4.1. The Beginning of the End

Part IV: Cataclysm

"Great countries have fallen under less tyrannical rule than what you impose upon this guild."

World of Warcraft login screen,
during the Cataclysm ('11-'12) era,
Copyright © 2012 Blizzard Entertainment

We Meet Again

Doubt.

It's you again, old friend. That infection of the mind I just can't seem to shake. Battle scars from our former meetings are extensive. Whenever the biggest risks come to the table, when I have the most to lose, the marks are a reminder that I fought and won. You knocked at the door when I decided which guilds to assimilate and which to ignore. You had Graulm and Ater on a first-name basis at a time when it wasn't especially clear where my loyalties should lie. I remember you being clingy when it was time to shift out of AQ40 and into Naxxramas, leaving the bug-ridden instance unfinished.

You were out of sight for a bit, back when I thought I was untouchable. You got your little jabs in when I lost folks in Karazhan, when we took weeks on Magtheridon, when we wiped an embarrassing amount of times on The Lurker Below. I have to hand it to you, you've got spunk. You're like every man's personal forum troll and hater rolled up into a convenient little package. When my main tank and mentor left the game, there you were, with your sympathies that reeked of "told-you-so".

You were practically my copy-editor when it came time to rewrite the guild rules, my own personal YouTube commenter. Every word I typed was a joke to you, and you were certain to point a finger and laugh when I left loopholes for people to exploit, shirking morals in their illustrious rise to power.

You're tenacious -- if but a bit predictable. Didn't see you come out to congratulate us on all the bosses we dropped, and you certainly weren't there to pat us on the back as we took on the competition without losing players. See, that's the tricky thing about you. You don't really like to show your face when you're on the losing end of a debate, when you've been proven wrong. You linger, hovering over my shoulders when I know I'm about to make a decision I'll regret. But when that decision turns out beautifully, you're nowhere to be seen. How convenient that must be. You take off when things don't go your way; I can practically set my watch to it. Which begs the question: why are we squaring off again today?

The end of Wrath is only a few months away, and we've cleared nearly every boss in both normal and heroic mode. My guild is made up of some of the best played, best geared folks on Deathwing-US. Everywhere I turn, I see the Descendants of Draenor guild tag, so many well-known and accomplished folks on the server. They're already deep into the planning stages for Cataclysm's raid content. From all angles, we've nailed it, chief. And so, old friend, this is the part that confuses me, because under any other circumstance, you'd be as far away from this success as possible. Under what guise do you feel you still have authority over me?

I couldn't shake the feeling I had seen this all before.

A comparison of hit combo values between
 Street Fighter Alpha 2 (above) and Marvel vs. Capcom 2

No Scrubs

"Daaaaamn, you just got royally fucked up!"

"Another? That quarter yours?"

"Bullshit. And yes, I am going again. This fuckin' stick is busted."

The kid next to me dropped another coin into Street Fighter Alpha. The joystick movements hadn't changed much through the iterations. Ken had pretty much always been Ken, right from the first quarter sunk into Street Fighter II. Since then, Capcom rode the gravy train to success, rolling out sequel after sequel. Street Fighter II: Champion Edition let us choose the same character for hot Chun-Li on Chun-Li action, Super Street Fighter II added four new characters. Trip Hawkins made a horribly expensive console that I wouldn't have dreamed of purchasing, had it not been for Super Street Fighter II Turbo. Which led us to this prequel in the franchise, taking place before the events of the game that originally hooked me. I dug Alpha, and was particularly fond of the alpha-parry system, turning an opponent's attack into a block-counterattack in a swift 1-2 punch. With it, I could be on the offensive, even when on the defensive.

Hadoukens and Shoryukens glided out smoothly, muscle memory from years of performing the quarter-circle and zig-zag motions mapped to their respective abilities. I held the joystick with the tips of my fingers, believing it to give me a slight edge in precision. "Underhanded" was another popular style: the hand is turned upside down, nestling the joystick between middle and ring fingers. It was easy to size a player up that chose either grip: they knew their shit.

My opponent backed into the corner, nervous, waiting to see if I'd unleash another barrage. I snuck a glance without moving my head, trying to get a read on whether he was about to leap forward: the subtle nervous shake in a player's hand before his next move. The move that gives him away. He gripped the joystick with a fist, as if to pound a nail into a board. His movements were jerky, panicked, and he looked to tear the stick right out of the casing at one point.

Scrub.

He made his move, telegraphing the Titanic in the process. As he leapt, I caught him with another Shoryuken. He hopped off his back just in time to get a foot in the face, which I chained into several jabs, a low sweep, and a final Hadouken, sending him flying backwards through the air in slow motion. The screen read "5 Hit Combo Finish".

"Thanks a lot," he said, as if to imply we were taking turns trading wins -- a common tactic to make your quarters last longer. Quarters among friends. I didn't know this guy, or his pal...the one who spoke next.

"What's the highest combo you've ever got?"

"Ah, Christ, no idea. 11, 12 maybe? I can't even remember the last time I got into the double digits. The timing is insane." I was good, but not that good.

The guy I beat puffed out his chest, "I nail 30 hit combos all the time in MvC." I glanced over my shoulder at the Marvel vs. Capcom 2 machine. MvC took the SF franchise in a drastically different direction. Playing off the licensing behemoth of Marvel Comics, Capcom facilitated a tournament of infamous faces from their games, pitting them against super heroes I'd known since childhood. Matchups like Venom vs. Mega-Man, Spider-Man vs. Captain Commando, and Zangief vs. The Incredible Hulk were now a reality. The collective star power was unparalleled in MvC, and it drove some mad lineups to the arcade. For a time, at least. Players soon got wise to the gimmicks.

From the moment a seasoned SF player cast their eyes on the four buttons, something was amiss. Every SF game in the franchise delivered the standard six-button layout... but not MvC 2. Technically there were six, but two "assist" buttons masqueraded under the familiar layout. What was once a tried and true system, was now ever so slightly watered down. There was more.

The game diverged from its Street Fighter brethren in its over-the-top combos system. Basic joystick movements coupled with button presses yielded instant double-digit combos. Chaining these abilities together, then, caused ridiculous numbers to spin up. The average player rocked out with these Hyper Combos. A seasoned SF vet knew better.

MvC gave you the illusion you were doing better than you actually were. Comparing a 30 hit combo in MvC to SF was ludicrous, unless you scaled it appropriately: ratios varied from 1:8, to upwards of 1:30 in the most bizarre cases. Was the game less fun as a result? On the contrary, MvC was an absolute blast in terms of entertainment. It was easily the most stylish one at the party, and had plenty to go around.

Ah, but the substance...

You came to expect certain things from the SF franchise: Ken's red, tattered gi, Chun-Li's hair done up into two buns...and scoring a combo in the double digits took practice, patience, and timing. The numbers lied to you. With MvC, anybody could hit the double digits, and those who gloated were the least qualified to understand why it didn't matter.

"MvC is way easier than Alpha....game's insane!" one of them spoke, trying to sell me on the adrenalin. My eyes darted to the kid and his proclamation, then back to the MvC 2 cabinet. It stood alone, ignored. Yeah. 'Crazy fun'...that's why everyone is knocking down its door to play. On its release day, MvC had a lineup of kids walling me off from the machine. The jig was up.

I turned back to Alpha, the announcer's voice barely audible against the backdrop of relics that lined the room.

The 25-Man progression team takes a photo
on the back of their respective mammoths,
Ruby Sanctum

Identifying With Neither

I sat, staring at the monitor, not knowing what to type, not knowing what approach to take. The document title stared back: Descendants of Draenor - Changes in 4.0. The cursor blinked on the plain white screen. I was at a loss. What's your strategy, chief? How exactly do you plan on getting people to stay? I didn't know. No matter the angle I framed each possible solution, a logical solution failed to present itself. Antisocial players submerged in mediocrity would have no incentive to grow. Not with the back door left wide open by our friends in high places.

A week earlier, screenshots of the 25-Man raiders floating above Dalaran on their Frostbrood Vanquishers went live on the forums, signaling our last great accomplishment in Wrath. Plenty of time remained on the clock, if we so chose to eek out Heroic Lich King, but people wanted their gear, wanted to finish off their Tier 10 four-piece bonuses. Some would want breaks, gone for the summer months. And they'd earned it. Pushing Heroic Lich King ran the risk of burning players out, discouraging them from returning. Better to give them a breather now so that they could come back refreshed later, ready to pound the virtual pavement. If a tactic had the remote possibility of regenerating stamina in the roster, I had to employ it. We'd need every last drop.

From the moment it was made public, Blizzard's announcement of merging the 10-Man and 25-Man raids into a unified lock never left my mind. I carried the baggage to and from work, and played WoW like a zombie, contemplating possibilities. Each time I thought I had it, nope...that simply won't do. The back door is wide open. After the propaganda of the Blizzard PR machine settled like so much dust, one fact remained perfectly clear: once a guildy made a choice to run a 10-Man each week, they'd be systematically locked out of contributing to the 25. It didn't help that both sizes now shared the same loot tables, but Blizzard even went so far as to claim that the difficulty would remain the same between both sizes. It was an absurd claim. Most preposterous of all: Blizzard claimed to be returning a level of difficulty more in line with The Burning Crusade. It didn't take a genius to determine how this would play out.

1. WoW would become brutally difficult.
2. 7.5 of the 12 million WoW players, groomed on the Wrath content, would very quickly get a wake-up call -- having never known the way things were.
3. They would do the napkin math in their head, and leave the 25s behind, joining the far more digestible (in theory) 10-Man content.
4. Without a healthy pool to pluck from, the 25s would collapse.

Players...guildies...would choose the path of least resistance. No offense, old-school raiders, this was a simple reduction of risk. How could I convince them otherwise? Players owed the guild nothing.

They owed me nothing.

Sure, some people might stay. I wasn't happy with 'might'. Lessons learned from Vanilla and TBC proved to me that reliability wasn't built on good intentions. You had to provide structure, rules, and a system that acknowledged and rewarded players for their contributions in order for them to make the right choice. All the structure in the world didn't account for this new threat. Part of being in the DoD team meant you were never done learning, you were willing to grow, improve, seek new ways to be a better player, a better person. What if at the end of the day, all you wanted was some phat lewts and to not have to deal with people? To not have to be told you need to shape up. Your heals need work. Your DPS is at the bottom of the charts. You're dying in the fire too much.

You're failing. Fix it.

So, given the option of taking criticism or not taking criticism, how could one hope to keep this Mediocrity Swim Team pushing for the gold? The casuals would flock together, frolicking across the land without a care in the world, while the hardcore, 5-day-a-week raiding crowd would demand excruciatingly skillful guilds as their base of operations. Where did that leave us? As I stared at the empty screen, unable to type anything, unable to even begin to guess at what the answer might be, an upsetting reality set in...

For the first time in my career as a guild leader, it wasn't doubt in myself that I feared stood in the way of our success...it was doubt in Blizzard.

Why Raid Teams Fail

In early 2008, I read a book on team management. Shortly after reading the book, I imposed a number of changes to our rules, which would go on to form the foundation for a restructure of the guild. It is my belief that those changes paved the way for our defeat of Archimonde, which is detailed in this blog post. For your enjoyment, here is the refined forum post I made, months after Archimonde's defeat, at the start of Wrath of the Lich King. It is, in essence, the World of Warcraft raider's interpretation of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.

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Raid teams, like any group of individuals working together as part of a business organization or sports team, can be prone to dysfunction. This dysfunction typically manifests in five ways, each one acting as a catalyst for the next. They are:

• Absence of Trust
• Fear of Conflict
• Lack of Commitment
• Avoidance of Accountability
• Inattention to Results

What follows is a description of each, along with examples. As well, I provide a number of solutions for each, as you attempt to solve those problems with your own raiders. Dysfunction begins with trust...or lack thereof.

Absence of Trust

Trust is a fundamental part of what makes people work well together. When players in a raid do not trust one another, it leads to issues:

• They are unable to admit their own mistakes, and prefer hiding them in anonymity
• They rarely ask for help from others regarding their class and play
• They typically do not offer assistance outside their own area of expertise
• They are quick to jump to conclusions when considering why other raiders are making certain decisions, without asking for clarification
• They hold grudges
• Eventually, they avoid signing up for raids

In order for a team to function correctly, and increase the level of trust between raid members, players need to consider:

• Admitting to mistakes and their own shortcomings, without fear of alienation or rejection
• Ask for help
• Openly accept suggestions/recommendations on how they can improve
• Give fellow raiders the benefit of the doubt before arriving at some predetermined negative outcome (ie. "He died in the fire because he always dies in the fire--he's a shitty player"...when in fact, the player in question just received news about an ill family member)
• Take risks in offering feedback to others
• Appreciate the value of other raiders' expertise, and take advantage of their knowledge
• Focus effort into valid issues (ie. "How can we better optimize moving ghouls from spawn to off-tank in Phase 1?"), not into wasteful politics (ie. "All of our attempts are going to fail because we have two Paladin tanks, and we have to have at least one Druid tank!")
• Offer/accept apologies without hesitation (this relates DIRECTLY to the first point)
• Look forward to future raids in which to implement the points above

In short, foster an environment where players are encouraged to speak, ask for help, and admit mistakes without being publicly humiliated...a task best started with YOU. Don't judge (unless you're a Paladin), and keep people focused on growth, improvement, and what better progress will be made when you return to the raid next week.

Fear of Conflict

When a team has an absence of trust, they become fearful of producing any sort of conflict. Conflict is not always a bad thing; it is normal in most relationships and organizations, and is a healthy part of an engaged team environment. It opens up the channels of communication, and gets members passionate about what they believe to be important. In raids, conflict often manifests as a result of failing to kill a boss. A raid that avoids conflict usually looks like this:

• Completely quiet in vent. Often dull/boring
• Play environment encourages politics and personal attacks (ie. Vent remains quiet, while /officer chat lights up, blaming a bunch of individuals for a particular wipe)
• Controversial topics critical to raid success are avoided (ie. Continuing to support/enforce/rotate in a failing Tank that is key to the success of the raid, rather than speaking up)
• Other members of the raid are not considered for their opinions, many of which may be valid, but are suppressed due to the first dysfunction - Lack of Trust
• Wasted time pouring energy into defending one's own position rather than tackling the real issue at hand (ie. "Well, I healed through that Unchained Magic because the damage is trivial and I can control it" - instead of - "We all need to be actively watching Unchained Magic and holding our casts to the best of our ability")

In order to allow conflict to become a healthy part of a raid team, players must:

• Have interesting, lively raids, where people communicate openly and easily. This is one of the reasons why we've never enforced a "raid-vent-silence" channel, where only one person speaks.
• All raiders' ideas/opinions ought to be polled on strategic solution, regardless of how significant their perceived contribution may be. This is why the Raid Leader works with the Role Officers in order to resolve boss failures, rather than do it all himself. In many cases, individual Raiders also contribute to strategy resolution.
• Keep politics to a bare minimum
• Attack the most important issues first, and solve them quickly

Conflict is not to be swept under the rug; it's vital to every well-rounded team. Raiders are no different. Keep communication flowing, but be firm and educate your players when the appropriate time to speak is (you're not cracking jokes while listening to raid calls; save the chit-chat for trash clears). When a raid wipes, get to the heart of it. Speak up about what you've observed, but don't be negative, just objective. Be respectful. And if you call someone out, make an effort to bring a solution along with you, not just the problem. Scrubs complain. Expert team members solve.

Lack of Commitment

Once a team is resigned to avoiding conflict, the decisions they make permeate into a behavior that lacks any sort of commitment to the raid at hand. Commitment is an absolute requirement of raid success, no questions asked. The raid leader gives an instruction on a particular boss, and when you decide for whatever reason that you don't feel the need to meet that expectation, you are setting up the entire team to fail. A raid without commitment:

• Causes raid members to be ambiguous about what they are responsible for (ie. "Uhhh....so, I'm not really certain about what I need to do when I get marked for an ice-block during Sindy, so...I guess I hope I don't get marked!!")
• Loses opportunities to improve/solve a problem while issues are over-analyzed and unreasonable delays occur
• Encourages raiders to stay quiet, and not admit when they make mistakes, thus delaying the resolution for future attempts, as well as eat away at the player's own confidence of being able to execute at all.
• Constantly goes over the same issues. Again. And Again. And Again. And Again.
• Causes raid members to second-guess one another (ie. "Oh great, we have so-and-so in the raid again, well...here goes any hope of completing the heroic achievement on Sindy!")

In order to combat the lack of commitment, a raid team must:

• Create clear and concise expectations of raiders. This is why we have role officers, and why they are in place to create healing assignments, which side of Valithria the melee needs to be on, which foot melee needs to be on for Festergut, etc.
• Focus the team on the common goal (kill the boss!)
• Develop the ability to learn from mistakes: Acknowledge it. Ask for/receive clarification (without prejudice). Make the change. Problem solved.
• Take advantage of opportunities before other guilds do. (read: Opportunities, not EXPLOITS)
• Move forward on decided-upon strategy, without hesitation (ie. "Well, we've done Strat A on Heroic Lich King for two weeks, and now the Raid Leader changes it to Strat B...he must have a good reason, so I'll make these changes on my end as well")
• Adapt and/or change strategy as needed, without hesitation or guilt. As much as we can avoid, we typically do not change strategies on a boss mid-raid, but sometimes it is necessary (and typically the RL makes the right call on this)...and when it happens, EVERYONE needs to be on board.

Be committed to the end result. Narrow your focus on the goal (but don't play with blinders on and die in the fire!) If you make a mistake, don't be silent...ask for clarification, make it crystal clear in your mind. And if you have opportunities to gain insight, whether it be researching strategies on the web, watching videos, or reaching out to fellow raid guilds -- don't turn your back on these options. Take every legitimate opportunity you can to make the end goal reachable.

Avoidance of Accountability

A team that fails to commit produces a bunch of wishy-washy, less-than-adequate players who take no responsibility for their own actions; they avoid accountability. Raid teams that avoid accountability:

• Produce resentment among raiders who have different standards of play
• Encourage people to play at a level we can only consider 'mediocre'
• Allow players to miss raids without consequence
• Place an unhealthy amount of stress and burden on the raid leader as the sole source of rule enforcement

If you want to build and enforce more accountable players in raids:

• Ensure poor performers have incentive to improve. This is why we have the guild rank/reward structured as we do. Mini-goals are achieved based on performance, and rewards are then showered on the player to celebrate the accomplishment.
• Identify problems quickly by openly questioning other members' approach without hesitation (ie. "So-and-so, I see you are still casting while you have Unstable Magic, what's going on there? I thought the deal was to stop casting...")
• Establish acknowledgement/respect for raid members who are held to the same high standards (relates to the guild ranks listed above), thereby validating the effort of those players who are truly committed
• Delegate the handling of individual groups' expectations, which are clearly defined and explicit (ie. Our role officers handle each subsequent group in healing, melee, and ranged DPS. A healing officer, therefore, can be expected to state: "Healing assignments are posted - if you fail to heal these people, you are removed from the raid - Questions? /w RL, the healers are ready...").

Players that demonstrate accountability are truly a sight to behold in action. They jell with extreme efficiency, communicate clearly, and see the success of the entire team as it is their own personal responsibility. This builds a healthy balance between raid leader and raiders, and provides incentive for players to improve, grow, and eventually gain rank and status within the guild. In turn, this will cause your raid team to gain status on the server (or perhaps beyond).

Inattention to Results

A raid full of players that couldn't care less about what they do is a sorry sight to see. Their individual poor performances lead to consistent raid wipes for a multitude of reasons...many of which are easily identifiable and solvable. But nobody cares about solving them. Their attention is elsewhere--whatever is on TV, what the current score is during the Football game. It's sad and pathetic to watch, and painful to be a part of. Raids that don't care about their success or failure:

• Fail. Period. They do not improve, nor care to.
• Are beaten by other guilds in progression.
• Cause the very best raiders in the guild to begin looking elsewhere for a guild
• Encourage individual raiders to focus on themselves instead of the team/guild as a whole.
• Are easily distracted--(ie. cracking jokes and spamming ASCII-art macros in General Chat while inside a raid).

When raid teams care about what they do in a raid, and make an effort to examine the finer details of raid strategy, they:

• Retain the best and brightest players
• Minimize individualistic behavior (ie. "The healing assignment went out, and I'm assigned to heal X, but I'd rather inflate my numbers on WorldOfLogs.com, so I'm going to do XYZ instead!")
• Are able to enjoy both success and failure, because they fully understand that each is needed, and leads to growth
• Benefit from team members' skills whose personal focus shifts to the success of the team (ie. "Wow, if it wasn't for that one DK who Chains/Gripped that Blood Beast, I'd have been killed for sure. His DPS went down a bit, but...well...we killed Saurfang!")
• Avoid Distractions (ie. I can only imagine how many wipes we have avoided by not being in General Chat and missing some crude/stupid joke or macro that catches the attention of a key tank or healer, causing the entire raid to die).

There it is. Start repairing your raid team by building the foundation of trust, encouraging conflict, driving commitment, enforcing players to be accountable and ultimately driving the quality of what they do onward and upward. If you succeed at applying these rules, I guarantee that you will kill raid bosses with great efficiency, because you will have a great team.