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?

3.33. The Call

The Eh Team displays their Rusted
Proto-Drakes near the entrance to Ulduar,
The Storm Peaks

A Double-Edged Sword

One-by-one, I pulled up the scheduled raid for Ulduar on our sign-up, looked for his name in the rotations, and deleted it. The restructure of the guild had been successful to such a degree that I had actually pulled off the trick of training my players to sign-up months in advance. Today it wasn't a blessing, it was a curse, because I had the frustrating task of deleting his sign-ups, one at a time. Each time I clicked delete, my gut laughed at me. You knew promoting him was going to cause you grief. And now he's walked and left you holding the bag. When are you going to start listening to me? I didn't want to listen. I liked the guy. He was funny, had been with us for years. His love of pizza and tacos was a well-known joke among the raid. He was family. I wanted to temper judgement with compassion, cut him a break for past offenses. Summer had arrived; signups were weak. I needed the best and brightest to tackle hard modes, to see us through Heroic: Glory of the Ulduar, to assist with the crafting of Neps' impending Val'anyr. So, I gambled on him and ignored my gut.

I gambled and lost.

---

A month had passed since The Eh Team had reached their goal. The "Glory of the Ulduar Raider" achievement spam had lit up the screens of all the guildies on the evening of May 27th, 2009, signaling to the rest of us that the spoils were soon incoming. Cheeseus and his crew proudly sent over screenshots boasting their coveted Rusted Proto-Drakes. I encouraged the guild to join in congratulating their hard work, and their many late nights slaving over the various metas. But while there was celebration in the hearts of the The Eh Team members, Cheeseus remained in his perpetual state of funk. Descendants of Draenor's #1 position on Deathwing-US (via 10-Man raiding), had finally fallen from grace. Enigma ended up beating The Eh Team to the Rusted Proto-Drakes, by a factor of only two-and-a-half weeks. With steep competition produced by various 10-Man teams in both Enigma on the Horde side, and Inertia on the Alliance, the resulting tally of achievement points pushed DoD's 10-Man standing down to the number 3 spot. I reminded Cheeseus that his team's work was no less successful, and that the guild was very proud to have him and his members on board. The 10-Man achievements were simply gravy, anyway -- what we cared about the most was 25-Man progression. Nevertheless, Cheeseus clung to the belief that they could have done better, pushed a bit harder, and this weighed on his mind as we carried on into the summer months.

With The Eh Team's completion of "Glory", new faces began to appear out of the woodwork. A few members needed to take a break from the constant push Cheeseus levied on them, which created opportunities for others in the guild to tag along in Eh Team runs. Various players that weren't previously able to field a 10-Man saw this as a chance to secure a Rusted Proto-Drake of their own. Behind-the-scenes negotiations began to take place as various players in DoD would speak to whomever was "their bestest bud" in The Eh Team, finagling a spot to acquire gear and achievements. Cheeseus's weekly 10-Man soon became one rife with new faces. The guild's family-oriented ideals dictating we all pitch in to help one another was starting to rub Cheeseus the wrong way. His way of thinking was more meat-and-potatoes. You want something? Get out there and earn it. I couldn't disagree with that stance as I'd restructured DoD to put greater weight on personal responsibility.

I was on the fence. 

Part of me wanted to push Cheeseus and The Eh Team to extend assistance to folks interested in getting their Rusted Proto-Drake; it's what a guild would do to help each other out. It was the sort of compassion and camaraderie I was striving for us to achieve. Sticking to our guns in that department, in turn, would be a selling point to recruit new folks who had grown tired of hanging around with insufferable, entitled children.

But another part of me thought otherwise. You should be very thankful that Cheeseus and company would even consider having you along at all, riding their coattails as a means to your own personal end. What started out as a very gracious offer soon devolved into an entitled expectation, and their get-out-of-responsibility-free card was the guild tag that sat below their name.

The 25-Man progression team defeats Freya while
protected by one of her three Elders, earning
"Heroic: Knock on Wood",
Ulduar

Chipping Away

Whether or not the drama of dealing with freeloaders in weekly Eh Team runs ate into Cheeseus' psyche, one can only guess. He may have completely put it out of his mind, or it may have been something he chose not to talk about, while it quietly flicked the back of his earlobes as he tried to concentrate on work. But in our continuing discussions regarding 25-Man hard modes, he continued to express his interest in an aggressive pursuit of "Heroic: Glory", along with his frustration of those who held us back. Even as Father’s Day presented another struggle to schedule around, Cheeseus stuck to his guns, insisting we run with who we had while I argued it was a mistake. He hyper-focused on the carries like Prodigie, while I continued to remind him to relax, and I would handle it. We may be held back a bit, but we were still doing very well, progression-wise. If it were up to him, he would cut all of the failures out of the roster. He only wished for perfection, anything less was an excuse. As a result of this mentality, when he turned on the heat about our lack of progression, he would lobby for more Elite promotions, this time in the form of Bretthew, the Paladin I gave a second chance to...but whom had red-flagged me to the point that a promotion would almost entirely be out-of-the-question. And this difference of opinion only served to draw the debate out further.

The work day conversations may have been thick with debate, but at least we saw eye-to-eye when it came time to zone in to Ulduar.

---

Hard modes continued to be chipped away throughout the month of July. The first of this batch was the completion of Heroic: Knock on Wood, defeating Freya with one Elder alive. This achievement was only the beginning of a hard mode, however, as we would have to crank the difficulty up two additional times to acquire to the final meta: kill Freya with all three Elders alive. An easier but no less annoying meta, Heroic: Iron Dwarf, Medium Rare, required us to force Razorscale to slay the Iron Dwarves that were trying to protect her. Whittling them away slowly without accidentally killing them was an exercise in patience in frustration. We held the plated Proto-Dragon in place, writhing, blowing fire in every direction. In many cases, she would ignite a pack of dwarves low in health...but not low enough to kill them. To our great excitement, the process would have to be repeated again and again until each member of the progression team individually claimed the achievement. From there, we moved on to The Assembly of Iron, and ramped up the difficulty a notch, killing Runemaster Molgeim last. It wasn't the achievement we needed for "Heroic: Glory", but it was the next logical step in difficulty. Baby steps...all over again.

July had a great start, but slowed down considerably as the weeks progressed, providing us only two more achievements. The weekend of the 19th scored us the first of this pair -- the completion of Heroic: Three Lights in the Darkness. This kill marked a significant milestone for us, as it would be the precursor to crafting Val'anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings. All we needed was to collect the remaining Fragments, and getting a hard-mode kill guaranteed us at least one, even if our luck failed to produce any others for the duration of the raid. We were still short a few Fragments; my hope was to complete it before the impending vacation at the beginning of August. July's remaining achievement came in the form of Heroic: Siffed, marking our first successful push through Thorim's phase one in under three minutes. But when Sif leapt down into the arena and the achievement flashed up on everyone's screen, we learned very quickly that activating the hard mode -- and actually defeating Thorim with Sif in tow -- would be as different as Wrath was to Vanilla.

The 25-Man progression team defeats Yogg-Saron
with only three Keepers protecting them,
earning "Heroic: Three Lights in the Darkness",
Ulduar

Listening to the Gut

Except for the three-light kill of Yogg-Saron, a particular player was absent from all of these achievements. A player who should not have missed any of them. A player whom held the title of Elite. He had been a familiar face in my raids as far back as Vanilla, and always rocked the damage meters with his effortless control of fire. Over the course of DoD's life, I'd struggled with keeping the roster full of reliable, well-played mages. Many were reliable, but played like shit. Others were damage-dealing machines...if I could get them to show up. Only one remained consistent throughout our many years of slaying internet dragons.

Turtleman.

Through DoD's bad luck with mages, Turtleman had been a shining light in the darkness. But his immature approach to his schedule was biting at his heels. He'd gone missing a number of times, discreetly canceling out of a number of raids -- even when he shouldn't have been allowed to -- taking advantage of a bug in our phpRaider signup application. Yet when he pressured me for a promotion to Elite, I felt obligated by a sense of duty, rewarding his tenure. I ignored my screaming gut as I reached for that promotion button.

Tenure doesn't trump a red flag.

When the call came in to my phone that evening, my gut scrolled a message across my mind like a Hollywood Marquee. You should have known this was coming. Throughout the entire conversation, my mood slowly changed from disappointment to anger. Turtleman sat on the other end of the line, his tone like that of a kid being caught stealing from a store. He confessed. No more progression raiding for him. I asked for explanations; he offered none. I reminded him that this would be it for him, his final chance to ever hold a role of seniority in raids within DoD, that all his loyalty and tenure would be flushed down the toilet. I even gave him an out: give me the two-weeks notice I ask of all Elites to find a replacement, and you can walk away from this amicably. No dice. He mumbled responses, I could tell it was eating him away inside. Embarrassment and shame. Most players would rather walk away than have to deal with facing more disappointment. I demanded that, at the very least, he do the right thing and complete the evening's raid to kill Yogg-Saron with three Keepers. He agreed, and hung up.

I rested my phone down on the desk. Fuck. Pulling up phpRaider, I scrolled to the month of July, and one-by-one, cancelled Turtleman out of every raid he was rotated in for.

3.26. Pants Tres Bien!

The 25-Man Progession team defeats Hodir,
earning "Heroic: I Have the Coolest Friends",
Ulduar

Oh, Dear

By the third weekend of raiding Ulduar, we were face-to-face with Hodir. The second of the four keepers, Hodir hid within a refrigerated tomb. An audience of NPCs stood before him, frozen into position -- a reminder of the bitter elements he wielded. Our task was to break the NPCs out of their icy prisons so that they could offer assistance to us in the defeat of their captor. Freeing the NPCs granted us buffs which would accelerate our execution of the frozen giant. We slowly led him around the circumference of the room and I traded off tanking as his Frozen Blows pummeled us. Other mechanics existed and were no less important: runic discs that indicated incoming icicles, the need to constantly move to prevent Biting Cold from stacking -- but freeing the NPCs was a decisive way to turn the tables in our favor.

Providing, of course, that our raiders made the breakout a priority.

Sowing chaos in Ventrilo was easy to do, thanks to the Flash Freeze mechanic. Everyone felt the need to communicate to the team that now was the time to get into the runic discs that lit the floor. Moments earlier, the discs were a death sentence, the destination of an incoming shower of icicles. Now, they were sanctuary, providing the only protection against the entire room's encasement into ice. And no matter how many times we'd remind players there was no need to call it out...they felt the need to call it out.

When raiders don't follow the strategy, you are filled with an urge to backseat raid lead. Like a nervous tick that you repeat subconsciously -- an unchecked addiction. It takes every ounce of energy to keep yourself from picking at the scab, because you know it won't heal...yet you continue to push your nail under the surface, over and over until the wound is raw. When Blain was my raid leader, he was very good at reminding me to stop. He took control of the situation, no matter how much it might offend me, and reminded me to shut the hell up. This isn't your job. You're not making things better. I'd snap back into reality, and apologize. I'd stop picking. For the moment.

In the absence of his familiar calls in Vent, I was on the receiving end. Everyone felt like they had to take on the responsibility of notifying the raid exactly when and wear to move. And of course, I wasn't the raid leader, so deferred to Cheeseus to handle. The good news was that Cheeseus and his merry men from Eh Team were already schooled on Hodir; moving appropriately was nearly instinctual for them. The 25-Man progression team saw them in action and learned quickly, proving that they were highly tuned raiders. The raiders did this because of the expectations we had set ahead of time. They knew to listen and follow directions...if they wanted any chance to return to the roster the following week.

Well, except for Ben, that is.

In his uniquely adorable fashion, Ben liked to play by his own rules. And even though Cheeseus gave Ben very specific instructions on execution priorities (frozen NPCs / players first, Hodir second), Ben liked to focus all of his damage into the boss, walking away from the kill with a nice record of top DPS. And, as is typical of players whose priority is a spell-rotation rather than the subtle details of ambient incoming damage, Ben fell victim to some falling ice and was killed. So, not only did he not break people out of ice as instructed, his own critically important "top DPS" was quickly 0 DPS, thanks to pushing up daisies while the rest of us dealt with the frost giant. Cheeseus was good at holding his tongue in the raid, but I'd be sure to hear about it over IM the next day.

---

After the excitement of another boss kill died down and the achievement of "Heroic: I Have The Coolest Friends" faded off of our screen, Neps began to solicit bids on the linked loot. One of the items, "Leggings of the Stoneweaver", were a pair of Mail Intellect/Spirit pants, intended for a Restoration Shaman. A few moments after bids started, Neps shot me a whisper.

"Divine is bidding on these."

Ah, God. What the Hell would a Paladin want with Mail Pants?

"He says they're still an upgrade from what he has."

I scanned the roster. Four Shamans, two of them Restoration. One of them...the Healing Officer Kelden.

"They really ought to go to a Shaman off-spec before a Pally, but whatever. If he insists on bidding..."

There was a bit more silence as Neps completed his whispers back to Divineseal, and then spoke in Vent, "Ok, counting down bids...3...2...1, winner is Divineseal."

Comes the laughter. Divine quickly sprung to defend his bid, "Hey, they're an upgrade! And you know...you can never tell when you might get an upgrade, right?"

I glanced down at officer chat.

[Officer][Dalans]: What an idiot.

The 25-Man Progression team poses after
defeating Freya in The Conservator of Life,
Ulduar

Attuned to Nature

We took our leave of that subzero prison, and made our way into a room that was everything Hodir's wasn't. Sunlight bled across a lush forest, pools of water and rich vegetation. The room bore a striking resemblance to Sholazar Basin and Un'goro Crater, known playing grounds of the Titans. It was in this chamber, dubbed The Conservatory of Life, that we'd face our third keeper, Freya. Like the others, Freya's good intentions had been corrupted by a evil presence deep in the crust of the earth. She planned to put a stop to our advances by leveraging her power over nature. We chose to chop down the three elders, deferring hard mode to another day.

Initially, Freya was untouchable, protected from damage by her "Attuned to Nature" stacks. As the fight progressed, she summoned Snaplashers, Storm Lashers, and Ancient Water Elementals, all of whom did not wish to be friends. As we worked through the kinks of her summoned soldiers, she lost stacks of her attunement buff -- eventually leaving her naked as a noob in the woods. That was the signal, and we burned her to the ground, keeping an eye out for any sprouting Blessings of Eonar; foilage that would heal her if left to grow unchecked. It only took a few attempts to get a feel for the craziness of the add tanking. Once we had that polished, Freya succumbed to the might of the 25-Man progression team. Three guardians down, one to go.

Neps began to take bids on Freya's loot, the first of which were tokens for the Tier 8 legs. One such token was the Legplates of the Wayward Conqueror: potential owners were Priests, Warlocks...and Paladins.

"Closing bids, 5...4...3...2...1," said Neps into Vent, "Winner: Divine".

Wow.

[Officer][Dalans]: Really?
[Officer][Cheeseus]: lol

The ability to exchange loot with players that were present when the loot dropped (for up to 24 hours) was a wonderful feature that Blizzard added to the game, to help us mediate some of this loot drama. Unfortunately, that feature wouldn't be implemented for another three months. So I said nothing, but only shook my head in disappointment, a gesture which ended up being completely lost on a person who was hundreds of miles away.

For a Paladin, he wasn't exactly demonstrating the best judgement.

Descendants of Draenor defeats Mimiron, wrapping
"Heroic: The Keepers of Ulduar",
Ulduar

Mimiron, Assemble!

At last, the pièce de résistance. As our third weekend in Ulduar neared its end, the raid took a trip deep into the heart of Ulduar. Our destination was so vastly remote and buried below the surface that we had to board an underground train just to get there. This location, an underground machinist's shop, bore immense pistons and gear cogs with teeth larger than any of us. Electrical currents lept across doorways as we moved into the central lab. We were tiny specs crawling across a cog in the machinations of some far more extraordinary contraption. This was The Spark of Imagination, home to the final of the four keepers of Ulduar, a clockwork gnome named Mimiron.

Mimiron was an intense and complex encounter, split into four different phases. In phase one, Mimiron commandeered a literal tank, a smaller version of Flame Leviathan. Our own figurative tanks had to control it in the center of Mimiron's lab, blowing cooldowns to survive Plasma Blast while avoiding ejected mines. Defeating this tank took us to phase two. A gatling gun emerged from the floor, pivoting and blasting us with no uniform pattern to speak of.  While healers struggled to keep up with the chaotic damage, Mimiron launched missiles from this gatling gun, painting targets of instant death on the ground. Phase three had Mimiron piloting a miniature aircraft. Safely out of melee, he would require a ranged DPS as a tank -- a throwback to old encounters like High King Maulgar, Illidari Council and Leotheras the Blind. The secret to grounding him came in the from of gravity cores which we farmed off his bot defenses.

Once the raid became accustomed to the nuances of all three of these phases, they would be tested one final time in a fourth phase, in which all three units would re-assemble into a single gigantic robot, employing all of the above mechanics against us at once. All three machines had to be killed again...and all three of them had to be destroyed within seconds of each other. Failing to do so meant each component repairing one another, whittling us away in the process.

I remembered back to similarly complex fights like Lady Vashj and Kael'thas and wondered how many nights of work we would need to put into Mimiron in order to execute a kill. I had my answer within the hour. 45 minutes before the scheduled end time for the Sunday evening raid, a broken and badly beaten 25-Man Progression team limped through the third and final attempt on Mimiron. With only 15 of us alive, the last bit of damage was poured evenly into all three parts of Mimiron's gigantic Voltron-style mech, and in one final moment, he twitched, shook, buzzed, and teetered over as his robotic components lost power. "Heroic: The Keepers of Ulduar" was complete, and after three weeks, we were 3/4ths of the way through the instance, earning ourselves another early end to the raid.

Hard mode is gonna suck on this one, I thought. And I couldn't wait.

---

"Hold on a second," said Neps as the cheering died down, "I think Divine's pants are in here somewhere."

Vent lit up with a round of laughter. The ping of a whisper notification caught my eye and I glanced down to my chat window:

[W From][Cheeseus]: We need to talk about Divine after the raid.

I chuckled.

[W To][Cheeseus]: About his supreme lack of sensitivity surrounding loot?
[W From][Cheeseus]: About the fact that he's 7th in healing.

Well. This was a bigger issue than I thought.

We'd only brought six healers to the raid.

Red Flags

During the restructure of the guild near end of The Burning Crusade, one change I felt important to implement was the need to listen to my "gut" more. Even in the face of all logical explanation proving to me that a situation was transparent or a person was sincere, an awkward feeling lingered -- yet I rarely acted on these feelings. In order to increase visibility to my own intuition, my strategy involved documenting those actions, those behaviors, those very situations that made me uneasy. Things players should really think twice about before saying or doing.

What follows is the content of that original forum post, entitled "Red Flags".

As much as I wished for these red flags to be common sense, I learned as a guild leader, the things I perceived to be common sense...aren't always so to others.

Sometimes...you have to spell it out.

---

Kerulak mediates loot drama,
Molten Core

Eacavissi recently coined a term in the Officer Forum I would like to make an (un)official dictionary definition:

Cattledriver (kat-l-drayh-ver)
-noun
1. A reliable member of a raiding team whose presence is a dependency, who leaves the guild suddenly and offers no forewarning or resolution.

When I asked the guild several months ago what your biggest likes and dislikes were, many of the responses (both public and private) alluded to this single, solitary pain-in-the-ass. It upsets guild members, causes drama, and it stresses out the officer core to no end. It is, bar-none, the most difficult thing I have to deal with as a Guild Leader. My quest to reduce the amount of Cattledriving that takes place in DoD moving forward has led me to many of the changes you've seen thus far, with specific regard to the new "Elite" rank, and how people obtain (and maintain) said rank.

If you'll review the requirements for the Elite rank, you'll notice one requirement is slightly vague in definition:

- Must not, at any point in time, have demonstrated any red flags* to any officer, raid leader, or the guild leader.

So, what is a "Red Flag"?

A Red Flag is something you say or do that brings your reliability in DoD into question. These words and actions can vary from the blatantly obvious to the extremely subtle. A lot of the time, red flags manifest when people confuse opinion with fact. Sadly, the most common type of red flags are from a sheer lack of common sense. Whatever the case may be, once I get a red flag from someone, I'm loathe to start handing out promotions, for the fear that I am knowingly going to regret it at some point down the road.

In an effort to paint a picture of a guild leader who has heard a lot of crazy shit over the last four years, I present to you a list of some of my favorite and most memorable red flags I've ever received. I've left people's names out, but it shouldn't take a lot of effort to remember who they were. For your convenience, I've offered my own feedback on each red flag, so that you may gain a better understanding of why this would cause me to prevent you from gaining an Elite rank. You'll note that some of these may not have anything to do with raiding at all.

"Sorry I wasn't able to buy Mana Pots and respec before the raid, I'm flat broke."

-- With the advent of dailies, no single WoW player has any excuse to be out of gold now.

"Oh, I'm not going to bother saving up for an epic mount, it's a complete waste of money."

-- See the previous point, plus a comment like this denotes laziness, a trait we don't want to encourage in raids.

"Ehh, my PvP gear works fine in here, I'm a (healer|dpser|insert role here)."

-- See the previous point. Denotes laziness, as well as a lack of commitment to raiding.

"My wife and I won't be signing up for raids anymore. We got the gear we came for and we prefer PvP anyway; raiding is a colossal pain in the ass, and I don't need a bunch of kids telling me how to play."

-- We don't raid for gear; we raid to see progression and experience content. If your intentions are to gear out for PvP (which doesn't happen much post 1.0), do us a favor and let someone go to a raid in your place that gives a shit about the guild and not about their own personal agenda.

Zanjina reads a complaint from an ex-guildy, after
being rotated out of an Illidan kill,
Shattrath City

"If the raid doesn't even have 25 people signed up, how about this: Why not just cancel it?"

-- You don't get to create guild rules on-the-fly. We fill empty spots with who we have, as has always been the rule. If, after filling, the makeup/gear/people aren't right, it'll be canceled then. You do not get to cancel it because you're having a bad day.

"Who cares if I didn't decurse well? I was top dps, and never once ate a Doomfire, which is more than I say for the rest of the raid."

-- It's not OK to do you half your job, and justify it by comparing your performance to others. This denotes laziness, lack of sportsmanship/being a "team player", and that you are superior to everyone else, all of which gives me an indication that somewhere down the road, you are going to cause me great amounts of stress and grief.

"Oh, sorry about my behavior the other day, that must have been my brother playing during raid invites. I let him use my account yesterday."

-- Account sharing has been nothing but a source of grief for the guild through TBC, mostly due to communication problems (with the actual account holder) and security concerns, in which many accounts just end up getting hacked.

"Yeah, I wasn't able to raid last night because my friends came into town and I haven't seen them in awhile."

-- Contrary to popular belief, this is not an emergency. This is a personal event outside of WoW that can be scheduled around, much like an oil change, a haircut, or your 9-5 job. Furthermore, if you have a feeling you won't be able to raid, this problem is easily solved by simply not signing up for the raid. The very least you owe your team is to phone/text/forum PM someone and update them as to your whereabouts.

"Don't worry, Kerulak, I'm here 'til the end!"

-- That sound you hear is my teeth grinding together. Nobody is "here 'til the end". Every single person that has repeated this mantra to me is now gone, and these days, just makes me suspicious. If you really truly are going to be here "till the end", prove it with actions, don't say it with words.

"XYZ class is completely OP and has no counter whatsoever. They require no skill to play and should be removed from the game."

"Agility has the same value as +hit"

-- It simply demonstrates a lack of knowledge of the game, and I expect the Elite rank of player to have a deep understanding of the game mechanics.

I would like to point out that I, myself, have made many mistakes in the process of learning WoW. I'm certain you are all familiar with this famous quote:

"Stay away from my shackled target! Otherwise it's liable to kill you!"

I have since backpedaled from my silly statement, and I expect that many of you have also made similar mistakes (and have learned from them). The difference between this mistake and the ones listed above is the people that made the above statements...stood firm on their beliefs. They were stating opinion as fact, and that is incredibly dangerous. I want to encourage healthy discussion/debate on WoW mechanics, but when you bring an argument to the table, you had best come prepared with evidence to support your claim. Otherwise, you make yourself look like a fool in front of everyone, which discredits you, and the officers/guildies are going to be less inclined to take you along to raid where they need people performing at the top of the charts.

The above two examples can be rephrased very easily in a much more neutral manner:

"In my experience, XYZ class is currently dominating arenas by using the spell rotation of X, followed by Y, and finishing off with Z. I have yet to see a class consistently counter this, thoughts?"

"Although agility and +hit affect different attributes with XYZ class, they're both extremely valuable. I'd recommend trying to find gear that has (stat one) first, following that, (stat two)."

Kerulak fields a complaint about a guildy
from a random player on Deathwing-US,
Blade's Edge Mountains

"I don't care what you say, X boss is *hard*, not everybody can do it. I know X and Y and Z and they are all great players, and they all have problems with it, too."

-- An Elite raider doesn't make excuses for their performance. They find out what the problem is, what steps they need to take...and solve it. They know and understand the fundamental rule: It's OK to make mistakes...just don't repeat them. Furthermore, other "great" players may in fact not be so great if they also fail for the same repeated reasons and use similar justifications.

Causing a shit-storm/drama fest on the public WoW forums

- I don't have any examples to give as DoD has typically been pretty good in this dept. Our worst forum whore is an Officer (Fun Fact: It was one of the first things I had to talk to him about when I assimilated the guild he was in), but neither he, nor anyone else, has been blatantly disrespectful or offensive on the public forums. I'd like to keep it that way.

"You can't hear me in vent because I don't speak in vent."

-- Hypothetical situation:

You accidentally fuck up your kick rotation and are about to miss your Spirit Shock interrupt. You need to issue out a command to a fellow guild mate to pick up your missed interrupt in enough time that the person is able to respond and cover your ass (which, by the way, would require a typing speed of approximately 120 words per minute). For the sake of argument, let's say you have fast enough reflexes and a bizarre typing speed...even though your reflexes were apparently not good enough to hit an ability once every 10 seconds. So, after all that, and you manage to issue out a blazing fast command for someone to pick up the slack, what makes you think the person you issued the command to is looking at their chat log instead of their own boss-mod timers?

You are not better than everyone else. Elite raiders have to make decisions on-the-fly and in many cases, there is no time to type out a response. You can solve that problem by speaking. Everyone else does. Show us that you can be a team player. "I don't do XYZ because I just don't feel like it/don't have to" is a very pessimistic, single-minded attitude that offers no benefit to the raid team. Besides, I'm not paying $20/mo. for Vent so you can be silent while we wipe. Speak...and be heard.

"This is total bullshit, that is the best trinket in the game for X class, why the hell does Y class get priority over us?"

-- No class gets priority on loot over any other class, bids are made based on your DKP earnings and what your main spec/role is in DoD progression. A Rogue and a Ret Paladin have just as much right to each roll on a Dragonspine Trophy--they are both in a primary DPS role. A statement like this is also blatantly unsportsmanlike, and denotes that you are not a team player, therefore...not someone I would want as an Elite. If you want to raid more and haven't been rotated in, perhaps a little more soul searching is in order...maybe you are implementing more of the red flags in this list?

"Nobody told me I need a full set of Shadow Resistance gear"

-- Demonstrates a lack of preparedness, in the hope that guild officers will just "give you the knowledge and items you need on-the-fly". This is what's known as doing the absolute bare minimum to get by and is not a trait I'm encouraging.

"Don't look at me, I can't tank this section, my gear sucks/is in the bank"

-- See the previous point. Buy some larger bags.

"I know you have only been in the guild for a week now but some of us have been here since the game started and have earned our place."

-- You don't earn Elite status by being in the guild the longest, you earn it by demonstrating that you excel at both playing the game, dealing with other people and being a team player...the latter of which is completely disproven by a statement like this.

"Oh yeah, I don't use any mods when I raid. I find that I don't need to, this game is pretty easy, and the use of mods really violates the feel of the game as it was meant to be played."

-- Let me respond to that quote with a quote from Blizzard:

No, I think we assume that those who are working on the extreme endgame PvE content are going to be doing anything they can in order to help increase their chances for success. By both embracing the UI mod community and their addons, as well as assuming that players are going to be using them to great effect versus our encounters, we have to design encounters that assume their use or the encounter is trivialized by those on vent, those with a countdown, those with a threat meter, etc. Once a lot of the guess work is removed with mods we have to raise the complexity beyond what a mod can purely assist with. I think at this point we're forced to assume everyone is using mods to great effect versus our design complexity, which in turn forces everyone to use those mods. It's probably somewhat debatable what mods are required and where, but it's certain that we have to take them into account, lest the game be trivialized.

So to summarize: install mods and use them. When we require them to be installed, we expect you to have them. Beyond that, I encourage and support the use of any additional mods, and furthermore, would like to hear about them.

"I don't need to tell you my age because you are not the boss of me and my age is irrelevant"

-- If I am attempting to quell drama before it starts, your age is very relevant. Denotes hostility toward fellow guildies, lack of a team-player mindset, and an unwillingness to be treated as an equal by your peers. Additionally, behavior like this is almost always an indicator of guilt. If you have nothing to hide, why so defensive?

"PvE takes no skill in this game, PvP is where you are truly tested"

-- Both PvP and PvE require skill, some of which are common, and some unique to each type of play. Making a blatant statement like this only proves that you do not understand the game mechanics, or are just trying to cause a shit-storm, neither of which impress me.

"Yeah I don't think I'll be signing up for any more raids, I find raiding to be extremely boring"

-- See the previous statement. If you're not interested in raiding, don't waste my time by trying to feign interest for a few nights. I'd rather spend my time recruiting someone who cares, then invest in training/gearing someone who would rather not be there.

"Can I leave the raid early if we're not killing a boss tonight? I'm not really interested in doing trash..."

-- Explain to me how any part of this statement represents a team-player mentality. If the raid is canceled, you're free to leave. If everyone else stays, so do you. Leaving early because you have "no chance at phat lewts" demonstrates that you value loot over the guild and progression, and is a sure-fire indicator that you could give two shits about DoD. If you leave early, it will result in you being penalized as if you were a no-show.

--

In conclusion, let this forum thread act as a guide, both to guildies and to the officer core, about behavior that is going to cause us to raise an eyebrow and give us pause before we dole out a promotion.