3.14. The First Elites

Newcomer Abrinis joins a handful of his guildmates
in Zul'Gurub (20-Man) during Vanilla

Homogenization

There's not much you can get wrong in a glass of milk. As a kid, you poured it on your cereal; perhaps later on in life, you drank it for the reported calcium benefits. Wherever you went in life, if they didn't have your drink of choice, at least you knew what you were getting if you asked for milk. The various brands of milk differ more in label than they do in flavor. Grab a gallon off the shelf at the grocery store -- any brand and all -- and you’re pretty much guaranteed the same taste and texture. Milk is milk, what else can you say about it? So when it comes time to reach for the jug, the only thing that really separates one from another is brand loyalty. You stick with the brand you know because you've always bought it; second-guessing your decisions only adds anxiety to a normal, consistent life. But milk is only consistent because of homogenization, a process that prevents the cream separating from the skim. The cream is special. People see it as a luxury; milk in your coffee is plain, but cream...that's a taste reserved for those who appreciate the finer things in life.

Throughout Vanilla and The Burning Crusade, our raid team was not unlike a glass of milk.

The players that were poured into our raid team were a mixture of all different talents and styles, of varying degrees in skill and play. But without a system to incentivize players, to excel and be acknowledged for that excellence, we sat on the shelf of our server's grocery store and stagnated. We appeared no different than the brand any other guild sold. Creating a hierarchical structure of ranks in DoD served two purposes. One: it gave the individual players in my raiding roster an opportunity to rise to the top, rewarding them with pellets as they continued to pound the lever. Equally important, it allowed me to skim that cream off the top and place it on Deathwing-US's shelf for sale. If my hunch played out, that cream of my raiding roster would turn the heads of those wandering the grocery store aisle of guilds, looking for that richness in flavor that was presently absent in their lives...and raiding careers.

My job was to make sure the centrifuge spun as fast as possible, and skim the cream as soon as it surfaced.

An early shot of Jungard, along with the 25-Man
 Progression Team, after the defeat of Anetheron,
Hyjal Summit, Caverns of Time

Predictions and Surprises

We often attracted two types of raiding recruits to Descendants of Draenor. The first bucket of players were battle-worn and exhausted; ex-hardcore raiders who prided themselves on server-firsts in Sunwell and Naxxramas (40-Man), but for one reason or another, couldn't maintain that lifestyle anymore. Perhaps their hardcore raiding days were during College, but with degree in hand, it was time to knuckle down and punch the 9-to-5. Perhaps it was more appropriate to game into all hours of the night when your significant other was simply the “boyfriend” -- but now that he was the "husband", it was time to get some priorities straight. Maybe the only thing that changed was the addition of a kid to the picture...perhaps it was none of these things. It may very well have simply been a conscious decision to strike a better balance in life. Whatever the case may be, I was not there to judge, but to simply welcome in. I'd offer an alternative to the abusive demands of hardcore raiding, and guarantee seeing some progression. Cheeseus was a good example of this type of a recruit. He had a taste for cream and was uninterested in the peasantry of milk.

The other type of recruit we attracted was that of a player who felt constrained by their current conditions. The kind of player that felt they could be so much more, but were surrounded by excuse-makers: Facerollers clinging to pathetic justifications for their incompetence like a broken-record.

It's a challenge to strive for greatness when you are surrounded by mediocrity.

Guilds comprised of trolls seemed bent on perpetrating the notion that because World of Warcraft was "just a game", it was OK be a moron. While those guilds were busy starting and ending every sentence with "lol", our prospective recruits were alt-tabbed and hitting the virtual pavement, researching their class and boss mechanics -- trying to squeeze that last bit of DPS out. But with no one to act as a mentor, to guide them through the twisted raiding path of right and wrong, their own motivation to excel only got them so far. They needed a new lesson in raiding. We'd be the ones to step to the front of the class for them.

The first Elite promotions went to individuals that fell into this latter category. Abrinis and Jungard were a pair of Warriors that had become a staple in our raiding roster for many months. Abrinis, first recruited by Annihilation when he oversaw the Warriors, had an affinity for sports and would often be spotted discussing Basketball scores with Ben and Neps in guild chat. He was otherwise quiet, but also prolific with his alts, ever eager to help out a 5-man or a quest, and he'd have an alt specific to the role you needed to have filled. When it came time to raid, however, it was down to brass tacks on his Undead Warrior. Abrinis consistently topped the meters with Fury DPS, and I could always expect to see him signed up for next week's raid. It came as no surprise that when a fresh face known as Jungard entered the scene near the start of our Hyjal work in TBC, Abrinis took him under wing and trained him up to be equally effective wielding two weapons. The pair soon grew to challenge each other come raid night; a battle to see which Warrior could claim dominance on the meters. Pushing each other to rise to the top produced the pleasant side-effect of consistently high melee DPS. Their efforts were well-deserving of the Elite title.

The next Elite promotion was a surprise: Ekasra, the bullied Shaman from TBC who took my place when I retired Kerulak to raid as a Shadow Priest. Ekasra had struggled to find a place in DoD throughout TBC, and the weight on his shoulders was heavy. Not only did he have to fill the shoes of the guild leader who had come out of the 40-Man healing core from Vanilla, he struggled to gain any respect from his peers. Ekasra's raiding mistakes were exacerbated by his tendency to ebb the bullies on in return, rather than ignore them. Ekasra approached me at the start of Wrath, still wanting to demonstrate his value and be accepted by the team, asking for my advice. I was blunt: shelf the Shaman; you're intrinsically wired for a different role. Look at what appeals to you in a different raiding department, and then embrace it. He took my advice, and in the wake of Ekasra came Nestonia the Warlock. Nestonia not only wrecked the damage meters, he dominated them, even giving the Warlock officer Eacavissi a run for his money. Coincidentally, he whined a little less, joked a little more, and before I knew it, he had officers recommending him for promotion -- officers that, during TBC, wouldn't even speak his name. For him to be among the first Elite promotions was a proud moment.

A random Shaman in WoW,
boasting the default keybindings (1-9,0, -, =)

Wax On, Wax Off

The fourth and final promotion to Elite that I issued out in my first round was another surprise. He was a player I've not mentioned too much thus far, but had also been with DoD since TBC -- a Restoration Shaman by the name of Mcflurrie. Originally named Deathflurry, he joined progression at the same time we suffered overabundance of players whose name began with the word "Death". To reduce the confusion of raid calls in Ventrilo, he opted to change his name, a pretty good indicator of someone willing to do whatever it took to improve. What makes Mcflurrie’s story inspiring was his hunger to grow, and how the most seemingly obvious roadblocks are often right in front of our faces.

Mcflurrie's issue was healing effectiveness and survivability. He felt like he couldn't push his play any further, but still suffered from "playing with blinders" -- a common affliction among healers too focused on their whack-a-mole addon, and not focused enough on the environmental damage blanketing them in flames. One evening following a Serpentshrine Cavern raid, he pulled me into a private vent channel.

"I just feel like I'm not as mobile as I could be. And when I get moving, I can't heal really well, or end up dying."

"Playing with blinders?", I asked rhetorically.

"...Yeah."

"Take a screenshot of your UI and send it to me."

Moments passed, then came the ding of my email alerting me of a new message. I pulled up his screen and began examining where he placed his healing mods, his unit frames, what his field-of-view was like.

And then, I noticed them.

The action bars held all of a player's abilities, lined up in a horizontal row along the bottom of the screen. In each bar, twelve divots. Resting in each divot, a square icon that represented the spell that would cast when clicked or having its key binding pressed. But most importantly, in the upper-right corner of each icon, a tiny white symbol...either or a number, letter, or punctuation mark...that represented the key binding assigned to the spell. All at once, his problem was as crystal clear as the waters of a Moonwell.

"How are your keys set up?"

I knew the answer, but wanted him to say it.

"Oh, well...I’m just using the default layout."

"So, you're hitting the numbers keys along the top for healing? 1, 2, 3...etc...all along the top of the keyboard?"

"Yep, that works pretty well for me."

"Can you reach all your spells while you move? Or do you have to lift your hand up off the keyboard to reach the spell you want."

Silence followed.

"Try running forward right now, and while you continue to run forward, I want you to cast a Greater Healing Wave without lifting your left-hand up off the keyboard."

A little more silence followed that. Then,

"I...I can't. I have to lift my hand up."

"We're going to change that. Right now."

I spelled it all out for Mcflurrie, that painful truth that he was crippling his abilities by forcing himself to awkwardly look away from the screen, lift his hand off the keyboard to reach for a spell...ugh. I had flashbacks of Battleguard Sartura and the day I changed my karate stance. I told Mcflurrie it was going to be painful to re-learn from scratch. It was. Like me, it took a few weeks to re-program, to be able to react to the demands thrust upon a healer. But he got it. He sweated through the re-programming, and was soon  reaching for spells and moving at the same time, instinctively. His play improved, and this introduction to key binding customization pushed him even further to explore mouse-over macros -- something that wasn't available to me in Vanilla. Eventually he was shooting me tells mid-raid, "“I can't believe how much easier this is!" The rest, they say, is history. His reward for that tremendous growth: Mcflurrie became our fourth Elite, closing out the first batch of promotions.

--

The cream was now on the shelf. Potentials buyers were out there...but would they bite? The careful, meticulous restructuring of my guild's ranks produced a team unlike any I had before -- one comprised of both casual raiders that were motivated to play like professionals, and hardcore elites, the backbone that would drive progression week-to-week. Finally, I felt like I had nailed the perfect balance of player willing to work together to accomplish great things.

It’s unfortunate, then, that in order to demonstrate our ability to work together as a team, Blizzard forced us to stick a fork directly into it.

3.1. Perestroika

Part III: Wrath of the Lich King

"It would never work, just as communism would never work in the real world, but if you look at it on paper, isn't it an excellent idea?"

World of Warcraft login screen, during the
Wrath of the Lich King ('09-'11) era,
Copyright © 2009 Blizzard Entertainment

The Restructure

In the summer of 2008, I had a lot to think about.

I built Descendants of Draenor from a group of people I used to play Quake and CounterStrike with, to a guild of hundreds. Over the course of both Vanilla and The Burning Crusade, the original ideals I set out for DoD evolved into two core goals. In Vanilla, my priority was to construct and grow a guild with other players of a similar, mutually respectful mindset. I accomplished this by building a solid core of friendly, helpful, skilled players. In turn, this catalyzed the assimilation of other guilds who shared that mindset. With a core reflecting my own ideals in place, we began to dabble in raiding. Initially, we saw impressive success, but it was haphazard and lacked focus. By The Burning Crusade, a second goal for DoD emerged: To make a real competitive push in endgame raid progression without having to maintain a hardcore schedule. We were working men and women after all, we couldn't be expected to raid until midnight (or later) throughout the week. I implemented changes during TBC to drive new behaviors surrounding raiding. We clearly identified the expectation of the raider, and what our unified goal was: the constant, consistent defeat of raid bosses, keeping pace with other hardcore guilds. I also stressed personal responsibility, compelling the guild to re-examine each player's individual level of contribution. Via these changes, we were able to maintain a two day per week raid schedule. It was this very schedule which allowed us to clear all of the content up through Black Temple, ending with an Illidan kill before he was nerfed in 3.0.

But there were other struggles beyond the schedule I had to give serious thought to. Players came and went in our raid rotations, and it frustrated the core players, leaving them stressed out. We had to retain a large pool of people to choose from, in the case that we had emergencies or last-minute-cancellations, and those fillers often left a lot to be desired. The disparity between player skill levels was vast. People coming and going also led to a decrease in overall raid performance. The "revolving door" of our guild also led to another issue: brand new players joined, raided, won items that my core had been working toward for weeks, then switched guilds the next day, effectively pissing off the entire raid team. Morale among progression was a roller coaster of highs and lows.

On top of all of this, my raid leader, Blain, had quit the game -- burned out from the exhaustion of having to deal with so many failed players, a cornucopia of excuses, and the lack of that "spark"; a willingness to simply cut out the excuses, pull yourself up by the bootstraps, and dig in to endgame content until it was farmed. When he joined DoD at the start of Blackwing Lair, my then-warrior officer Ater had warned me, "he's going to whip this group into shape, but he's not going to make a lot of friends doing it." Ater and Blain played together previously in Lineage II, and Blain had made a name for himself as being detail-oriented and focused on doing whatever it took to be the best. When he joined the rogues, they were the most under-performing group of players in my guild. He walked into our raid wearing gear from Zul'Gurub and Dire Maul, yet within minutes, Blain was not only destroying the other rogues in DPS, he was quickly shooting to the top of the entire damage meters. He went on to become my raid leader for the duration of Vanilla, broke briefly at the start of TBC, but re-assumed his role when it was time to set the raid team straight. He then held the position all the way through the death of Illidan the Betrayer. By then, nearly four years later, he was completely spent. Nearly four years of listening to "This is too hard", "You're such an asshole!", "Why are you pushing us into more difficult content when we don't have the items we need from earlier bosses?"...he was done.

I didn't want him to go, but I didn't blame him.

These were only the in-game issues weighing heavily on me. I had a family that I was putting on the back-burner, and a career that was stagnating. I had to give some serious thought to how I was going to run Descendants of Draenor from here on out. The person whom I looked to for general leadership and guidance, Ater, was gone; I was officially on my own. I took my summer vacation out at my Dad's farm in a town called Hudson Bay, Saskatchewan -- a speck in the northern reaches of the Canadian prairies. Here, hours and hours away from any metropolitan city, I could step out on the deck at night, look up, and see nothing but stars. I'd stare upwards and lose all sense of time. No noise. No distractions. I let my mind go blank. All the stresses of the world washed away. I didn't care about the problems at work. I wasn't stressed about my family situation. And, it goes without saying, the pressures of running the guild were gone. Finally, I was able to think straight.

Kerulak, my main during Vanilla
Shattrath City

Learning from the Past

While I contemplated the state of my guild and where I wanted to go with it, I explored new avenues to gain insight and perspective. I read "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team" by Patrick Lencioni, a fascinating tale of a failing company and its various employees, locked in a constant state of finger-pointing, stubbornness, and old habits. Although intended for the entrepreneurial crowd, I found an amazing amount of parallels between it and the difficulties I was experiencing managing a raiding guild. The book spoke to my plight so accurately that I paraphrased many of its concepts in a forum post that would help align the raid team during their preparation for Archimonde. Now on vacation, I returned to those notes, and re-purposed them into a new post entitled "Why Raid Teams Fail". In my post, I simply reiterated the same core fundamentals that Lencioni touched on. Instead of targeting a company and employees, my post was tailored for a WoW guild and its raiding members. I reviewed the forum post, and all at once, I had a path to follow.

This post would be the outline for my restructure.

Descendants of Draenor had been following the same set of unwritten rules I set forth since its inception in late 2004. Although we were still together and things seemed fine on the surface, there were cracks in the foundation. I had a raid team that, while successful, drained a massive amount of energy to manage and coordinate. I also had players of such vastly different skill levels contributing to raids that progression would stagnate for weeks at a time. This led to increased administration on my part, which forced me in-game for longer periods of time. I was pouring too much of myself in, and needed to balance my WoW time with my family and other external responsibilities. In order to accomplish that, I was going to need to refine and delegate. The guild would need a completely transparent set of expectations, unambiguous and unable to misinterpret. Every member would read them, confirm that they understood, and either meet those expectations...or be dismissed.

I reflected on the lessons I learned during Vanilla and The Burning Crusade, from the many individual experiences, players, and mentors that had come and gone. The highlights?:

Personally Oversee All Recruitment: The mass assimilation of guilds was a task I fielded solely during Vanilla. This granted me the luxury of first-hand knowledge of a person, and to go with my "gut" instinct when something felt right or wrong. This hands-on knowledge of people, in turn, was vital to the success of building a foundation comprised of guilds with similar mindsets as my own; it allowed us to make the leap to 40-Man Raiding. But in the course of TBC, I delegated much of the recruitment to my officer core. Each officer's opinion of a player varied too greatly. Thus, the pool of players that we expected to help us with raiding were suffered disparity. I solved this by personally taking on the recruitment process. All applications would go through me; there would be no more delegation of this task through officers. All invite privileges in-game were revoked. The public application forum (which often derailed into a flame fest) was locked. My guildies flaming n00bs during the app process went against everything I preached about being kind and respectful to fellow players and guilds. The open app process would come to an end. I would handle it from that point forward.

Everyone On the Same Page: "The Five Dysfunctions..." showed me that the team needed to speak a common language. The raid team's disharmony was sad and pathetic. It grew from (among other reasons) a generation gap; players in different age groups couldn't even agree upon the basic fundamentals. 38 year old players had a very different perspective on life than 17 year olds. If they couldn't see eye-to-eye on generalities outside the game, how could I expect them to form a cohesive team in-game? I imposed an age limit of 21 to diminish this generation gap. It wasn't about maturity -- it was about realignment.

Acknowledging Multiple Levels of Commitment: Ater taught me the value of acknowledging a player's contribution, and reminded me that players of different skill levels warranted hierarchical recognition. Players of poor quality fostered animosity among the team. Stellar players resenting foolish ones drained everyone's energy, and performance suffered as a result. Failing players could no longer be allowed to justify their behavior, and star players deserved priority over these mediocre folks. To solve this, I mapped out a hierarchy of ranks, each with its own requirements, rights, and responsibilities. Now, not only were there a clearly defined set of prerequisites that needed to be completed in order to set foot in a raid, players who exceeded them would be granted additional rewards and perks within the guild framework. Henceforth, two classes of player would be identified in the guild: "Raider" for general rotations, to come and go as they wished, and "Elite" for fixed rotations, whom I expected to be present every week, the rock stars of the team. The beauty of this solution was that the fixed rotation was perceived as a perk to the player, because they wanted to be there every week. And, by enforcing the attendance of the Elite, the overall performance of the team would remain high, instead of the sine wave of the past.

Elites Get 1st Round Bids: Players that treated our guild like a revolving door were murder for the progression team. Joining our team, gearing up...and then never setting foot in another raid again not only wound me into a ball of seething hatred, it flushed team morale down the toilet. I had a responsibility to provide some kind of incentive to keep stellar raiders returning to progression. In a somewhat controversial move, I introduced a change to our guild loot system, based off the aforementioned Elite rank. Players who gained the Elite rank by proving their consistent reliability and stellar performance would not only gain a guaranteed a spot in our raids, but would earn the option of a 1st-round bid, so that fleeting new members couldn't swoop in, bid and win the most powerful item in the dungeon, then hit the road the next day. This perk further incentivized players to outperform, and provided me with an additional layer of defense against cattledrivers; an in-joke we used when referring to top-geared raiders that suddenly left us high-and-dry.

Acknowledging Contribution Outside Elite: Not everyone that raided could hope to become Elite. Perhaps they weren't the greatest players in the world, or maybe not the most well-liked...but they still played a valuable role, and ought to be recognized for their efforts, even by contributing in some capacity without raiding. My vision of the new progression team would be comprised of a core of Elites, but it would be the Raiders (and others) that would allow us to continue to churn a rotation week-to-week, granting our members the schedule flexibility we committed to delivering. So, how would I recognize those non-Elites? I instituted the ability to earn a temporary "glory" rank for going above-and-beyond the call of duty, regardless of raid commitment. We would make a big deal about their contributions and assistance to the guild, both on the forums, and in-game with a special rank that granted access to the officer channel, even granting them temporary 1st-round bidding rights of the Elite rank, so that even non-hardcore players might be given a chance to shine. We'd name these players "Avatar".

Zanjina, my main during The Burning Crusade,
Black Temple

What Dreams May Come

The changes were significant. On paper, it read like an employee handbook. Was I going to scare people away? Would they look at this restructure, think it was some sort of joke, and walk away, pointing and laughing? I had to take a deep breath and make an important decision. Up until that very moment, my biggest fear was failure; that the guild would be seen as a laughing stock in retrospect, that we weren't able to accomplish anything of any value. I didn't want the entire four years to have been a waste of time and energy. My gut spoke to me again, much more loudly than ever before. So I stood out on my father's deck, staring up at the night sky in Hudson Bay, and listened.

It is time to come to terms with this.

There is a very real possibility that these changes will cause the end of your guild. You have to be willing to accept it. Prepare for it. And when that day arrives, be it tomorrow or years from now, you need to be ready to move on. No more excuses, no more crying about what was, or what could have been. When you are ready to accept the end of your guild, only then can you truly take a hold of that vehicle, and drive it as you always meant to. 

At the precise moment I realized this, I gained a new outlook on my ability to lead; I was overcome with a sense of confidence and direction. Once the fear of losing my guild was gone, all at once, the cloudy path ahead became crystal clear.

---

I returned home from my summer vacation, posted an announcement hinting to the changes that I had planned, and began to draft the first post that would pave our way: Who We Are, and Who We Are Not.

Why Raid Teams Fail

In early 2008, I read a book on team management. Shortly after reading the book, I imposed a number of changes to our rules, which would go on to form the foundation for a restructure of the guild. It is my belief that those changes paved the way for our defeat of Archimonde, which is detailed in this blog post. For your enjoyment, here is the refined forum post I made, months after Archimonde's defeat, at the start of Wrath of the Lich King. It is, in essence, the World of Warcraft raider's interpretation of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.

---

Raid teams, like any group of individuals working together as part of a business organization or sports team, can be prone to dysfunction. This dysfunction typically manifests in five ways, each one acting as a catalyst for the next. They are:

• Absence of Trust
• Fear of Conflict
• Lack of Commitment
• Avoidance of Accountability
• Inattention to Results

What follows is a description of each, along with examples. As well, I provide a number of solutions for each, as you attempt to solve those problems with your own raiders. Dysfunction begins with trust...or lack thereof.

Absence of Trust

Trust is a fundamental part of what makes people work well together. When players in a raid do not trust one another, it leads to issues:

• They are unable to admit their own mistakes, and prefer hiding them in anonymity
• They rarely ask for help from others regarding their class and play
• They typically do not offer assistance outside their own area of expertise
• They are quick to jump to conclusions when considering why other raiders are making certain decisions, without asking for clarification
• They hold grudges
• Eventually, they avoid signing up for raids

In order for a team to function correctly, and increase the level of trust between raid members, players need to consider:

• Admitting to mistakes and their own shortcomings, without fear of alienation or rejection
• Ask for help
• Openly accept suggestions/recommendations on how they can improve
• Give fellow raiders the benefit of the doubt before arriving at some predetermined negative outcome (ie. "He died in the fire because he always dies in the fire--he's a shitty player"...when in fact, the player in question just received news about an ill family member)
• Take risks in offering feedback to others
• Appreciate the value of other raiders' expertise, and take advantage of their knowledge
• Focus effort into valid issues (ie. "How can we better optimize moving ghouls from spawn to off-tank in Phase 1?"), not into wasteful politics (ie. "All of our attempts are going to fail because we have two Paladin tanks, and we have to have at least one Druid tank!")
• Offer/accept apologies without hesitation (this relates DIRECTLY to the first point)
• Look forward to future raids in which to implement the points above

In short, foster an environment where players are encouraged to speak, ask for help, and admit mistakes without being publicly humiliated...a task best started with YOU. Don't judge (unless you're a Paladin), and keep people focused on growth, improvement, and what better progress will be made when you return to the raid next week.

Fear of Conflict

When a team has an absence of trust, they become fearful of producing any sort of conflict. Conflict is not always a bad thing; it is normal in most relationships and organizations, and is a healthy part of an engaged team environment. It opens up the channels of communication, and gets members passionate about what they believe to be important. In raids, conflict often manifests as a result of failing to kill a boss. A raid that avoids conflict usually looks like this:

• Completely quiet in vent. Often dull/boring
• Play environment encourages politics and personal attacks (ie. Vent remains quiet, while /officer chat lights up, blaming a bunch of individuals for a particular wipe)
• Controversial topics critical to raid success are avoided (ie. Continuing to support/enforce/rotate in a failing Tank that is key to the success of the raid, rather than speaking up)
• Other members of the raid are not considered for their opinions, many of which may be valid, but are suppressed due to the first dysfunction - Lack of Trust
• Wasted time pouring energy into defending one's own position rather than tackling the real issue at hand (ie. "Well, I healed through that Unchained Magic because the damage is trivial and I can control it" - instead of - "We all need to be actively watching Unchained Magic and holding our casts to the best of our ability")

In order to allow conflict to become a healthy part of a raid team, players must:

• Have interesting, lively raids, where people communicate openly and easily. This is one of the reasons why we've never enforced a "raid-vent-silence" channel, where only one person speaks.
• All raiders' ideas/opinions ought to be polled on strategic solution, regardless of how significant their perceived contribution may be. This is why the Raid Leader works with the Role Officers in order to resolve boss failures, rather than do it all himself. In many cases, individual Raiders also contribute to strategy resolution.
• Keep politics to a bare minimum
• Attack the most important issues first, and solve them quickly

Conflict is not to be swept under the rug; it's vital to every well-rounded team. Raiders are no different. Keep communication flowing, but be firm and educate your players when the appropriate time to speak is (you're not cracking jokes while listening to raid calls; save the chit-chat for trash clears). When a raid wipes, get to the heart of it. Speak up about what you've observed, but don't be negative, just objective. Be respectful. And if you call someone out, make an effort to bring a solution along with you, not just the problem. Scrubs complain. Expert team members solve.

Lack of Commitment

Once a team is resigned to avoiding conflict, the decisions they make permeate into a behavior that lacks any sort of commitment to the raid at hand. Commitment is an absolute requirement of raid success, no questions asked. The raid leader gives an instruction on a particular boss, and when you decide for whatever reason that you don't feel the need to meet that expectation, you are setting up the entire team to fail. A raid without commitment:

• Causes raid members to be ambiguous about what they are responsible for (ie. "Uhhh....so, I'm not really certain about what I need to do when I get marked for an ice-block during Sindy, so...I guess I hope I don't get marked!!")
• Loses opportunities to improve/solve a problem while issues are over-analyzed and unreasonable delays occur
• Encourages raiders to stay quiet, and not admit when they make mistakes, thus delaying the resolution for future attempts, as well as eat away at the player's own confidence of being able to execute at all.
• Constantly goes over the same issues. Again. And Again. And Again. And Again.
• Causes raid members to second-guess one another (ie. "Oh great, we have so-and-so in the raid again, well...here goes any hope of completing the heroic achievement on Sindy!")

In order to combat the lack of commitment, a raid team must:

• Create clear and concise expectations of raiders. This is why we have role officers, and why they are in place to create healing assignments, which side of Valithria the melee needs to be on, which foot melee needs to be on for Festergut, etc.
• Focus the team on the common goal (kill the boss!)
• Develop the ability to learn from mistakes: Acknowledge it. Ask for/receive clarification (without prejudice). Make the change. Problem solved.
• Take advantage of opportunities before other guilds do. (read: Opportunities, not EXPLOITS)
• Move forward on decided-upon strategy, without hesitation (ie. "Well, we've done Strat A on Heroic Lich King for two weeks, and now the Raid Leader changes it to Strat B...he must have a good reason, so I'll make these changes on my end as well")
• Adapt and/or change strategy as needed, without hesitation or guilt. As much as we can avoid, we typically do not change strategies on a boss mid-raid, but sometimes it is necessary (and typically the RL makes the right call on this)...and when it happens, EVERYONE needs to be on board.

Be committed to the end result. Narrow your focus on the goal (but don't play with blinders on and die in the fire!) If you make a mistake, don't be silent...ask for clarification, make it crystal clear in your mind. And if you have opportunities to gain insight, whether it be researching strategies on the web, watching videos, or reaching out to fellow raid guilds -- don't turn your back on these options. Take every legitimate opportunity you can to make the end goal reachable.

Avoidance of Accountability

A team that fails to commit produces a bunch of wishy-washy, less-than-adequate players who take no responsibility for their own actions; they avoid accountability. Raid teams that avoid accountability:

• Produce resentment among raiders who have different standards of play
• Encourage people to play at a level we can only consider 'mediocre'
• Allow players to miss raids without consequence
• Place an unhealthy amount of stress and burden on the raid leader as the sole source of rule enforcement

If you want to build and enforce more accountable players in raids:

• Ensure poor performers have incentive to improve. This is why we have the guild rank/reward structured as we do. Mini-goals are achieved based on performance, and rewards are then showered on the player to celebrate the accomplishment.
• Identify problems quickly by openly questioning other members' approach without hesitation (ie. "So-and-so, I see you are still casting while you have Unstable Magic, what's going on there? I thought the deal was to stop casting...")
• Establish acknowledgement/respect for raid members who are held to the same high standards (relates to the guild ranks listed above), thereby validating the effort of those players who are truly committed
• Delegate the handling of individual groups' expectations, which are clearly defined and explicit (ie. Our role officers handle each subsequent group in healing, melee, and ranged DPS. A healing officer, therefore, can be expected to state: "Healing assignments are posted - if you fail to heal these people, you are removed from the raid - Questions? /w RL, the healers are ready...").

Players that demonstrate accountability are truly a sight to behold in action. They jell with extreme efficiency, communicate clearly, and see the success of the entire team as it is their own personal responsibility. This builds a healthy balance between raid leader and raiders, and provides incentive for players to improve, grow, and eventually gain rank and status within the guild. In turn, this will cause your raid team to gain status on the server (or perhaps beyond).

Inattention to Results

A raid full of players that couldn't care less about what they do is a sorry sight to see. Their individual poor performances lead to consistent raid wipes for a multitude of reasons...many of which are easily identifiable and solvable. But nobody cares about solving them. Their attention is elsewhere--whatever is on TV, what the current score is during the Football game. It's sad and pathetic to watch, and painful to be a part of. Raids that don't care about their success or failure:

• Fail. Period. They do not improve, nor care to.
• Are beaten by other guilds in progression.
• Cause the very best raiders in the guild to begin looking elsewhere for a guild
• Encourage individual raiders to focus on themselves instead of the team/guild as a whole.
• Are easily distracted--(ie. cracking jokes and spamming ASCII-art macros in General Chat while inside a raid).

When raid teams care about what they do in a raid, and make an effort to examine the finer details of raid strategy, they:

• Retain the best and brightest players
• Minimize individualistic behavior (ie. "The healing assignment went out, and I'm assigned to heal X, but I'd rather inflate my numbers on WorldOfLogs.com, so I'm going to do XYZ instead!")
• Are able to enjoy both success and failure, because they fully understand that each is needed, and leads to growth
• Benefit from team members' skills whose personal focus shifts to the success of the team (ie. "Wow, if it wasn't for that one DK who Chains/Gripped that Blood Beast, I'd have been killed for sure. His DPS went down a bit, but...well...we killed Saurfang!")
• Avoid Distractions (ie. I can only imagine how many wipes we have avoided by not being in General Chat and missing some crude/stupid joke or macro that catches the attention of a key tank or healer, causing the entire raid to die).

There it is. Start repairing your raid team by building the foundation of trust, encouraging conflict, driving commitment, enforcing players to be accountable and ultimately driving the quality of what they do onward and upward. If you succeed at applying these rules, I guarantee that you will kill raid bosses with great efficiency, because you will have a great team.

Let's Talk About Raiding

Six months into The Burning Crusade, progression had come to a dead halt. Factors included a thinned pool of raiders after 40-Mans shrunk to 25-Mans, Ater's growing work schedule which took him away from researching boss strategies, and a lack of assistance from Blain, who had retired from leadership to pursue arenas. More than anything, however, the family-friendly guild I had grown from a handful of friends at the start of Vanilla lacked a common set of expectations in approaching raids. Every player defined 'fun' a different way, and many players allowed their own interpretation of 'fun' to absolve them of any accountability in raids. 

When Ater, Blain and I determined that we had to find a way to motivate a family-friendly guild to approach raiding with the mindset of a hardcore player, we determined three things needed to change. We had to foster a sense of individual ownership in the guild's goal of defeating Illidan. We needed everyone participating in raids on the same page, which meant everyone's expectation had to match that of the guild's. And, we needed a way to identify those players which were aligned with the guild's goals, keeping them separate from those whom chose to tread off the beaten path.

By the beginning of October, Blain had returned to raid leadership and turned around the stagnant progression team, going from no progress in months, to going 5/6 and 1/4 in SSC and TK, respectively. As we began to acknowledge the efforts being made by the team to foster ownership of the guild's success, it was time to tackle resetting expectations. I drafted a forum post which intended to clear the air and set the record straight on exactly what we were trying to accomplish.

Submitted for your perusal is the content of that original forum post titled "Let's Talk About Raiding", initially drafted on October 8th, 2007.

---

When DoD first began raiding, we honestly did not know what we were getting into. A bunch of us were heading over to Zul'Gurub one night to tackle some content when Kadrok sent me a tell, "You know...we have 40 level 60s on right now. We could potentially go to Molten Core." And with that one quick whisper, God damn him, it was over. We were off and running, pretty much by the seat of our pants. The officers and I scrambled to find out what was fair, how to distribute loot, where to learn about boss strategies, when the best times to run a raid were, who should lead those raids, and what all of our roles would be. And while all of those decisions were made, we tried to keep the atmosphere fun, laid back and enjoyable.

A lot of players would call this: "Casual Raiding".

We ultimately decided that, for what our guild wanted to do, 2 hours an evening was an adequate amount of time. And, furthermore, we would maintain a large pool of players, and focus heavily on rotations. Rotations would allow us the freedom to have more people available to fill spots in an emergency. What we found in practice, however, was the following:

1) Two hours an evening was barely enough to accomplish anything. As the raid-game increased from MC to BWL, and BWL to AQ40 and so on...we felt we had a responsibility to continue running old instances, and so continued to grow our guild to a massive size, which lead to problem #2...

2) The rotations which were to help us fill spots, now became our crutch: We would rotate so many people in, we would often find ourselves running a raid with strangers, with whom we were unfamiliar with, gear-wise, spec-wise, and experience-wise.

You live, you learn. We adapted and changed our outlook on raiding slightly, while still maintaining a sense of the original guild's vision, "To have fun, and enjoy playing WoW in a respectful, mature group of players, and to progress as far as we could through end-game."

However, TBC threw us a curveball again. We discovered from previous raids that two hours is simply an unacceptable amount of time to get anything significant accomplished. Two-hour blocks cannot be overcome by adding more nights to the week; you inevitably end up with another insignificant amount of time where nothing is accomplished, and it causes burnout. Furthermore, our pool of raiders has become saturated with people that are perfectly comfortable with doing the minimum amount possible, relying heavily on their raid-mates to cover their ass, or hoping that Blain will instruct them on-the-fly as to what it is they ought to be doing. And in their defense, some direction is in order ("no direction" is flat out dumb)...but hand-holding is far too much micromanagement.

DoD will always be a guild where you can log on and hang out with friends and enjoy some quality time with people you like, I will never impose restrictions on how/when you should play WoW. But, starting today, the restrictions on the raid-team requirements change. Let's talk about those changes now:

1. Guild Ranks

The Guild Ranks have changed:

A. Guild Leader. Pleased to make your acquaintance.

B. Raid Leader. Blain. He oversees everything that goes into raiding. What bosses are we working on, and which nights. Who our top raiders are and who remains a liability. He'll mark targets and be sure that by the time we kill a set of trash, the next set is already marked. He'll review boss strategies with us pre-pull, but he won't hand feed them to you. He'll let you know when we are performing well and when need to call the raid because it's our third (and final) attempt on Lurker. He is the coach of the team, and as expected, you'll execute his plays.

C. Class Officers. You'll remember these folks. They will carry on with their duties. They'll give you advice on your class, spec, and generally be a mentor if need-be. They help me with handling applications, and will be doing a bit more in their off-hours to recruit across servers, but for the most part, their role remains unchanged.

D. Raid Assistants. This is a new role I've created to help manage raids. Raid Assistants are people of various classes and roles that are vital to a smooth and efficiently run raid. Raid assistants have various roles, such as calling out targets, declaring healing assignments, communicating cc targets to the raid, and so on. In their off-hours, they communicate raid needs back to officers, the raid leader, and myself, so that if we have poorly performing players, we know to take action. They understand raid mechanics well and will assist you in learning how to use Wow Web Stats to improve your own personal performance. They also have access to officer chat, so they can let us know discreetly if there are grave concerns in a raid that need changes.

E. Bank Assistants A & B. These are two placeholder ranks I hope to take advantage of in WoW 2.3. More info will come on their use when I know more about the future of guild banking.

F. Raider. If you are a raider, you've passed the test. We've raided with you and seen that you are a huge benefit and a core member of our raiding team. You'll be considered for all rotations in the 25-man progression raids.

G. Veteran. You have been with DoD for a good long time, and you may not necessarily feel that Raiding means all that much to you, in fact, it means more to you to hang out with us online, chat, perhaps level some alts or run some 5-mans. It simply means you have a different goal and direction than the raid-team and nothing else. You are still an important person to us. You are a veteran.

H. Recruit. You're new to DoD and still cutting your teeth with the guild. We'll promote you when we see that you've made a name for yourself with us.

I. Silenced. You've pissed us off, and now it's time to be quiet.

2. Raiders

The rank of raider is a special one. It lets us know you are an exceptional player, looking to do exceptional things.

A) You care about self-betterment. Constantly striving to improve oneself in the PvE realm. It is your day-to-day tweaks  that make our raid team strong and dynamic. To you, it is no longer acceptable to just be 20-30% below your fellow players in a statistical analysis. Every night you raid, you push yourself hard to be #1.

B) You have the same vision as the raid team: Serious, competitive progression through end-game raid content, with the ultimate goal of conquering all that WoW has to offer.

C) You learn quickly, can adapt and work well under pressure. You take criticism well, and grow from it. You have excellent coordination and can deal with emergency situations, and you hone this skill in your off-hours through PvP.

D) You are always prepared, with consumables and flasks. You are on time and never make excuses. You take personal responsibility for your own performance, and never blame other people for your own faults. If you have a legitimate problem with another player, you take it to a Raid Assistant, or higher up the food-chain, if need be.

The main difference between raiders before and raiders today, is simply this: Raiders are here to win, at whatever the cost. For some raiders of the past, it may have equated to "Just something to do tonight, no big deal, just here to have fun." It's important to understand what's wrong with this thought now:

Raiders who want to justify poor performance and behavior with 'just being here to have fun' are not raiders.

To the new raid-team, our definition of "Fun" is constant, consistent success.

In order to do that, we all need to be on the same page and be in the same frame-of-mind, and that is to stay sharp and be performing at the top of our game...every night. If you are here simply to fill the evening with something to do, or you feel compelled to raid because of something we've said or done, now is the time to step down from raiding. To those who wish to stay on and help us work through this content, I salute you. Read on...

3. Schedule

The new schedule begins this week, and it is as follows:

Friday: 7pm - 11pm (MST)
Sunday: 3pm - 7pm (MST)

We are going to start with two blocks of four hours each. The #1 cause of burnout in the past is too many nights of the week where nothing is accomplished. Most dedicated, PvE focused guilds raid in blocks of four hours (anything more is simply ridiculous imo). We are going to ease ourselves into this new schedule to start, and see if, in the near future, we can possibly work a third night in. For the moment, I want the Raiders to focus on Fridays and Sundays until we come to a point where we can reschedule.

These two blocks of time were chosen, simply to allow the most Raiders an available spot due to family- or job-related restrictions. For people that balk at this initially, keep in mind that I am well aware of Tuesdays and Wednesdays being the most common nights of the week for raiding. If we can move to them in the near future we will. I politely ask that the Raiders please work with us on these initial nights and we will see how well we do before manipulating the schedule again.

4. The Raid-Game

1. We will be analyzing our top performers each weekend and rewarding exceptional performance with gold from the bank, to assist with repairs and flask purchases. It doesn't mean you have to be #1 Dps or #1 Healer...it just means you have played well enough that weekend to make the raider leader and assistants take notice. All raiders should have the potential to be #1 at any given night, based on their luck with crit streaks or other random factors.

2. All raiders are now flasked. Every night. This is no longer optional. Potions are mandatory. Mana for casters, Health for DPSers and Tanks. Food is optional but extremely recommended. It is cheaper to flask for trash/bosses, then it is to wipe and re-clear. We are going for the gold, and we are going to be buffed accordingly.

3. We are imposing a three-wipe maximum, also to curb burnout, and to encourage the raid-team to stay alert at all times. In a four hour block, the potential for burnout on 2 full clears of trash and 17 attempts on The Lurker Below is mind-numbing. Perhaps in other guilds, the Raid Leader would call you "idiots" and continue to throw you at the boss until he dies, but we're not even going to bother. If your head is not in the game and you can't perform the task on bosses we've killed many times before, the raid ends early and you go home empty handed. I don't want to suffer through four hours, and neither does Blain or the rest of the team. So, a three-wipe maximum on previously killed bosses is your "room to breathe".

If the first question out of your mind is, "Does the three-wipe maximum reset on each boss?", my answer to you is, we'll call it as we see it. Obviously, this rule doesn't count on bosses we're learning.

4. We are going to be looking at raiders (current and future) and their abilities spent in off-hours PvPing. It has become painfully clear that most of the dynamic players who work well under pressure and adapt quickly in emergency situations do so because they have honed their skills PvPing. I am going to recommend that raiders do investigate some PvP in their off-time if they have not yet done so.

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, I would hope that these changes encourage and revitalize a lot of you for raiding. For some, I won't disagree, it may be painful, or hard to take. I will not hold it against you if you cannot step up to the task of meeting these new requirements. If you are burnt out, or if raiding no longer holds the appeal it once did, now is the time to step down, so that we can begin the process of looking at our pool of raiders and recruiting if need be.