4.15. Same Team

"Gryph vs. Gryph"
Arwork by Ol'ga Bol'shakova

The Sickest Sense

One spring day in 1985 I learned two things about my friend Stephen: that my Coleco Vision's game controllers were compatible with his Commodore 64, and that he was a thief. Before I tell this tale, let me start with an apology. Perhaps I'm being hasty with my labels. "Friend" might be pushing it. Let's agree on something a bit more conservative, say "acquaintance".

This was my first lesson in reading people, and learning that ulterior motives were very real.

Geeks were a rare commodity in the small town of Parksville, so I took what I could get. I invited Stephen over after school, even though I knew I'd be a crummy host. Gaming options were limited. We were one year in on a digital deficit, thanks to the video game crash of '84. It would be a few years before the big N invaded North America, kicking off the 8-bit revolution. These were all minor obstacles in the quest to get a gaming fix. The biggest hurdle was keeping Mom at bay.

She hated video games. Hated the sight of them. Hated the noise. More accurately, she hated what they did to me. Sitting, staring for hours, wide-eyed, rolling games like Zaxxon and Donkey Kong, to the exclusion of everything else: all responsibilities, all homework, all chores. All common sense. Video games had a detrimental effect on me, and Mom read me like a book. She despised them, and so, my game library suffered as a result. I owned the two aforementioned cartridges, and a third: BC's Quest for Tires, based off a Sunday comic strip where the only thing more prehistoric than its setting was its jokes.

Donkey Kong, Zaxxon and BCs Quest for Tires...that was the extent of my video game library for nearly a decade; I wouldn't be allowed to make another video game purchase for six more years.

I wanted to race straight to my room to fire up the Coleco Vision, but manners compelled me to introduce Stephen. Mom smiled, shook his hand, and asked him how he liked our school, the teachers, his classes -- typical small talk one might expect of a mom. He rattled off a mix of "yah", "nah", "I dunno", then excused himself to hit the bathroom. I spun to resume my race to the bedroom, images of spaceships and explosions dancing in my head. A firm grip on my arm stopped me. Before I had a chance to give her a what?, she leaned in and delivered a commanding order under a hushed tone,

"Do not bring him around this house again...ever. He is trouble waiting to happen."

Her words only registered for a split second, quickly erased by images of Mario leaping over barrels. But in that split second in the mind of an 11 year old, I had to wonder one thing: What was it exactly that she sniffed out? He couldn't have been in her presence for more than a couple of minutes. How he spoke? What he wore? Uncombed hair? Or was it something else entirely, something you can't put your finger on, but you know it when you see it. An uneasy feeling in your gut when you look it straight in the eye and you know something isn't right. Mom called it a vibe. And whatever vibes Stephen was giving off, I wasn't getting them. Was it youth? Inexperience?

...or a mad addiction to video games suppressing them?

---

Three weeks later, Stephen returned the favor, and invited me over to his place for a gaming session. Unlike my sparse options, however, Stephen's bedroom yielded a mother lode of Commodore 64 games. The computer's little details didn't escape my notice: the tan coloring of its plastic casing, the single row of brown "F" keys along the right edge (holding one of them down was a common requirement in loading C-64 games)...and, of course, the two 9-pin connectors engineered into the right wall of the computer case.

Game controllers in the early 80s were pretty much the same. They were either analog or analog/digital hybrids (8-way controllers usually fell into this latter group) but most all shared a common connector: the DE 9 Subminiature or "D-Sub" for short. Forming the shape of a trapezoid, the joystick cable led to a female connector in two rows (5 bottom, 4 top), and the game console provided the male counterpart. D-Sub controllers were prolific, compatible with Atari 2600s, 7800s, the Intellivision II, the ZX Spectrum, the Amstrad and Amiga. Eventually, D-Subs would provide support for the Sega's Mark III and Mega Drive...or what we'd call the Sega Master System and Sega Genesis, respectively. The pinouts -- how the 9 pins actually mapped to their respective game controllers -- didn't always match up exactly, but in most cases, compatibility was surprisingly good.

One such compatibility was the Coleco Vision and the Commodore 64.

The Commodore 64 computer had two game controller
ports that were compatible with Coleco Vision paddles (right)

Blinded by Obsession

After the thirty minute bike ride to Stephen's house, I dropped the navy green backpack on the floor of his bedroom, unlaced it, and produced two black Coleco Vision paddles.

"You think they'll work?" Stephen asked, grabbing the connectors and jamming them into the ports.

"One way to find out..."

The game of choice to test the two controllers was Spy vs. Spy, a simultaneous 2-player game pitting the infamous cone-nosed MAD Magazine characters against one another in a battle of tricks, traps, and treasure. Two player games were rare in 1985; if they existed, players typically took turns trying to beat each other's high score. A game supporting two players at the same time was a rare luxury.

The controllers worked beautifully.

Stephen shared a bedroom with his older brother Cameron. Once Cam saw the dual joystick action, he wanted to get in on it, so we rotated him via "winner stays" rules. Round after round, traps were set and triggered, heads were cracked with batons, bombs exploded in unsuspecting faces, and angelic spies floated up to heaven. It was a blast. But like all blasts, time flew by, and eventually, the time came to depart. I bagged the game controllers back up, hit the bathroom before the long ride home, then said good-bye to Stephen and his brother, and headed out.

There were no surprises on the way home. I took the same route I always took, taking a short cut through a wooded area along a bike path worn down by kids in the neighborhood, cutting across a shopping mall's parking lot, and down through a neighbor's unkempt yard. I never fell off my bike. I wasn't robbed at gunpoint. There wasn't any period of time I was without my backpack; it was cinched closed and laced tightly, and hung off my shoulders for the duration of the ride.

You can imagine my shock, then, when I got home, opened it up and found...no controllers inside.

I frantically rewound the memories of my ride home, but there was no event to single out. I grabbed the phone and called Stephen. Had I left them there? He checked...nope, not there. Must have fallen out on the way home. I hung up, and tears began to well. Could they have possibly fallen out? It made no sense; the backpack was closed the entire ride home. The more I wracked my brain for an explanation, the more upset I became. Most frightening of all was facing Mom's wrath -- the only thing she hated more than video games was dealing with the fallout. Those game controllers were not cheap, not replaceable, and would bring a swift end to my video game addiction. I half expected her to rejoice in hearing they were gone.

Mom had a very different response than what I expected.

As I stood in the kitchen, blubbering, and still clinging to the empty backpack, Mom picked up the phone and began dialing. She butted a du Maurier cigarette into an ashtray as she waited. Someone picked up. Her tone was cordial, with perhaps just a tinge of condescension.

"Yes, Hello? To whom am I speaking? Cameron? Yes, hello there Cameron, this is Shawn's mother. Are you Stephen's brother? Oh, you are! Good, well, I'm calling to let you know that Shawn seems to have forgotten his game controllers at your house. Is someone going to be there at the house in the next hour? Because he's going to be coming by to pick them up, so when would be a good time for that?"

A pause.

"Yes, I heard the conversation earlier, I'm not interested in listening to any of that right now. Yes. Uh-huh. Yes, well I really don't care about that story, Cameron, as I said earlier, perhaps you weren't listening. His controllers are at your house, and he's going to be coming by to pick them up..."

A longer pause. I watched Mom's face. Her eyes narrowed.

"...Well, if that's your story, Cameron, then I have a story for you: I've called the cops on you and your thieving little brother, and they are going to be at your door in the next fifteen minutes unless you cough those game controllers up. I'm gonna wager a guess that your parents won't be too thrilled about that. We'll see you in fifteen minutes!"

...and she hung up.

I stood for a moment, wiping the tears away, staring wide-eyed at Mom. She hadn't called the police. Can...can you do that? She drew another cigarette from the pack, looking back at me in...disgust? Or was it pride? How much longer am I going to have to fight your battles for you, son? Or maybe, it was sometimes, when people play dirty, you have to play dirty.

The minute of silence ended abruptly as the telephone rang out. Mom answered, speaking in the same faked politeness.

"Hello? Yes, he's right here, just a moment!", and she held the phone out toward me.

"...Hello?"

"......yeah, this is Cam. Come get your controllers."

In-game screenshot of Spy vs. Spy,
based on the MAD Magazine comic strip
created by Antonio Prohias

Two to Tango

Parksville grew rapidly in the 80s, and "Town of" had to be replaced by "City of" before I left grade school. Rapid growth forced limited classrooms to deal with their size by instituting a 3/4 and 4/5 split. This was how I first met Stephen's older brother Cameron, who (in Grade 4) ended up seated across from me, a lowly Grade 3er. Cam was a smug piece of work with a penchant for flicking stones as adeptly as he flicked insults. But his true versatility came in how he affected the room.

He hung with the best and brightest bullies in school...or at least they seemed to be bullies. By themselves, a good number of those kids were no worse nor better behaved than the other. For whatever reason, Cam brought out the very worst in them. He was a button pusher, and knew what buttons of mine to push. Say the right thing, and watch Zurba fly into a rage -- it must have been hilarious for him, a free show every day with minimal investment on his part. I was small, weak, and Mommy fought my battles for me, so "crybaby" worked particularly well; I was a bully's dream come true. What upset me more than the name calling was his effect on people. With Cam in the room, everybody was a bully.

I had few friends, and even fewer that shared a passion for video gaming. In that small town of Parksville, a gaming nerd was a rare treasure to stumble upon. So rare, in fact, that it was easy to turn a blind eye to any riff-raff it happened to attract. It was our mutual love of video games that brought us together and allowed us to leave our differences at the door. This was my reasoning, at least... my naive and inexperienced reasoning.

I was quick to forget any atrocities Cam committed against me on the school playground, if it meant looping him in for the next round of Spy vs. Spy. I never stopped to ponder whether or not it was all just an act, that he was excited because of his own self-interests, especially at the convenience of having game controllers where, formerly, there were none.

There was nothing complex about this first lesson. No diplomacy required to understand motivation, no finessing people to extract any subtext. It was very simple: some people want what you have, and they'll do whatever it takes to get it. And when it happens, it won't be a series of strategic moves to topple you from a kingdom, no mosaic of plotting, no navigation of political minefields. They'll take what they want, and the story will end. You'll want an explanation for why you were betrayed, but you won't get one...because there won't be one.

There is no betrayal where loyalty never existed.

When I showed up to collect my controllers, Stephen didn't answer the door. There was no apology. No hung head in defeat at being caught red-handed, and no show of remorse. Instead, the ringleader was the one with the balls to face me, standing on the front steps with the controllers jammed into a plastic grocery bag. Hours earlier, we were all on the same team, playing video games and having a blast, and all was right with the world.

"Here" was the only thing he said to me as he shoved the bag in my face. I looked back into his eyes, to see if I could get a read on whatever Mom got from Stephen. He stared back with a cold smirk, no hint of defeat, no acknowledgement of loss; an unremarkable vibe of apathy. I got the message, loud and clear:

I was never on your team, loser. 

4.12. Water Under the Bridge

The first gift my wife bought me.
Supports the swap trick without a mod chip.
I know. She's awesome.

Intake

Being married to a probation officer has its perks.

The biggest regret, looking back, was how easily I swept family under the rug. This was the six year mark as guild leader, but my sixteenth year as husband. Neglecting her to ensure the guild stayed focused through 40-Man raids was poor judgement on my part; very representative of life decisions thus far. Turn the clock back a bit further, and you'll come to learn about the day my wife was keeled over, puking her guts out with the stomach flu on the very day movers were arriving. They continued to cart boxes out to their truck, while I wrapped up "just one more round" of Team Fortress Classic. I was bona fide "Husband of the Year" material. One of my first offenses involved the purchase of a PlayStation game with money set aside for groceries. Street Fighter Alpha, to be specific. Great port, by the way. Included a fantastic remixed soundtrack that could be toggled on/off in-game; I highly recommend it if you enjoy 2D fighting games, and own a classic PSX.

Did I mention that the first generation PlayStation was the first gift she ever bought me? True story. So, on the downside, we ate a lot of ramen that month -- but if you came over to visit, there would definitely be some SFA going down.

Jul and I had come a long way from those early days of marriage, but it was only really now coming to fruition, sixteen years later. I hate thinking about how much she shouldered, particularly when Descendants of Draenor was birthed. It was unfair and unkind, wholly representative of my fixation on video games. It wasn't until around Wrath of the Lich King that I started to become aware of the impact my decisions were having on her, and slowly, I began trading excuses for acceptance. Eventually, we could have evenings together again, share in the day, and just plain talk. And Jul always gave an ear, particularly when it came time for me to broach the subject of people analysis.

I like to think my wife has proficiency in reading people -- since she made it her career.

---

"The word you're looking for is 'recidivism'."

"Sure, OK. Repeat offenders, right? And what's that look like for alcoholics?"

Jul shook her head, waiting for a response. She hoped I would finish the sentence, "...in what context? What kinds of crimes are we talking about?"

"Oh, I get it. Like domestic abuse or theft..." I said.

"Yeah! The demographics change based off of the type of crime."

I paused, cycling through all the ways I might try to criminally classify inappropriateness and abuse, which is about as close to a "crime" as a guild leader could get in categorizing d-bag guild members.

"Well, if someone is out wandering randomly in public, drunk off their ass, hurling insults."

"That could still be a number of different types, it could be civil disobedience...if the person is directing threats to someone in particular, it could be public harassment. There's public drunkenness, the list of statutes is long, and quite often it isn't really clear!"

"Public intoxication isn't really punishable in the state of Colorado is it?"

"You can plea down, though, from a more serious offense, and still end up serving probation."

This was becoming more complex than what I gave the original question credit for. Jul sensed frustration, "...what are you really trying to ask, here?"

"I...am struggling with whether or not I should let someone back into the guild. Someone that was verbally abusive to another player. The guy has a history with the drink. We've talked about it. He's remorseful. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt but...I just wish there was a way I could make a better judgement call on this."

"Look. Just because we have a by-the-book classification for each offense, that doesn't mean there's an answer for each individual person you can just look up. If you go into the office and have a pat response for each and every case that gets dropped on your desk...you're not doing your job."

She was right. The college kid that had one too many drinks after a party and killed his friend might be the same offense as a tipsy constructor worker accidentally dumping a load of lumber on a co-worker...but they're still two human beings. They have histories. They have agendas. Remorse is sincere or manufactured. People regret their decisions, or are indifferent. They are capable of growing...or not. What it takes to sort this all out is the read. Sitting them across the desk. Smelling the alcohol on them after getting a denial that they've gone near a bottle at all. Watching them fidget and turn away when asked if they're attending alcohol treatment classes. The crime is important to sort people into generalized punishment categories, but getting a read on someone is crucial in determining who gets another chance.

Except that I had no desk to sit them down at. No way to smell breath. No way to see fidgeting and dishonesty. All I had to work with was their voice over Ventrilo, and a history of bad behavior.

My wife passed her own sentence on the case, "Without knowing anything else, I'd say give him a second chance -- after it is made clear that this behavior won't be tolerated again. After that, he's out."

Mature assists Mashakana in clearing elemental
rifts, earning "Tripping the Rift",
Blade's Edge Mountains

Little Miss Chatterbox

"I've been contemplating having Bulwinkul come back to DoD. How do you feel about that?"

Lexxii seemed surprisingly casual about it, "I'm fine with it."

I checked again, offering her another chance to back out, "You sure? I mean...I'm not at all comfortable with his treatment towards you. It was completely out of line."

"No, it's fine. I mean, I was just really surprised...is all. When I started to make the suggestions about bite orders on blood queen, he just blurted that shit out over Vent and I was really just not expecting that at all. But...y'know. No big deal. Whatever."

"Ok, well...I'll have another chat with him about it. And to be clear, he'll be on an extremely short leash."

"Thanks. It's good to finally get some support around here. Y'know, Bullshark and I really feel like we've been welcomed by you guys, and to be honest, haven't really gotten any kind of support like that from guild leaders in the past. I mean it really got going with the some of the drama queens in Final Hour, and they would just throw us under the bus, y'know? It happened a lot. This is the thanks we get? It's pretty sad."

"We're thankful to have both of you. Have you given any thought to healing leadership in Cataclysm?"

"No! I mean, no, not at all, I didn't even know that you were changing the line-up!"

"Well, I'm not entirely sure what's going on with Guns, yet, but there may be a spot in the near future." The guild survey told a clearer story. Guns tied Eacavissi for "Officer Least Noticeably Helping Hanzo run the Guild." Not the greatest badge you'd want to pin to your chest. "Do you think you're up for the task?"

"Well, yeah, I mean, I have a lot of great ideas about how we could really get the healers more involved in some overall strategy discussion, I mean, when we get down to it, there could a lot more adjustment that we do between our specs, especially since I've already sort of bounced a lot of those ideas off Neps and he gets it, y'know? I mean, if we can push our throughput by going with more disc, I'm perfectly fine with that. I mean, I've pretty much been Holy this entire time, but switching to Disc was phenomenal on Sindragosa, it made that fight so much easier to deal with it. and we could do a lot more of that in Cata. As long as people chill out."

Discussions with Lexxii very often went this way; I didn't mind. It gave me a chance to practice listening, which is something a few guild leaders could use a lesson in.

"Give it some thought, and we'll talk more as we approach raid ready. I feel you're the best candidate because you know the healing assignments now, you're proactive, involved, and you're a first class healer."

As it stood, Lexxii was the strongest healer in the line-up. If the raid team could see past the chatter, she'd be fine.

Mature kills one of Falnerashe's alts,
wrapping up "Wintergrasp Ranger",
Lake Wintergrasp

Leveling The Field

Lake Wintergrasp was barren and empty. News of elemental spawnings began to trickle in from all corners of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms. Players going about their business were subjected to tremors, as the earth slowly shook, preparing to birth Azeroth's next coming attraction. As such, players diverted their attentions away from Northrend in an attempt cast themselves into aforementioned elemental invasions. And so, with the playerbase migrating away from Northrend, the scheduled outdoor warzone of Lake Wintergrasp held little value for players preparing for the next iteration of war.

I surveyed the list of outstanding achievements and noted that Wintergrasp Ranger remained unfulfilled. And it was here that I drew Shadowmourne once more, preparing to sink it into the alter ego of a ex-guildie who hadn't set foot in our guild in many moons: Falnerashe.

Years had gone by since The Tantrum. That's a lot of time for players to walk past one another on the same server. Each time Falnerashe ran by, en route to a dungeon, or off to participate in some makeshift raid somewhere, I took note of the guild name Triple Zero, for no other reason than it was not Descendants of Draenor.

Her exit had not been kind. She left us in the worst way possible, scathing accusations, fingers pointing and all of the blame sat squarely with me and my mistreatment of her group. She was disgusted, watching half-assed players rise to prominence in the 25-Man roster while she and her friends, folks like Lhaktar and Teras, remained sidelined. Though she never actually asked me for my reasons, I wouldn't have been able to pin them down. All I had was the gut to help govern my decisions; to an outcast guildie, it must have looked at lot like favoritism.

I didn't know much about how things went for her, post DoD. A few in the guild stayed in touch with her, Annihilation, Neps, the PvPers that would make the rounds, and throw together unofficial raids in the wee hours of the morning when the rest of us were trying to plan for the next work day. I was curious if she was still resentful, bitter about the exit. At the very least, I knew the unfortunate circumstances surrounding Lhaktar's passing, and knew that they were close friends. As much as Falnerashe and I had not seen eye to eye in those earlier years, I had to think the loss of her friend was rough, I would never swear that on any of my worst enemies.

So, I was surprised, then, when Drecca mentioned her in passing, over a conversation we discussed about knocking out a Heroic Lich King in 10-Man. Drecca said she'd been offering up services and they had been getting unofficial help from Fal for quite some time -- there wasn't a lot of activity in Triple Zero these days. I had doubts about approaching her, but Annihilation helped push those aside. "Dude, just send her a tell. Get the cricket chirping. You know she will..."

So I did. And she responded.

We talked about DoD, about Triple Zero. We talked about Lhaktar and about Cataclysm. She admitted there were things that went on that she wasn't happy about; I too admitted fault at not giving people management the focus it deserved. We talked about the proverbial water potentially having the possibility...maybe...of running under the bridge. And, of course, I had to make my pitch. Cataclysm was going to be rough, especially for the old-schoolers. Guild structures were going to come apart and pugging dungeons and raids would be a thing of the past. Did she want to put up with that? Should she have to? If I could commit to keeping her away from the drama, and mediating issues so all she needed to worry about was raiding, perhaps the 2nd time around might have a better outcome.

And lo and behold, Wintergrasp Ranger was something she was looking to wrap up as well.

So, Falnerashe and I agreed to wipe the slate clean, and start from scratch. And what better way to do that, then by driving our weapons into each other?

4.8. They Shot Jane Fonda, Didn't They?

Guild Leader in training,
1983 (8 yrs. old)

Arbitrary Math

The keepsakes in my mother's hope chest smelled of wet newspapers and old people. I stifled a gag while sorting through bags containing personal history I preferred to ignore. Down the hall, in the living room, a faint outline of my hand could be seen on the wall above the TV, visible only from a certain sunny angle. A dufflebag containing my XBox and laptop sat near the base of the TV stand, neglected. Wishful thinking had led me to pack them, even though, deep down, I knew.

I wasn't entirely clear why Mom asked me to rifle through my childhood memories: an old Boy Scout uniform, various bowling trophies, photos of me in the little league softball and soccer teams. A never-ending stream of activities designed to keep me out of the house. All I wanted to do was to sit down and play a video game, uninterrupted. There was no evidence to that in this wooden box. Her and I had a difference of opinion on what constituted time well spent.

Wandering the house of my youth felt strange. Flowery patterns lined the walls on the way to my former bedroom, long stripped of its plastic cartridge smell. I'd spent many nights there devouring Sonic the Hedgehog, Street Fighter II and Samurai Shodown. It was in that room I wrote a FAQ about a fighting game which, in turn, led me to make new online friends, one of whom was Zoid. It was my first glimpse outside the tiny world of of Qualicum Beach. Holy shit! There were actually other people like me: gamers who recorded themselves playing video games and preferred Yuzo Koshiro over Metallica or Smashing Pumpkins. But with the joy of having a Sega Genesis, a NeoGeo, a SuperNES and more, came with the apprehension that my mother had the power to take them away at any time, for any reason. It was leverage she liked to hold over me.

Groundings were a battle of wits in my teen years, once the leather belt stopped working. The most miniscule infraction would send her into a rage. Like a child, I'd be forced to put the game console high up on the shelf in her bedroom closet. She suspected I hooked it up when she was at work, sneaking game time, so she one-upped me by placing a penny on the console. She'd leave for work, I'd grab the console, and the penny would fall silently to the floor. She'd come home and accuse me of defying her, I'd deny it. The groundings were endless. As of this writing, I'm still serving several grounded for life sentences.

I continued to sift through the items buried in Mom's hope chest, stopping to consider the room I was in. The ol' 286 used to be in here. It was a piece of shit computer that was the cheapest available. High school friends were up to 386s by this point, and Ultima VII was all the rage -- that, and Wing Commander II. I couldn't run Ultima VII on my 286, missing out on perhaps the best game in the series, and as for Wing Commander, well...this was the room she had once caught me playing during a lunch hour break. She saw the strategy guide laying next to the computer, and tore that book into a million pieces.

Yeah, it was a piece of shit computer, but I found a way to make it work. After winning the childhood-long battle of convincing Mom that I could use a computer for things other than games, the truth couldn't have been far from her mind. Mom was always watching, always waiting for me to mess up the rules. One hour of homework + One hour of trumpet practice = one hour of computer. I ended up pitching the trumpet, one of the few classes I enjoyed and excelled at, in my quest to balance the effort with the reward. One hour of studying for one hour of games, Mom. That's how it should be.

Mom's arbitrary math was yet another tactic, and one that had a way of grinding any lasting enjoyment out of anything I took pleasure in. Several years before giving up music, she caught me sneaking by the local arcade, trumpet crammed into the back of my bike's newspaper baskets. The "Fun Center", owned and operated by a sweet elderly couple, had come to recognize me by the trumpet case. Always friendly, they called me by name as I meandered through the darkened room, eyes on games like Renegade and Rush 'n Attack.

Mom had a hunch. One day, she played some of the kids I hung around with, getting them to cough up hints about my possible arcade shenanigans. She called the arcade and sweet-talked the couple into giving me up; they never suspected her ulterior motives. Mom had a way with people -- she not only read them like a book, but could adjust her demeanor with the ease of a professional actor to get what she wanted. The Fun Center debacle mathed out as follows: Five visits to the "smoke-filled", "drug-infested" video game shithole, multiplied by the three lies I allegedly told -- denying my having ever been there -- which brought the grand total to fifteen leather belts across the ass.

My newspaper delivery went slowly and painfully that week.

Unvacation

Nearing the bottom of the chest, I pulled out a worn plastic bag with a few elementary school books inside. One revealed a piece of history I'd sooner forget: my fifth grade report card. Fifth grade was the most hellish year of school in my academic career. A fat, bearded man with a British accent and an obvious distaste for children drove every student’s grades into the ground that year. Even Nina, the star, straight A student, earned Cs and Ds. There was no hope in Hell for me. Driscoll had done me one better, though, making sure to twist the knife. I flipped the card open and reread his comments, even though I’d committed them to memory years earlier:

Shawn would do much better in class if he spent more time on task, and less time drawing pictures of video game characters on his notebooks.

At the time, I knew what kind of punishment those words would bring, and I remembered how Mr. Driscoll knew so little of the impact of his comments. I held the report card at my desk as tears welled up in my eyes; he looked down at me, all smiles and hand gestures as he described the examples of Mario and turtles I sketched into the corners of my math and English papers, as if I didn't already know. I was certain to see the belt that night.

Mom remembered the report card -- there it lay in her hope chest, her wooden box filled with her precious memories of the myriad activities I was never interested in. The only evidence that reflected my actual interest -- video games -- was a piece of paper that fueled her suspicions that games would somehow, undoubtedly, ruin my life.

I bundled up the childhood artifacts and stuffed them into an old grocery sack, wondering when it would be, exactly, that I'd get some time to myself.

---

Mom kept me busy the entire time. If we weren't taking care of dishes or walking the dogs down to the park, she was encouraging us to go out, to go show the kids the beach, to let them roll around in the sand and collect up shells. Take them out to the mini-golf where you always used to go. Take them out. Go. Do. Enjoy the fresh air, the warm breeze, the sun, the sunset. Enjoy life. Enjoy it, son, before it's too late.

Her distractions were grating on me. I wanted to write. I needed to write. My guild rules needed revising and this was when I had intended to get most of my work done. I was out of the city, away from the game, on vacation. Yet as each day plodded along there was more to do, more to see, and more to keep busy with, thanks to my mother's unrelenting schedule. There was no time to work on loot guidelines. No time to write guild rules. No, there was never time for that.

Our first day there, while Mom was at work, I thought I'd hook the Xbox up. While reaching past the stereo equipment to plug the cables into the TV, I lost my balance and caught the wall for leverage. I thought nothing of it. As luck would have it, the living room patio door faced west, allowing the sun to beam in at the end of the work day. Anyone entering through the front door had a perfect view of its light reflecting off the wall, catching my hand print in the process. And in a disappointed tone, Mom reminded of how the wall was ruined, and would have to be re-painted and papered. Ever melodramatic.

Family Tradition

The extra baggage I returned home with,
following the summer vacation of 2010

The relationship I have with my Mom, now in adulthood, is quite awkward, offset only by her slightly twisted sense of humor. We have little in common, although we both love music and movies. We can even joke about how awful Joan Crawford was, what with her whipping her child with coat hangers, yet mentions of the actual movie Mommie Dearest always hung heavy with a deep unsettling irony. I avoid discussing topics surrounding video games and tech in general, yet any time my career comes up, she responds inexplicably, "Son, I always knew you'd do well in computers." It's laughable. Still, I can't quite brush away those years of brutality that put Mortal Kombat to shame.

Toward the end of the vacation, I still hadn't had an opportunity to gather my thoughts about WoW, yet there I sat, compelled to spend another evening discussing movies with my mother. I suddenly remembered something she had once told me as a child: the worst movie she had ever seen.

"Didn't you tell me...this must've been years ago...it was something about shooting horses?" I asked, bringing it up.

She let out a single laugh, "Ha! They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? Absolute worst movie of all time, son. It was awful. Just torture to watch."

The title was misleading. It had nothing to do with horses. Instead, it told the story of a dance marathon held during the Great Depression. She nodded in agreement, "Yes. Yes, that is exactly what it was about. Your Grandfather and Grandmother dragged me to that, son, and I had to sit through the entire two hours of it. Around and around they went, over and over. It was ridiculous. Complete waste of time and energy."

I never understood why, until I did some arbitrary math of my own. Pollack's Academy-nominated film came out in 1969; Mom would've been fourteen years old. I imagined a rebellious teenage girl, forced to sit in a theater, as Red Buttons and Jane Fonda circled the dance floor for two straight hours. I imagined her agonizing, wanting to be done with the horrific nightmare so she could return to her bedroom, with its dangling spiders and black lights, to crank Iron Butterfly and Jimi Hendrix and forget the insanity of the movie. I pictured her withdrawing from her parents, wondering Who are these people? and Why the hell did this guy just blow Jane Fonda away? And I could see Grandpa and Grandma sitting there, taking it all in: family time at the movies. Because they could. There didn't need to be any other reason. They were in charge.

Just like she was.

Just like I was.

---

The morning after I arrived home from vacation, I took the bag of belongings pulled from my mother's hope chest and hung it in the closet. Then, I sat down at my computer, opened up my State of the Union draft -- wherein I proclaimed the death of the 10-Man teams in DoD -- and deleted it.

3.39. Flying the Red Flag

Mature fills in on a Team Starflex clear of Ulduar,
earning "The Secrets of Ulduar (10 Player)",
Ulduar

What It Feels Like For a Raid Leader

Failing is, apparently, a subjective term.

Cheeseus' observation was wildly askew from my own, his intentions and motivations deeply affected by his past perceptions of hardcore raiding. I assumed this would be a challenging point-of-view to alter when I brought him on as raid leader -- but to see his attitude remain unwavering in the face of all that we had done was a tough pill to swallow. In his funk of failure, we were surrounded by evidence to the contrary. Five meta achievements remained on Glory of the Ulduar Raider (25 Player). Work would begin on Trial of the Grand Crusader that week. Plans were already set into motion as to how we would leverage the guild's resources and assign the next legendary weapon. Two fully equipped 25-Man raids were running on entirely different schedules each week. No bickering or in-fighting. No pending exodus. Morale at an all-time high. My inbox flooded with guild applications. And losing absolutely no one to further progressed guilds. To be quite honest, it was one of the first times in the history of Descendants of Draenor that we had very little to regret.

"I think we are a huge success in the grand scheme of raiding guilds that walk the casual line very closely. What would you quantify as our 'hard failures'?"

Cheeseus was very quick to point to the fine print.

"No hard modes, save those that have been nerfed."

His former days of Sunwell clearing were catching up with him. In our eyes, it was as different as night was to day. Reflecting upon our earlier years of wiping to trash, the rubber band had been pulled back, sling-shotting us forward into a new world where raiding was our oyster. But this gratified picture of our history came through misty, jaded eyes. Eyes that had bled and suffered; that had dealt with the loss of good people to reasons that were still tough to deal with. We'd scraped the bottom of the barrel and felt our egos singed and depleted. Today, Descendants of Draenor had been given new life. We were humbled to call ourselves a successful casual/hardcore raiding guild without having our moral compass spinning like a centrifuge in the process.

These things mattered little to an ex-hardcore raid leader.

The eyes of a rogue that drove his blades deep into Kil'jaeden saw a very different picture of the World. To Cheeseus, guilds like Enigma and Inertia should have been stomped into the dirt months ago. Every man, woman, and Ben in the guild should already have their Iron Bound Proto-Drakes, and be listed in the top ten of the world first raid completion leaderboard. Any attempts to justify poor play should be met with swift and brutal justice. Through these stilted eyes, the many successes Descendants of Draenor enjoyed were clouded by a fog of self-doubt. He saw no great successes; the minutia of realm-first losses crackled through his neocortex like a storm.

I slammed a wall-of-text into the IM window in an attempt to win back my raid leader.

Descendants of Draenor holds the #1 spot on
Deathwing-US for 10-Man (July 2009) as a result
of The Eh Team (Full Link via Wayback Machine)

The Adult Diaper Award

"We're never going to be at a level where we can compete with a guild like Enigma. You have to set your expectations appropriately when comparing our progress to others. Their people, their hours? It's unrealistic to measure our failures against a hardcore guild's successes. Try to remember that there are still guilds out there who can't get past Kologarn. Besides, I gauge guild success on many other criteria, beyond hard modes. Do my guild members work well together and treat each other with respect? Are they constantly bitching about loot or are they hyper-focused on getting content completed? Is it a pleasure to log into the game and Vent and hang with them throughout the week, or would I rather go sort my sock drawer?"

Before he had a chance to respond, I cranked it up a notch in an attempt to identify his personal contributions to our success.

"And in the 10-Man dept, chief...no competition, you've pushed the guild's name up to the top of the charts. You should be very proud of your accomplishments."

Telling an ex-hardcore raid leader that he is successful in 10-Man raids is like congratulating someone on not shitting themselves in public. As much as you'd like it to be a compliment, it isn't.

"Eh, I dunno. I feel like a failure. Between you and I, I'm having serious doubts about if I want to continue to raid lead or not."

I braced for the impact.

"I was hoping that a little break over BlizzCon would help recharge the batteries, but I'm already finding myself logging in on Friday/Sunday in a shitty mood, with a terrible mindset, only to get assailed with Taba's witty 'Cheese has a stick up his ass' followed by 4 hours of retardation over vent, Crasian's hypocritical love of Enigma and what they do, Omaric's suggestions to fix things that aren't broken, Six's 'I don't know why Cheese is being stubborn, I'll talk to him during the week', followed by him crying, then crying over my crying for having to put up with their shit. Then we have retards in raid who not only cause headaches by being there, but also make more 'drama' in officer, which is more fun."

Comes the crushing blow.

"I dunno, I'm trying to work my ass off, but for all the hours I'm putting in, I'm getting nothing but shit-on and people doing whatever they want to anyways, so I don't know how much longer I can put up with it."

It was apparent now that the stability of The Eh Team wasn't as sound a structure as we all assumed of the rock star 10-Man. Political dysfunction was bleeding into the 25-Man and causing Cheeseus' contempt towards our "lackluster" performance to grow like a weed. In turn, he hyper-focused on the 25-Man progression raid and its inability to reach perfection. And then blamed himself.

I turned my head to the side, the shadow of one of my office mates catching my eye, and as they moved on toward their desk, my gaze darted to the window a moment. I stared out, ignoring the view and weather, turning my thoughts inward to try to approach this problem, these million red flags flying in every direction. Do I try to work on individual members of The Eh Team and turn them around, thereby granting Cheeseus some slack? No, this was a bad proposition -- a short-term Band-Aid that might cover the bleeding now...but was certain to fall off the wound down the road. Pouring all of my energy into 'saving' Cheeseus would be fruitless and naive. The game plan shifted to that of contingency. Priority one: vet a new raid leader and get them ready to take the reins asap. He hadn't pulled that ripcord yet, but when he did, I had to be sure the plane still had a pilot.

Guess Who? by Milton Bradley

Bored Games

As it always has been, options were limited in the raid leadership department. I needed someone with staying power; clearly, this was an attribute I misread in Cheeseus. My mind flipped through various pages of in-memory guild profiles, names and faces of characters whirred by like a Descendants of Draenor rolodex. It should have been methodical, a careful scientific process. The psychologist puts his feet up on the couch, pipe lit, reviewing all the human conditions of his patients. He draws smoke into his lungs, and attempts to decipher their goals, their dreams; their integrity, motivations, and biases. I had no such piece of paper resting in a frame on my office wall, nothing to demonstrate I possessed any expertise in reading people and understanding their bizarre behaviors -- their ability to take logical, rational arguments and break them into pieces like a spoiled child abusing toys. I only had my gut. My experiences. My learned lessons of the past. And a general sense that I was heading in the right direction...

...which made my decision-making a little less clinical, and a little more like a game of Guess Who?, Descendants of Draenor™ Edition.

I looked at the freshly set up board in my head, a mix of Elites and officers, and walked the criteria list in an attempt to nail down the next mystery guest. Have they been with DoD a long time? I started flipping faces down: Sixfold, Mangetsu. Have they demonstrated a tendency to lead on their own? Down went Gunsmokeco and Sir Klocker. Have they red flagged me, giving me any reason to doubt their integrity? I reached for the Bretthew card, hesitating only due the incredible turnaround and track-record he'd been maintaining since his return. Tongue in cheek, I flipped his card down. Can they commit to every instance on our raid schedule? Down went more faces. Have you demonstrated expertise in a myriad of classes, not just your main? Another face hit the dirt as I flipped Jungard down. I sat back and looked at the dwindling faces that were left: Neps, Omaric, Dalans.

And then, I remembered Shadowmourne.

Whomever I chose for the next raid leader would most likely be the one to wield the legendary axe first, following in the same footsteps as Neps did with Val'anyr. I looked back at the board.

Do they use a 2-Handed Axe?

Down went the priest and the druid, both of whom had enough on their leadership plate. The last picture stared back at me.

Omaric.

---

"Omaric, got a few minutes?"

"Yeah, gimme a sec. Just finishing this dungeon on Ikey bear. I'm really digging the druid now, think I've decided I'm gonna make it my main."

Well, isn't this nice?