3.15. Killing the Flautists

Mature and crew knock out the
10-Man version of "The Twilight Zone",
Obsidian Sanctum

Theory vs. Reality

Eleven minutes after Ghostcrawler announced to the audience that his favorite pastimes included long walks on the beach, drinking Gin, and nerfing Paladins, a gamer addressed the panel of developers seated at the front of the auditorium. To her, the question was a legitimate concern; in her eyes, the design made made no sense and seemed illogical when scrutinized.

"It seems like some classes have to take PvP talents in order to reach the 31 point talent. Was this intentional? And if so...why?"

I picked up on her indignant tone and continued to listen, flanked by several members of Descendants of Draenor to my left and right. I knew where this was headed, but was intrigued by how Blizzard would respond.

Ion Hazzikostas leaned towards the mic and asked in return, "Can you give us an example of what you would consider a PvP talent?"

She stumbled a moment, flipping through the multitude of talent pages in her head, trying to zero in on an example worthy of this complaint.

"Shamans. The talent, I believe, that lets them take less...magic damage?"

Ion was quick to respond, "True, but isn't that useful in PvE? Essentially, if you aren't tanking, all the damage that you take...whether it be in a 5-man dungeon or in a raid...is going to be magic damage." He expounded on this by digging deep into Blizzard's changing philosophy of choice vs. "false" choice of talent specs in the next expansion, but the gamer was unsatisfied with this answer, and pushed Ion further.

"But as a caster, in some of those cases, you really shouldn't be getting hit anyway. There are the area-of-effects that are constantly going on, but in some cases, there's really no reason for you to be getting hit."

I leaned over to Goldenrod and whispered, "What, you've never made a mistake before?" He smiled back in agreement. Who was she trying to convince? Blizzard...or herself?

Ion's response summed up my thoughts exactly, "In an ideal world, none of these things would be needed. In an ideal world, an ability like combat rez wouldn't be needed, because people wouldn't be dying. In reality...people die."

We joined in the applause as Ion's message hit home. The raiding community in World of Warcraft was especially tuned to the nuances of reality when setting foot in Azeroth; we'd had everything but the kitchen sink thrown at us, damage wise. We'd suffered fire damage from Ragnaros, Shadow Flames from Nefarian, damage from pools of lava, void zones, arcane explosions, bombs, even weapons without owners took a chunk of our health away. Taking damage was a fact of life in raiding, and to us, there was no need to stand in line at BlizzCon and burn a question about survivability prerequisites. The game was like that by design.

Yet questions of this nature are repeatedly posed by the community, each more suspiciously naive that the previous. They cement the notion that there are a massive amount of players in the community that are missing something.

Mature and crew knock out the 10-Man
version of "A Poke in the Eye",
The Eye of Eternity

The Big Picture

Blizzard has a window into the game that you and I will never see. Behind closed doors, they are able to extract data, analyze patterns, see trends rise and fall, and use this criteria to make thoughtful decisions about their changes moving forward. They have made mistakes in the past, but have been a reasonably noble company in admitting when they are wrong, and not repeating those mistakes...far more than many other equitable companies in the game industry. One of their first big mistakes they made -- the implementation of PvP and PvE rewards using the exact same visuals (during TBC) was never repeated again, nor was the brutally complex mechanics of a raid at entry-level, such as with the case with the original Magtheridon. We knew it was a logistical nightmare to co-ordinate, and this would've been fine for late-game. At entry level, however, it was an artificial road-block that was a bit heavy-handed. Blizzard acknowledged this, and the mistake was never repeated.

The WoW player base, however, seemed to be growing in the general direction of "complain first, solve later" as their approach in dealing with a part of the game they couldn't understand. This concept is foreign to a seasoned gamer. We thrill in the hunt, to figure the puzzle out on our own. Whether this trend in the community grew out of sheer volume (the player base had ballooned up to 11 million players worldwide, having been closer to 7 million during The Burning Crusade), or as a result of Ghostcrawler and his fellow blue posters becoming more responsive on the forums, I can't say for certain. But I knew I had a limited view into the Matrix, and the answer would reveal itself if I put forth the effort. Players often see WoW through their own jaded lenses, reflecting back the narrow picture of a world where things don't go their way.

They lack the big picture. And it fuels their rage.

So while the masses of players continued to stomp their feet when things didn't go their way, I opted to err on the side of giving Blizzard the benefit of the doubt when I came across a bewildering design decision. True, I've been a gamer my entire life, so I have a pretty good handle on what I think is fun. And thanks to my career, I like to think I understand the complexities of software development, granting me perspective into the long hours it takes to produce even the most basic game mechanics that players take for granted. But I'm still just a gamer. I'm not a professional game designer. I keep that in the back of my mind when a  particular piece of the game puzzles me, doesn't seem to make sense, doesn't seem to be balanced or fair. It's what gives me pause before I rush out and jump on the forums, claiming Blizzard is just a bunch of asshats. Instead, I take a step back and wonder,

What part of the picture don’t I have?

Mature continues to whore up achievements,
raising 15 reputations to Exalted,
Icecrown

Benched On Purpose

The first round of achievements Blizzard delivered to us at the start of Wrath were fantastic. They got our raiding juices flowing and challenged us to push it to the limit. The Twilight Zone was an especially great way to let us crank up the difficulty, based on our team makeup and level of commitment. If you wanted to jump straight into 3-drakes, Godspeed. For us, baby steps were our bread and butter, so it made more sense for us to twist the dials a little bit at a time. The beauty of the design was how each achievement tested us in each area. Buried beneath the clever puns and in-jokes in their titles lay quantifiers that validated your skill as a raid team. Can you figure out a way to inflate DPS beyond what your team's gear allows? How well can your team communicate and coordinate? Is your team disciplined enough to make excellent time? If your team ignored a mechanic that would otherwise make the boss unkillable, could you still do it? There were a wide variety of achievements Blizzard gave us to test the 25-Man Progression team's competency; we gladly stepped up and showed them we could do it.

When we whittled the majority of the meta-achievements away, I began to see a strange trend emerge. Among those achievements that remained, there lacked a certain focus around the accomplishments of the team. In fact, one might go so far as to say those raiding achievements appeared to test how well a team didn't work together. Subtraction, The Dedicated Few, and A Poke in the Eye all required us to bring no more than 20 players to the instance. At first, I explained away their odd requirements as an exercise in competency under duress. Less players meant less DPS, less heals. Enrage timers would be tighter. Mana pools would be thinned. Each contributor would have to min/max to a much greater degree. Per my modus operandi, I sided with Blizzard and justified the design of the achievements. Putting a tiny bit of thought into Blizzard’s intent granted me the satisfaction of believing I understood their design.

Persuading the team of that intent was a different story entirely.

The raiders were less than enthusiastic about sitting on the bench in order to accomplish these achievements. I made it clear: these metas were a minor inconvenience, yet very necessary for the ultimate goal of achieving Heroic: Glory of the Raider. Everyone would be given an opportunity to churn through so that we all could claim it in our toons. I did my best to convince them, but as I continued to deal with the drama of players being uncomfortable sitting out, I began to question who I was trying to convince...the raiders, or myself?

Even though we were a guild whose ideals dictated that a team was a sum greater than its parts, I was still only months into the reboot of the guild. The past still lingered, and individual insecurities managed to squeeze out of the raiders' pores once we revealed the raider rotations for first shot at these metas.

"Why do I have to wait until week three?", they'd ask me in private.

God. Does it matter? We’re all going to get it done. But to them...it mattered. Self-doubt lingered in my avoidance in addressing their concern. Maybe they weren't as valuable as they originally thought. Maybe the clarity of my new rank system, denoting Raiders as general purpose, and Elite as star-performers wasn't as transparent as intended. Maybe after building up their self-esteem and making them believe they were better than they gave themselves credit for...these rotations spoke the cruel truth to them.

...or maybe they were reading too much into it.

I was annoyed. For Blizzard to ask us to chop our team up in order to prove they were capable was blatantly contradictory. I'd assembled a complete orchestra of players to perform, and was then instructed to kill the entire flute section, while the audience still expected a symphony. Quantifying a raid team's skill under duress could have been accomplished a number of ways: increasing the boss's health, inflating the boss's damage, hitting our healers with a raid-wide debuff that inhibited their heals...the list goes on. And in typical Blizzard fashion, they would acknowledge that this design was faulty -- that they had rushed into giving us this first round of achievements without the proper foresight. Blizzard never again asked us to leave players behind in order to accomplish great raiding feats of strength.

For the time being, however, the damage was done. In order to churn a reduced number of raiders through the instances so that everyone could claim Heroic: Glory of the Raider, we lost valuable weeks working on what would come to epitomize a fundamental lack of insight into achievement design -- an achievement that had great aspirations, yet very dire ramifications in its reckless implementation:

The Immortal.

3.5. The Changed Landscape

Sep 10, 2006: The original 40-Man team
 defeats Instructor Razuvious,
Naxxramas

School in Session

We returned to Naxxramas on the second raid night, December 14th, drunk with ego and testosterone. Much of the success of the previous night had gone to the raiders' heads; it seemed as though the students had become the teachers as we began to tear the Military Quarter's trash apart. We were driven by the excitement and anticipation, not of simply cleaning up the remaining part of the instance, but by the realization this was now possible. For the few original Vanilla team members that remained, Naxxramas (40) defined "brick wall"; to be able to conquer anything in that raid was a significant achievement. But as we worked our way through the Death Knight Cavaliers, Captains, Deathchargers and Dark Touched Warriors, the greater mystery still loomed: why had raids become so much easier? The progression team wasn't talking...yet. Maybe they were too focused on getting through Naxx, and moving on to Malygos. Maybe they were fearful of the answer.

Next on the docket: Instructor Razuvious. Raz was the first boss Descendants of Draenor defeated in the original Naxxramas (40) during Vanilla. It was a gimmick fight: the original encounter called for two Priests to mind-control Raz's understudies, turning his students back upon the teacher. Not only did it pull two healers out of the pool, but it forced them into a role they didn't play.

Some might say the original Razuvious was a test of a true raider in WoW. I know you've healed for for the past year and a half, but tonight, you're going to be tanking. Back in September of '06, we put our two best priests on that duty: the officer Haribo and his protege Volitar, a player who would go on to assist with raid leadership (albeit for a short time) during The Burning Crusade. It was through precision timing, and calm, clear communication that Haribo and Volitar were able to pull off the unconventional roles imposed upon them, securing us a kill.

As Neps and Arterea positioned themselves to mind-control the understudies, someone in raid casually mentioned in Vent, "Did you hear how they nerfed this encounter in the 10-Man version?" Wrath of the Lich King had introduced a new concept to the raid-game: Each raid would be doable in a both a 10-Man and a 25-Man version. 

It was hard enough to wrap our heads around a brutal, 40-Man instance being watered down to this new 25-Man walk-in-the-park, but to liquefy its remains into a fine 10-Man paste seemed sacrilegious. How would you even accomplish the Razuvious encounter with only 10 players? Forcibly bring two priests every time? Of course not. The new deal for WoW was "bring the player, not the class", so the Razuvious encounter had been simplified for 10s: two giant cylinders called "Obedience Crystals" stood outside the 10-Man Razuvious pit. The priest's mind-control mechanic was baked into the 10-Man encounter itself. 

The progression team laughed when they heard this; the kind of laugh you make when you find out your childhood hero is back in court for drugs and alcohol abuse. How typical.

We schooled the instructor with little effort, then proceeded to Gothik the Harvester, whom we pushed aside like a nerd in the hallway. Shortly thereafter, we found ourselves face-to-face with Thane Korth'azz, Lady Blaumeux, Sir Zeliek, and their leader, Baron Rivendare: The Four Horsemen. 

Many moons past, this was a test few guilds could complete. A bewildering mixture of debuffs placed on the raid demanded that Vanilla guilds bring nothing less than eight fully geared Warrior tanks. I remember watching videos of guilds performing the chaotic criss-cross "expand and collapse" maneuver that was needed to mitigate the debuff. The strategy alone was intimidating, never mind the unheard of tanking requirements. This was eight tanks we were talking about! I considered it an accomplishment just to have six Warriors in the roster! 

For tonight's diluted Naxxramas, we had but half of the original required tanks, one of whom was me. And, as we would discover, the daunting expand-and-collapse maneuver was no longer a requirement. Instead of the mind-boggling weeks and weeks of attempts that only the very best guilds in the world defeated the original Four Horsemen within, our execution took but a single pull.

"Sapphiron - Naxxramas",
Artwork by Patrik Hjelm

Wyrm and the Lich

After 4H, all that remained were the giant Frost Wyrm Sapphiron, and the ultimate bad boy of Naxxramas, Kel'Thuzad. 

Sapphiron was tricky: the raid had to allow him to freeze players by purposefully eating an Icebolt, then use those blocks of ice as human shields, a line-of-sight protection against Frost Breath. I say tricky not due to difficulty, but due instead to the encounter being very buggy. 

Players in our raid would die from the Icebolt, giving us nothing to shield us from the intensity of Frost Breath. I distinctly recall certain key spots along Sapphiron's outer ring that you did not want to be caught on when eating an Ice Bolt; these glitchy spots meant almost certain death. Other times, players positioned themselves perfectly behind an ice block...and died anyway.

Bugs aside, Sapphiron ended up only taking two or three attempts, and we left his bones in a pile as we headed down the final hallway, where we came face to face with Kel'Thuzad himself.

We had our hands full with the lich. Wave upon wave of undead scourge attacked us. Shadow fissures erupted under our feet, forcing us to be perpetually mobile. Kel'Thuzad would, at times, detonate the mana our casters relied on to power their pyroblasts, frostfire bolts, renews and rejuvs. Those mana-fueled bombs wrecked players standing too close to one another; we had to be mindful of where we positioned ourselves. 

He'd mind-control us at random, causing us to turn against each other, forcing us to apply crowd-control effects in order to stay focused and eliminate distractions. He'd even freeze people in blocks of ice, requiring healers to react quickly and heal them through the frosty damage. On top of all this, Kel'Thuzad sent two crypt lords after us, forcing us to off-tank, getting our players out of harm's way. 

Written out here in plain English, it seems like Kel'thuzad was a lot to digest. It wasn’t.

DPS blew up the waves of undead minions like pinatas at a child's party. The damage from Shadow fissures barely registered on the meters. Casters detonated by Kel'Thuzad struck each other with the ferocity of a light breeze on a warm summer day. Mind-controlled players were easily dispatched with Frost Novas and Polymorphs; even simple AoE fears did the job. 

And those crypt lords I spoke of? The ones that joined the fight late into Phase 3? Our off-tanks picked them up with a leisurely "don't mind me, just checking my email"-level of urgency. As for Kel'Thuzad himself, well, his attacks were insignificant, unmemorable, and sad; a kid having a meltdown for not getting enough birthday presents.

Who was the boss here?

The only real risk of the entire encounter ended up being the blocks of ice he froze players into, which spiked their health down sharply, as its damage was based on a percentage of their health. Even that risk was something our healers adjusted for with ease, another non-factor in a long list of potentials. Kel'Thuzad died in only a couple of pulls.

As we lined up for our traditional "Accomplishments" screenshot, the raiders were aghast in Vent. As they expressed their disgust, a slideshow of the last three years flashed through my mind. The many nights of attempts on Ragnaros, each week, gaining more of a foothold in adequate fire resistance. The weekends we poured into Nefarian, the struggles of Lady Vashj and Kael'Thas Sunstrider, months and months of work clearing Hyjal and eventually getting us to Illidan at the end of Black Temple. And now, this. After one weekend of raiding, I was lining up my progression team for a "full clear" screenshot.

I felt as though I was standing at a bus-stop, long after the bus had come and gone.

---

There had to be a valid explanation for this massive shift in difficulty. Sure, I wanted to believe I'd done a reasonably good job at getting the raid team prepared, but I had to be realistic about my limits and impact on the guild. Fundamental truths could not be ignored. 

This was our first raid weekend. Aside from a few pieces in Obsidian Sanctum, we had no previous raid gear; it was a fresh start. We'd had no opportunity to practice any of these bosses before hand. In fact, there were really only a few of us that remained from the 40-Man days. But even that was a moot argument, because many of the mechanics had been adjusted, rendering those old Vanilla strategies (and any experience gleaned from them) obsolete.

Some folks may have got their feet wet in the 10-Man versions prior to our 25-Man start, but surely that wasn't enough to reduce the 25-Man to the point of complete irrelevance...was it? One might argue that DoD possessed a healthy amount of raid experience under our belts thus far, which may have given us a bit of an edge in tackling this first tier of WotLK content.

...but, really? This much of an edge? An entire instance cleared in one weekend -- the first weekend --no less?

The 25-Man Progression team defeats Kel'thuzad,
Naxxramas

Achievement Whoring

We were bewildered by these raid changes, at first. After having spent years in raids the likes of which players would never see again, fighting bosses requiring weeks and weeks of practice, it stunned us to consider that this drastic reduction in difficulty was the new normal. Only after careful examination of the achievement interface did we begin to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

Nestled among the silly achievements like kissing all the critters of Northrend and falling in a drunken haze without dying were strategic, skill-based accomplishments. Kill Thaddius without any player crossing the positive and negative charges. Defeat Sartharion with all three drakes still alive. Kill Malygos in six minutes or less. A requirement of skill was still very prescient in WoW raiding, the difference now was that the challenge was no longer front-loaded. You could, in theory, choose how hard to push yourselves, rather than have that forced upon you.

Giving players a choice, at last, was the brilliance of this design decision. Brilliant, and misunderstood.

The barrier of entry to raiding had long been an immense wall to overcome for many players. Even with the days of 40-Man raids well behind us, 25-Man raids still posed a mountain of complexity to recruit for and coordinate. Implementing a regular schedule where 25 people met virtually and dedicate their attention for a block of uninterrupted time was easier said than done. Interruptions from real-life issues constantly barge in, demanding our attention and causing us to cancel. Farming for raid materials ahead of time, whether they be flasks, food, or potions, is monotonous, and not fun. And you need to have a focused, dedicated leader who knows what they are doing: a person that can navigate virtual traffic, identifying and resolving failures in the raid quickly. Raid progression wasn't as simple as walking into a dungeon, killing a boss, collecting loot, and walking out.

...but maybe it needed to be.

Maybe players didn't want to have to deal with all the drama of a gigantic guild, chock full of inflated ego and teenage angst. Maybe some folks preferred a smaller, more tight-knit group to play WoW with, and large, overbearing guilds were too oppressive to their liking. Maybe their skills weren't necessarily up to the demands that Blizzard's typical high bar was set for. They still deserved a chance to see that content, didn't they? 

In the past, the masses were incapable of seeing that content; you couldn't just waltz into Black Temple by yourself and expect to see Illidan meet his fate at the hands of Maiev...unless 24 other players had your back. Forcing all players to overcome those insurmountable odds just to catch a glimpse of the villain around which the expansion was crafted seemed...well...over the top.

So, how then, could one re-design raiding to broaden its appeal?

Lowering the bar to raid entry widened the audience to the endgame content. Now, huge percentages of players, previously not having a chance in hell of seeing endgame content, would be able to. In order to do this without devaluing raiding, there had to be an appropriate risk/reward structure. If players were able to prove that they had the skills, the coordination, and the teamwork that was expected of them in the days of The Burning Crusade and Vanilla, what would be the incentive to keep them coming back, long after raids had been trivialized? Achievements. Prestige. Special rewards, mounts, titles -- visual indicators that made it easy to separate the casuals from the hardcores at a glance. You killed the Four Horsemen? Big deal! We killed The Four Horsemen within 10 seconds of each other.

Even after solving the puzzle, I suspected the masses would not see it as I did. Ever competitive, exclusionary by nature, and skeptical of changes that made what was once difficult now digestible, many long time core players would pay no attention to risk/reward structure re-implemented in Achievements, focusing their contempt back at the raids themselves, and how this change was a slippery slope to a host of hypothetical futures in which players paid for upgrades, raiding would no longer require any skilled players and devolve into a mass of mouthbreathers, all the while dogs and cats shacking up with one another.

For DoD, the path was clear: we would become a guild of raiding achievement whores. They would both define how we operated as a raiding guild and quantify our successes in doing so. They mapped our goals, a raiding to-do list we'd scratch off one item at a time -- an in-game manifestation of "baby steps". In turn, we would use this collection of accomplishments to separate us from the guilds unable, unwilling, or uninterested to compete at the 25-Man level, thereby funneling more traditional raiding recruits our way. 

After a meeting of the DoD minds, work immediately began on The Twilight Zone. Reaching it would be our first major raiding milestone in WotLK, and set the stage for our progress down this achievement whoring path throughout Wrath. Getting there, however, would not come without sacrifice, and a decision that haunts me to this day.

3.4. Great Expectations

Mature completing "When the Cows Come Home",
Netherstorm

(Almost) A False Start

One week before we were scheduled to begin raiding, I logged on and discovered Annihilation was accepting invites for Naxxramas. Immediately, I called him into Ventrilo. It was time for a quick come-to-Jesus.

"What's going on?"

"Ah hey, Kerulak, nuthin' much, just puttin' a bunch of people together here for Naxx, see if we can maybe get it off the ground."

"...No! You can't just throw a group together like this!"

"...Uh, why not?" He seemed a bit put out.

"Anni, haven't you read anything I've posted on the forums?" It was rhetorical; I knew Anni hated reading the forums. "Do you not know about all the rules I've painstakingly detailed out here for the launch of WotLK? We're doing things differently now. Everything has a purpose. We have a scheduled start date and the raid rotations are all ready to go for next week."

He pushed back, "Yeah, but why wouldn't you want to at least get a head-start in there?"

"Maybe because I don't want a repeat of the fiasco at the start of TBC!"

Silence greeted me.

"You do remember what happened, right?" He must have at least partially remembered.

After a moment's pause, he replied, "...mmm, no, what happened?"

"Well, we had a bunch of groups that decided to unofficially start running Karazhan because we hadn't taken the time to purposefully make it official. No signups, no raid rotations, no set groups, just first-come first-serve. That lasted for one week, and then we started losing people because nothing was clear about how it was handled. That was the week we lost Baite to Pretty Pink Pwnies...remember now?"

"...yeah, I guess so. I remember parts of that, but I never knew the specifics..."

"OK well, now you know. I'm not trying to bust your balls over this, Anni. I just want to make sure you understand where I'm coming from. I have the entire responsibility of the success of the raid team on my shoulders now, and I know what's failed in the past. I'm not repeating those mistakes. We're starting on the scheduled start date, with the scheduled rotations, and nobody's getting a head-start: everybody's treated equal on day one. I want this as fair and unbiased as it can be."

I must have sounded insane to Anni. What's the big deal? It's just a bunch of guys getting together to check out the new content, maybe kill a few bosses. The days of looking at situations like these through rose-colored goggles were over. Starting folks early on an unofficial raid had ramifications. Some players might be upset that they were left behind, or question the lack of authority surrounding impromptu groups ("How could you let this happen, Hanzo?"). Even if it managed to slip under the drama radar, the fairness of the loot system would skew as certain members of progression started out with less of a need to bid. Are you getting this, Annihilation? Am I conveying the urgency of the situation to you? Or was I coming across like some sort of dictator.

"OK, Kerulak, we'll hold off. I never really knew this was that big a deal, but now that you explain it in this way, yeah...I can see why you want to stick to your guns. No biggy! We'll drop this invite."

He got it. Thank God. I wasn't just raving lunatic. There was a method to my madness and I needed everyone's support in making it happen. Luckily, there were folks like Anni in the guild I could count on that would understand my reasons, however unorthodox they appeared to be.

Mature (and other Horde) is spit on by an
infamous Dwarf Paladin from Deathwing-US,
Dalaran

The Wake Up Call

I struck a deal with Anni; we'd keep things by-the-book, and in return, I'd commit to getting the raiders into Obsidian Sanctum one week early. The original plan was to start with Naxxramas on December the 12th, but due to this compromise, we were able to pull off a full signup on Sunday, Dec. 8th. The design of the Obsidian Sanctum invoked memories of our early days slaying Onyxia; a relatively small instance, only a few trash packs to deal with, and a single black dragon: Sartharion. What made this instance unique were Sartharion's three twilight drake guards: Tenebron, Shadron, and Vesperon. 

The Twilight Dragonflight maintained an awkward alliance with the Black. Twilights loathed the Black, but at the same time, owed their existence to them, due in part to Deathwing's failed experiments in Blackwing Lair. Deathwing's consort Sinestra eventually succeeded in this endeavor, deep in the hidden chambers of Grim Batol. Politically, the Twilight had no choice but to act in the best interests of the Black: without their cunning and lust for power, the remaining Twilight faced eradication -- which was exactly what we were here to do. The strategy was simple: execute each Twilight guard, then pull Sartharion, avoid flame walls which would rise up out of the lava and sweep across the raid, and kill any Fire Elementals that assisted in Sartharion's defense.

He was killed in three pulls.

---

Naxxramas proceeded as planned the following Friday the 12th of December. I zoned into the instance alongside the raid team, and prepared to resume my role as off-tank. We began by weaving through the Arachnid Quarter, the easiest wing during its 40-Man days...and the only wing DoD cleared. We'd spent a good number of weekends working through the mechanics of the first boss, Anub'Rekhan, tossing us into the air, forcing us to run around the outside of the circular ring, avoiding his Locust Swarm...

We killed Anub'Rekhan in one pull.

Grand Widow Faerlina followed Anub'Rekhan, and in the old days, she required us to mind control her followers, which allowed us to prevent her enrage from one-shotting the tank. No such requirement existed today. We were free to kill her followers, or leave them up; whatever worked. Whatever we were in the mood for. She posed absolutely no risk whatsoever, and was executed. As the wake up call continued, we moved on to Maexxna, a boss I would forever remember as a glowing triumph for our guild back in the day. Maexxna's constant webbing of the entire raid team put the main tank at risk of dying without being able to receive heals, and we had to coordinate a "Nature's Swiftness" healing rotation among the druids and shamans. This, of course, was vital to the success of the 40-Man version of Maexxna.

She required no such rotation this Sunday. She was slaughtered in a single attempt.

The 25-Man Progression team defeats Sartharion,
Obsidian Sanctum

Steamrolling

After exterminating the arachnid infestation, we moved to the Plague Quarter, cleansing it of Noth the Plaguebringer, Heigan the Unclean, and wrapping it up with the defeat of Loatheb. In a distant past, Naxxramas (40-Man)'s Loatheb was a brutal, heal-intensive encounter requiring rapid reflexes and diligent communication -- massive silences would apply to the raid, preventing players from receiving heals for 80% of the fight. It is no wonder that Loatheb's name itself is an anagram for HEALBOT.

One pull later, Loatheb was dead.

Onward, we turned to the Construct Quarter, putting us in the direct path of Patchwerk, Gluth, Grobbulus, and eventually, Thaddius. I distinctly remember hearing horror stories from ancient hardcore raiding guilds about the damage output of Patchwerk. Fully geared T2 (Blackwing Lair) warriors were often being popped like balloons, forcing raiders to supplement their equipment with drops from AQ40. Patchwerk was, without question, a gear check in Naxx 40, and a true test of the min/maxing capabilities a raiding guild possessed. 40-Man Patchwerk kills often showed screenshots of only a few members in the raid remaining alive at the time of the abomination's death, as Patchwerk would hit his enrage timer, and proceed to kill one player per second with every Hateful Strike he delivered.

On this occasion, Patchwerk took two attempts for us. It would've been one, but a couple of healers locked-up...or maybe it was that they disconnected? In the second attempt, he fell over dead and everyone in the raid was still alive. You can probably guess how Gluth, Grobbulus and Thaddius turned out. They proved no more difficult than anything we had encountered, and we proceeded to make short work of them, signifying the end of the first raid night in Naxxramas-25.

I thanked the raiders as they headed out, and imported the DKP earnings and expenditures into our website. I glanced at all the loot that we acquired on our first night; the most we had ever seen in a single night of raiding...ever. And I remember quite distinctly the thought that entered my mind as I reviewed what could only be described as a "steamrolling" of this new raid content...

...what the hell was going on?

1.20. The Longest 1% Ever

Naxxramas Loading Screen
Copyright © Activision/Blizzard

The Balancing Act

Her lair was a prison of webbing. In all directions lay stretched the delicate weavings of a spider large enough to put any arachnaphobe into the fetal position. She sat perched at the far end of this spherical cocoon, twiddling her eight black legs. Evil beads for eyes glared at us while a mandible expanded and contracted, as if licking unseen lips. Her yellow-and-red abdomen dwarfed the raid. And when we made our first pull of Maexxna, she filled our computer speakers with a nightmarish clacking sound, as if two undead claws were being dragged down a chalkboard of despair and anguish. Every time Maexxna uttered these terrifying sounds, I felt my composure slipping away. It was so horrific a sound, in fact, she continued to haunt me well into The Burning Crusade. Spiders sharing Maexxna's model became tamable by Hunters, and I would lose my shit in battlegrounds when the Kill Command was given. That sound made me jump out of my chair and spaz out on my keyboard and mouse in a last-ditch effort to save my pathetic self. Only two other video games had ever made me jump throughout my life: Rescue on Fractalus!, and DOOM.

There was a reason her image graced the Naxxramas loading screen; Maexxna embodied raw, unadulterated fear. This was a good thing™. If Naxxramas was truly the ultimate raid for Vanilla, everyone should have been losing their shit.

Her rules of engagement were a delicate balancing act of nerves, discipline and timing. The main tank would hold Maexxna in the center of her lair, while the raid grouped tightly behind. We were then subjected to an intricate web of mechanics she'd rotate through on forty-second intervals, staggered among each other. One such mechanic caused Maexxna to randomly choose three people and toss them backwards toward the far wall of her nest, encasing them in a cocoon. While incapacitated these players would suffocate; their lives were in the hands of the ranged DPS. It was up to our casters to break them out as quickly as possible. Another mechanic produced a swarm of spiders that would coalesce onto the raid. Off-Tanks would have to do everything in their power to hold AoE aggro on these spiders, so as to not let them attack and kill our healers. Maexxna's venomous mandible also injected a necrotic poison into players, suppressing healing by 90% -- this had to be cleansed immediately. If the Main Tank was the target, unattended poison would guarantee a wipe. We repeated the handling of these mechanics until Maexxna's health dropped to 30%, at which point she would Enrage. While all her mechanics continued to stretch us thin, it became a non-stop burn until either she...or we...ended up dead.

There was just one small twist amid all these mechanics, a monkey-wrench which instilled fear into the hearts of every healer to ever play the game...

...Maexxna would incapacitate the entire raid for a full eight seconds.

Every. Single. Player. 

Cocooned

During Web Spray, nobody would have any control over their character -- every one of the forty players in the raid would be completely immobilized. And while Maexxna was free to continue to tear the flesh away from our Main Tank, we could only watch helplessly as their health dropped to frighteningly low levels. Healers of today may look back on this encounter and think, "What's the big deal? Load the MT up with HoTs before Web Wrap and you're good to go."

In Vanilla, you could only have one unique HoT on a target. Even if you had five priests and five druids, your main tank could only have one Renew, one Regrowth, and one Rejuvination on them at any given moment.

Ater was our most well-geared tank at the end of Vanilla. Fully buffed at the pull, he had 10,047 hit points. Maexxna was striking him for between 2500 and 3500 hp per blow, white damage. HoTs ticked for about 300 hp. If Ater was topped off and lead into the Web Spray with a Shield Block, he'd be in a good shape with a couple of HoTs. But if not, and Maexxna happened to deliver a crushing blow, his health would be nearly empty by the end of the eight seconds. To combat this nerve-wracking mechanic, the healers and I set up a Nature's Swiftness rotation. One by one, the Druids and Shamans would cycle through an instantly cast giant heal at the end of the eight seconds, shooting Ater's health back up and preventing the raid from having a heart-attack. Nature's Swiftness was on a 3-minute cooldown, so a rotation was necessary to keep an emergency heal flowing in.

But while Healers were dealt the worst hand of the roles thanks to Web Wrap, the other roles were similarly impacted. A web-sprayed ranged DPS meant the possibility of players suffocating to death on the walls of Maexxna's nest. Ranged, therefore, absolutely had to make breaking people out of cocoons their number one priority. A web-sprayed off-tank had a pretty tough time collecting up swarms of spiders scurrying across the raid, so the spider swarm had to also take priority over Maexxna herself.

Things fell apart at the 30% mark. After working to perfect our timings with web spray, poison shock, and the never-ending swarm of spiders, we naturally lost a good number of players to web wrap. DPS was slow to move from Maexxna to the targets on the wall, and they would run out of air before we could break them out of their silken prisons. As it had been with Princess Huhuran, Maexxna's game was attrition; keep whittling the raid away piece by piece, so that when the enrage burn phase came at 30%, we wouldn't have the manpower to keep both Ater and the rest of the raid alive. Ater would die, and the remaining tanks would scramble to pick up, but not having the buffs or the gear that Ater possessed, they would be ripped apart as she systematically fed on every last remaining member the raid.

Descendants of Draenor defeats Maexxna,
Naxxramas

Winning the Attrition Game

Our goal for each attempt was to keep just one additional player alive as we approached the 30% mark. As we refined our pulls, communication on her phases improved, warnings on the next mechanic were consistent. Our own internal timers began to adjust to Maexxna's, and healers were more prepared to proactively protect players before the spray froze us into position. Web-wrapped targets were broken out faster, and with players being topped off more consistently, those suffocating had more room to breathe before they met their maker behind a mask of webbing.

When the 30% mark hit, Ater granted us one last reprieve: Shield Wall, the last great bastion of defense for a Warrior in Vanilla. He could only use it once per attempt, so he saved it for the first Web Wrap post 30%. It would save his life, but systematically ensure his death by the second, as we watched his health spike from 10k down to 2k...and then nothing. His death marked the burn like a starter pistol. Did we have the manpower alive to tear through her remaining health while she feasted on the aggro list like a menu? Annihilation called out Warriors frantically to burn their Shield Walls as she turned to them, and the gong of RDX rang like a death knell. Ater, dead. Annihilation, dead. Darange, dead. Her taste in our raid team diversified as she found her rhythm, eating one player per second. Another Rogue. Another Druid. Another Shaman. Another Lock.

Having succumbed to the lack of air in my own cocoon, I watched helplessly as her health dropped into the single digits. Amid the chaos of her feasting, RDX showed that we were only down 4 DPS. She continued to one-shot players, eating Siax next--the only DPS Warrior in our raid, joining DoD after his own hardcore raiding guild had collapsed in Naxx. Only two Warriors remained alive: Demus and Kurst, while Zyr and Volitar poured Greater Heals into them.

Dalans yelled out her health "3% go....2% go..."

Kadrok continued to chant "Burn Her!!" to the remaining raiders.

Her health dropped to 1%.

---

It all seemed surreal. This was our second weekend on Maexxna. Two full months of work in Naxxramas. A year of raiding. Of assimilating guilds, meeting new people, building up a roster. I had gone from a player barely able to make it through Sunken Temple to this...a raiding guild. A 40-Man raiding guild. A Naxxramas-raiding guild. Forty strangers, all working together, virtually. Coordinating. Watching timers, boss alerts, churning out Pyroblasts and Shadow Bolts. We gained players and lost them. Decisions had gone well and gone horribly. And I'd met people that would profoundly affect my decision making in the years to come. What challenges would be next on my plate? Would I be able to handle them?

And it was in that moment that seemed to stretch out for all eternity, a bizarre realization set in.

...it was my birthday.

I'd been so hyper-focused on the guild, on WoW, on our success, on the threat of 2.0 stripping away any further progress we could make in Naxx...that I had forgotten my own birthday.

---

I glanced up at the screen, The arachnid flipped over in a curled, twitching ball in the center of her nest. 

It was over.

Descendants of Draenor managed to clear The Arachnid Quarter a full month before the release of 2.0. It was our final greatest triumph of Vanilla, and a testament to the resilience of a guild with a year-late start in PvE. We'd grown from a handful of Counter-Strike LAN buddies into a 40-man raiding machine, one of the few Horde guilds on the Deathwing-US server to claim this level of progress. And while most of my success at the helm seemed based off of sheer dumb luck, I nevertheless carried on, trying new things, listening to the folks whom I felt would offer us the greatest chance of success. I vowed to learn from every mistake I made, every bad judgement call that was my doing. Above all, I left Vanilla with a real sense of accomplishment -- that Descendants of Draenor could continue to be a raiding machine with much greater dedication and focus.

But perhaps not to such a degree that I would forget my own birthday.

1.19. The Sprint

DoD clears trash during an evening raid,
Naxxramas

Nerfed by Proxy

The glue of the spider wing's webbing dragged Naxxramas out for weeks. I kept optimistic by reflecting back on how far we had come. Our raiding career thus far had produced plenty of accomplishments we could claim ownership of. Ragnaros. Nefarian. Princess Huhuran. And while other guilds may have progressed past us, we remained one of only a handful of Horde guilds on Deathwing-US to be Naxxramas-capable. We'd grown from a tiny handful of close-knit players to this monstrosity that was able to run two separate 40-Man raids per week. The players were respectful. They made an effort to be civil. And, we boasted a number of unique strengths, including a few High Warlords -- the first of which whom was both an officer and a trusted friend. Upon reflection, I'd made a real effort to stick to my guns on the guild's ideals. When it looked like trolling was about to start, either in general chat or on the forums, I shut it down. The officers were also aligned with those ideals; I trusted them to shut down trolling on my behalf. We kept a low profile on Deathwing-US, and as a result, were rarely called out by other competing guilds. We'd lost people, true...but not in massive quantities; we certainly weren't hemorrhaging players. For the most part, loyalty in Descendants of Draenor was good. The trash in Naxxramas may have been brutal, but players returned each week. They knew time was running out on Vanilla. The finish line was in sight. The sprint had commenced.

When not on an actual boss, the conversation turned to 2.0 with curiosity and speculation. Initial talent trees had leaked out, promising new forms of heals to my Shaman -- the most significant of which came in the form of an Earth Shield. Other classes were similarly buffed with new talents; I'd bug Dalans by asking him if he was looking forward to the new Tree Form, and was promptly told to cram that tree of restoration up my ass. Dalans made no secret of his hatred in healing. Come 2.0, he would leave it behind once-and-for-all, and planned to follow in the footsteps of Ater and Annihilation as a Tank. Meanwhile, Volitar the Priest and Kadrok the Shaman were fully committed to leveling a Blood Elf Paladin, as the age-old faction restrictions fell to the wayside in The Burning Crusade. They spoke of marathoning a 24/7 leveling effort, sacrificing both hygiene and sleep...which was certain to produce some amusing dialogue in Vent.

As exciting as it was for all of us to pour over those new talents, a sinister side-effect remained: an implicit drop in difficulty to all the raid instances we were working on. Fights like Anub'rekhan that were so tightly tuned would suddenly become trivial with the existence of talents like Vitality, granting Ater an overnight bonus of 5% to his Stamina; the equivalent of an entirely new set of gear. The brunt of the free-for-all healing would no longer rest solely on the shoulders of the Shamans, with our raid's Priests blanketing the group with Circle of Healing. And of course, our damage dealers would all gain a 41 point talent that would inflate their DPS by a significant amount, the Hunters with The Beast Within, the Rogues with their Surprise Attacks...the list went on. Our heals would heal harder, our tanks would live longer, our damage dealers would be deadlier...

...and our raids would be nerfed by proxy.

To the guild, 2.0 meant a breath of fresh air, exciting new content and challenges. To me, it meant the end of Vanilla progression. The day that 2.0 hit, anything we had yet to execute would officially be off-the-table, tainted by the stench of these new talents...none of which had been considered in the design of Naxxramas. Whatever we could clear before 2.0 would be our legacy in Vanilla.

I wanted our final effort in Naxxramas to be significant.

Grand Widow Faerlina

We pushed further down into the Arachnid Quarter, clearing away the spider threat, until at last we came upon a room filled with cultists. They bowed and chanted toward a woman dressed in fanatic robes of yellowish greens, adorned with jagged black spikes -- instantly recognizable as the Tier 3 Warlock set, Plagueheart. The woman stood on her circular stage, flanked by six senior religious heads, four of which were deemed "Worshipers", the other two, "Followers". Ater and Annihilation rushed into the hypnotized crowd and the raid proceeded to put them out of their misery, granting us a wide berth to setup our strategy.

There was no rocket surgery here: Main Tank on the Grand Widow, Off-Tanks on the Worshippers. Kill the two Followers, then unleash Hell on Faerlina. Decurse the Poison Volley, move quickly from her Rain of Fire. There was only one gimmick to the fight: we'd call on our Priests again, as we had with Razuvious. Every minute into the fight, Faerlina would gain a powerful Enrage, making her sword strikes so brutal that healers would empty their entire pool just to keep the Main Tank alive. But, we could no longer rely on our Hunters to tranquilize the buff -- she was too powerful, even for them. Much like turning Razuvious' students against their teacher, we would have to call on our secret weapon Volitar, who would Mind Control a Worshiper. The Worshipers alone possessed the power to purge Faerlina of her rage. This power would cost the Worshiper their life, which meant we only had four silences at our disposal.

The first enrage came at the 50 second mark, then every minute thereafter. The 3:50 mark would be our last opportunity to purge her of her enrage ability. If the fight drew out to the 4:50 mark, our healers would be running on empty, and she would most certainly cleave us apart, one-by-one, until there was nothing left alive in our crew of 40 raiders. This style of fight, where resources are limited and poor execution can lead to a wipe via attrition, is what we referred to as a Soft Enrage. The terminology stands to this day in communicating to players whether or not they are fighting to beat a static timer before the boss goes ballistic (Hard Enrage), or we ultimately do ourselves in by not utilizing the hidden mechanics in the encounter.

Descendants of Draenor defeats Grand Widow Faerlina,
Naxxramas

Emergency Maneuvers

Haribo had me and a few other Shamans on Kurst and Darange, the Off-Tanks for the Followers. They were the first to be killed; Follower AoE silence posed a threat not only to our other healers and casters, they could potentially cause issues for the Priests attempting to control a Worshiper. Once the Followers were dead, this freed Kadrok, Klocker and I to start painting our Chain Heals across the remainder of the raid.

"In 15 seconds, we're going to have an enrage, healers get ready," Blain called out into Vent. I spun Kerulak around, winding up more Chain Heals.

"No. We're gonna do one more, then the Enrage", Volitar called back, as he prepared to take out a Worshiper -- his implication being that we were planning to silence Faerlina before her next Enrage. This tactic would also kill the Worshiper, but grant us 30 additional seconds of smoother incoming damage. Rather than risk a few seconds of Faerlina's enraged strikes, which could one-shot an ill-prepared tank, guilds would employ the tactic of silencing her before her enrage, granting temporary asylum from the onslaught, negating a round of poison volley in the process. Two birds to be killed by one stone.

But in the chaos of Naxxramas, it was easy to get mixed up. Volitar still thought we were on the first Worshiper, when we were already ready for the second.

"Nononono", Blain called back, "Need to let her enrage...now."

Faerlina grew large, her entire body bathed in a deep blood red -- the telltale sign of an enrage mechanic. Volitar silenced her in an instant, and she resumed her normal size, the redness washing away. The raid continued to unleash while Blain's voice remained calm, giving us updates as necessary. A cool, collected head breeds success, Blain was adamant on stymieing panic. We gave up our fourth and final Worshiper, but he kept us focused with words like "plenty of time". The DPS poured in. Another volley of poison showered us while we decursed it away.

"She's enraging, Ater get ready to shield wall." Blain called out. Too late. Before Blain's digitized voice finished transmitting across the Internet, Ater was struck and killed by Faerlina's enraged blows. Initiate Plan B.

"Rogues, get ready to evasion tank." They swarmed in behind him, ready for an Evasion rotation, which would give each rogue their 15 seconds of fame as they held Faerlina, dodging her blows -- the raid pushing out the last of their DPS. But the Rogues would not see any fame this day, for as they moved into position to begin emergency tanking maneuvers, Faerlina's pool of health went dry, and she collapsed near the steps to the stage she was worshipped on. The death of Grand Widow Faerlina was a sigh of relief to DoD. After agonizing over Anub'rekhan for six weeks, the Grand Widow only took us one weekend of work.

If our luck kept up, we could potentially close the Arachnid Quarter down completely. But if the next boss proved to be another Anub'rekhan, Faerlina might be the last boss we could claim under Vanilla.

1.18. A Shot of Adrenaline

Crazzyshade and Kadrok strip down to their
skivvies to show off DoD's first Tier 3,
Eastern Plaguelands

Solace in Loot

At the end of September, after being in Naxxramas for over a month, we finally collected the necessary Wartorn Scraps to exchange for our guild's first Tier 3 pieces. Blizzard was still playing with the "token" concept by this point. In AQ40, tokens dropped off of the more difficult bosses, and each token was shared by a number of classes. The tokens would be distributed to players, who would then exchange the token for their respective class tier pieces. It was a clever solution to the age-old problem of streakiness; due to the nature of random numbers, we'd often see the same loot drop week-after-week, which made gearing a chore. By granting us tokens, we now had some control over those items which previously seemed cursed with horrendously bad luck.

Blizzard changed up the token concept a bit in Naxxramas. Now, bosses dropped Wartorn Scraps of multiple armor varieties: Cloth, Leather, Chain and Plate. Players would collect up these scraps and after amassing a certain amount, they could exchange the handful of scraps with an NPC stationed in Light's Hope Chapel for their Tier 3 gear. The trick in this case was that each boss didn't drop all the scraps necessary for a single exchange. The plan was to farm multiple bosses each week, allowing the raid to collect a multitude of scraps so that at least one item was purchasable. But, after five weeks of work, we hadn't pushed past Instructor Razuvious -- only collected a handful of scraps each week. In our long standing quest to be an efficient raiding guild, this was the worst way to achieve progression. But we'd made our decision on Naxxramas and stuck to it, and in the process, earned enough Wartorn Scraps to issue out our first Tier 3 Boots, one pair to Crazzyshade, a dedicated Warlock, and the other, to my Shaman officer Kadrok. He may have been displeased at leaving AQ40 behind, but perhaps found some solace in becoming one of the first members of the guild to proudly show off a Tier 3 piece.

Not many on Deathwing-US could do the same.

---

After the kids were tucked in, I headed downstairs, fell into my chair, and logged in to WoW. There was nothing spectacular planned this particular evening, so I hopped on to my guild bank alt, Oxanna, to process whatever requests the guild had for me, either distributing Zul'Gurub Zandalari tokens, or Idols and Scarabs for AQ20. As soon as I arrived in-game, Blain whispered me immediately.

"Flip over to Kerulak and head to Silithus."

"Why? What's going on?"

"Ater just looted the other bindings in MC. We're going to go do Thunderaan."

Kerulak stands next to Thuderaan's
massive weapon, Thunderfury,
Silithus

The Blessed Blade

One year. Fifty-two raids. Eighty players across two separate forty-man raid groups. I had to hand it to Ater. He never gave up. Long after the A-team had left Molten Core behind and turned their attentions to most difficult challenges of AQ40 and Naxxramas, Ater continued to run through the Core. Even the mention of the Core made a lot of the A-team raiders sick to their stomach, never again wanting to set foot in the instance after having made it their weekly torture for so many months. But Ater swallowed the torture, the sole POW interrogated incessantly by the Surgers, Annihilators, Core Hounds, and Molten Giants. He's withstood more Pyroclast Barrages than any other player in DoD, and bore witness to more dusted Shadowstrikes than any mortal man should have to. Ater did it with a smile on his face, intently focused on the goal that drove him: Bindings of the Windseeker, two legendary materials held captive by Garr and Baron Geddon, in defiance of the Windlord's armies. And after running Molten Core for a solid year in Descendants of Draenor, the second Bindings dropped, and at last, Ater could claim a weapon that all tanks coveted in World of Warcraft:

Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker.

By the time I was logged in to Kerulak and en route to Silithus, Ater had already taken a crew to smelt the Elementium Bars necessary to craft the sword. Elementium could only be smelted in Blackwing Lair, in the covey behind Firemaw's path, just beyond the suppression room. The bars were in hand, and our raid invites continued to grow as more players logged on, ready to assist in completing the guild's first ever Legendary. When we arrived in Silithus, we quickly moved to the southwestern part of the zone. Unlike the brown sands dominated most of the zone, the Twilight Outpost in the southwestern region was shielded by darker, gray rock. Venturing out there by yourself immediately invoked a sense that you were somewhere you didn't belong, an ominous area where cultists were performing rituals, attempting to communicate with dark horrors hidden below the earth. It had an entirely different feel when protected by thirty-nine of your closest guildies. We paid no attention to the cultists. Today, we had another objective.

Ater announced he was talking to the quest giver, and in a moment, a giant windlord arose from the surface: Prince Thunderaan the Wind Seeker. He towered above us, matching the size of Ragnaros, but wasn't nearly as threatening. In fact, the slaying was over almost as quickly as it started. The raid pummeled Thunderaan into submission and he sank below Silithus only a few minutes after being summoned. A gigantic pronged weapon spun downward out of the sky, lodging itself in the dirt -- lit up by sparks of electricity travelling the length of the blade. After talking with the quest giver and handing over the materials, he called out in Vent:

"Oh, look at that!"

The same lightning-engorged blade that protruded from the sand was now in the hands of our main tank.

---

It's hard to say if acquiring the guild's first legendary was the shot of adrenaline we needed to catapult us forward in Naxxramas, but it certainly didn't hurt. Our milky, zombified eyes seemed to sharpen overnight. Exterminating the spider trash was a little less painful, a little less chaotic. Ater lept into battle, swinging the blessed blade left and right, tearing the abdomens of the arachnids wide open, bolts of electricity leaping from insect to insect. Not only was Ater's AoE threat greatly enhanced by the Nature Damage chaining across targets, I noticed a considerable smoothing of incoming damage he took overall, a result of his primary target's attacks being slowed by Thunderfury's cyclone effect. Whatever slight improvement it was,  the edge had been taken off of Naxx. We cleared with a bit more efficiency, stood our ground with a little more confidence, and knuckled down on our next boss with greater ferocity.

Positioning for the original 40-Man Anub'rekhan,
Naxxramas

Dinner Time

Anub'rekhan was a Crypt-Lord; a giant scarab-like creature. Unlike a traditional insect, his features were more humanoid in prominence, he took on more the stance of a bear than of a beetle, and had a distinguishable face in lieu of classic insectoid eyes and antennae, while still demonstrating frightening spiked protrusions from his head and body.

He addressed us as dinner.

The mechanics behind Anub'rekhan were straightforward, but execution was an entirely different beast. He would require a tank to hold him position while large Crypt Guards would spawn in pairs, needing to be picked up and pulled to the side to be killed.  Where things got ugly was when Anub'rekhan cast his Locust Swarm ability. Locusts would infest the area near Anub'rekhan and would force the tank to kite him to the other end of the room. But, anyone (including the tank) caught in the swarm would take so much damage from the DoT that they would be killed within a matter of seconds, and to make matters worse, the locust swarm itself silenced and slowed anyone caught in its path. As Crypt Guards were already being off-tanked to the side, this circular room left little area to move...and having forty players in the raid made things extremely tight. The kite path, therefore, had to be along the outer edge of the circular room in a crescent shape. Dragging Anub'rekhan through the middle was out of the question. Too many people would be hit and killed in the process.

Execution required surgical precision on the part of the main tank because there was only a split second warning before Anub'rekhan summoned the swarms of locusts. The main tank had to be running away before the cast began. Furthermore, a player's standard run speed would not be enough to outrun the swarm; the main tank would have to be accelerated by a Hunter's Aspect of the Pack. This was already a frightening concept, due to the single reason that if the tank was late by even a fraction, he would be hit and stunned from Aspect of the Pack, eliminating any potential option of escape. No single person could afford to be caught in the insect's path. It required everyone to be alive. Each person that died would spawn a corpse scarab that would add to the ambient damage flowing in to the raid. On top of all this, Anub'rekhan impaled random spots in the room, spikes shooting up from the floor, tossing packs of us into the air and interrupting whatever cast we had planned. It all added up to one single fact:

Everyone had to play perfectly, and nobody could die.

Annihilation opted to handle Anub'rekhan, to learn and perfect the kite, while the remaining Warriors held the Crypt Guards at bay. The Hunter officer Kaleu was responsible for remaining in Anni's party, since buffs only affected the five people in each sub-group during Vanilla. Nights were spent practicing this mechanic, over and over. Anni watched for the warning, Kaleu flipped on Aspect, the kite would commence. I would stand ahead of him, throwing out a few heals in the process, eating the occasional impale, while the raid blasted away at Crypt Guards. The execution became almost clockwork in nature, after repeating it again and again, only to make one small error in timing half way through. Then, the chain reaction began. Players would die, corpse scarabs would spawn. They, in turn, would eat away at other raid members until they died, producing more scarabs. We were soon overwhelmed. Kites would be repeated in perfection by Anni for the duration of these attempts, only for a momentary lapse in timing which would cause the fight to unravel and for us to start anew. Perfect...or nothing. No gray area in between.

On October 15th, six weeks after our first kill of Instructor Razuvious, we punched through Anub'rekhan's thick scarab shell, and its wings flapped one last time as the bug collapsed on its side. I glanced up at the raid -- everyone was alive. It was as I predicted. Only perfection would fly at this late stage in the game. But at a grueling six-week duration on boss practice, how much further were we going to get?

1.16. Paying the Entrance Fee

DoD surveys The Twin Emperors,
The Temple of Ahn'Qiraj

Options Dry Up

Attempts on Twin Emperors were not going well at all. One week earlier, the 40-Man raiders had successfully exterminated Princess Huhuran, earning the first set of "real" rewards in the instance. From Skeram up through Fankriss, loot was on-par with that of Blackwing Lair (for the most part). Blizzard tried something new with Ahn'Qiraj: instead of issuing our set pieces directly from the corpse of a boss, we'd collect tokens to be exchanged for the actual gear. These Qiraji Bindings were shared among multiple classes, which added a layer of complexity to our fixed-cost DKP system. It was already an administrative nightmare to catalog every item, estimating its worth to a particular class. Now we had to consider the value of the exchanged item, normalizing the cost between the classes that shared it. Players regularly dismissed their assigned loot, opting to pick-and-choose random off-pieces to maximize their play -- which only made the administration worse. The good news is that we finally had some Tier 2.5 tokens to our name, thanks to the death of Huhu...

...the bad news is they would be the last AQ tokens that Descendants of Draenor would see.

The problem of AQ40 was becoming more painfully clear upon each wipe at the hands of Emperors Vek'lor and Vek'nilash. First and foremost, we'd run out of time on the schedule. B-team became more prolific at leaving us "cleanups" as they failed to empty out Blackwing Lair. Instead of starting AQ40 work fresh, A-team continued to sink precious minutes into Nefarian kills before moving to Silithus. And, A-team themselves had issues with farm bosses. Our first kill of Skeram was months behind us, yet we still struggled with execution, and the same held true for Battleguard Satura. We regularly skipped the bug family to shave time off clears; the change was negligible. Even a mistake or two on Fankriss meant re-doing the gauntlet that proceeded him. Let us not forget about The Princess whom had already proven to us she was going to require multiple attempts per night; the self-proclaimed queen of the 1% wipe. After A-team swallowed all of that, precious few hours remained to work on The Twin Emperors, and we were only now digging into the tough content. For behind The Twin Emperors nestled Ouro and Viscidus (both of whom could be skipped) and the ultimate evil behind all of Ahn'Qiraj: C'thun. We'd heard the horror stories of world-first guilds burning week after week after week on the final boss. Two days a week was no longer enough.

So, there was the problem of time; a lack of a viable schedule. There was the problem of loot, that being nearly every boss we were killing en route to The Twin Emperors producing nothing of upgrade value. There was the looming expansion, still in development by Blizzard but in the forefront of our minds every day. A release date wasn't yet set in stone, but we predicted that it would be soon, and we wanted as much off our plates as we could stand.

And, of course, there was the issue with Naxxramas.

Kerulak and the 40-Man team gets Power Word: Fortitude
in preparation for the nightly work in Naxxramas,
Eastern Plaguelands

2.5 vs. 3.0

An entire raid instance still existed that we hadn't even set foot in. The ultimate raid in Vanilla, a devastatingly oppressive instance that only the dedicated few raiders of World of Warcraft could claim a victory over. We knew by pouring over the Elitist Jerks discussions and examining the loot tables buried within thotbott.com that Naxxramas was, coin-for-coin, worth every bit of energy put into it. Items that dropped off the first bosses alone put our existing gear to shame, and with most players in A-team built on Tier 2, the prospect of leap-frogging out of AQ40's pathetic 2.5 side-grades straight into Tier 3 made our core raiders drool with anticipation.

The only other possibility to increase our progress was to come to an agreement with a competing guild, one less progressed than us. These less progressed guilds whom were able to clear the first half of AQ40 were starting to "give up" their raid locks to more progressed guilds, who would swoop in, inherit the half-cleared instance, and then power through the remaining second half. The price on the "sale" of these locks varied from handfuls of gold, and/or promised loot if it dropped, to "carrying" several of the lesser-progressed-guildies along for the ride. None of these options sat well with me. They all seemed like forms of selling out. Could we actually say we cleared AQ40 if others were doing half the job for us? It didn't matter what I thought, anyway. There were no half-eaten AQ40 raid locks to assume on Deathwing-US. Whatever inter-guild agreements may have been on-the-table got scooped up by other guilds with greater desperation and less conscience.

After The Twin Emperors made it clear we would be spending weeks working on their encounter, and with our options dwindling, the officers and I came to a difficult decision: Our work in Ahn'Qiraj was over. Princess Huhuran would remain the final boss defeated by Descendants of Draenor in AQ40, and all of our efforts would now be turned towards the necropolis that floated above the Eastern Plaguelands.

Some of the officers didn't take this news well. Kadrok was particularly angry by this decision, and felt his voice hadn't been heard enough. An old school EQ player, he was unsatisfied with an incomplete instance on our track record. Trying to outline the logical reasons why we left AQ40 only reiterated to me that it was a decision not made lightly. But as an honorable officer, Kadrok bit his tongue and stuck to the assignment, continuing to lead and shape the Shamans into a respectable crew of healers. I encouraged him at every opportunity I could, but I could tell he was not pleased with leaving AQ40 behind. I wished there was a way that everyone could be happy. There wasn't. And for those of the raid team who couldn't stand AQ40, celebrating our decision with virtual backflips, Kadrok and like-minded completionists only grew more disgusted at our choice to throw in the towel.

Kerulak takes some flak from a non-raiding player,
Orgrimmar

The Need For a Gate

Before we set foot in Naxxramas, we needed all of our players to gain access, a process known as "attunement". Molten Core and Blackwing Lair both had an attunement that was easily digested: run a long dungeon and collect a quest item at the end. AQ40, meanwhile, had no attunement whatsoever (save the server-wide unlocking of the entire instance). But Naxxramas had a different plan in store for us. Stationed in Light's Hope Chapel stood a series of NPCs revealing the attunement quest to us. There was no challenge, no dungeon to run or quest item to return -- in fact, the attunement was completely free...

...if you were exalted with The Argent Dawn.

Now, if it turned out that you hadn't run 10-Man Stratholme or Scholomance a billion times already, no problem! You could also gain access to the floating necropolis for a small fee of 30 gold if The Argent Dawn saw you were at least Revered. Even those who were only Honored could buy their way in, though the cost was raised to 60 gold for these less dedicated folks.

Let me take a moment to propel you back into a game where having gold was practically unheard of. In those days, there was no such thing as a daily quest -- a quest you could repeat over and over, racking up vast amounts of wealth. In Vanilla, once you walked the entire surface of Azeroth, completing every quest in every zone, quests no longer became your primary source of income. From that point on, money came from either playing the Auction House, or farming high-level mobs until your eyes bled. And when carrion grubs in the Plaguelands dropped 2s each, it was a long, hard road to 30g.

The grinding became so incessantly awful that I often forgot why I was there in the first place, gaining temporary bursts of insanity that caused me to make bets with myself on what I would hit first, the reputation or the gold cost. In a burst of craziness, I'd scribble down some notes on how fast I thought I was earning reputation, then compare it to the insanely low income of mob farming. Gold...it was definitely going to be the Gold that wins out. Ha ha! I told you, game. I told you!! I'm totally going to get the gold before I max my rep. 

Reality would quickly snap back like a bucket of water being dumped on me as I sat at the computer. What the fuck was I doing? Was this why I swore never to touch another MMO again? Why hadn't I listened to myself? Who considers this 'fun'? Didn't I learn my lesson in EverQuest?

"If they know what's good for them, they'll ditch any and all concepts of attunement in the expansion", I typed into guild chat.

"They do it to gate the raid," Kadrok replied, "Not everyone belongs in there."

"Nor should they be! But for God's sake, can't the player's skill...or lack thereof....be the gate itself? There has to be a better solution than this."

"They should just do it off of your gear", typed Gutrippa, adding to the conversation.

"Yeah, exactly! This makes perfect sense. Examine a person's gear. If you don't have the gear, don't let people in the instance!"

Blain typed his two cents into guild chat, "Gear doesn't make a bad player good tho."

In that brief moment of lucidity, the Naxxramas attunement made sense. For all the technology that WoW was bringing to the table, a good ol' fashioned grind was the most practical way to keep non-raiders at bay. A casual would look at a grind like that and give it the middle finger. There'd be no complaints of 'the instance is too hard', or 'we can't figure out these bosses', because players who used those excuses as a crutch wouldn't even get a taste test. The rest of us might bitch to ourselves quietly...but then knock it out. Besides, players that didn't raid had other opportunities to take their jealous rage out on us, spitting on us in public at the sight of our gear. A /spit is much easier than, say, getting off your ass and making it happen. They were unwilling to pay their entrance fee like the rest of us. Those players would always exist, but the logistics behind these gates diminished their opportunity to bitch. Of what little animosity that remained towards our progress and success, we ate.

---

I won my own bet: the 30 gold pieces accumulated first. To this day, Kerulak is still not exalted with The Argent Dawn.