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?

3.69. Blizzard's First Mistake (Revisited)

Visualization of The Public Goods Game
(Source: FieldOfScience.com)

The Public Goods Game

When I said Blizzard never repeated their first mistake...I lied.

An economics experiment that teaches about human nature and cooperation was all the proof Blizzard needed to cast doubt on their latest revelation. Whether their designers knew of the experiment's existence or not was moot, as the announcement of 10-Man and 25-Man being joined to a single lock in Cataclysm, producing the same rewards, was peppered with the colorful language of "good intentions". Sadly, good intentions are not enough to divert years of evolutionary adaptation away from the hard wired ways we fool ourselves. Spending only a few moments reviewing this simple textbook experiment should have convinced Blizzard that what they were about to embark on was going to have lasting, powerful repercussions, and 25-Man guilds would never be the same.

Imagine for a moment, that you are sitting around a table with nine strangers. Each stranger is given $100.00 and told that, in each round of this "game", you are free to contribute any amount of money from your holdings into a pot. At the end of the round, the pot is doubled, and all winnings are divided evenly back amongst the group. Depending on how fast you catch on, you come to realize that by withholding less and less of your own money from the pot, you begin to turn a much larger profit than the other players of the game. Over time, other players will pick up on this trend, and begin to do the same. Eventually, the economy of the game crashes, because all the players stop putting money into the pot. After all, why join the others and only come out $10.00 ahead...when you could put nothing in, and get $18.00 back? Why would anyone in their right mind be content with contributing, just to break even, when they could do nothing and turn a profit?

Things get more complicated when punishments and rewards are introduced to the Public Goods game. Punishing the stingy keeps the economy flowing through the pot, yet rewarding good behavior causes an economic crash again. It is a bizarre reflection of human nature that flies in the face of all logic, since on the surface, it makes sense that as long as everyone contributes, everyone will profit. But buried deep in the synapses of the highly evolved human brain, the rational often gets suppressed by the emotional. When you see other people gaming the system, you instinctively feel that they should be punished, as bad men/women should be. Just how that behavior manifests is subject to the type of game being played. In this experiment, it means that you withhold your funds from the pot, just as the others do, until no money remains.

In World of Warcraft, it manifests nearly the same...the only difference is that it isn't money you withhold from the pot, it's effort.

Contributions during the Public Goods game,
with and without punishments
(Source: AskWhy.co.uk)

Tragedy of the Casuals

Nobody wants to feel like they're being taken advantage of, yet this is exactly what happens when you look at two different levels of effort that both produce the same reward. Instead of tossing money into a pot each round, you're weighing all of the variables that help you decide which size of a raid you're wishing to run that week. And there are a lot of variables to consider. What kind of effort goes into dealing with that boss each week, trying to set aside a new schedule so that you are available for your raids each week? Maybe it means sitting down to a have a talk with your significant other, running the risk of it escalating into an argument over whose time is more valuable. And what of the risks involved in the actual raid itself? Any player worth his/her salt knew well that heading into a 25-Man raid was going to be a bigger challenge that a 10-Man; all the evidence in Wrath of the Lich King had proven 10s were the easier gamble by this point.

It all boils down to risk aversion.

Our free time is valuable to us; what we decide to put our off-hours into can mean more than money itself. With each decision we ponder regarding the allocation our free time, risks are constantly weighed against payoffs. We're more likely to avoid risk if a loss is possible, yet illogically we favor risk when only gains are on the table -- just ask any financial investment expert. As the blue post began to circulate the Internet, risk aversion chemicals had already begun their flow through the brains of raiders across the world. So, I can do a 10-Man, which I already know is easy-sauce, or take a chance at maybe getting my foot in the door of a 25-Man...for the exact same reward?

Cataclysm was still months away, but I already saw a crystal clear picture of what was to come.

Risk aversion is our default mechanism to fall back on when evaluating how we allocate our spare time. The situation is exacerbated by the fundamental need to want to punish "wrong doers"; its our mind wanting closure in a just world that otherwise doesn't exist. And when we see other players putting in less effort for the same rewards, our instincts aren't to "show them the right way", it's instead to come up with justifications on why we should do the same. We don't want to feel like we're being cheated out of money in the pot. We can't beat them, so we join them. We can't take a risk on the 25s...so we fall back on the 10s. It's safer, it's easier. Easier to roll with a small group of friends that aren't judgmental in watered-down mechanics, than deal with the possible criticism of a raid leader attempting to turn you from a mediocre player into a great one.

The pool of 25-Man options dwindle as a result, a term coined by Garrett Hardin as the "tragedy of the commons". The only way to combat it is the punishment of those "free riders", those folks unwilling to contribute to the pool. Blizzard may not have realized it, but the punishment of those free riders had already long been in place: the separation of the 10 and 25 by their individual loot tables. Players who wanted to take the easy way out, dumping out of a 25 in favor of a 10, were punished implicitly -- they no longer had the option to reap the achievements and rewards of the 25. I liken this separation of rewards to the guardrails that come down over a bowling alley lane, protecting an easily manipulated ball from rolling into the gutter. When the 10s and the 25s were merged to a single lockout and a single set of rewards, the guardrails went away.

Blizzard's opinion expressed bewilderment at the proposition that "one group of players doing something you didn't want to do" would somehow take something away from you. And the bewilderment was understandable...provided you look at the issue from that same skewed perspective. Unfortunately, the situation was never about "10-Man players get the same rewards as us 25-Man raiders, and we're not having fun now!"...

...it was "10-Man players are going to get the same rewards as 25-Man, and they will...which means whatever pool of players existed to fuel 25-Man guilds will all but dry up."

When players can take the easy way out, they do. I saw it once before in The Burning Crusade, as players came/went from the 25-Man as if the front door to our raid was a steamboat propeller. Because they could. They didn't need a warlock's Malefic Raiment from Black Temple...they could slough off any accountability a raiding guild attempted hold over their heads, and pull Vengeful Gladiator's Dreadgear out of a few weeks of smashing heads together like coconuts. Once that pool runs dry, the economy of available raiders crashes as a result. It was a matter of perception. Blizzard simply refused to "perceive" the issue the way 25-Man raiding guilds did.

Klocker stands naked atop the bank next to Annihilation,
Haribo, Crazzyshade, and Demus (circa Vanilla),
Orgrimmar

Promoting the Perv

Even as Descendants of Draenor were preparing to dig their heels deeply into the first heroic encounters in 25-Man ICC, I feared that the 10/25 decision would spell the end of many 25-Man raiding guilds, including our own. Blizzard felt confident that 25-Man raiding guilds would live on and thrive, but not paying attention to the fundamentals of human behavior, blinded by their "best intentions", was without a doubt Blizzard's Third Mistake in World of Warcraft. Amusingly, this was a far worse version of their first mistake in The Burning Crusade, having both PvE and PvP sets share the same visuals, something many wagered they had already learned from. Of course, the damage done during TBC was minimal (if any), and amounted to inconvenienced guild/raid leaders losing occasional PvP players from their raiding roster. This time, the change had the potential to reach far deeper into the blood of each and every raiding guild that wasn't listed on the first few pages of WoW Progress. It didn't look like Blizzard was going to budge on this one, so I mentally prepared for the devastation it would levy on the roster, each night going to bed, lost in a cloud of ideas on how I could save Descendants of Draenor from something that it couldn't be saved from: human nature.

First on that to-do list was to find a replacement for Dalans; he'd been gone over a month now. I always felt comfortable with he and Neps in charge, in the off-chance I were to be hit by a bus. In the absence of Dalans, I grew concerned that serious issues wouldn't get the clarity they needed by just Neps and I. We tended to agree on most generic stuff -- there wasn't anyone to play devil's advocate. This lead me to return to an oft overlooked player. Sir Klocker was one of my few remaining core members from the days of Vanilla, his years of experience making him one of only a handful of players that knew the guild inside out. Newer members like Bullshark, Jemb, even Mangetsu didn't carry the baggage associated with our early days of struggling in SSC, withstanding the setbacks of losing guildies to competing hardcore guilds like Pretty Pink Pwnies, or being subject to months and months of work in Ahn'Qiraj and Naxxramas (40), only to turn away empty-handed.

Sir Klocker had been there for it all.

If anything, Klocker would bring his veteran experience to the table, keeping reason in the face of irrationality. If players in the roster were to ever express disinterest in pursuing the 25, I could place a safe bet that Klocker would be one of the few to argue my side -- because he had lived through it himself. He knew what sacrifice went into real raiding and would staunchly defend it if challenged. With Blizzard's hand played for the next expansion, I wagered that keeping similarly-minded folks in the officer core was going to be our best chance at survival.

Sir Klocker had been shortchanged in the officer department several times already. When I shifted to role officers at the start of Wrath of the Lich King, Klocker ended up on the unfortunate end of the stick, as I had no place for him in the core. I re-arranged guild ranks to finagle his way back into officer chat, but this move was simply a band-aid taped across a much larger wound. Now, Klocker could finally make the move into a role befitting of his knowledge of the game and experience of the guild's people. He obliged at my request, and took up the rank of 2nd-in-command, alongside Neps. Once promoted, he wasted no time at all at bringing up a long-standing concern:

Loot.