2.16. The Underwater Cavern

Serpentshrine Cavern

Gone Fishing

Eager to get started on Tier 5, we began the mad search for answers on what lay below the waters of Serpent Lake in Zangarmarsh. Swimming through a series of pipes, and up into an underground cave protected by a pocket of air, we not only gained access to three dungeons, but our entry into the next tier of raids. Behind the waterfall that poured down the back of the cave revealed an elevator boss that claimed many lives with its frightening depth and propensity to hypnotize players into leaping to their death. For those patient enough to wait for the platform, however, it would transport us into an underwater lair hiding the Naga, an amphibious humanoid creature that swore their lives to Azshara. We'd navigate broken wooden bridges, scour caves and tunnels, and ultimately activate a bridge that rose out of the waters, draped with seaweed. This bridge would lead us to Azshara's reluctant handmaiden, a serpentine female known as Lady Vashj.

This was Serpentshrine Cavern.

Ater was now gaining assistance from Volitar in our quest to execute raid content. Volitar had been with us as one of the most qualified, reliable priests in Vanilla. He joined many others in the re-rolling marathon that accompanied The Burning Crusade's launch, starting from scratch with a Blood Elf Paladin, one he felt would bring a entirely new level of healing control to raid progression. Volitar had great leadership qualities, and stayed calm under duress, and Ater relied on him more and more to make calls and adjustments in Vent, while he stayed quiet and focused on tanking. Volitar assumed Blain's role with a dedicated professionalism that I was thankful for, and I hoped that our raid team remained equally thankful.

Breginna was still away with work, post Magtheridon, and so I continued to bring her Druid to raid progression, providing the ever-essential HoTs and battle rezzes that Druids contributed to PvE. Heading into Tier 5, I was unconcerned about Kerulak falling behind in gear; it was an eventuality, but not something I worried myself with in the short-term. What was more important, in my eyes, was the success of the 25-Man, and if it meant bringing another loyal player's Druid to the table, I never gave it a second thought.

What did give me pause, however, was the absence of my shaman in the healing make-up. As easy as the druid was to play in a healing role, the shaman still brought vital tools to our group, the most important of which was Bloodlust. Beyond that, a shaman's chain heal was extraordinarily powerful, and their totems brought crucial buffs like Windfury and Wrath of Air, buffing our melee and ranged casters, respectively. All of these abilities added up and could easily have made the difference between a 1% wipe and a boss kill. Without Kerulak, I needed a responsible, reliable shaman to put in that spot, to keep it warm, and to keep the totems planted firmly in the ground, while chain heals leapt across the raid like flashes of yellow lightning.

Kerulak links loot over to Ekasra during a 10-Man raid,
Karazhan

Ekasra

I reviewed the list of shamans we were taking, searching for the one most consistent with signups. A lot of them were coming and going, filling in whenever possible. One stood alone that had been present in signups, week-after-week, a younger up-and-coming player who had been with us since Vanilla. He provided the best chance of filling in for me on a consistent basis. Upon speaking to Ekasra, he confirmed my suspicions -- he wanted to do whatever it took to get into our 25-Man raids each and every week. Because of his late entry to the guild mid-way through Vanilla, he'd been unable to secure a foothold in the 40-Man. As a result, he spent most of the end of Vanilla on the sidelines, yearning for bigger, more exciting adventures. He yearned for inclusion. Ekasra wanted the chance to leave his mark, to make an impression with the officer core.

It was now time to give him that chance.

I took Ekasra aside and let him know I would be playing Breginna's character for several weeks while she was away on business. I let him in on the intent of this alleged selfless act: Continue to provide a Resto Druid for HoTs and battle rezzes, while keeping the character geared for her owner's return -- ensuring a seamless transition back into the roster. In doing this task for Breginna, I would be leaving a shaman spot open, and would need to rely on him to be present each and every week, even if the other shamans continued to use the sign-up sheet like a revolving door.

Ekasra was ecstatic.

It was as if I had just handed him a winning lottery ticket. He thanked me for the chance, swearing up-and-down that I would not be disappointed, that I could rely on him to take up this responsibility. I was happy to have someone as excited and passionate as he was. As long as he could channel that passion into his healing ability, both of us stood to benefit from the arrangement. Problem solved, time to begin work in the Cavern.

As with many of my early leadership decisions, problems had a tendency to appear solved...when they weren't.

"The Lurker Below"
Artwork by YeastSoldier

Evil Lurks

Dalans stood on the edge of the wooden ring, formed by a series of wooden planks laid out in a circular fashion, and tossed his fishing line into the water. Watching the bobber bounce suspiciously, he clicked it and drew up the line, hoping a for a bite.

Nothing.

"How long is this gonna take?" someone blurted out into Vent, frustrated at waiting.

Another person answered with a short, annoyed tone, "We've been in here for three weeks. I think you can wait a little longer."

Three weeks.

At the dawn of Tier 5, preparing for yet-another-attempt on what was considered the easiest boss in SSC, The Lurker Below, we braced for another pull. In comparison to the nightmare we'd been through dealing with Tier 4, The Lurker Below's straightforwardness should have been a reprieve.

Yet here we were.

Dalans tossed his fishing line back into the pool.

"C'mon guys, we got it this time." said Volitar, a little less enthusiastic, a little more war-torn, and noticeably running low on patience. I could tell he was forcing himself to keep positive; it must have felt like a prison to him, jailed by the constant reminders all around that progression had come to a dead halt. Again. Ater sat silent in his position, weapon at the ready, shield in hand. He said nothing in Vent and typed nothing into raid chat, nothing into officer chat. Everyone has a breaking point. Had he reached his, I wondered? How much longer were we going to put up with mediocrity?

"Yeah, guyth. We got thith," replied Ekasra, his lisp thick and unmistakable in Vent. Chuckling followed, and I had to remind them to all to keep it down. Forever the babysitter. Common sense had long since gone out the window. The roster was filled with players who thought it was "no big deal" to pick on someone with a speech impediment. And I wondered at what point had I thrown in the towel. At what point had I made the decision that it was OK to allow that kind of behavior. How many raid wipes had gone by before I was so desperate to see any kind of progress that I scraped together any sort of bottom-feeders available.

What had we become?

2.15. The Merger

Send a Memo: let's throw these two companies
together and see what works!

Culture Clash

The office was humming with new energy and chatter. My colleagues were getting up from their desks, folding their arms, listening to what the new bosses had to say. It was official and the news was now making the rounds around Denver. Our web agency had merged with a digital marketing firm across the street. Long competitors of ours, the bosses upstairs had decided to finally pull the trigger, and merge. By working together, they reasoned, we would be far stronger than if we'd remained individuals. Old Aristotle was rearing up his ugly head once again, letting loose with a barrage of flames and fury: "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts" was tossed back at my lap. I glanced over at Ater, who was focused intently on what the bosses had to say. Exciting? There was no question. The right move to make? Possibly, I'm certainly no expert in business affairs to say.

But 'The Whole'? Was it truly greater than the sum of its parts?

I glanced around at many of the new faces that had joined the office. Logistics were still being discussed; it would be some time before we determined which of the two downtown locations we'd flock to. There was even a discussion into keeping both. Splitting the newly formed team back up. That seemed a bit...odd, I thought. Part of the merge would involve us needing to get to know the new faces, where their expertise lay. The digital marketing firm had a deep history of creative under their belt, which bled back into their culture. Guys with frizzy haircuts, pierced lips, and tattoos of dragons with chinese kana inked into their arms made up a good portion of this culture -- the other side. They would just as easily flop down on to the company couch and fire up a game a Gears of War, rather than punch in the corporate approved 9-to-5.

This culture seemed at odds with the stiff, more traditionally run business that my agency's history was rooted in. Ran by an ex-Air Force man, things around our office was far more crisp and shiny, the khakis and business-shirts left little room for more creative work attire. If there were tattoos, I wasn't aware -- all were covered up under a sense of modest professionalism, and the 9-to-5 was not only the norm, it was expected. Sure, I got the occasional call late into the evening to fix a mistake -- but it was usually something I'd done, and was cleaning up my own mess. I was deeply curious to see how this experiment would pan out, as both firms had a solid book of work under each's respective belt, clients varying from The Denver Broncos to Quiznos. That was exciting. Something new to challenge us. Yet this would have to play out in order to truly understand what impact this merge would have on the company, on Ater, and on me.

DoD joins Dirty Horde in a clear
of a 10-Man during Vanilla,
Scholomance

Hackers

It was during an otherwise uneventful, straightforward clear of Serpentshrine Cavern one evening, that an event took place which I will forever remember. As we moved from pack to pack, clearing Naga trash, mentally preparing for The Lurker Below in the hopes of moving through him quickly and on to bigger, better bosses, it happened. One of our main tanks, a Druid named Kizmet -- who had been with us since the early days of Vanilla -- stopped pulling trash. At first, he seemed a victim of momentary Internet lag, so we waited a few seconds to see if he would catch up. A moment later, he shifted out of his bear form, and began hearthing back to town. I had imposed a strict "you're-here-for-the-full-four-hours" rule on our raids, so players did not leave early unless it was a dire emergency.

I inquired quite rhetorically, "Uh...is there a problem, Kiz?" 

His response caused my eyes to narrow with concern.

"I'm...not in the game. Trying to log back in now. My password isn't working."

The rest of us saw that someone was most definitely still in-game on his character. Kizmet's account had been compromised. We called out to people in the guild who were back in town to find out where his character was. Within seconds, reports were coming in from players who were watching Kizmet disrobe, as the hacker proceeded to vendor all of his raid gear. Guild members fired off whispers to the player, demanding they identify themselves and respond. Of course he didn't. Others started opening customer support tickets, desperately trying to contact a Blizzard Game Master to catch this person in the act of hacking an account. It was useless. Getting a hold of a GM at a moment's notice was unheard of. Support tickets sat in the queue for hours, sometimes days, before speaking to someone about a problem in-game. I sat back in my chair, and took a deep breath, while my fellow guildy tried everything he could to get his account back. Eventually, you stop struggling, when you realize there's nothing to save you from drowning, so you relax and let the water fill your lungs as you sink into darkness.

Another tank down. The keying process would need to start all over again.

In The Burning Crusade, there was only one way to acquire the gear necessary to raid. And that was to raid. Players that didn't possess the appropriate armor and weaponry were completely unable to participate in even the most rudimentary of encounters. There were no alternatives. 5-Man Heroic dungeons dropped blue quality gear, worse than Karazhan. There were no tokens, no valor or justice, and the only redeemable set of crafted gear that had any hope in Hell of working in raids was the Frozen Shadoweave set, popular among Shadow Priests. And Frozen Shadoweave itself was a known joke among the raiders of TBC; the only reason it was viable was because itemization in TBC was an embarrassment. The Tier 4 and 5 sets for a Shadow Priest were pathetic in comparison, and they weren't the only ones suffering out of the gate. Paladins were now viable tanks in Protection, yet the appropriate defense gear to make them uncrittable didn't exist at launch. It was through heavy advocacy on the forums from players like our own Bretthew that Blizzard finally swung around and fixed those gaps in gear.

Should it come as any surprise when I reveal to you that Bretthew also suffered a loss of his character at the hands of a hacker? Of course he did.

Another tank down. They keying process would need to start all over again.

Zanjina watches as players from And Justice For All
and Legion of Zek attack a griffon,
Winterspring

A Modest Proposal

They were a familiar face on Deathwing-US, for at least as long as we had been around. Perhaps a little more casual, maybe a bit less hardcore, but the guild name was recognizable as we passed by each other in Orgrimmar. The Legion of Zek took their name from Tallon Zek, a popular EverQuest server back in the day. EQ servers were named after popular characters in their game's lore, a pattern World of Warcraft followed suit with. And, much like World of Warcraft and each server's individuality, those players who stuck to a particular server took great pride in their home, as these players clearly demonstrated by carrying the name with them to WoW. Although I didn't pay much attention to their goings-on, I felt they were a tight knit crew of close friends that perhaps shared a similar mindset as ours. The only indication that we were aligned was due to a general lack of drama on the Deathwing-US forums coming from or pointed toward them. I compelled DoD to keep any volatile opinions to themselves. By flying under the radar, we were rarely the target of any public drama.

Legion of Zek, it would seem, agreed with this tactic.

I got my first indication that things were hitting rough waters for LoZ when their guild leader, Syldhor, reached out to me. I was surprised, at first, because my days of assimilating guilds during Vanilla were long behind me; these days, I would pick up the occasional player here and there as options made themselves available to me. So for a guild that was smaller, tight-knit, and kept to themselves to option up the automatic assimilation of their roster into mine seemed bizarre. But in talking with Syldhor, the reasons were made clear, and were all too familiar. They were struggling on the unforgiving content in The Burning Crusade. A few star players were enshrouded by a much a larger crew of complainers and has-beens, players focused heavily on the "fun" part, and not so much on the "serious" part of raiding.

"Why us?" I asked Syldhor.

"Well, you guys have a proven track record. It's no secret that you guys pulled off Magtheridon, that fight is a nightmare."

At least we agreed there.

"But more importantly, I like the way you run things here. From what some of the guys have told me, in running with your crew through the heroics and stuff, there's a noticeable bit of maturity in your group. You go the extra mile."

"That's very generous, thank you for the compliments. I certainly try, though it seems lately that it's tough to keep your arms around it. Mutual respect, that is."

"Oh, no question. I mean, I've played with these guys a long time. Long time. Well back into EQ. We're all good friends. And I don't know how much longer I have, my interest in WoW is really kind of waning. So before I cut out of here completely, I'd like to be able to leave my crew with folks I can trust to be treated the same way."

"Do they all want to come over?" I asked, "I mean, I may have spots in raid progression for some of them...but I can't guarantee out of the gate."

Syldhor hesitated.

"Some of them are opposed to this idea. And I get that. I don't hold it against them. But, they'd rather go down with the sinking ship than take one of these lifeboats. They're stubborn."

"Do you think it would help if I talked to them?"

"Well, you're certainly welcome to. But I wouldn't expect miracles."

Syldhor granted me access to their guild forums, and I introduced myself, extending an olive branch as best I could to those holdouts that stood their ground as the boat continued to spring leaks. I wasn't able to bring them around. We were the enemy, this big bloated monstrosity that stomped around Deathwing-US with an enormous roster and a multitude of boss kills they lacked. The holdouts felt we weren't small enough, family-oriented enough, that our goals were different.

What goals? To have fun? Isn't that everyone's goal? It boggled my mind why any player in a guild like LoZ, whose interest was clearly to enjoy their time in WoW, wouldn't want to spend it with a similar group of like-minded folks. We wanted to have fun in WoW, too?

Why would their idea of fun be any different than ours?

2.14. Pulling the Pin

Descendants of Draenor defeats Magtheridon,
Magtheridon's Lair

An End to Tier 4

Magtheridon finally met his end at the hands of Descendants of Draenor on June 4th, a grueling six encompassing twelve individual nights of work. Bloodied and beaten, we scraped ourselves up off the floor to take our final kill-shot, while I ran through all the failures of this boss's design in my head. How many wasted attempts had we endured due to a lag spike or a disconnect from a cube-clicker? It was both an insufferable and inconsequential end to the first tier of raiding in The Burning Crusade. When Ragnaros fell by our hand, we raced into Blackwing Lair. But when Magtheridon died, we collapsed in exhaustion and disgust.

Were there screams of excitement in Vent? Absolutely. It was nearly as deafening as our first Nefarian kill, another boss that marked the end of a tier of content. Were we excited about the kill? Without question! We knew this was an incredibly difficult encounter that did not have a lot of kills on our server. Were we relieved? Most definitely. It was a huge relief to finally have the Magtheridon notch on our belts.

Did we want to go back?

Not a chance.

After spending that amount of time and effort for something so trivial in the end (several tier 4 chest tokens) we had no interest in returning. And that distaste towards the first tier of raiding in TBC set the stage for a multitude of problems we would soon have thrust upon us. This was the first real difference between raiding in TBC and raiding in Vanilla. When Nefarian finally fell by our hand, we couldn't wait to get back in Blackwing Lair the following week, clearing all over again. Mind you, we didn't always get him, even after we officially declared him on farm status. Our second 40-Man cleanup crew often left a mess themselves, which we had to sacrifice progression time for. Amid these apparent inconveniences, we cleared every boss along the way, which meant gear for many, many raiders, and plenty of practice on a wide variety of raid mechanics.

Descendants of Draenor celebrates their
kill of Magtheridon in Thrallmar,
Hellfire Penninsula

Regaining Control of the Situation

By contrast, there was really nothing to be gained by returning to Magtheridon's Lair; it was a pit of despair and sorrow. The trash prior Magtheridon dropped nothing of value, and only taught our raiders how to be disgusted at having their time wasted. Magtheridon was a linchpin boss that set the stage for a variety of encounters we would be force-fed throughout The Burning Crusade, all delivering an alleged common-theme from the powers that be at Blizzard: 

There is no margin for error in raiding. We demand perfection, regardless of the technical limits of the game or your system.

And while I am most certainly up to the task of meeting this new raised bar set by Blizzard, the linchpin encounter -- as designed -- demands that a certain margin of error exist, to adapt to those limitations that are implicit by nature. I cannot control the latency of my players, I can't control the performance of their computers...and perhaps with a hardcore guild, in which kicking the player to the curb may be an option, it wasn't for the type of guild we were striving to be. In order for the zero-margin-of-error linchpin to work, to provide adequate challenge but still work within the confines of the World of Warcraft infrastructure, one facet of control needed to remain intact:

If you insist on reducing the margin of error to nearly zero on a linchpin, then you must give us the ability to control who becomes the linchpin

Without that control, what practical options remain?

Yell at the player for failing? That only upsets the player. It doesn't make them play any better.

Keep practicing until they get it? Some players won't ever get it. In the real world, there are players that simply lack the capacity. No amount of practicing or yelling will make them do what you want them to do. They either lack the coordination and reflexes to perform the task you want, or their latency prevents them from doing it in a timely manner. If a person prefers a melee class over a tank, perhaps there is a reason for this. Perhaps they've come to terms with the fact that they aren't comfortable playing a tank, and never will.

Deal with the network disconnects / lag spikes and keep re-trying? If anyone at Blizzard is reading this blog, here's the secret: If you're worried that a duplicate raid (say, for example, a raid that exists in both 10- and 25-Man formats) expedites burnout, I'm here to tell you that it doesn't.

Giving us a raid like Magtheridon's Lair expedites burnout.

Kick them out of your guild and bring someone that can do it? Well, that works for hardcore guilds that care only about progression and not about the people themselves. That didn't work for us. We were trying to be respectful and supportive toward each other. That meant bringing players that didn't have the necessary reflexes to react in an emergency to filling in as a cube clicker.

An example of a well-designed
Linchpin boss: Professor Putricide,
Icecrown Citadel

The Right Way to Pin It

The best example I can think of in an encounter such as this is Professor Putricide. There are a wide array of complex mechanics at play in the Putricide encounter, but the success of the raid ultimately hinges on the player chosen to drive the Abomination. This is how a linchpin encounter with no room for error must work. Without that control, infrastructure impurities multiplied with personal incompetencies equate to an encounter that the raid is unable to adapt to when randomness spikes up. True raiders understand randomness, and know that it must be dealt with. But the tools must be present, a constant must exist to lean on, so that strategy can be built around such randomness.

We know that Blizzard had thought this through at least once before...back when we were in Naxxramas. Instructor Razuvious was a prime example of a zero-margin-of-error linchpin that allowed us some control over our own fate. Randomly forcing players into that role as a means of varying the raid's difficulty is lazy and short-sighted. Razuvious got it right. Remember, Haribo and Volitar weren't chosen at random to be Priest Tanks...we chose them. Give us the control to choose whom our weakest link will be, or widen the error margin enough so that we can adapt. You can have one or the other, but not both.

---

With a deep sigh of relief, we officially stuck a fork in Tier 4 and called it done. It was ridiculous, logistically skewed (especially in regards to Karazhan's role in the mix), widened our eyes to accentuate personal responsibility, and set the precedent for how much forgiveness we could expect in the raids to come...

...little. If any at all.

We returned to Orgrimmar after celebrating the death of Magtheridon, and two of our players now boasted a complete set of Tier 4, the end result of a grueling ten week ordeal. It felt like we had been through a dozen bosses, yet we could only claim three completed encounters as our prize. As we wandered around the Orc city, one of only a skant few guilds on the server that had completed Magtheridon, I began to notice something that both startled and confused me. This thing was a direct result of a decision Blizzard had decided to go forward with in The Burning Crusade, without giving it a second thought. A decision that, in the face of the brutality dealt to us in the form of these past three encounters, was the equivalent to a slap in the face.

A decision that is undeniably Blizzard's First Mistake in World of Warcraft.

2.13. A Single Point of Failure

"Pit Lord: Magtheridon",
Artwork by MARKCW

An End to Tackling

Imagine for a moment, a world where no touchdown could be considered fair unless every single member of the offensive team remained untackled. Not just the person running the football into the end-zone, I mean each and every member of the offensive line. The center, guards, and tackles all remain upright. None of these players can be knocked down to the turf. Ever. If the quarterback opts to throw, he may not be tackled. Ever. Not before the ball leaves his hands, not after. Every single member of the backfield must stay up. All halfback and fullback positions can never be tackled during the play...whether they have the ball or not. No wide receiver, no tight end...nobody. Not a single player on the offensive line can be knocked down during the play.

It makes for an incredibly brutal game of Football. I expect it would be frustrating to play, torture to coach, and boring to watch.

This is what Football would be like if it were played like a linchpin boss encounter in World of Warcraft, a very specific style of encounter that we experienced as a repeating theme throughout The Burning Crusade. Individual boss strategy aside, the success of a linchpin boss encounter rests solely on the shoulders of an individual player. Now, whether this player is chosen at random, cycled through during the course of the boss-fight, or is a specific person that the raid can control, the result is the same. If the person currently responsible does not live up to his task, the proverbial linchpin not only fails himself, but causes the raid to wipe in the process.

Linchpin boss encounters are quite common in WoW. Looking back over the history of the game, there are a good number of bosses that stand out in my mind as linchpins. Archimonde and the horrific Doomfire mechanic. Teron Gorefiend, with his cursed Shadow of Death. Even as far back as Baron Geddon, igniting players at random into a Living Bomb, the linchpin encounter leaves raiders with a single, solitary truth:

Death to you means death to all.

Hear me when I state for the record that I am not opposed to the linchpin encounter. It is important for us as seasoned raiders to experience a multitude of encounters, to identify and adapt as necessary, to be challenged in different ways, and ultimately forced to conquer our own inner spatial awareness demons. But in designing these encounters for a game such as World of Warcraft, a game played over the internet, fraught with latency and subject to the performance of many individuals and their respective computers, a careful note must always be observed which takes these many factors into account:

An encounter in which the survival of the entire raid rests solely upon the shoulders of an individual that cannot be planned around is a terrible, terrible mistake.

In order to learn this undeniable truth, Ater would have to pull a prank on his guild leader.

"Baron Geddon"
Artwork by Brandon Kitkouski

The Living Bomb Prank

"...and Kerulak, you're going to stand right here."

Ater motioned me over to a portion of Garr's expansive cave; now empty, save that of a small pile of Earthen Elemental rubble in the corner. Eager, and still bursting with excitement that my guild had successfully entered 40-Man raiding, I moved to the position he directed me to, far on the south end of the room. While I was a bit concerned about the positioning, I trusted that Ater knew exactly what he was doing. By putting me in the role of main tank healer, I was in a safe spot to heal him and avoid any bad decisions that a Living Bomb might choose to make.

When the encounter began, all seemed well. Ater wailed on Baron Geddon while the raid slowly picked away at him. I whack-a-moled my Greater Healing Wave button whenever Ater took a spike of fire damage from one severely pissed-off Fire Elemental. A few minutes into the fight, something caught my attention. In the blink of an eye, one of the mages had teleported directly to me. It happened in a flash; there was no time at all to react. The mage burst apart at the seams, exploding in a gush of fire and flames -- taking my Shaman with him -- to a burning grave. When the laughter in TeamSpeak filled my headphones, it became painfully obvious that the joke was on me. I'd been set up, the target for whichever mage happened to be lucky enough to gain Geddon's awful debuff.

It is a tale of woe and despair that continues to amuse guildies and strangers alike, but while many focus on the funniest part of the story -- the death of the cow named Kerulak -- the story has a darker, more serious underpinning. Ater was never truly in control of the prank. Geddon applied Living Bomb to members of the raid in such a way as to ensure no one individual knew who would be next. There was no amount of positioning, no management of damage or threat, no single one mechanic that any player could latch on to that would shift the control of the encounter to them and them only. Even though Ater had set aside a very specific spot for a soon-to-be-BBQ'd cow that was away from raid's harm, a false sense of control lingered. The prank's success would ultimately rely on the mage that happened to be randomly chosen for Living Bomb, and whom happened to be let in on Ater's secret.

The prank may never have happened at all, had the Living Bomb not randomly made it around to the mage Ater had let in on the gag. The Blink spell had a habit of being buggy in Vanilla, so the prank's success had technical implications as well -- the mage could have just as easily misblinked into a crowd of unsuspecting raiders. Latency was also an issue, the Mage could have lagged at the time they were to move toward Kerulak, a very real possibility that had dire implications. But of all these possible points of failure, the worst possible scenario is the scariest: Had Ater chosen someone less adept, there might be far fewer DoDers today that remember this story as a hilarious.

A Hellfire Channeler monitors one of the puzzle
cubes keeping the pit lord shacked,
Magtheridon's Lair

Lynching the Pit Lord

The boss was situated in the center of the room. Surrounding him were five boxes that could be clicked on by any player in the raid. The strategy involved sending five players, at a specific moment in time, to go and stand by those five boxes. When Magtheridon was about to unleash a massive amount of fire damage on the entire raid, the five players were to "click" their respective box, which would cause five purple beams to shoot out towards Magtheridon, partially de-materializing him, and preventing him from unleashing hell onto the raid. Simple, right? Wait for the call, click the box, repeat. It was a very simplistic mechanic. 

Unfortunately, what should be straightforward in theory often does not translate well into practice within a raid environment.

Right from the start, players couldn't get it straight when they were supposed to click. Even with a raid leader coordinating by voice over Ventrilo, players still couldn't get into position consistently. Or they clicked their cube too late. Or too early. Or they thought they clicked their cube, but didn't. And the beauty of this encounter was, as soon as you successfully made it past one round of cube clicks, you could no longer rely on those same five people, because now they had a magical debuff that prevented them from clicking again. So even though you had a reasonable amount of control to decide who clicked what and when, eventually, nearly everyone in the raid was going to have to handle the clicks. Now you had the luxury of teaching the mechanic to five new people. And another five. And another five.

And this is about the time you start thinking about putting a gun in your mouth.

Let's face it, everyone makes mistakes; every single member of the 25-Man raid team most certainly fucked up their own cube clicking at one point or another. Others...struggled. We would do our very best to try to keep them from having that responsibility so they could stay focused on the boss, but that was a fairy tale where everyone lived happily ever after in the end, as a rainbow sprouted from Magtheridon's lifeless corpse. The cold, brutal reality of Magtheridon's Lair is that players died mid-attempt. With limited battle resurrections as a crutch, eventually, you are going to have to put those struggling players into cube-clicking responsibility. A truly gifted group of raiders are dynamic and can bend at will to the needs of the raid. So you spend 15 minutes on Magtheridon, you get him low on health, and someone takes a bad fireball to the face, doesn't quite get healed up in time, and is killed...and you are forced to make that horrible, horrible judgement call. The one where you call out the name of that not-so-great player in Vent, say you need help, and tell him he's next on cube-clicking duty, and he runs over and clicks...

...the wrong cube.

And the entire attempt is a wash.

2.12. The Accidental Florist

"Crying Tree of Life"
Artwork by Okha (Oksana)

Fauxliage

Kerulak was all I knew.

Since the game's launch in November of 2004, all of my end-game knowledge and expertise as a healer had been funneled through my Tauren Shaman. Like many players, I had a number of alts on my account, to break the monotony and see the world through a different pair of eyes. But my alts were low-level and I looked upon them as a hobby in-between polishing Kerulak's gear, assisting with attunement runs. My priority was first and foremost my shaman, Kerulak, so the prospect of putting him on the bench was unnerving and left me feeling a loss of control. My muscle-memory had long been cemented around totems, chain heal, and big single target greater healing waves. Earth Shield was still relatively new, having been added at the start of TBC, and was technically my only legitimate HoT (albeit one that lay dormant until reacting to damage). That is, if you don't count the pathetic heals-over-time that came from a Healing Stream Totem.

I feared the pain of breaking down that muscle and rebuilding it.

Part of the problem was that I was spaz. As far back as I can remember, I struggled with keeping my shit straight as it began to hit the proverbial fan. In emergencies, microseconds before death, I was at my absolute worst from a play perspective. I had a habit of freaking out and spamming a multitude of buttons as I scrambled for my life; in many cases they were the wrong abilities in the wrong order. In order to prevent myself from tripping over my own branches while playing on Breginna's character, it was important for me to keep shared functions in the same places. That muscle memory was all I had to rely on when adrenaline was pumping and I was about to flip out on the keyboard and mouse. I needed to ensure I was a contributor, not a detriment, by bringing this Druid to raids. Embrace the spaz.

My strategy in approaching the adjustment from Shaman to Druid was based around a single concept: Both are healers, so find whatever similarities you can, and map Druid abilities by function to the same keybindings you use with your Shaman. The starting point was the spell both the Shaman and the Druid shared: Nature's Swiftness, granting an instant cast to an otherwise long-casting spell. With Kerulak, the macro was mapped to Greater Healing Wave. This time, it would be Healing Touch. Kerulak could perform an emergency pool of mana regeneration through Mana Tide Totem, so I took my keybinding for it, and changed that to Innervate. Since Healing Touch had taken the place of Greater Healing Wave, I looked at my options. Chain Heal was more of a staple than Lesser Healing Wave in my eyes, and for the Druid, Rejuvenation seemed to follow suit. As a result, I chose to map Regrowth to Lesser Healing Wave, and made Rejuvenation my base spell. I reasoned that, since Earth Shield is what I'd use to protect a tank, I converted that mapping to Swiftmend -- with the expectation that I would have said tank loaded up with HoTs as the prerequisite.

As I wrapped up the changes, all that remained was Tranquility, taking the place (far more significantly, I might add) of Healing Stream Totem. Like an anal retentive chef, I dragged the metaphor even further, replacing Ghost Wolf with Travel Form and Revive with Ancestral Spirit. By this point, abilities were varying wildly, but it came down to function more than naming convention or even the difference between instant and non-instant cast. As for Ankh, a passive triggered upon death, the paradigm shifted the furthest in the form of a druid's Rebirth. This clutch ability was something the raid would rely on me for, so I needed the ability bound front-and-center. When the spazzing began, someone would need to come back from the dead while the raid remained in combat. I stuck to mapping functions in this manner in the hopes that re-learning healing from the ground up would be painless and quick.

Just like how Magtheridon intended to end our pathetic lives.

The Druid Talent Trees during The Burning Crusade

The Feels of Heals

Healing on Breginna's Druid was an entirely refreshing experience. I took advantage of the perpetual-motion machine that was everlasting attunement requests, and leapt in to help as much as possible. I was amazed at how much simpler it was to keep people alive. The freedom to heal while moving was a luxury that Druids took for granted. One can only know the pain of having to keep a Main Tank alive and stay out of the fire at the same time by playing a healer other than a Druid. It required extreme discipline to shuffle around as little as possible in order to maximize cast time, but all those restrictions went out the door with the Druid. With a Disney-like innocence etched into the bark that was the Tree Form's face, I pranced around 5-man heroics like The Arcatraz, The Steamvault, and Shattered Halls, waving my twig-like arms in the area, dolling out HoTs like they were candy, while bouquets of flowers and nature flourished behind me.

This was how the other side lived.

When it came time to return to Gruul's Lair for our weekly run, Ater and company had already been briefed on Breginna's story. The sudden loss of Kerulak from the raid turned the attention of a few raiders, and that was to be expected. I explained myself in Vent and waved to them all from my bird's eye view, gliding down out of the Blade's Edge sky and shifting into humanoid form at the entrance to the Gronn's cave. Yes, there was ribbing, and that was to be expected, but I took it in stride as this is what we did for one another in a family setting. Breginna may have still been new, but she was no less important than the players who had been with us since as far back as Blackwing Lair. We looked out for one another, and joked about each other's ability behind the wheel. We did this because if there was ever truly a legitimate concern about someone's incompetence, the jokes would be a little less playful, would sting a little more...have a little more bite.

They were certain to leave teeth marks.

Behind the wheel of Breginna, High King Maulgar was a bit less stressful, a little less chaotic. I got the hang of layering up Lifebloom to smooth out the otherwise jagged health bar that sat just below Ater's name on my screen. I was the only Resto Druid in the raid, so when I heard a call out for a battle rez, there was no need to debate or question who was being addressed. A button click later, the dead were back in biz, rushing toward the Ogre King with blades in hand. Gruul was equally less taxing. Moving out of the cave-ins was a cinch, as I shuffled the little wide-grinning Tree out of harms way, flinging its arms into the air for heals as I went. Other healers would run low on mana, call out for help, and without giving it a second thought, out came the mana-regenerating magic imbued within Innervate. When I took on the task, I wasn't sure if I would acclimate to the Druid as quickly as I had, but keeping my button functions the same pounded the learning curve into a flat pancake. The High King and Gruul were once again down, and I bid on items on Breginna's behalf, keeping her geared and growing in strength while she was away.

Hanzo plays Breginna during her absence for work,
Gruul's Lair

Magtheridon's Lair

April had come and gone, and with it, the task of digging into TBC’s raid content had finally commenced. But to say we were progressing would be a stretch. Three weeks of the High King and three weeks of Gruul landed us squarely at the beginning of May, and we still had not yet completed Tier 4. Yes, there were issues. Two pieces came from Karazhan, a 10-Man raid not officially on our roster. Two pieces came from Maulgar and Gruul combined, but with only three King kills and a single, solitary defeat of the Dragonkiller on our belts, Tier 4 equipped raiders were still a long way off. But as Blain had taught us, gear did not make a bad player good, so we repeated this mantra every time we slammed up against another wall.

This time, the wall was about to come down on us.

The remaining piece in Tier 4 would come from the pit lord Magtheridon, a pit lord shackled deep beneath the bowels of the Blood Furnace, where Illidan drained his blood as a means to fuel his army of Fel Orcs. If there was any shred of a doubt in the back of my mind that Blizzard misjudged the difficulty for their entry level raids, that doubt was excised from my brain once we set foot in the pit lord's lair. I was none too thrilled to dig into this fight. Word had spread among the raiding community about the sheer ridiculousness in difficulty the boss posed. A few short weeks after The Burning Crusade launched, I remember reading an article on WoW Insider about how Death and Taxes themselves said, not in so many words…

"Fuck that."

DnT leap-frogged past Magtheridon entirely, diving into Tier 5, uninterested in wasting any time dealing with the foolishly designed mechanics of a boss that desperately screamed out to be re-tuned. The High King and Gruul were tough and unforgiving, that was never in question. But they were doable with a raid comprised of team members that were sharp, took accountability for their own actions, positioning and performance. A pro-team could absolutely take out these pro-bosses.

But even professional teams make mistakes, yet still come home with the championship trophy; it's because the game might be complex and technical, there's room for error and recovery -- there's room to breathe.

On the twelfth night of Magtheridon attempts, I felt like I was drowning.

2.11. Divergent Paths

Twitter.com, circa 2007
Source: SXSW

The Latest Fad

"Check out this new website."

I tilted my head to the side, peering around my work monitor, revealing Ater. His gaze remained fixed on his own computer's monitor, the clacking of keys producing a steady hum from his side of our collaborative desk arrangement.

"What's the url?"

"twitter.com. I guess it's been around awhile but I heard about it through South by Southwest. It's bizarre." Ater got up, walked around to my side, and pointed to the registration link. "Here...set up an account."

I clicked the link, filled out my info, waited for the confirmation, and then logged in. A lone window greeted me, with a single label above it: 

What are you doing?

"This is weird. Who would care about what I'm doing?"

"I know...crazy. But I bet people would use this for all sorts of things." He walked back around to his desk and took a seat, "Maybe even like having public conversations."

"That's just creepy, though. Following people's conversations? I mean, I can have a conversation over the Internet in IRC if I want to."

"Right," Ater shot back, "but how many people use IRC?"

"A hell of a lot of nerds, that's for sure!" I laughed.

"Nerds, yeah. But not the masses. Think about what you have to do to get into IRC. Gotta know what server to connect to, and then deal with all the lingo. Figure out what channels to go into. IRC is still pretty underground...at least for the general user. IRC is great for people who are tech like you and me. But not very usable for the masses. That's the difference."

I looked back at the website, and then looked at Ater. It was as though every time he spoke, there was some deeply insightful message that just seemed to be as plain-as-day to him. The masses? General everyday users, uninterested in technology, barely knowing the difference between Yahoo! and Google? They're going to be the ones having public conversations where strangers eavesdrop on one another? 

If it had been anybody else making such a bold prediction, I would've laughed them out of the room. The masses have never flocked to technology. As long as I've been alive, non-tech folk have always expressed frustration and dismissal when it came to technology. Cool for us...confusing, boring, and dull for them. Even at the agency where Ater and I built websites for customers specifically paying for technology, we struggled with training them. Things were too complex, too many terms to learn, too many buttons to press and an awful lot of "why doesn't it just work."

I couldn't help but be reminded of the plight of the casual.

Two Separate Roads

Every so often, a lone forum post would pop-up on the Battle.Net forums about why there weren't more raids like Karazhan. Smaller, less oppressive raids, allowing players to rely on fewer of one another to accomplish the same tasks. Most often, Blizzard wouldn't respond to these complaints. The folks in charge, namely Tigole, tuned it out as white noise. Raiding was never meant to be for the masses, the great majority of players that were confused by basic concepts like moving out of the fire. Should it have been any wonder that Tigole himself came from a background of hardcore late-night raiding in EverQuest, ranting on his guild's website about the undeserving whiners who were slowly forcing EQ into a watered-down grave. Raiding was a privilege, not a right. You want it? You get off your ass and you do it. No complaining of size or of having to interact with other people. You take that energy you'd normally use to bitch and moan about how you have it so hard...and you simply go and get shit done. Anybody that complained of raids being too large, too many things to learn, too many buttons to press...didn't belong in raids in the first place.

I looked back at the website, asking its presumptuous question. Ater did have a point. It was simple and accessible. Certainly something that far more users could take advantage of. IRC was involved, did have a lot of techno-babble baggage associated with it, and I got how it could turn the masses off, scare them with horror stories of pedophiles and pornography and pirated software. This...Twitter site definitely made things a lot more accessible. And it certainly wasn't going to replace IRC by any means. They'd serve different audiences -- maybe even both! But they would ultimately maintain unique purposes. If all you cared about was posting a public thought, this new Twitter thing would serve that crowd beautifully. Tell Twitter you're playing a video game, and maybe get a couple of followers as your reward. But if you wanted to take it a step further, dive deep down into the depths of IRC, get your hands muddy with mods, channels, binary file transfers and bouncing between servers, stuff you would never get through Twitter -- IRC was still an option.

One action with two separate levels of effort and two separate degrees of reward.

The Twitter thing suddenly made a lot more sense.

---

"I could only imagine someone like Blain using this. How goes the search for a Blain replacement, anyway?"

Ater glanced back, "I've been talking to Volitar. He might be interested in helping out."

"Ah, nice. Volitar's a good choice."

That damn site was still up on my screen, the dialog box practically begging me to type something into it.

"Twitter, eh?"

Ater smiled, "That site is gonna be huge. Keep an eye on it."

What are you doing?

I clicked into the box and typed a response:

Completing Twitter registration.

I closed the browser and went back to work.

Hanzo's Druid alt, Oxanna,
Thunder Bluff

Breginna

I logged in that evening, checking to see who needed assistance in completing their attunement, when Breginna shot me a tell.

"Can I chat with you for a bit?"

"Sure, of course! Let me hop into Vent."

I alt-tabbed and fired up Ventrilo. Breginna was one of our newest raiders, our lone Restoration Druid. In the wake of a myriad of class changes that The Burning Crusade gave us, I struggled to find quality healers of the druid affinity. Many, as was the case with our very own Dalans, had felt forced and betrayed into a role of healing during Vanilla. They wished to take advantage of all of the bestial forms they'd been granted by rolling the class -- and that meant inside raid encounters as well. But in Vanilla, Druid tanks were clunky and difficult to get right, and their feral and balance DPS wasn't up to par with the purer DPS classes. So if raid progression was the goal, Druids were expected to heal -- and many didn't like it.

Come TBC, Druids gained far more viability in their multiple forms, and they -- like Dalans -- said good-bye and good-riddance to healing. Great for them, horrible for me. The pool of available healing druids withered away to practically zilch, and this was not good. Even with all the changes that TBC brought to the table for the variety of playable classes in the game, Restoration Druids still dominated one very specific niche of heals -- the ability to stack a multitude of HoTs on targets. Between Rejuvination, Regrowth, and Lifebloom, Tanks that normally experienced huge spikes of damage would have their health bar changes smoothed to a much more tolerable level, which in turn, eased the minds of the remaining healers and kept us from having an aneurysm.

"Hey, Hanzo." Breginna's voice was refreshing. In the sausage factory that was Descendants of Draenor, having a gal in the guild was a relief from the daily testosterone fueled chat. It was fine most of the time...but even I needed an occasional break from random bouts of excessive profanity.

"What's up, Breginna. Everything OK?"

"Yeah! Yeah...everything's great. Getting settled in to the raids now, really psyched about Mag."

"Yes. Mag. He is going to be a tough one. You'll absolutely be key in the guild pulling that off."

"Well, that's why I wanted to talk to you..."

Oh, God, no...

"You're not leaving the guild on me, are you?"

"Oh no no, no not at all!"

Jesus H.

"Thank God! You scared me!"

"No, I am going to be around for a long time, if you'll have me! The reason I wanted to talk to you was to let you know about an upcoming event in my schedule that I need help with..."

"Sure, anything! What can I do?"

"Well, I have a job coming up that I have to travel for, and it'll be a couple of weeks at least. So, I'm not going to be able to raid, I expect. I mean, I don't think I'll have access to a computer that will be WoW-ready."

Well...shit.

"OK, well...hm, that sucks. But how can I help with that?"

"Well, I was thinking...what if I give you my account to play on? I mean, do you think that is a possibility?"

Uh...

"Yeah. I guess that could work." I stumbled a bit, lost in a train of thought as I attempted to deal with this curve-ball. Awkwardly, I blurted a thank-you back to her, "That's extremely generous of you to offer up your account."

It could work. She wouldn't fall behind in gear, and Kerulak pretty much had everything he needed from the content we were able to complete thus far. And as the lone Resto Druid blanketing the raid with HoTs, her presence was going to be pivotal in our success -- never mind the fact that it was one more battle resurrection we desperately needed.

"Alright. Let's do it."

I had some Druid homework to attend to.

2.10. Carrying the Load

Kerulak watches while Gruul ends
the lives of his 25-Man raid,
Gruul's Lair

Stay

After coming off of our High King Maulgar kill with 11 people dead, I felt an uneasy tug at my gut. Our performance was going to have to be as sharp as the difficulty curve that TBC was throwing at us. Gruul's mechanics offered us no reprieve. He struck Ater hard, and employed a similar strike made popular by Patchwerk back in Naxxramas. But while Patchwerk's was Hateful, slamming an additional punch into the first melee in range with the highest amount of health, Gruul's was Hurtful, always choosing the second melee in threat behind the Main Tank as his target. Both Ater and Kurst's health were constantly spiking, and any hope of smoothing out that damage was diminished by the fact that we were painfully low on Resto Druids. In fact, we only had one to speak of: a new recruit named Breginna, who promised to do everything she could to flatten said spikes with her multitude of HoTs.

He struck our tanks with such fury that the cave shook around us, rocks breaking free from the ceiling and showering down onto random unsuspecting players. We were in a constant state of re-positioning, while Ater and Kurst moved together, slowly, cautiously -- bound by an invisible shackle that...if one or the other moved too far away from...would cause Gruul to choose a new melee in range as the second-highest threat as a Hurtful Strike target.

You'd know when it happened. A rogue would be alive one minute, dead the next. No time for a Power Word: Shield, no Ancestral Swiftness-macro'd Greater Healing Wave. Alive, then dead. Game Over. The End.

Aside from extreme damage pouring into both tanks, coupled with the panic that ensued after cave-ins, Gruul still had one big gimmick in store for us. The Gronn would punch the ground in a single explosive blow, knocking the entire raid in random directions. As we spazzed-out after landing, our feet grew heavy with mud and rock, we began to slow down, as if being pulled through clay. Soon, we all stood motionless in the cave, frozen into position, reduced to immobile statues.

Then came the Shatter.

Gruul would send a wave of damage out that multiplied against any player that was within the vicinity of any other player. The closer the player, the more damage that was multiplied into the Shatter. One poorly positioned player could easily take four or five other players out in a single Shatter. The goal, therefore, was to use those precious few seconds after the knockback to get away from each other as quickly as possible. This was not complex at all, not nearly as much as High King Maulgar. One boss. Three mechanics. It was practically a tank-and-spank. This should be over in a couple of attempts.

It wasn't.

An example of the many Gruul's Lair diagrams
guilds created to train their raiders on.

Yelling at the Deaf

On every Gruul attempt, players continued to amaze me during Shatter. The instructions could not have been communicated any simpler: Move away from each other. Spread out. Get away. Do not stand next to another player. How many other ways can it be stated? It didn't matter. Whatever we told the raid to do, they panicked and spazzed out. They ran into each other. They killed each other. The simplest of tasks became a nightmare, and paraphrasing the instructions was as effective as yelling at a deaf person.

You can yell all you want, but they won't hear you.

Other raiding guilds struggled with this, too. They created bizarre images which meticulously detailed out each one of the 25 positions a person could hold in the roster, mapping each slot to a placement in the cave and a direction for them to run. It was the thing of nightmares, a paint-by-colors strategy meant for a child, handed over to grown men and women as an instruction manual. Why was this absolutely necessary? Had we fallen to such a degree that each and every person had to have their hand held as we gently guided them to the bathroom to go potty?

But that wasn't the nightmare. The horror came when we realized it wasn't helping.

Even with diagrams and arrows drawn in crayon, players continued to panic, blindly following the path given to them per the instructions, not taking into account that their positioning was off or had changed as a result of the knockback. Walking the directions we gave them without thinking for themselves. Heading towards other raiders. Ending each others lives.

Six nights.

Six painful nights is what it took until we got it right. I can't even begin to tell you how many attempts it was. It was a lot. Far too many. Far too many for the first tier of raids, and far too many for players that should have known better. Both Blizzard and our raid team had made some pretty embarrassing mistakes in this first tier thus far. Yes, there was a huge onus on us to increase each player's personal responsibility, but from a practical perspective, one thing was clear: entry level 25-man raids were insanely unforgiving.

For all the painful attempts, the wipes, the running back, going over positioning and clarifying not where you run during Shatter, but how...over the course of those six nights we eventually knocked Gruul down a peg or two. A round of yelling -- albeit somewhat muted -- filled the Vent server with what should have been considered a triumph and a victory.

I felt neither. And I had no idea why.

Kerulak poses with the 25-Man raid team
after the defeat of Gruul the Dragonkiller,
Gruul's Lair

Personally Irresponsible

Gruul's Lair was behind us, but it had opened our eyes. All the work we'd done in Vanilla, the struggles, the late nights, re-learning healing, refining keys and adding mods to the tool-chain...it all seemed irrelevant. Like we had never accomplished anything in a raid before, like we were all green and needed to start from scratch. Claiming the progress we'd made in Vanilla as a selling point to new recruits made me feel like a fraud as we languished amid tier 4. They would only have to be present in one raid to see the panic-stricken raiders get picked off by falling rocks to read between the lines. You're not progressing -- you are the very absence of progression. Look me up when your guild pulls their heads out of their collective asses.

In these opening weeks of our guild re-entering the raiding landscape, I was desperate for answers. Had we lost our touch? Was the difficulty truly as steep as we perceived it to be? Did the lack of a reliable raid assistant affect Ater more than I had hoped? Did it come down to an absence of mage leadership, or the inconvenient shortage of restoration druids blanketing the raid with Tranquility? Or was there simply a much broader, more overarching reason why everything felt oppressive?

As with any team, there are going to be folks that rise to the top, a great majority of competent individuals, and a select few bottom feeders. In the days of the 40-Man, the incompetence of those bottom feeders was masked by the sheer strength in numbers coming from the remainder of the raid. The majority of these shining-stars would act as a buffer for those who were unable to deal with such technical details as standing in fire. With the loss of the forty came with it the loss of that buffer, that extra padding that softened the blow dealt by a handful of dead weights. 

In the new world order of a 25-Man, each and every person had to account for their sins, and "carrying" would no longer be a viable option. By each player taking personal responsibility, the strength of the team became that much more robust. I believed it. It is what I strove for, and what I wished the guild to adopt as their mantra.

Wishing...is a very poor way to lead people.