3.67. The Sorest Loser

While waiting for Sindragosa, Mature sneaks a peek
at who is currently logged-on in the guild,
Icecrown Citadel

Best Policy

Logging in each day, being greeted with the bustle of Descendants of Draenor, was not unlike entering a small city. Throughout the week, any one of the four 10-Man teams were busy marking their territory at the various signposts staked inside Icecrown Citadel. While I assisted Blain and co. with Si Team, Eh Team continued along their own path, minus a few members, but still determined to make a stand in heroics. Meanwhile, Jungard and Fred continued to push Federation Starflex through the muck. The fourth was Cowbell, a team comprised mainly of old-school DoDers, many of whom had left their mark in our history -- folks like McFlurrie, Kizmet and Breginna. Cowbell was the platform that many players got a start from, including Jungard and Bretthew. But the bustle didn't end with the four 10-Mans. The 25-Man progression team, long the sole source of income for our guild, had drawn a line through every boss standing between us and The Lich King himself, and plans were well underway to architect his defeat. The success and celebrity of the 25-Man progression team led to more invested interest in the Alt-25, and before long, Mangetsu was getting help from Drecca leading a second set of players through ICC. Business was good.

From the top down, I did what I could to remain humble, yet kept spreading the word about our accomplishments, acknowledging the hard work being done by the men and women in the guild -- boasting only occasionally to outline we were a raiding machine that actually still cared enough to treat each other with honesty and respect. Just as it was in the old days, our members mostly kept off of the public forums, and as a result, flew under the radar enough to steer clear of the handful of festering douchebag guilds on Deathwing-US. We were rarely (if ever) the target of humiliation, nor did we drum up drama needlessly. There was plenty to go around on the server without our intervention. I felt confident that when our name did come up, whatever insults were slung came from the misinformed and the careless -- groups of players that we didn't need to lose sleep over. Detractors didn't have a chance. I kept a diamond-like focus honed on the cultivation of a guild unlike any other on the server...and possibly even further than that.

How does one cultivate such a culture? For me, it was by ensuring that when taken to task, I shot straight from the hip about who we were and who we weren't. Players with our guild tag under their name, as well as those who wished it to be, knew what we were here to do, even before their eyes graced a single rule or perused any forum post from our boards. We are not going to be a world- or server-first guild. But we're not going to run you ragged through week long sprints of raiding, either. You get out of this guild what you put in, and those people who invest wisely will see the biggest returns. And as long as you dedicate yourself in whatever chunks of time and energy you have available, we'll continue to see successes as we have in raids in years past. This will be a judgement free guild where you will come to enjoy content by similarly minded folks, who push each other and always have something to learn. In short, what you do here matters. And we notice.

I was proud of that sentiment, at least. It made the many men and women living in the city of Descendants of Draenor feel like they mattered. And I often wondered if Blizzard themselves would ever take notice of us? Do you think they see what we're doing here? Do you think we matter?

I got my answer on the morning of March 11th, 2010.

Enigma demonstrates their mastery of
choreographed genitalia,
Icecrown Citadel

15 Minutes of Shame

I scrolled through the website, reading carefully, my tongue dragging itself across the jagged edges of my teeth in disgust. It was Blizzard's freshly launched World of Warcraft Anniversary site, celebrating five outstanding years of World of Warcraft and an unbelievable fifteen since the Warcraft universe's inception. On this particular page -- one I was finding increasingly laughable -- Blizzard had chosen a random guild of the many hundreds of thousands across a myriad of servers to highlight for their accomplishments.

I'll bet you already have a pretty good idea of how I felt about their decision to choose Enigma.

I read through the interview with Fraya, to see what Blizzard felt made them so special as to be plucked from a seemingly random group of guilds across the world. After all, Enigma was certainly not a world first raiding guild, only a server first. This was true at least in the short time they had spent on Deathwing-US. Descendants of Draenor, meanwhile, had a solid four years on Enigma. Longevity certainly didn't seem to hold much weight in this particular comparison. There, of course, were minor details to stack up against Enigma as well -- pushing more people through content, keeping flexible schedules and allowing players to contribute at varying degrees without penalizing them and kicking them to the curb. But again, these features appeared to mean very little in this particular selection process, nor would the fact that I insisted players in DoD treat not only each other with respect, but also those outside our guild. 

I pulled our website up again to see if perhaps something could've been overlooked. Maybe there wasn't a clear enough link to our ideologies, what we stood for, things that might catch the eye of a potential Blizzard employee. Nothing stood out as problematic. I popped open a new tab and typed in the URL to Enigma's website. Centered squarely on the homepage were a series of boss kill pics, some in 25, and some in 10. And in nearly every image, Fraya and co. had positioned themselves in the shape of a gigantic dick. Their killshot portfolio brought an entirely new meaning to the phrase penis envy.

It was nice to see Blizzard chose such a class act for this monumental celebration.

I flipped back to the interview and read further, until my eye caught the real highlight of the entire ordeal. A specific question about scheduling, and Fraya's alleged answer, caused my vision to turn blood red:

---

How rigorously is raiding for your guild run? For example, do you place a lot of focus on 10-player content with multiple dedicated groups in comparison to your 25-player raids?

How rigorous? Well it's nothing extreme. We raid sixteen-hour weeks, with a potential extra four tacked on if we feel we want it. Most of the time we only end up raiding about eight hours a week.

---

Eight hours a week, my ass. If anything, the eight hour schedule was the only true claim-to-fame Descendants of Draenor had, retaining it as far back as The Burning Crusade. There was absolutely no way this was true. Fraya and his guild were pulling down server firsts from a four-night-per-week schedule, minimum. By comparison, guilds on Deathwing-US that had limited themselves to three nights a week were keeping up with us. But this claim...this was so far off the map that it infuriated me. And why, Fraya...why try to spin this? They already had the server-first claim to themselves, why try to bullshit their way through false pretenses? Was it because they weren't a world first guild, nor would be, so claiming a "lighter" schedule would excuse their shittiness when compared to the likes of Vodka and Paragon? Not everyone was fooled by the interview. Some of my best players had friends in Enigma, some of whom confided with me Enigma's more realistic schedule, which essentially boiled down to:

"We're not leaving until the boss is dead."

From that point on, I just shook my head as I read the remainder of the interview. I gleaned nothing amazing, no incredible insight from this "mature nineteen year old guild leader", but a final quote caught my eye just before I closed my browser:

"The aspects of really good leadership and people management are virtually endless, and that will keep me attracted forever."

Forever is a long time, Fraya. Let's hope you mean it.

Hanzo's email to Blizzard regarding Enigma's
selection for the Anniversary feature.

Turning Loss Into Win

To vent my frustrations, I wrote a scathing letter to Blizzard on their "guild selection process", thanking them for ignoring the efforts of guilds like mine that tried to put some effort into their management of people and process, rather than pick the guild with the most server 1st kills under their belt.

I got no response. And expected none.

---

When my temper tantrum subsided, my crimson view giving way to a more calm, crystal view of the situation, I was determined to make the best of the situation. If nothing else, Enigma's selection would mean heightened attention on Deathwing-US, which in turn would draw more possible recruits. Sensing a much larger surge of applications approaching, I moved quickly to take advantage of whatever collateral damage Enigma's celebrity might cast our way. I thought about the effort that recent applicants like Drecca and Lexxii displayed in their applications, and wondered if there was a way to draw more of that out from the WoW public. My wife reminded me that not everyone writes with such precise eloquence, but perhaps there was a way to point them in the right direction.

I scanned my Gmail trash bin, overflowing with the rejected applications of so many could-have-beens, looking for just the right mix of apathy, laziness and self-deprecation. So many to choose from! I tried a few out, copy and pasting them into a forum post, eyeballing it for clarity and aesthetics, while stripping away any name which might humiliate and/or incriminate. I had to admit, choosing between so many wonderful examples of idiocy gave me great pleasure. I felt like it was a rare opportunity to educate, but not necessarily implicate. After playing with various combinations of failures, I at last settled on two: Poor and Can't Read Directions. Together, they stood as shining examples that represented the very worst in guild applicants.

But...what to do about the very best in guild applicants?

I could've lifted either Drecca's or Lexxii's, as both were fresh in my mind. But that was the problem. Just as leaving names in the worst examples would've implicated the original authors, humiliating them in public, I didn't want to draw attention to these new recruits, either. In much the same way, using their apps as examples ran the risk of artificially inflating their ego, or worse -- speaking to the guild about how fast I was vetting players, an issue that really wasn't any of their concern in the first place, but still had the potential to sow dissent. No, I needed an older applicant. An older yet stellar applicant.

I popped open IM and made virtual letters appear there.

"Do you still have a copy of your app?"

Moments later, Cheeseus responded, "I expect its buried somewhere in my email, will look in just a second."

I tapped my fingers on the desk. Against all logic, I instinctively sent applicants I accepted into the guild straight into my Gmail recycle bin, a virtual trash compactor that Google disintegrated at regular intervals. Meanwhile, all of the failed applicants to which I had replied, "Sorry, but we're not looking for X at this time," remained etched into eternity via Gmail's "sent" folder. It was a tragic irony reflective of life: the failures remained, while the successful moved on, just out of reach...and never to return.

"Got it, resending."

Thank God.

"Ah, wonderful, here it is. Thank you for this."

"Taking a moment to bask in all of its glory?"

"You should be proud. I have big plans for it."

"Interest piqued."

"Need to tighten that noose up a bit on how potential applicants are reaching out to us. It's not enough to give them an explanation of what to do and what not to do. Sometimes they need to be shown."

"And you want to use my application as an example?"

"Bingo."

"Oh, you flatter me so."

I began to select massive chunks of Cheeseus' writing, copying and pasting into a forum post, reformatting, prettying-up, making things crystal-clear for the masses. At last, I revealed the third and final example: **High Quality**. I remembered Goldenrod's advice a week earlier, regarding AVR and posting content publicly; he was right. If we wanted to set a new example for guild applicants, it was incumbent upon us to provide that clarity...and what better way to do so than by real-world examples of what we deem acceptable? With two examples on how to fail, and a solid one on how to succeed, I felt like I had turned a setback into a perk...

...and I looked forward to hearing from more applicants who'd visited Enigma's homepage.

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?