excel and be acknowledged for that excellence, we sat on the shelf of our server's grocery store and stagnated. We appeared no different than the brand any other guild sold. Creating a hierarchical structure of ranks in DoD served two purposes. One: it gave the individual players in my raiding roster an opportunity to rise to the top, rewarding them with pellets as they continued to pound the lever. Equally important, it allowed me to skim that cream off the top and place it on Deathwing-US's shelf for sale. If my hunch played out, that cream of my raiding roster would turn the heads of those wandering the grocery store aisle of guilds, looking for that richness in flavor that was presently absent in their lives...and raiding careers.

My job was to make sure the centrifuge spun as fast as possible, and skim the cream as soon as it surfaced.

An early shot of Jungard, along with the 25-Man
 Progression Team, after the defeat of Anetheron,
Hyjal Summit, Caverns of Time

Predictions and Surprises

We often attracted two types of raiding recruits to Descendants of Draenor. The first bucket of players were battle-worn and exhausted; ex-hardcore raiders who prided themselves on server-firsts in Sunwell and Naxxramas (40-Man), but for one reason or another, couldn't maintain that lifestyle anymore. Perhaps their hardcore raiding days were during College, but with degree in hand, it was time to knuckle down and punch the 9-to-5. Perhaps it was more appropriate to game into all hours of the night when your significant other was simply the “boyfriend” -- but now that he was the "husband", it was time to get some priorities straight. Maybe the only thing that changed was the addition of a kid to the picture...perhaps it was none of these things. It may very well have simply been a conscious decision to strike a better balance in life. Whatever the case may be, I was not there to judge, but to simply welcome in. I'd offer an alternative to the abusive demands of hardcore raiding, and guarantee seeing some progression. Cheeseus was a good example of this type of a recruit. He had a taste for cream and was uninterested in the peasantry of milk.

The other type of recruit we attracted was that of a player who felt constrained by their current conditions. The kind of player that felt they could be so much more, but were surrounded by excuse-makers: Facerollers clinging to pathetic justifications for their incompetence like a broken-record.

It's a challenge to strive for greatness when you are surrounded by mediocrity.

Guilds comprised of trolls seemed bent on perpetrating the notion that because World of Warcraft was "just a game", it was OK be a moron. While those guilds were busy starting and ending every sentence with "lol", our prospective recruits were alt-tabbed and hitting the virtual pavement, researching their class and boss mechanics -- trying to squeeze that last bit of DPS out. But with no one to act as a mentor, to guide them through the twisted raiding path of right and wrong, their own motivation to excel only got them so far. They needed a new lesson in raiding. We'd be the ones to step to the front of the class for them.

The first Elite promotions went to individuals that fell into this latter category. Abrinis and Jungard were a pair of Warriors that had become a staple in our raiding roster for many months. Abrinis, first recruited by Annihilation when he oversaw the Warriors, had an affinity for sports and would often be spotted discussing Basketball scores with Ben and Neps in guild chat. He was otherwise quiet, but also prolific with his alts, ever eager to help out a 5-man or a quest, and he'd have an alt specific to the role you needed to have filled. When it came time to raid, however, it was down to brass tacks on his Undead Warrior. Abrinis consistently topped the meters with Fury DPS, and I could always expect to see him signed up for next week's raid. It came as no surprise that when a fresh face known as Jungard entered the scene near the start of our Hyjal work in TBC, Abrinis took him under wing and trained him up to be equally effective wielding two weapons. The pair soon grew to challenge each other come raid night; a battle to see which Warrior could claim dominance on the meters. Pushing each other to rise to the top produced the pleasant side-effect of consistently high melee DPS. Their efforts were well-deserving of the Elite title.

The next Elite promotion was a surprise: Ekasra, the bullied Shaman from TBC who took my place when I retired Kerulak to raid as a Shadow Priest. Ekasra had struggled to find a place in DoD throughout TBC, and the weight on his shoulders was heavy. Not only did he have to fill the shoes of the guild leader who had come out of the 40-Man healing core from Vanilla, he struggled to gain any respect from his peers. Ekasra's raiding mistakes were exacerbated by his tendency to ebb the bullies on in return, rather than ignore them. Ekasra approached me at the start of Wrath, still wanting to demonstrate his value and be accepted by the team, asking for my advice. I was blunt: shelf the Shaman; you're intrinsically wired for a different role. Look at what appeals to you in a different raiding department, and then embrace it. He took my advice, and in the wake of Ekasra came Nestonia the Warlock. Nestonia not only wrecked the damage meters, he dominated them, even giving the Warlock officer Eacavissi a run for his money. Coincidentally, he whined a little less, joked a little more, and before I knew it, he had officers recommending him for promotion -- officers that, during TBC, wouldn't even speak his name. For him to be among the first Elite promotions was a proud moment.

A random Shaman in WoW,
boasting the default keybindings (1-9,0, -, =)

Wax On, Wax Off

The fourth and final promotion to Elite that I issued out in my first round was another surprise. He was a player I've not mentioned too much thus far, but had also been with DoD since TBC -- a Restoration Shaman by the name of Mcflurrie. Originally named Deathflurry, he joined progression at the same time we suffered overabundance of players whose name began with the word "Death". To reduce the confusion of raid calls in Ventrilo, he opted to change his name, a pretty good indicator of someone willing to do whatever it took to improve. What makes Mcflurrie’s story inspiring was his hunger to grow, and how the most seemingly obvious roadblocks are often right in front of our faces.

Mcflurrie's issue was healing effectiveness and survivability. He felt like he couldn't push his play any further, but still suffered from "playing with blinders" -- a common affliction among healers too focused on their whack-a-mole addon, and not focused enough on the environmental damage blanketing them in flames. One evening following a Serpentshrine Cavern raid, he pulled me into a private vent channel.

"I just feel like I'm not as mobile as I could be. And when I get moving, I can't heal really well, or end up dying."

"Playing with blinders?", I asked rhetorically.

"...Yeah."

"Take a screenshot of your UI and send it to me."

Moments passed, then came the ding of my email alerting me of a new message. I pulled up his screen and began examining where he placed his healing mods, his unit frames, what his field-of-view was like.

And then, I noticed them.

The action bars held all of a player's abilities, lined up in a horizontal row along the bottom of the screen. In each bar, twelve divots. Resting in each divot, a square icon that represented the spell that would cast when clicked or having its key binding pressed. But most importantly, in the upper-right corner of each icon, a tiny white symbol...either or a number, letter, or punctuation mark...that represented the key binding assigned to the spell. All at once, his problem was as crystal clear as the waters of a Moonwell.

"How are your keys set up?"

I knew the answer, but wanted him to say it.

"Oh, well...I’m just using the default layout."

"So, you're hitting the numbers keys along the top for healing? 1, 2, 3...etc...all along the top of the keyboard?"

"Yep, that works pretty well for me."

"Can you reach all your spells while you move? Or do you have to lift your hand up off the keyboard to reach the spell you want."

Silence followed.

"Try running forward right now, and while you continue to run forward, I want you to cast a Greater Healing Wave without lifting your left-hand up off the keyboard."

A little more silence followed that. Then,

"I...I can't. I have to lift my hand up."

"We're going to change that. Right now."

I spelled it all out for Mcflurrie, that painful truth that he was crippling his abilities by forcing himself to awkwardly look away from the screen, lift his hand off the keyboard to reach for a spell...ugh. I had flashbacks of Battleguard Sartura and the day I changed my karate stance. I told Mcflurrie it was going to be painful to re-learn from scratch. It was. Like me, it took a few weeks to re-program, to be able to react to the demands thrust upon a healer. But he got it. He sweated through the re-programming, and was soon  reaching for spells and moving at the same time, instinctively. His play improved, and this introduction to key binding customization pushed him even further to explore mouse-over macros -- something that wasn't available to me in Vanilla. Eventually he was shooting me tells mid-raid, "“I can't believe how much easier this is!" The rest, they say, is history. His reward for that tremendous growth: Mcflurrie became our fourth Elite, closing out the first batch of promotions.

--

The cream was now on the shelf. Potentials buyers were out there...but would they bite? The careful, meticulous restructuring of my guild's ranks produced a team unlike any I had before -- one comprised of both casual raiders that were motivated to play like professionals, and hardcore elites, the backbone that would drive progression week-to-week. Finally, I felt like I had nailed the perfect balance of player willing to work together to accomplish great things.

It’s unfortunate, then, that in order to demonstrate our ability to work together as a team, Blizzard forced us to stick a fork directly into it.

3.13. Cream

"WoW - Malygos"
Artwork by Wynahiros

Wringing Out the Sponge

We had no idea when 3.1 would hit. Blizzard was very good at keeping release dates hush-hush, for fear of the community flying into a rage when a date was missed. All we knew was that time was running out, and when it had, Heroic: Glory of the Raider would no longer be attainable; the coveted Black Proto-Drake would be removed as a reward, forever left as a symbol of its rarity and the skill of the player whom rode on its back. By this point, no Horde guild on Deathwing-US had completed Heroic: Glory of the Raider. Depraved and Enigma were tied with three remaining: You Don’t Have an Eternity, Gonna Go When the Volcano Blows, and The Immortal. When all was said and done, seventeen meta-achievements needed completion.

Wrapping up The Twilight Zone brought our running total to ten. The work we had done prior to 3-Drake was inconsequential compared to what lay ahead, however. First on that list was killing Patchwerk in under 3 minutes, which we managed to complete the very same day we executed Shocking!, ensuring that no two players crossed a positive and negative charge on Thaddius. The next raid weekend was You Don't Have an Eternity, which forced us to kill Malygos in under 6 minutes -- we barely pulled this off by the skin of our teeth. We employed every trick we could think of to wring the DPS sponge dry. The secret? Forcibly stacking Malygos’ powers sparks for a multiplicative damage buff. My role in this was wielding the Death Knight's ability to pull an enemy (be it monster or power spark) to my location. Once "death gripped" to our feet, melee would blow the spark up, stand in the magical residue left behind, and gain arcane infused attacks. We stacked the buff onto all of our DPS, depleting the azure dragon's health at an increased rate, and were able to make the six-minute mark.

During the day, I'd discuss the state of the raiding situation with Cheeseus, having been newly promoted to the rank of Avatar. Since joining DoD, his affinity toward raiding with precision was common knowledge. What wasn't as well known was that he'd approached me with an offer: assume Raid Leadership and be the single voice that guides the 25-Man progression team to greater prestige. He was only a few months into his guild membership; officership seemed premature. Via Avatar, however, he could give us commentary on raid management, proving his worth to the others. Our weekdays were a combination of chats surrounding achievement order and priority, upcoming Elite promotions, and the state of raid progression on Deathwing-US, as other guilds closed in on Heroic: Glory of the Raider. The task before me was this: Wring every ounce of efficiency out of the team like a sponge being crushed in a vice. I'd do this by making our goals crystal clear, foster raiding discourse on our forums (as we'd done with The Twilight Zone), and pour the concrete into our raiding foundation by acknowledging the shining stars of DoD: Awarding the first Elite ranks.

It was report card time.

The Straight A Student

The Elite rank was a brand new concept I implemented at the start of Wrath of the Lich King. I took the name from a guild I'd long admired for their professional-quality approach to raiding and a commitment to sharing thoughtful, intelligent discussion surrounding raid mechanics. A hardcore raiding guild had the luxury of demanding everyone be committed to a fixed (and often overzealous) schedule, expecting everyone be present for multiple nights throughout the week. Descendants of Draenor did not have that luxury. We needed to make allowances for all types of schedules and levels of commitment. I accomplished this by creating the Raider rank, which clearly defined a baseline set of expectations that a guildy needed to meet in order to be considered for a rotation. This would ensure players wouldn't walk into The Eye of Eternity wearing unenchanted green gear with empty sockets. The downside to the Raider rank was that by not asking a player to commit to a schedule, I couldn't grant them a guaranteed spot in each raid. Minimal commitment equals minimal reward, after all. For many players, the Raider ranked worked well for them. They could come and go as they pleased, and understood that not all raids they signed up for would be given to them -- they were fine with the trade-offs.

But for those who wanted more, Elite beckoned them.

In contrast to Raider, Elite had high expectations. I wanted you to make me believe that raid progression was your priority. With the Raider rank already acquired, you needed to prove you could meet Elite-quality scheduling commitments, signing-up (and showing up) for each of the two raid nights a week -- for a solid month -- without fail. Raiders were free to cancel their raid sign-ups, as RL (“real-life”) dictated their schedules, but if you wanted Elite, I didn't want to see any cancellations. I also didn't want any Elite players that held real-life commitments that involved a unpredictable, fluctuating schedule. If you were deployed to Iraq to serve our country, I’d be proud to call you a fellow guild member...but your deployment would cripple our progression team. Everyone's priorities had to be weighed fairly, and for Elite, I needed the highest level of commitment to the raid that a player could provide. The mistakes of cattledriving throughout TBC would not be repeated.

Once the prerequisites to Elite had been hit, the next step was to assess your proficiency in a number of categories:

• Activity on Forums
• Contributions to the Guild Vault
• Guild Spirit
• Attitude
• Gear Pride
• PvE Performance

From A to F, I'd go down the list and make an assessment of your contributions to Descendants of Draenor. Were you providing thoughtful, meaningful discussion to our boards? Did you give us much as you took from our guild vault? Were you proud of the guild you called home, and acted with our ideals on a regular basis? Were you a positive, driving force behind the raid team, preaching our goals which prioritized progression over loot? And when loot did come your way, did you take pride in keeping it enchanted and gemmed, tweaked to its maximum potential? And, above all, did you walk-the-walk, and demonstrate excellence in our raids? A raider might strive to top damage or healing meters, but an Elite would know there's much more to consider for: awareness, survivability, team preservation (decursing, contributing to adds, etc.). Did you make these your focus, rather than brag about being #1 in Recount?

Score poorly, and you'd be sent back to refine your efforts. Bring home straight As, however, and you'd guarantee yourself a set of proud parents who would shower you with gifts.

Wemetanye shows off his Azure Drake,
outside of The Eye of Eternity,
Coldarra

Elitist Perks 

In my opinion, the kickbacks to earning Elite were well worth the effort. The re-structured guild vault, now categorized by herbs for raiding flasks, material components for enchants, glyphs, stat-specific food buffs, and uncut gems, would now boast increased withdrawal access for your convenience. Furthermore, we'd extend a bit of trust your way, allowing you into the vault tabs where you yourself could take raw components and craft them into the aforementioned raiding materials.

Act like an adult, and I would treat you like one. 

The Guild Vault would also now pay for your repairs; a slick way of taking the edge off your raiding budget. We'd take this a step further, and subsidize your talent respecs as well, easing these monetary demands on your dedication to wiping repeatedly as we learned new bosses. On our forums, you'd become a moderator, gaining the fringe benefits associated with curating our guild commentary. But above all this fluff, these nice-to-haves that certainly would raise the eyebrow of an enticed player, the most important perk came in the form of a raid rotation priority. The players who were focused on raid progression above all else did so because of a core need they wished to satisfy: to be present at all raids.

Earn Elite, and I'd chisel your weekly raid rotation into stone.

All of these perks gave our players the ability to contribute how they wanted, Raiders contributing a little, Elites contributing a lot. By doing so, I defined a clear hierarchy in the guild ranks which differentiated between varying degrees of contribution. I think this is often misunderstood by critics who feel everyone should be treated equally. Let me be perfectly clear: I treated everyone in Descendants of Draenor equally -- I equally rewarded each player's contribution to the guild which matched their level of involvement. If I had rewarded both Raiders and Elites -- essentially, different levels of effort -- with the same perks, the opposite would be true -- I would not be treating everyone equally. Rewarding different levels of effort the same leads to animosity and dissent, jackhammers drilling away at my raiding foundation.

In running the numbers on our first qualifying Elites, a few were not surprising, one definitely raised an eyebrow.

And one completely caught me off-guard.