3.75. Never Say Never Again

Si Team wraps "All You Can Eat (10 Player)",
completing Glory of the Icecrown Raider,
Icecrown Citadel

A Win is a Win

Sindragosa howled and filled my headphones with her threats, barking of betrayal. A barrage of arrows mixed amongst explosive buckshot loosed into the undead dragon's side as Bullshark and Cenadar strafed across her flank, their respective pets chomping in the hopes of hitting marrow. Neps and Lexxii zig-zagged across the platform while shields flashed around us, stopping occasionally as Penance spiraled out of their fingertips. Moolickalot the Boomkin dropped back, fading away from the iceblocked Phame. I watched for the timing to hand the bone dragon back to Klocker. The last remaining DPS came from Abrinis and Blain, maintaining their rotation, driving steel into bone. Her health dipped to 2%, then 1%. The flash of guild achievement spam signaled the fight's end. Si Team completed "All You Can Eat (10 Player)", the final meta necessary for Glory. And when it flashed up on the screen, cheers filled both Vent and the DoD guild chat. Finally, a 10-Man in the guild claimed completion of Glory of the Icecrown Raider...it was us.

Meanwhile, in another Vent channel, Eh Team ran back for their next attempt.

It had been neck-and-neck between Eh and Si in our collective attempts wrap up Glory. Of course, no official gauntlet had been thrown down, no line had been drawn in the forum sand. Nothing had ever been explicitly stated that this was a race. The competitive nature of raiding set us down this path. Beating Eh Team at anything stood on its own as a justifiable measure of accomplishment within the circle of cliques that populated DoD. Laying claim to the Bloodbathed Frostbrood Vanquisher certainly didn't hurt. It was a shame that no official rivalry had been digitally inked. As is often the case among "friendly" competition, being beaten in the absence of contractual obligations seemed to grant you a free pass...yet the reverse was nearly never the case. No player seemed concerned about a lack of officiating when they were the first to cross the finish line, and their chests were thumped with no less vigor. A win is a win.

Conveniently, losing the race suddenly doesn't hurt as much when you can tell yourself it wasn't a race.

"Gratz on sticking it to Eh Team," I whispered over to Blain.

"They're missing a few of their original roster." Big deal. So were we.

"Blain," I said, "you have my permission to enjoy the win. Just get the damn mailbox out already. Need to get screenies for the website."

Omaric swapped Vent channels, poking his head in to congratulate us on nailing the achievement. "Thanks, Om. Now get back in there and wrap it up! What's taking so long?" He chuckled before switching back to Eh Team's channel, a hint of indignance in his tone. I got the vibe, as if to say "Funny joke! Maybe you could take your joke and shove it straight up your ass." It's difficult to say exactly what was leaving a bad taste in his mouth, but losing Glory to Si Team by minutes didn't seem like it. Perhaps there was inter-Eh Team friction at play, drama we weren't privy to in our own private Vent channel. Perhaps he harbored resentment toward Blain pulling out another win, taking it personally; another lesson in leadership, as if to rub his nose in it without saying a single word. Or perhaps that tinge of disgust was more for me. Maybe I hadn't given him as much support as he needed as Raid Leader for the 25-Man, having to deal with being spoon fed help from a retired raid leader from a former era of WoW.

Or...maybe it was something else entirely.

Mature and members of Si Team pose with their
Bloodbathed Frostbrood Vanquishers,
The Storm Peaks

Cancelling Retirement

After collecting our mounts from the mailbox, I directed the members of Si Team to head toward The Storm Peaks for our victory shot. En route, I pulled Blain into the officer channel in Vent.

"Have you given it more thought?" I asked.

"He's definitely stepping down?" Blain responded with a question of his own.

"It's practically a done deal now. Omaric says he's fine with you taking back control of raid leadership whenever you want. He is completely done with it, chapter closed, end-of-story."

Bretthew's exit at the conclusion of 25-Man (normal) left Omaric to fend for himself, which most certainly contributed to additional pressure. He suffered a long history of struggling to take criticism and suggestions, and by this point, had expended all of his remaining energies as lead of the 25-Man. Blain's undercover adjustments kept the raid focused through those heroics, undermining Omaric's leadership in the process. Each whisper must have been like digital daggers in Omaric's eyes. Here's an example of why you're wrong. Here's another adjustment which proves you don't know what you're doing. But Blain never held animosity nor delivered malice with his adjustments. "Switch the tanks." "Let me call out the warnings." "Group further back on the steps for iceblock." What Blain typed and what Omaric read were two different things. Perhaps the differentiating factor was a simple lack of why such adjustments were needed.

Blain rarely explained himself. When he did, there were bigger problems at hand than simply re-positioning ourselves on the steps for iceblock.

"And Taba's out for good?"

"As far as I know."

"What was that all about, anyway?"

I took a deep breath. "Dunno, exactly...but I was pretty pissed off when he told me. He said something to the effect of 'killing the Lich King was my personal goal'...which apparently relieved him of any responsibility toward the 25-Man."

"Nice."

I popped open the roster and eyed the list of players that were still in Icecrown Citadel, Bretthew's name resting at the top. I guess another personal goal was Glory of the Icecrown Raider, Eh Team stylin'?

I took another deep breath and let the pulsing forehead vein subside.

"At least he stuck around as a backup while I got Kizmet situated."

Blain seemed disinterested in the whys or the why nots, "I don't know about all those crazy requirements you got now. I can't guarantee that I'll be there every. single. weekend."

The 25-Man progression team defeats Heroic Professor
Putricide, concluding "Heroic: The Plagueworks (25 Player)",
Icecrown Citadel

I shook my head instinctively, as if speaking to Blain face-to-face, "Don't let the fine print of the guild rules prevent you from taking up your old position. That's not what they're about, alright? The reason those rules are written like that is to prevent people from coming up with excuses to get away with shit you and I consider common sense. We avoided the catastrophe of TBC thus far, my plan is to continue to do so."

Blain remained quiet, which I can only assume meant he was still in contemplation. The group arrived in The Storm Peaks, and before long, were vying for position as the most prominent player in the shot.

"Look, you said yourself the raid's gone soft. This...mentality...of needing loot for progression has pretty much flourished under Om and Taba. I agree. I'm with you. I see it myself. This could be your last real chance to take control of the raid, and if the raids in Cataclysm are heading back to the difficulty of TBC, DoD's going to need someone like you to set them straight. I can't do that on my own. I'm gonna need some serious help from some serious folks."

"Ater was the one doing most of the research in the off-hours." It was as if Blain was giving me reasons to stay in retirement.

"That's no problem, I have a plan for putting people in place to take care of that for you. There are a few players left here that still give a shit, and they'll gladly step into that role...or whatever role...you need them to fill."

I thought back to those issues that manifested during Blain's career while at the head of the raid. Maybe it was best to revisit my stance on the most troublesome of those pain points.

"Remember, you will have all the support you need. The entire officer core would be behind your decisions. There will be no undermining, no questioning your strategies. I'm driving people to the forums for those discussions now. That haphazard shit is behind us. Too many cooks in the kitchen? We barely have enough now to fry up an egg."

"Who'll be my backup on the days I can't be there?"

I held back on naming names, only because I wanted to be 100% certain it was a done deal first. "I have a few people to talk to first, you let me worry about that. I'll put someone in place, that's my part of this deal. I have my eye on a couple sharp candidates already. Trust me. We can make this work."

Blain shifted amongst the crowd of frostwyrms in preparation for the historic shot. "Alright. I'm in for Cataclysm. After that, no promises."

"I'm fine with planning one expansion at a time. Anything beyond that, it's just a crap shoot by that point."

I positioned Mature in the middle, spun my camera around, and pressed the PRTSCR key. In a moment of daydreaming, my brain spun through the Warcraft lore, considering any number of possible futures beyond Cataclysm. I saw myself playing through The Frozen Throne, years before, guiding Rexxar alongside a familiar black-and-white bear.

"...I mean, Hell. For all I know, the next expansion will be filled with pandas."

Blain made his position abundantly clear, "The day they add pandas to this game will be the day I cancel my account."

The 25-Man progression team defeats Heroic Sindragosa,
finishing "Heroic: The Frozen Halls (25 Player)",
Icecrown Citadel

The Highest of Notes

Before officially retiring from leading the 25-Man progression team, Omaric pulled us through those last three meta achievements, all of which took the entire month of July to wrap. Heroic Professor Putricide was every bit as grueling as we expected, reminding us of the challenges we faced in the early days of raiding in Vanilla and TBC. It took three weeks of concerted, concentrated practice on the Professor, knocking out a kill on the 23rd of the month. Two days later, Sindragosa fell in her Heroic Mode, the progression team sprinting to the Lich King to knock out Neck Deep in Vile. And we did, in classic DoD fashion, in our famous last pull of the night. The raid had no qualms staying a few minutes late that Sunday evening, collecting their mounts and being captured in the guild's killshot.

DoD wraps the final meta, "Neck Deep in Vile (25 Player)",
earning "Glory of the Icecrown Raider (25 Player)",
Icecrown Citadel

DoD's last major accomplishment in Wrath of the Lich King was Glory of the Icebound Raider, granting the team their Icebound Frostbrood Vanquishers. On that day of July 25, 2010, the team proudly hovered over the landing pad in Dalaran and their accomplishments were digitally etched into DoD's history.

The percentage of raw content we claimed victory over, no other expansion came close...nor ever would. We left three quarters of Naxxramas and one third of Ahn'Qiraj untouched in Vanilla (not to mention three of the four outdoor green dragons). In TBC, the entirety of the Sunwell Plateau was left behind. By comparison, only three bosses remained incomplete from the 25-Man perspective, and all three were in their heroic forms: Halion in Ruby Sanctum, Anub'arak in the Tournament of Champions, and The Lich King himself. It wasn't a 100%, but I'd take a 96% over an 80% and 60% any day of the week.

The 25-Man progression team shows off their
Icebound Frostbrood Vanquishers,
Dalaran

From a camaraderie perspective, Descendants of Draenor couldn't have ended Wrath of the Lich King on a higher note. It was the first expansion we suffered no exodus; no massive group of players left us to greener pastures. And even in the day-to-day of wading through the celebrity of Enigma and their rise to prominence on Deathwing-US, we never lost a player to them...or to any competing guild that surpassed us in progression. The bonds of loyalty may have tensed, but withstood even the biggest of egos. Not even The Eh Team could be swayed to part ways with DoD; they never left our side, instead standing defiantly among the roster when approached by the competition. Wrath of the Lich King will forever remain the apex of Descendants of Draenor's success, from every angle.

Every angle but one.

3.68. Fall

One of many opinions on Ensidia's exploiting
The Lich King encounter (source: Allakhazam)

Apples to Oranges

Weeks before Descendants of Draenor began to scratch the surface of the final encounter in Icecrown Citadel, it was common knowledge that The Lich King had already been defeated. The victor? Blood Legion...but the recognition they received was muted, for it was the 10-Man version they had scored a world-first of -- something other hardcore raiding guilds paid little attention to. Guilds clamoring for a world-first title were instead pouring their effort into a 25-Man defeat. Two days after Blood Legion's 10-Man clear, the European guild Paragon wrapped up the 25-Man version, and went on to defeat Ensidia by clinching the world first 25-Man heroic clear, even though Ensidia had wasted Arthas first. Details leaked out about Ensidia's dubious strategy, forcing Blizzard to strip them of their title. While the WoW media was busy covering the drama between Ensidia and Blizzard, debate raged further on where the line should be drawn between "clever use of game mechanics" and "full-on exploit". All eyes and attention were on them, and Blood Legion's "world first" quickly fell out of the limelight.

Granted, only nine guilds in the world had defeated the Lich King in 25-Man heroic by this point -- Arthas was far from what even the seasoned raider would call "trivial". One thing was certain: WoW Progress's landing page, listing the world-first guilds who had put Arthas in his place was a short list, and one in which our resident server's celebrity guild was nowhere to be seen. A viewer had to click deeper into WoW Progress or GuildOx to determine what 10-Man standings existed. It was quite clear that the attention was focused squarely on 25. Players certainly cared about 10s, but the weight they held from a competitive standpoint still had little credibility. This argument was further backed by Blood Legion's continuing delay to wrap up their own 25-Man heroic kill of Lich King. The difference between Paragon's kill and Blood Legion's eventual one wasn't a matter of hours or even days...it was weeks.

It was pointless to compare the 10 to the 25. But that didn't stop players from doing it.

Time and time again, each boss encounter was defeated first and foremost in its 10-Man iteration, sometimes well before its big brother, and was easily explained. Blizzard never intended for 10s to be a challenge; at one point during Wrath, they even debated leaving the 10-Man heroic mode completely out. Yet in the face of the 10-Man being a non-factor, complaints persisted:

"10's are more difficult!"

"There's less room for error!"

"They need to be nerfed!"

So the nerfs continued to flood in. Marrowgar became less touchy between transitions. Saurfang refrained from casting Blood Nova on Mark of the Fallen Champion targets. Sindragosa's instability debuff was decreased in potency. Changes to Festergut. Changes to Rotface. Changes. Changes. Changes, so that players' concerns were sated. No member of Descendants of Draenor ever voiced such a concern throughout our entire career in Wrath of the Lich King. Because there was no need to. There was no concern.

Raiding in Wrath of the Lich King had finally reached the right balance. We were proof.

Many of us had first-hand experience with the raids of yore, and the pains and struggles of those days were still fresh in our memories. Our greatest struggles thus far, bosses like Blood Queen Lana'thel, Professor Putricide, Algalon, Yogg-Saron, these bosses didn't hold a candle to the likes of Illidan, Kael'thas Sunstrider, and Lady Vashj. And these bosses weren't even the worst of The Burning Crusade! Cheeseus shared horror stories of the nightmares in Sunwell Plateau, an instance that would've chewed up and spit out so many of these entitled players. But from our own perspective, so many lost weeks on bosses like Magtheridon made Yogg-Saron look like a child's plaything. Boo hoo, it took you an entire weekend to kill one boss? Try months of work on one boss...then we'll talk. But therein lay the problem. It was taking guilds months of work...it just happened to be on bosses that didn't require it.

I'd scan blog posts from guilds throughout that final year of WotLK, chock full of frustrated guild leaders. Months of work wasted on bosses like....Freya?? Sartharion?? It was true. While Descendants of Draenor buckled in to begin work on our first kill of 25-Man Lich King (normal!), there were still guilds that hadn't yet completed Naxxramas.

Even though I felt confident that Blizzard had reached exactly the right balance in Wrath, the overwhelming majority continued to prove me wrong.

The 25-Man Progression Team poses next to
The Lich King at the start of the encounter,
Icecrown Citadel

Defiled

The Lich King was a three phase fight, connected by two transitions. Arthas brought forminable techniques to the table, so the only way to master them was practice, practice, practice. We began the weekend of March 5th-7th, which primarily consisted of refining our handling of his phase one abilities. Drecca fastened the Lich King in place while Bretthew distracted the swarming army of undead drudge ghouls and shambling horrors clawing their way out of the frozen earth beneath us. DPS wound up slow and steady, taking care to not deploy any area-of-effect abilities that might cause Bretthew's adds to run rampant. Their positioning away from Arthas' was important: at various intervals, a player would become afflicted with Necrotic Plague. While ticking away precious health, healers instinctively wanted to cleanse the disease away, but had to stay their hand. Decursing Necrotic Plague caused the disease to not dissipate, but rather, leap from its target to the next closest. This meant players afflicted with the Plague needed to run quickly from their group, and stand near Bretthew's adds. Then, and only then, could the plague be safely decursed, as it lept from our raid to the undead monstrosities themselves. Turning the Lich King's Necrotic Plague back upon his own undead army was the primary focus of phase one...that, and dealing with blasts of Infest -- shadow damage that not only ate away massive chunks of health, but continued to do so until targeted players had their health topped back off to full. When Arthas' health dropped to 70%, the first transition began.

The Lich King charged to the center of his icy platform, sending out a steady barrage of Remorseless Winter, a constant stream of biting snow that would quickly kill any player in close proximity. Winter had a radius that stretched so far, the raid was forced to the very edges of his platform, our heels inches away from chunks of ice breaking off -- every transition, we risked losing our footing and plummeting to an early death. During this transition, Remorseless Winter was not the only thing that raged. Raging Spirits would spawn, needing to be picked up by tanks quickly, as their tendency was to one-shot whatever they faced. Tanks needed to move quickly in positioning them as to not cause additional strain to the healers, while DPS burned the spirits away as fast as possible. On top of all of this, Ice Spheres would appear from the Lich King, slowly heading towards our position along the jagged edge of that platform. Casters needed to turn their attention to the Spheres quickly; if left alone, they would cause an explosion of enough force to knock handfuls of players clear off the mountain's top. By the end of the first weekend of work, phase one and its subsequent transition was safely behind us.

Mastering phase two, along with its transition, took us well into the third week of March -- its learning curve bent sharply thanks to Defile. A disgusting blackness broiled and bubbled in an enormous circular area beneath unsuspecting players, and it took the concept of "standing in the fire" to a horrific new level. Not only would players standing in Defile suffer enough shadow damage to kill them in mere seconds, the physical act of standing in Defile caused it to grow uncontrollably. This meant that the weakest links in the roster -- the ones with the slowest reflexes -- most certainly held the power to transform an otherwise typical raid encounter into a linchpin. All it took was one wrong person to stand one moment too long in Defile, and a manageable disc of black death transformed into an oozing monstrosity that blanketed the entire platform, devouring us in the process. Defile was relentless and suffered no fools. It was devastatingly swift and turned many of our excellent attempts into instant failures. By all measures, Defile was the mouthbreather's worst nightmare. In order to turn the tables on Defile, we would have to leverage the power of a very special kind of healer.

Arthas annihilates the 25-Man Progression team
during an attempt on The Lich King,
Icecrown Citadel

Disciplinary Action

After scouring reports from World of Logs, one thing became imminently clear: Discipline Priests were becoming the rockstars of the Lich King fight, as their unconventional "bubbling" of players absorbed precious milliseconds of damage at the start of each Defile. Theoretically, lightning fast disc priests could bubble players targeted for Defile, granting those victims a window to escape before the thick black mass multiplied across Arthas' platform. Until this point, we ran with one and only discipline priest: the infamous Neps. This newly uncovered information, however, made a solid case for Lexxii to drop from Holy and adopt a bubbling spec as well. She did so, and as expected, the 25-Man progression team was defiled a little less with each attempt. In learning about the absorbs, we identified other abilities that gave us "room to move" within Defile; I myself was able to pop Anti-Magic Shell to help stave off the blackness.

Soul Reaper forced the tanks to hand Arthas off to one another throughout these phase two attempts, but it was a trivial mechanic to deal with. Far more menacing (other than Defile) was the Val'kyr that the Lich King commanded, plucking various players from the platform and slowly carrying them over the edge of the platform to be dropped helplessly to their doom. The 25-Man progression team prepared for this by prioritizing their positions as close to the center of the platform as possible. This gave us the largest window to burn holes through the Val'kyr before they dropped members of our roster over the edge. Work continued in this manner, coordinating the right positions for tanks to hand the boss off to one another, defile targets racing away from the group, and a sychronized collapse to the center before Val'kyr spawned. From there, it was on to second transition...which was more of the first, save for less room being available near the edges of the platform. Again, Raging Spirits needed to be controlled and burned, while Ice Spheres slowly crept up on us, ready to blast players off the edge if not burned down in time.

After a month and a day of work, the chaos of the Lich King was nearing completion. Phase three pushed the entire raid to its limits. Arthas still leveraged Soul Reaper on the tanks, and he continued to Defile the progression team. Additionally, Vile Spirits were added to the mix: slow moving ghostly apparitions that carried an explosive area-of-effect with them. Vile Spirits were subject to snare effects, so while Drecca and Bretthew maneuvered Arthas around the far edges of the platform, Jemb and Bullshark would ice-trap the center, allowing the AoE frenzy to unleash hell. Ben's Mind Sear, Hellspectral's Howling Blast and Mangetsu's Seed of Corruption quickly turned the Vile Spirit packs into fireworks, detonating safely away from melee perched along the edge. But Arthas still had one more trick up his sleeve.

  

The final moments of Descendants of Draenor's
first kill of The Lich King in 25-Man,
Icecrown Citadel

Eve of the Soul Harvest

In one swift motion of his hand, Arthas reached out into the air and grasped nothing, squeezing an invisible neck tightly. I lost control of my death knight, as Mature was lifted up off the ground, choking, and in an instant, I was transported inside the very essence of the runeblade Frostmourne. In this alternate dimension, the ghostly image of Arthas' slain father, King Terenes was locked in eternal combat with a Spirit Warden. This was Arthas' last attempt to defeat us, dividing and conquering through Harvest Soul. I stood alone, separated from the raid, which continued to battle The Lich King on the outside world, and so rushed to Terenes' aid. Mature swung Shadow's Edge, layering the Spirit Warden up with diseases, pummeling him with Scourge Strike, and I watched, waiting for Soul Rip. There. The Warden began channeling a devastating spell, draining King Terenes' spiritual essence; instantly, I fired off a Mind Freeze, and Mature stopped the Spirit Warden's channeling, saving the ghost of Arthas' father. Together, we turned back to the Warden and tore him apart.

In a flash, I was back outside. In the center the platform.

"Move, move! Get out of the center, Spirits spawning!"

The melee and tanks were far off to the edge of the platform, well away from me. I dashed towards The Lich King and resumed the fight, while Mangetsu's Seeds of Corruption flew past Mature's shoulders, igniting the Spirits behind me. Arthas' health was nearing the 10% mark. Like the flash of a supernova, the raid was instantly obliterated. All twenty-five members of the progression raid team lay dead at Arthas' feet as he laughed, preparing to raise us as his own undead army. It was at this moment that Tirion Fordring, who had been frozen solid through the duration of every attempt, finally freed himself with a single blast of holy light, an explosion which shattered Frostmourne in the process. The souls of every man, woman and child that Arthas had desecrated were freed, now enveloping him, trapping him...becoming his own prison. Fordring refused to stand down. Determined to end Arthas' reign, King Terenas II's spirit manifested long enough to cast a spell of Mass Resurrection, and the 25-Man progression team was instantly restored to life, emptying every last attack into what remained of The Lich King.

---

Descendants of Draenor stood triumphant that day, snapping up our first kill shots as Arthas lay dead at our feet. The once noble paladin, long a slave to his cursed runeblade, was finally put out of his misery on April 11th, 2010. A story that had stretched as far back as 2002 had finally come to an end. But although Arthas' story had concluded, there was still some story left to tell about Descendants of Draenor before turning to the final chapter in our history. As Wrath of the Lich King waned, DoD would dive deep into heroics, drama would continue to unfold between both old and new guildy alike, and a veteran of the guild would make a startling revelation that would shift the course of the guild once more. But before any of these events transpired, Blizzard would do us the honor of kicking things off by revealing their plans for Cataclysm -- plans that can be more accurately described as Blizzard's Third Mistake.

Descendants of Draenor pose for their
first kill shot of The Lich King,
Icecrown Citadel