2.25. The Zanjina Monologues

"Undead Priest",
Artwork by UnidColor

The Feeling of Power

The first weekend of raiding on my shadow priest left me feeling like a bullshit leader. In the face of some of the greatest progression we had seen after months of stagnation, the guild leader was the lame duck. I saved face as best I could, congratulating the guild for their terrific wins in SSC, while quietly sickened by my own performance. Feelings of regret floated to the surface regarding my decision to bench Kerulak. Damage-producing machines like Turtleman, Blain, and Eacavissi dominated the meters, while Zanjina sat at a dismal 10th overall. It was the predictable result of a freshly minted 70 shoehorned in to the middle of TBC progression. My only consolation was the knowledge that we now had a dedicated replenishment buff that Blain could freely utilize in whichever group would gain the most from it. I knew mana regeneration was valuable. I was well-aware of the impact my small role played in the grand scheme of our progression. Those nights where boss kills easily could have been 1% wipes we'd now have the edge over. But I still couldn't shake the feeling that I was a burden more than a boon. And as I thanked each player for coming to the raid that night, reminding them that we were once again focused on getting to Illidan, nobody thanked me in return for sacrificing Kerulak in place of few extra mana points.

It was my job to motivate and encourage others without any expectation of warm-fuzzies in return. Self-sacrifice: all part of the job description.

Every day we returned to SSC to plug away at bosses, the damage meters stared back at me, a stark reminder of what my "contribution" looked like. Up went Shadow Word: Pain, then a Vampiric Touch, followed with a series of Mind Flays, my damage production capabilities continued to languish as the rest of the crew bubbled to the surface. As a leader attempting to set an example for others, this was an embarrassment, at best. It bugged me. I felt like I had no control to determine the raid's success. With Kerulak the rules were much simpler; the power of controlling players' lives through healing was much more palpable. My tauren shaman flung totems to the ground and dazzled raids with leaping beams of healing energy, saving tanks from imminent death and keeping facerollers in the fire from meeting their makers. Kerulak kept the raid progression alive. In his hands rested the fate of the players he healed. That was control. I would even go so far as to claim that a healer held more control of the raid than a tank, whose sole purpose was to bash a boss's brains in and not let the boss return the favor to others. The rejuvenating power of healing was intoxicating, which made it difficult for me to see the rational side of my current mediocrity.

I held the fate of our raid in Kerulak's hooves, and that felt like real power. I felt no such power in Zanjina. All I felt -- after looking at my 10th place on the damage meters -- was shame.

Shadow Word: Fail

Avatar Regalia:
Great to look at, set bonuses that
were nothing to write home about.
(Cosplay by Stéphane You)

The weeks that followed ate away at me as we neared the next hump in progression. One boss remained before Lady Vashj, Leotheras the Blind, and he would be the most unforgiving encounter yet. Every waking moment I spent in-game was to polish Zanny. I practiced in 5-man Heroics The Steamvault and The Shattered Halls. I struggled to keep myself alive in Eye of the Storm. I did anything I could to diminish my perception as a bottom-feeder. And to be quite clear, there wasn't much to adjust. In the days of The Burning Crusade, mastering a shadow priest was about as difficult as tying your shoe. Vampiric Touch, Shadow Word: Pain, Mind Blast, Mind Flay, rinse and repeat. As your target approaches death, add in a few casts of Shadow Word: Death for good measure. That's it. No complicated priorities. No "change your rotation when this one special ability procs" or "use this sequence while moving". The only flavor to the mix was an occasional Inner Focus, granting a free Mind Blast with a 100% critical chance.

Only a person who tied their shoelaces into knots could mess up a shadow priest's rotation.

My numbers remained low, and I continually enjoyed the luxury of random nagas leaping out and striking me down, my limited health pool and elegant Frozen Shadoweave ensuring a quick and embarrassing death. I gave new relevance to the phrase "standing in the fire"; a phrase no longer reserved simply to persuade others into getting their shit straight. If I was to lead by example, I was doing a piss-poor job of it, dying (it seemed) just by being looked at. Hyper focused on my pathetic damage and simplistic spell rotation, I became the textbook example of how to fail at raiding. And each time I was killed in the game, it killed me in real life.

I wasn't even able to take solace in loot. Yes, we were back on track, killing bosses and doing weekly imports of DKP strings boasting fabulous loot assignments. The raid's power grew stronger. But there was no loot for me. Not only had my DKP pool reset by switching to a new character (which was only fair to the rest of my players) but no items in tier 5 held significance to a shadow priest. We weren't going back to Tier 4, and as for the Avatar Regalia, its set bonuses left a lot to be desired. Under the oppressive iron fist of TBC raids, a steady boost of self-healing via Frozen Shadoweave's set bonus far outweighed random breaks in mana.

Mana cost was never an issue for a shadow priest. Replenishment...remember?

So, the steam train pressed on to Leo, clearing bosses and looting gear while gaining both power and strength. And I brought up the rear end, endlessly tripping over my knotted shoelaces.

Coagulation

September 2nd, 2007. Seven months into The Burning Crusade. Kael'thas Sunstrider's five blood elves, previously sent to Illidan to train as demon hunters, had produced only one viable candidate. Of the four failed students, three had perished in training. The remaining demon hunter apprentice had gone mad, exiled to the depths of Serpentshrine Cavern. We drank our flasks and ate our food, eyeing the three Broken that kept him leashed to the floor in draenic magic. The tell-tale blindfold wrapped tightly across his eyes marked him as a demon hunter. As it was with Illidan himself, blinded by Sargeras and granted new, truer sight to find and slay demons wherever they lurked. The only demons Leotheras saw were his inner ones, and it was up to us to bring his madness to an end.

Leo shifted between two forms for the duration of the encounter. In blood elf form, he would wail on the tanks, stopping on occasion to perform a whirlwind that bounced him around his cave like a pinball. This was when he was at his most treacherous; the blow from a whirlwind not only struck for a massive amount of damage, it left a bleed ticking away at the health pool of the afflicted player -- especially damning to a shadow priest already suffering in the hit-point department.

In his demon form, Leotheras focused fiery attacks on his highest threat target, and with each successive ignite, caused his target to take increased fire damage. Without a viable solution, whomever he chose would eventually burn to death, no matter how many healers were assigned. But this wasn't all that demon form had in store for us. His transformation caused five random players to face their own inner demons -- splitting out a copy of oneself that only the afflicted player could target and kill. Only Ater could kill Ater's inner demon; only Zanjina could kill Zanjina's inner demon, and so on. Failing to do so before Leotheras shifted back to blood elf form would cause the player to lose her own grip on sanity. And under the influence of this madness, fellow raid members would turn and cut one another down in cold blood.

The final 15% of Leotheras was the deal breaker. He proceeded to split into both forms at the same time, forcing the raid to deal with multiple sets of mechanics at once. With a solid 15% of health in his pool, this could not be handled as a final hail mary of damage, sacrificing tactics for bloodlust. Without keeping a cool head and staying focused on the strategy, 15% would most certainly eat away at us like parasites.

It only took a few attempts to truly understand how handicapped my undergeared priest was. Leo's whirlwind killed me more times than I could count. Fully raid buffed, I barely scraped past 8k in my hit-point pool...but in less than 4 seconds, the bleed did me in. But, Leotheras wasn't about surviving the bleed.

It was about not bleeding.

2.24. Back on Tracks

"Wage Slave"
Artwork by Michael Dashow

A Positive Work Environment

"Use your fucking head. You're a fucking train wreck."

I sat in stunned silence, looking up from my desk. She waited for a response and didn't get one, so proceeded to question my reasoning further.

"Honestly, I might as well just call Google themselves. Because I don't have time to sit around and wait for you to come up with a estimate on how long this work will take. So that you'll just come back to me in, what, five days? And tell me some bullshit number. I need speed."

Anything I said at this point would more than likely make matters worse. Yet I felt the need to speak anyway, a chance to remedy the situation.

"How about...half that time, then?"

She shook her head in disgust and walked away, "Whatever, Shawn. I'll just make up a number, how's that?"

Agency work wasn't exactly all that it was cut out to be. On the plus side, we had the luxury of putting big name clients on our resumes, certain to improve our worth in the field. On the downside, the game came down to money, and the wider the profit margin, the deeper the sales commission filled pockets. Sales wanted things done quickly, cheaply, in as little billable hours as possible. Yet the developers wanted the exact opposite. To take their time, produce some thoughtful, quality work. Two worlds completely at odds, forced to work together on a daily basis, in order to keep a business afloat. I looked back down at my laptop and watched as another guild application arrived in my inbox, and doubted if I had any development worth outside of these walls. If I was able to do anything of any real value outside of a virtual world slaying Internet Dragons. I was a self-taught programmer after all, how realistically viable could I have been? I hadn't even been able to come up with an original idea for a web application in years.

I looked over to the empty chair on the opposite side of the table, where Ater used to sit. Since the merger, he'd been pushed up to a high profile project for a major sub sandwich chain -- a time-tracking app that was sucking up more and more of his time. Most of the work day was spent in the other of our two offices, while he focused on creating cutting edge technology in the UI. He was definitely the right man for the job. But I saw him less as a result, and was left to fend for myself when sales came calling with aggressive schedules and a call for the least amount of hours possible.

I packed up my laptop and headed home for the night, unsure if I'd see Ater in the raid. The bigger concern was setting foot in as a Shadow Priest, my first official class change since Vanilla. I'm certain if I had any opportunity to be a train wreck, tonight would be the night.

Descendants of Draenor defeats Fathom-Lord Karathress,
Serpentshrine Cavern

Fathom-Lord Karathress

DoD had a poor track record with council style bosses.

Fights involving heavy coordination, tons of communication, and which required significant spatial awareness were not our forte. Blain's strategy wasn't anything particularly unorthodox for our attempts, it was a by-the-book strategy. Separate Karathress from his guards and kill them one-by-one. The shaman Tidalvess would die first, due to his spitfire totems causing collateral damage. From there, we'd move to the hunter Sharkkis, which drained our casters of their mana. Once he and his sporebat pets fell, it was time for the final guard, the priest Caribdis, which would heal Karathress, requiring a dedicated interrupt contingent -- a challenge when you are constantly being knocked up into the air.

If all three guards could be executed, the raid would collapse on to Karathress himself, who absorbed the powers of his fallen defenders. It was going to be a long fight. If we had the endurance to survive his guard, and continue to stay alive during the final phase, it would be a done deal.

If.

The strategy required us to split up into individual groups responsible for handling individual mechanics. Adding insult to injury, these groups would then shift responsibilities with the death of each guard in the council. Rogues helping us burn through Tidalvess, for example, would then split apart, a few going to lend their DPS to Skarkkis, while others moved back to the Caribdis to assist with interrupts.

Chopliver was one of these rogues.

Chop had joined us months earlier, and his gnarly attitude with a headbanger-quality voice lent itself well to the undead rogue he had chosen to play. Chop may have come across as a metalhead in Vent, but come raid time, tore shit up. His damage was excessive and he prided himself on moving through targets quickly and with extreme prejudice. Blain picked up on Chop's refined play from the sidelines, long before I reached out to him to resume his role as our raid leader. Now in command, Blain had promoted Chop to raid assistant, and relied on him to mark targets and act as an effective focus target, if players weren't certain which mob we were on.

It was on an particularly gruesome attempt on Fathom-Lord Karathress that things looked like they could go either way. The start of the fight was always the toughest, just surviving the barrage of damage and many mechanics from all four bosses was a testament to will. As we poured a desperate amount of damage into Tidalvess, closing in his remaining hitpoints after having burnt out another spitfire totem, Chopliver opened his mic and the raid heard him hammering on keyboard as if trying to drill a hole in the middle of it.

"I got this, I got this, I got this..."

A solitary Cataclysmic Bolt leapt from the Fathom-Lord's fingertips and ended Chop's life in a single shot.

"...nevermind."

The raid had a good laugh at poor Chop's expense, but his death wasn't in vain. A few attempts later and we stood proudly atop the fallen council and their Fathom-Lord. I checked the date: it was August 14th.

Descendants of Draenor defeats Hydross the Unstable,
Serpentshrine Cavern

The Duke of Currents

Three days after defeating Fathom-Lord Karathress, we once again stood at the head of Serpentshrine Cavern, staring watery death straight in the face. Technically, Hydross the Unstable was the first boss in the instance, but no guild (short of a world-first one) in their right mind would've started with him. The Lurker Below was a much easier pill to swallow, as were many others in this underwater pumping station -- the last few weeks had proven it. But before we could stick a fork in Lady Vashj, and Leotheras the Blind, we had to overcome our fears, once and for all, and deal with this brutally unforgiving fight.

We knew the issue all too well. Ater had struggled with it. Volitar had struggled with it. The success of the encounter hinged on a surgical handling of the transition. Each and every time Hydross moved away from...or into...his watery beams, Water Elementals would spawn and his aggro table would wipe completely out. In an environment where people are being healed nearly non-stop, the threat of a healer pulling aggro was very real and happened constantly. Even so much as a totem drop would cause a double set of Elementals to spawn, rendering the attempt futile. I was no longer in the position of dropping totems, but just as he assured me, Ekasra was right there filling Kerulak's spot. Hydross had it in for Ekasra, but his totem aggro would no longer be an issue. Not if I could help it.

Nature damage stacked higher onto Ater to the point that he could barely withstand each of Hydross's hits, and he dragged the colossal Elemental, shifting it back towards the beams. Blain called into vent, "Prepare for transition, no more DoTs", and I followed up, addressing Ekasra directly. "Ekasra, stop heals". Ekasra did as instructed, moving far away from the tanks as they got ready to shift. Hydross sloughed off his greenish tint and became bright blue as the Lady's water-system purified him, and Dalans moved into position, swiping the four miniature elementals that spawned as a result. The transition was clean. Kurst now had control of Hydross, and began taking stacks of Frost damage while Ater recovered.

With a little extra micromanagement in Ekasra's direction, we managed our way through the encounter, whittling the Elemental away a bit at a time, healing through players encased in bubbles. There was no brute force here, all movements, all attacks, every single heal was measured. It was an exercise in discipline to maintain control and not panic for the full 15 minute fight. One wrong move, even near the end, would mean a wipe.

As Hyross' health dropped down into the final few percent, I felt a guild first approaching. We kept calm, cool, collected -- we treated that last 1% of health as if it were still at 99%. In a gush of water, Hydross spun into a vortex and dissipated, his shackles falling to the ground in a splash. The Duke of Currents was down, and we had gone from a completely stagnant guild, progression-wise, to 4/6 and 1/4, completing a total of four new bosses in the span of two weeks. Perhaps a bit of Blain was what pushed us over the edge, perhaps it was Ekasra's newly found confidence and strategy in handling his fellow raid mates. Maybe a little bit of Replenishment was all we needed.

Whatever it was, we were back on the tracks...full steam ahead.

2.23. The Taming of the Askew

Zanjina admires a joke in guild chat
about the 5-Man instance Black Morass,
Terrokar Forest

Cast Out

"I'm gonna need you to take my place on a more permanent basis," I typed to Ekasra, "are you up to it?"

"Absolutely. I'm confident that I can take Kerulak's place. I may not be the best healer, but I promise that I'll keep on it. Every day."

The topic was about to take a side-road.

"There's going to need to be a little more than just an improvement to your healing, though..."

"Such as?"

I took a deep breath. Ekasra was really the best bet at permanently taking my spot in healing from this point on. Yes, I did have other shamans; at least four others that were churning through the roster. But Kerulak was the only permanent one. The one there every week, no matter what. The one that scheduled his life around the raid schedule, rather than be reactive to it. I needed a guaranteed shaman in Kerulak's spot, week-to-week. One that I could rely on, and that would never give me any cause to doubt his consistency. Ekasra met all those requirements. He was young, hungry to prove himself, not tied down by outside responsibilities, and most of all, sacrificed everything he could to become a part of our 25-Man Progression raid.

...even his dignity.

Ekasra was not fitting in well. At all. A number of screw-ups in our early SSC raids were attributed to him. A mismanagement of totem aggro led to a heartbreaking wipe on Hydross the Unstable. His healing often fell short on the meters, and most players were hung up on how far they climbed the list, ignoring other valuable quantifiers like number of decurses or damage taken. But beyond Ekasra's struggles to gain a foothold in our roster was his propensity to remain a social outcast. Topics of conversation included his love of Magic: The Gathering, and his adoration of the "Russian musical group" t.A.t.U.  He and I initially bonded, sharing a mutual interest in French artists like Mylène Farmer and Alizeé -- the very same gal whose dance was applied to female Night Elves. But these interests were nerdy and obscure, and while I may have playfully taken lumps from my wife by demonstrating my devotion to Ace of Base, the guild showed little remorse toward a similar taste in horrible music.

On top of these socially awkward choices, Ekasra had the unfortunate luck of having to live with a speech impediment. The moment he spoke in Vent, two strikes were applied to him immediately, as a thick, noticeable lisp made him the brunt of a lot of cruel jokes and punishment, as he continued to sit outside the circle.

So much for being a guild that sold itself as a family-friendly home that treated each other with kindness and respect.

Caught up in the lapse of progression, we'd turned to vent our frustrations by bullying those who were easy targets, and I was sick to my stomach because of it. Not only because I had let us fall into the gutter like this, but because I allowed myself to join in the bullying. But while I could end that behavior on my part, and consciously stop the behavior from spreading downward through officership, it required work on Ekasra's end as well. It was time for a new approach. I had yet to actually sit down and come up with a workable solution to any people-related issues in the guild. But I had no other options, and Ekasra had to take Kerulak's spot.

"You need to work on how you handle people. This is going take some time to get right."

"Dalans gives me the hardest time, maybe you could talk to him..."

I stopped him, "No. You talk to him. I can't fight your battles for you anymore. It adds to the problem. They treat you like a kid because you act like one. In order for them to lay off, they need to know you can't be rattled. Y'know? You can't be bullied."

I let it sink in a moment, then continued.

"Besides, you know what Dalans told me, right? He said 'If Ekasra can't take it, then he needs to learn not to dish it out.' You know what means, right?"

Silence followed.

"It means you're making it worse. Responding to insults with your own insults doesn't work unless we're all best buds, and it's just a big joke among friends. You haven't broken into the social circle yet. Dalans and them don't see your responses as jokes. They see you getting riled up."

"Ok, so how should I carry myself, then?"

I leaned in to the mic, "Listen closely. This is going to be your new strategy moving forward. And it starts with you keeping your love of t.A.t.U. to yourself..."

Morogrim Tidewalker,
Serpentshrine Cavern

Tidewalker Down

"Run to Bretthew if you have Murlocs"

I listened intently. Blain's voice piped up, "Murlocs. Don't heal."

"Burn!" Chopliver followed, "Kill him!!"

Screaming followed moments later, while I stared at my desktop, watching the speaker icons next to each player's name light up in the Ventrilo client. I missed the first boss kill of Morogrim Tidewalker, days after the guild defeated Void Reaver, but was no less excited to hear their victory. A work-related event caused me to step down from the raid, and my stress level rose with the thought of pressing into harder content without being present to help.

"Excellent work, Blain." I shot over to him, once logged in. "See? All you needed to do was leave me behind."

"Is Zanjina ready yet?" he cut straight to it.

"I'm going to need about one more week. I'll probably bring Kerulak to next week's Morogrim, but after that...it's gonna be Zanny until Illidan."

"Good." I expected him to carry on with an observation that someone was pissing him off, and that my presence would squarely push that person out the door, but he kept his opinion to himself, while I logged on and resumed my Troll Priest's grind for a Frozen Shadoweave set. In the meantime, I took solace in the fact that it was June 25th, mere days after the defeat of Void Reaver, that Blain and co. had pulled off another boss kill. Sans Kadrok. Sans me. Things could survive in my absence. It was not a feeling of disappointment to be absent from the Morogrim kill, but more of relief. The first indicator that I didn't have to sacrifice every waking moment of my life in order to ensure things ran smoothly.

Descendants of Draenor defeats Morogrim Tidewalker,
Serpentshrine Cavern

Humility is a Virtue

The next weekend, we were back in SSC, completely through The Lurker Below and back on Tidewalker. This time, I was on Kerulak, side-by-side with Ekasra, watching his positioning, keeping a close eye on his totems. Bretthew was the linchpin holding it all together, which worried me. His Protadin tanking was vital to collecting up the Murlocs as Morogrim bellowed out for help. We'd tried other gimmicks like having Sir Klockerr throw up Righteous Fury, increasing his threat while he spam healed the Murlocks, dragging them to Bretthew. But gimmicks wouldn't pan out in the long run, we'd have to do Morogrim by the book, and that meant a tank was ultimately responsible for collecting them up on his own. Bretthew did this, and we succeeded as a result. As long as he continued to participate in progression, we'd continue to see Tidewalker collapse in a heap.

Even the pull was tricky. Morogrim hit Ater like a truck, so we liked it very much if he didn't die within seconds of starting the fight. It was a carefully timed heal that would keep him alive. Too early, and Morogrim would turn away from Ater, heading straight for the guilty healer. Too late, and Ater would be dead, producing a similar result. Practicing the pull took patience and care. Ekasra got a heal out early, but before anyone could respond with their usual disgust, he had a prepared phrase typed into raid chat:

"My mistake, won't happen again."

And it didn't.

---

Later on, as we reviewed the night's progress, boasting Morogrim Tidewalker for the 2nd raid week in a row, as well as significant progress on Fathom-Lord Karathress, we discussed how the raid went. The usual egos flared to life, as players pounded their chests with proverbial might pulling out the meters, Ekasra added his own two cents, in a somewhat unorthodox manner,

"Definitely not my best night, but I'll continue to polish it up for next week."

Ekasra's new strategy was subtle. It was hard to tell if anyone really noticed at all, this change in perception regarding his play and demeanor. Rather than go on the defensive, trading insults for other insults, his new approach was simple: Humility first. Accept his flaws, acknowledge them, and stress that his priority was to always improve, always grow, and that he always had something to learn. And rather than say it aloud in Vent, which opened up his Achilles heel to be pounced on by those ready to mock his lisp, he stayed quiet in Vent, listening but not speaking, responding only by typing into chat. Perhaps, as time went on, if he stuck to the strategy, he might begin to turn people around. They may not take notice now...but eventually, they would.

It was a good thing I suggested it to him.

2.22. Blain Returns

The Alliance wins a battleground despite
Blain's domination of the killing blows,
Warsong Gulch

Back in the Saddle

"Everybody head to TK."

The chatter of the raid picked up somewhat. What was this? Something new and unplanned?

"We're switching gears?" someone asked in Vent.

"Yup."

Blain was a man of few words.

"Get inside when you get there, get eating and buffing. We're pulling at 7:00 o'clock."

When I first met Blain, his abrasiveness put me on edge. I questioned Ater's choice in leaders, looked at the gear the Undead Rogue walked into Molten Core with, and wondered if it was some sort of joke. Yet the joke was quickly on me as Blain proceeded to tear the Core apart, along with a number of whiners and excuse-makers in the process. Yet this time around, it wasn't a worry about incompetency or a lack of people-skills; I worried about whether or not he could bail the water out. We'd stagnated in progression for months, barely able to claim a couple of kills on The Lurker Below. Players were leaving to join guilds that were proven and successful, and we were left with the bottom scrapings. Was it too late? I wondered. I was well beyond concern that people's feelings would be hurt by this point.

"So we're just heading to TK out of the blue, what about all the work we've put into SSC?" What work, I thought to myself, while the hackles continued to go up. Ater boldly played his hand,

"Quite frankly, morale is low. We could use a boss kill to pick people up. Blain says we can knock out Void Reaver, so it's time for a change of scenery."

In typical Blain fashion, he ignored any sort of acknowledgement that credited his decision making, and kept focused on the coordination. "Your tanks are Ater, Rocraw, Bretthew and Dalans, the kill order is skull, then X, assist off of me or Chopliver if you aren't sure. Turtleman, sheep diamond."

When I hopped off the taxi and zoned into Tempest Keep, the raid was seated, eating and drinking, and the first pack of Blood Elves that guarded the door had been marked. Gunsmokeco sent me a whisper,

"So when did Blain decide to come back to leading?"

I got my own flask up, and sat down to join the crowd in the midst of buffing.

"Last week, when we decided we were done wasting time."

I moved into position after hearing the countdown to the pull, and lit up the raid with Chain Heal. Gunsmokeco didn't know the news yet, nor did any of the shamans. I didn't want to burden them on the day we planned to turn things around. For now, I kept the news to myself, so that everyone could focus on this change of scenery and the return of their old raid leader, hoping it was enough of a morale boost to start cutting notches in our belt again. The news would have to wait. For now.

Kerulak prepares to head into Tempest Keep: The Eye,
Netherstorm

Void Reaver

The roster was reasonably solid that evening of July 22nd, 2007, and my sanity rested on a number of familiar faces. Joining Ater and Blain from the 40-Man days was Neps, faithfully running the priests since Haribo's retirement, as was Zyr, infamous for his dead-on impression of cricket sound -- the perfect follow-up to horrible jokes. Dalans was the lone Feral Druid, backing up Ater's tanking alongside Bretthew the paladin. Turtleman held the longest running mage spot, as did Houla with the hunters. Even Annihilation was present, now laying waste on his warlock Fatality, side-by-side with another 40-Man vet named Eacavissi. And, standing by my side was Gunsmokeco, a Resto Shaman who had been with us since early '06, flooding the raid with chain heals. Rounding out the vets was Abrinis, a down-to-earth, no-nonsense undead warrior that delivered consistent, top-notch melee damage -- when he wasn't talking sports with Neps. Of the 25 folks present that evening, 14 had come from Vanilla. It was time to see if the remaining 11 were carries, or something better.

Rather than two separate instances with two individual paths of progression, Blain lumped Tier 5 into a single pot. Our best chance at success in pulling out of this nosedive meant attacking the bosses from the least amount of difficulty to the most. Lurker was down (though its bugginess was still a concern), and everything that remained in SSC was non-trivial. Logically, that meant the next easiest boss would have to be Void Reaver, hiding in the western wing of The Eye. The change of scenery would not only breathe life back into the raid, but boost morale -- if we could do it. On top of it all, the reward would be significant: Tier 5 shoulders. Blain may have taught me the fundamental rule about gear not making a bad player good, but at the same time, understood the impact the reward had on the crew. We needed to get people's minds out of the sinkhole and thinking about killing bosses, if there was any chance in Hell at one day defeating Illidan.

It was a massive mechanical contraption with a tiny head, rumbling while it idled in the center of a circular room. It eyed us and revved invisible motorcycle handles, waiting to peel out and attack, while Blain led the raid through the Fel Reaver's trash packs. Once the room was devoid of any backup, Blain instructed the raid to take a circular position around the outside ring. The rest of us would move in tightly, tanks, melee, and the shamans with their chain heal at the ready. Breginna had taken up the task of helping out with healers, and assigned them locations around the ring as well. Once in position, Ater pulled the gargantuan machine, and I raced into the center of the room to wind up the chain heal spam.

Descendants of Draenor defeats Void Reaver,
Tempest Keep: The Eye

Pounding It In

There was no real "trick" to Void Reaver, from the inner circle looking out. Void Reaver would Pound the tank, knocking him back, cycling over to the next tank highest in threat. The somewhat-diminished chaos arose in determining which tank would ultimately have him, as the contraption was immune to taunt. Watching Omen was usually a good sign, but calls were made in Vent regardless. Dalans has him. Taba has him. Ater has him. An excess amount of communication was a good start for a raid that had been troubled for so long.

I can imagine the ranged had their hands full with Arcane Orb, Void Reaver's slow-motiong ranged attack that he lobbed at our ranged casters like an electric bomb caught in a space-time warp. It was slow moving for a reason; if you saw it headed your way and ran away in fear, it was already too late. The blast radius for Arcane Orb was so wide that you needed a solid head-start at getting the hell away before it caught you in its dome, silencing you for a full 6 seconds. The silence added to the arcane damage was brutal, especially to healers caught unaware. Players should have been able to track their own orb, but Blain was taking no chances. He called out every person that was targeted and whom needed to move, while juggling melee DPS and mitigating damage from Pound at the same time.

Yet once again, Blain came out on top of the damage meters, just like he had that first day of setting foot in Molten Core. Even after calling out Orb targets. Even after surviving Pound. Even after dealing with the threat of being one-shot by a boss that couldn't be taunted. A heavy sigh of relief washed across the raid that night. My players were thankful for Blain's guidance and motivated once again to tackle content. The coming months would be telling, as we set out to regain control of progression and set upon a path that would lead us to the death of Illidan. It would not be a straight path, more obstacles would throw us curveballs and the lineup would change. But at least for now, we enjoyed a momentary victory after eating weeks of crow.

---

The bids wrapped up on Pauldrons of the Vanquished Champion. The winner wasn't Kerulak. Voices in vent showed their surprise and confusion. My shaman had gone months without an upgrade, the side-effect of failing to progress, coupled with my duties driving Breginna's druid while she was away on business. The raid clearly expected me to be one of the first shamans to walk out of The Eye with Tier 5 shoulders.

"The winner wasn't Kerulak?" someone asked in Vent.

"I didn't bid."

"Why not?"

"Because," I answered, "I won't be returning on Kerulak."

2.21. The Thin Yellow Line

Blain displays his Armored Netherdrake from Season 1,
Shattrath City

The Prodigal Son

"If I'm coming back to lead raids, there's gonna have to be some changes."

Blain made his expectations abundantly clear. My former 40-Man raid leader had been primarily responsible for driving progression throughout Vanilla. Along with Ater, the Warrior responsible for bringing Blain to me, Descendants of Draenor had blown through Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, ½ of Ahn'Qiraj (40) and ¼ of Naxxramas (40). Blain's no-nonsense and often brash style was pivotal in pushing our raid team to their maximum capabilities. But, when The Burning Crusade launched, his priorities changed, and he took to PvP while Ater was left to fend for himself as the driving force behind raid progression.

It hadn't gone well.

Several months in, Kadrok had thrown in the towel. Losing my Paladin officer was a nasty wound, as he was also one of our key healers. His second-in-command, Volitar, had been hand picked by Ater to take on Blain's responsibilities and help direct our raid traffic. But our stagnation in progression had eaten away at what remained of Vol's sanity, driving him to frustration and anger. Rather than face further disappointment from a group of fire-eaters, Volitar had gone AWOL, a second deep gouge in an already infected wound. Star players were walking away, and I was holding the bag of leftovers, while Ater turned to his work as a means of funneling his own disgust away.

The class pool was horribly askew; I had so many shamans, I felt a guilty sense of duty to sacrifice my own shaman in lieu of a shadow priest for the sake of progression. Without a leader, the paladins were in a constant state of flux; I didn't have a solid grasp on who my tanks or healers were. Entropy begets regression, and where we could once kill the most simplistic of bosses (namely The Lurker Below), we would instead spend hours wiping like amateurs. Once again, the threat of a guild collapse loomed, and any potential of us defeating Illidan had long since gone out of sight.

Ater wields Zin'rokh, Destroyer of Worlds,
Blackwing Lair

Resetting Expectations

Blain, fresh off claiming a victory at the end of Arena Season 1, was my only realistic hope at realigning the raid team. But the truth of his departure still had to be addressed. It was public knowledge he stepped down to pursue Arenas, but he had ultimately revealed to me the real reasons behind his psychological leave of absence: he had become fed up with the whining and excuses, and was tired of having his leadership challenged and questioned by kids who thought they were gods at the game.

"The problem is they are not taking it seriously enough," Blain stated over Ventrilo, "we can't continue to cater to casual players who aren't dedicated."

"That's the type of guild we are, though", replied Ater, "we need to be able to allow anybody who wants to raid...y'know...to do so!"

I tossed my two cents into mix, "The problem isn't that we are allowing everyone to raid, it's that everyone’s opinion of raiding is different. They come to have fun but...fun isn't wiping for four hours on a boss we already know how to kill."

"That's common sense," Blain answered, "we shouldn't have to tell them that."

"I think we've gone long enough assuming people have common sense. We need to tell them what we think 'fun' is."

With the margin of error now a practical negative value, personal accountability was that much more important. There simply wasn't any opportunity for people to be "carried" any longer. Everyone had to pull their own weight. At the start of The Burning Crusade, we had enjoyed so much success in progression, I merely assumed this sort of thing would be common sense! 

The problem with Descendants of Draenor at this point was everyone's common sense was different.

"Well, sounds good so far," Ater replied, "so what's your plan on telling them this?"

"I'm gonna write up a post, tell them Blain is returning. Clear the air on a brand new set of expectations." I took a deep breath, "and then, I'm gonna do exactly what you told me to do, Ater. Acknowledge them."

Hanzo continues to level Zanjina the troll priest,
Orgrimmar

The Bridge From Both Ends

In order to have Blain return to raid leading, change was needed at the top. His expectations of a player were very high, but that hadn't been communicated properly to the officer core. This was my own fault, and was due to a lapse in judgement regarding the chain of command. In Vanilla it was an assumed title -- but without making an official statement, officers let their egos grow into TBC and the result was unpleasant. Blain had to deal with back-talk, arguments, and debate regarding strategy, when it hadn't even been open to discussion in the first place. This was a plight often known as "too many cooks in the kitchen." I was determined to set the record straight. Blain was in charge and was doing the work necessary to build our raid strategy. Unless the officers wanted his job, they would need to keep their comments to themselves and stick to the micromanagement of their respective classes.

Additionally, we would need a unified goal; something that each individual player would need to be able to see, absorb, and relate to. We all knew we were raiding, and the goal was progression, but that wasn't finite enough; it didn't quantify any particular grade of success. So, I re-clarified the goal to Ater and Blain, who in turn, insured that the rest of the raid team knew exactly what we were pushing for:

Descendants of Draenor was going to kill Illidan the Betrayer, before the next expansion rendered him obsolete.

Once leadership was aligned, I had to do work from the bottom up as well. We had imposed no hard restrictions on raiders in the past, with the justification that we weren't a hardcore raiding guild. It wasn't enough. Some level of responsibility needed to be placed on the individual player, otherwise I would lose Blain again, possibly forever. With Blain setting the bar high once again, coupled with Ater's moral obligation to uphold our guild's ideals, I turned to the single unifying thread that defined Descendants of Draenor: to have fun. 

So, what did 'having fun' mean? It meant that what separated a Raider from a Non-Raider was you gave a shit about progression. In order to hammer this thought home, I created new ranks in the guild: Raider and Veteran. With a visual title associated to the concept, players now had a concrete way of describing their level of dedication to the team. And, to reinforce that concept of teamwork, I imposed a 3-wipe maximum on bosses we had already defeated. We would succeed together -- and we would fail together, but we would not force an individual to demoralize and waste the time of 24 other individuals.

With the bridge rebuilt from both ends, it was at least time to clarify to the guild what our definition of "fun" meant: Constant, consistent success.

To help catalyze these changes into the guild bloodstream, I drafted up a forum post which was previewed to a select few guild members. I wrote as I never had before, funneling every emotion that had wrecked me over the last few months, gutting me, leaving me worn out and exhausted. In that email, I indicated that we would be adjusting our raid schedule, so that we could begin the process of embracing structure; a constant, consistent schedule of raid evenings that the players could come to rely on. If they were going to commit to becoming a true Raider and leave Veteran behind, then I should be able to commit to them a schedule that they could arrange their own lives around.

I felt the reins tightening in my hands. It was time to turn this stagecoach around.

2.20. Replenishment

"Sabrine of Runetotem",
Artwork by Sabrine

The Forsaken Role

I couldn't sit back any longer. We hadn't made progress in months. I was losing Ater to work, only able to call on him in needs of great emergency, yet these were happening nearly every week. I couldn't stand by and let the guild implode out of raw apathy. I had to do something. The most logical place to start was with myself. Get my own shit straight. Figure out what the guild needed from me and make it happen, rather than sit around wishing people would do the right thing, or that the right player would fall into my lap. The shaman core was now reasonably extensive. Gunsmokeco and his brother Deathonwing had joined the crew, as had an older crew member named Deathflurry -- he would go on to rename himself Mcflurrie, in an attempt to diminish confusion. With these three grouped next to Ekasra to soften the blow from a chain heal perspective, I gave serious thought to benching Kerulak, filling another much needed role that we lacked.

In Vanilla, raiding specializations were rigid. Each class had 3 talent trees, which changed the way that class was played. Spec into Protection, and your Warrior becomes a tank, wielding a sword and a shield, standing at the front of the raid, holding the boss in place and bearing the weight of its attacks. But, change that same Warrior’s spec to that of Fury, and now the Warrior wields an edged weapon in each hand, and instead of tanking, the Warrior is now relegated to melee DPS, burning the boss’s health down as fast as possible.

During that era, multiple specs existed, but only one was viable per class due to the way in which the numbers broke down statistically. Only the Warrior could ultimately bear the immense burden of a boss pounding on it, even though two other classes could technically tank. And so, those two other classes that could tank...didn't. Blizzard aimed to fix this in The Burning Crusade. They granted a few new abilities to some of the other hybrid classes. Druids and paladins received a few new tricks that made them viable tanks. shamans and druids began contributing to DPS instead of always healing. There was one other class that received changes in The Burning Crusade that gave it more flexibility in raids, but unlike the others, this class was the only one to receive a very special ability that was essential to raiding: the Priest.

Hanzo (playing as Breginna) eyes Melkezadek's
place on the damage meters for Shadow,
Gruul's Lair

Amen

When we were felling bosses like Ragnaros and Nefarian, Priests were healers, end-of-discussion. They had two styles of healing that they could adopt, either Holy or Discipline. Discipline was simply not viable in Vanilla. It couldn't match the healing throughput needed to raid competitively and make serious progression. Our priests certainly wouldn't have been able to keep our Main Tank up through Maexxna if they had been "Disc" in Vanilla. In fact, the Discipline tree itself wouldn't be reworked by Blizzard for another year-and-a-half. As a result, all priests were Holy...at least, all the ones we were privy to, in our research of the furthest progressed hardcore raiding guilds.

Those were the two healing specs a Priest had as an option. The third option, however, was vastly different than Holy and Discipline. It was a class archetype that simply hadn't been heard of before (at least, in the mainstream MMO sense; I'm sure it exists in the annals of Dungeons & Dragons lore). In this third specialization, a priest no longer healed, was no longer a being of the light. Instead, a dark shadow draped down across the player, nestling the priest in a shroud of violet fog. And, rather than mending the wounds of her party members, this "shadow" priest would hurl dark energy from a distance, loading up their targets with curses, plagues and diseases. Where once there existed a Power Word for a player's savior, in its place was a Shadow Word for the target's suffering, pain...and eventual death.
It was the shadow priest who melted faces in World of Warcraft.

Shadow priests were an incredibly cool option when WoW launched. Visually, it was stunning; no other class had the unique look of a player surrounded by a swirling shadowy mist. But like the other hybrid classes, the damage a shadow priest produced simply couldn't be matched by its ability to heal. The Burning Crusade changed all of that, and did so in a very unique way: Aside from the standard "buffing its damage to competitive levels" that Blizzard applied to the other hybrid classes, they bestowed upon the Shadow Priest a uniquely important buff, one no other class provided:

When the Shadow Priest dealt damage, she would replenish the mana of all of the casters that shared her group.

Vampiric Touch, one of the tools in a shadow priest's belt, was the only spell that brought this game-changing buff to the table. Its value was unmatched -- by bringing a single Shadow Priest to a raid, the casting classes that shared a group with a shadow priest would gain a huge boost of endurance, allowing them to last much longer into a difficult fight.

A boost that could easily turn a 1% wipe into a kill.

Hanzo continues to level Zanjina for 25-Man raids,
Thunder Bluff

Perfect Timing

The end of the Arena season was fast approaching, and awards were soon to be dolled out to those on the server that had proven to be the best and brightest PvPers in our battlegroup. It was no surprise at all to hear that Blain and company had earned Armored Netherdrakes for their dominance against other players. But the end of the season also meant the chance to stick my foot in the door, before Blain committed to another season of mindless PvP. There was work to be done. In his absence, things had crumbled. Without him to crack the whip on the whiners, we had grown weak and full of excuses.

I jumped into Vent and called Blain in to chat, while I flew my priest Zanjina across Nagrand in an attempt to collect Clefthoof dung.

"I'm retiring Kerulak," I told him, "Shadow priests are consistently absent, and we're overflowing with shamans."

"What about Melk?" Blain named Melkezadek, one shadow priest that melted faces like a champ when he was available.

"His schedule is all over the place."

"Isn't Ben using Anni's account now? The one you gave him for his High Warlord present?"

"Yeah, he is. He renamed it. I think it is Aeden now. Anni's basically given him the account to use, but he mostly PvPs on it. I mean, he comes to the odd raid, but it's a crap shoot. I need a consistent one there every week."

"Yours isn't even 70 yet." Thank you, Captain Obvious.

"Gimme a break, I'm working on her now! Anyway...I'll craft the Frozen Shadoweave set when I get her leveled. In the meantime, I'll bring Kerulak to the last few raids and step down from any loot that drops."

"Ok".

The awkward silence loomed.

"Volitar is skipping out on raids. He's not helping Ater anymore. Unreachable. I don't have a contact number, I don't know who to call or what to do...the guy is shutting down. Things were much easier when you ran shit."

"Nobody listened to me," Blain fired back, "Too many cooks in the kitchen. Tired of having to re-explain myself over and over to people who don't listen."

"What if we could change that?" I proposed.

"Then I would come back and do it. But not without control, not without support."

"Ok. I get it. I will give you that support. If it means me telling each and every officer to shut their mouth and take direction from you, I will do it."

"What makes you think they'll keep it in check this time?" he asked.

In a moment of confidence, I blurted out something that sounded like what a leader might say.

"They'll have no choice in the matter. The alternative is to dismantle and go join PPP."

Blain chuckled at the prospect, while I sunk Zanjina's blue troll fingers into piles of excrement.

---

The next day, July 16th, 2007, I emailed Blain:

So, yeah...Volitar MIA. What can I do to convince you to going back to the full on raid-leader? What were you missing from me the first time around that I can make happen this time so your life is easier/job is done better, etc? I know you got harped on a lot and I can shut that down right quick, but the discussion that went long in vent last night kept pointing back to having you be a single solitary raid-leader, and that if that was indeed your role that people would shut the hell up and follow. I would like to discuss it with you if you have time. Volitar did mediocre but this uncommunicative shit is upsetting me a lot and the Paladins are spiralling out of control.

He called for a meeting with Ater and I in Vent, to put all our cards on the table.

2.19. Blizzard's First Mistake

Esteemed

"People want to be considered good at something," Ater said, taking a bite out of a BBQ chicken sandwich. We used our lunch hours to get caught up on guild-related tasks and discussion, the majority of which centered around bracing for Tier 5. The locale was a Brother's BBQ on the corner of Washington and 6th, not far from the downtown area where we cranked out ColdFusion sites by day. For over two years, Ater had been a key figure in my guild, one of the many benefits I enjoyed as a result of assimilating The Final Cut many moons ago. He was a non-stop source of insightful leadership. I picked his brain at any opportunity. I expected today's conversation would touch on such items as Volitar joining him as a new Raid Assistant, the ever-fluctuating roster, or my recent assignment of being tasked with keeping Breginna's Druid active while she was away at work.

As it turned out, Ater had another topic on his mind altogether: losing our raiders to competing guilds.

"You're going to have regular performers, and you're going to have star performers. That doesn't make the regulars any less important, they're still very valid and play a very important role. But, if you had your choice of picking a regular or a star performer for the raid, who would you pick?" he asked me.

"Obviously, the star performer", I replied.

"Exactly! So, what makes them the star performer?"

I thought a moment, "Well, they're more than likely going above and beyond the call of duty. I mean, they kick ass. They seriously raid like professionals."

"That's exactly right, they play well. They do their job well."

I leaned back, and crossed my arms.

"I still don’t see what this has to do with us losing players to a shit-box trash-talking guild like Pretty Pink Pwnies."

"If the guild was a company," he said, "would you treat your sub-par employees and your star performers the same way?"

I laughed. "Hell, no! The star performers would get promoted."

He smiled in silence, taking another bite of his sandwich.

"...I'm not going to promote a bunch of people to officership because they top the damage meters."

He shook his head, "You're not thinking about it the right way. Forget promotion. I'm talking about acknowledgement. Re-affirm to them that they're valid -- that what they've done here....what they are doing here...is important. They're a contributor. Remind them that they have accomplished something significant...otherwise, there's nothing that differentiates them from the carries."

I paused to let it sink in. If I had paid more attention in my college psychology class, I'd probably already know this. We have a desire to be noticed, to feel like we matter, and when we contribute to the social community, we seek approval for our efforts; we want to know that what we've done has some significance. This is why I was losing players to Pretty Pink Pwnies. Not because they were a better guild, or further progressed, but that players felt accomplished. Bru might not have patted them all on the back each and every time they had a successful raid (because that was certainly not his style), but his guild members already had something to fill the void left by his personal appreciation and acknowledgement:

They had gear.

In the absence of that gear, what did I have to acknowledge my raiders' contributions? Nothing. They were all being treated kindly, respectfully, fairly and equally.

But they didn't want to be treated equally.

Graulm displays the completed Warlock
Dungeon (Tier 0) Set "Dreadmist",
Orgrimmar

The Problem With Equal Treatment

To feel confident and have the respect of others is the reason people seek out a hobby or area of interest - something that they can contribute to or gain recognition from. This need affects people with both low and high esteem, which makes it cover a wide gamut of individuals. Whether seeking fame and glory, or simply the label of an expert, a person will only pour effort into such a task if they believe it is attainable. Once a realization sets in that the recognition they seek cannot be attained, the person is very likely to shift gears -- turning to new places for acceptance.

We had players that busted their ass to get into our raids, performed at the top of their game, and could be considered experts on the server, but when it came to raid rotations, they were treated no differently than a person who played at an amateurish level. This problem existed as far back as Vanilla, but the difference in Vanilla was that the scale of a 40-Man raid effectively covered up the handful of players that were "carries". Now, being forced down into a 25-Man size, but with difficulty being just as unforgiving, the carries were all too apparent. After wasting weeks on Gruul's Lair and Magtheridon's Lair, stalling on boss kills, the star performers felt more like their efforts were going unrecognized, which in turn, led to the resentment of fellow raiders that were holding us back.

By incorrectly assuming "equal" and "fair" were interchangeable, I bred an environment of mediocrity instead of one that prioritized excellence.

And as my eyes widened with realization during that lunch-time conversation, while Ater finished his chicken sandwich, suddenly, the subtle everyday things that I previously paid no attention to had meaning and ramifications. Images flashed through my head as the last several years of my raiding history cycled back like an old movie projector. I saw our Nefarian kill, and players walking out of Blackwing Lair and into Alterac Valley, taking their newly acquired gear and blowing the Alliance apart. I remembered Taba and the excited dance and scream that followed his acquisition of Ashkandi. I remembered the day the final piece of Ten Storms dropped, and Kadrok graciously stepped aside, allowing me to complete my set. I remembered taking a screenshot of Graulm in Orgrimmar after finishing his Dreadmist Warlock set.

In that moment of epiphany, it all became clear what it was that frustrated and angered me to no end on the day we killed Magtheridon -- I knew why the Gruul kill had left me empty and dissatisfied.

It was Blizzard's First Mistake.

Left: Malefic Raiment (Warlock Tier 6 - PvE)
Right: Vengeful Gladiator's Dreadgear (Warlock Season 3 - PvP)

Consensual Worlds

There are two different schools of thought within World of Warcraft on where the depth and richness of endgame comes from. On one side of the argument are the raiders. These are the players that push as hard as they can to execute raid encounters, and they quantify their success by their speed, their efficiency and their overall world/server ranking. This school of thought considers the most important attributes of a player to be how well they work in a large team, do they communicate and respond to commands quickly? Are they expertly played, and can they react with lightning-fast reflexes to emergency situations? Can they contribute to a thoughtful, intelligent decision on the min/maxing of their raid makeup in order to most effectively execute a boss encounter? And, will they have the capacity to endure a fight, over and over, until they get it right, while they race other guilds at exactly the same time for a world first title? This is the raider, the player that pours their time and energy into PvE (Player vs. Environment), and this is one school of thought.

Another school of thought is that man vs. machine is not the real test of skill, but instead, when human minds are pitted against one another. Like so many games throughout history that pit a human being against another in a battle of wits and skill, whether it be Chess, Go, Poker, or any number of other games, skill comes down to a mastery of the game's rules and the ability to predict what their opponent will do -- and then counter it. To this school, "reading the opponent" is the true test. Within this school, players build strategies to defeat other classes, studying the enemy, hoping to discover where each of their strengths are... and what weaknesses can be exploited. In their quest to master PvP (Player vs. Player), they strive to best all human opponents who dare challenge them; undefeated champions in their own right -- the ultimate accolade of a PvPer.

While each school of thought maintains its own unique acknowledgement of success, these rewards are intrinsic, and therefore internalized by nature. A PvPer knows his worth by how how adeptly he slays other opponents, while a PvEer knows her worth by her completion of raids. Intrinsic motivators, however, fail to act as a validation when outside of their social groups, cast out into a virtual sea of faceless strangers that are constantly judging. It is at this point that humans turn to external validators; the more overt, tangible, easy-to-read and easy-to-understand types of rewards. Players fall on to these validators as a crutch, wiping away the friction, removing any doubt from their mind about their quest to attain expertise -- and not look dumb. And what better way to externally validate a player's performance in PvP or PvE than by the gear that they have acquired as a result of their effort.

Therein lies the dilemma.

Players that have turned to external motivators to validate their expertise have already given up on the internal, truer quantifiers. To them, the knowledge of defeating 10,000 players in a battle, or being the first on the server to clear all the raid content is not enough. All they have to lean on is the physical manifestation of their effort, the gear they wear and the weapons they wield -- so that in the sea of faceless strangers, their mind can take comfort in knowing they are perceived as successful. So, what happens when the internal motivators are absent, and the external motivators are null and void?

They are at a loss. They have no way to validate their quest to become good.

And what might cause those external motivators to be null-and-void?

When others acquire the same rewards for a completely different level of effort.

Ater taught me a valuable lesson that day, one that started me thinking about how I could no longer treat my amateur players the same as those who were truly experts. Lacking that external validation, that acknowledgement for their efforts, the experts were becoming resentful. They felt used, their time wasted...and they would move on to greener pastures to seek validation for accomplishment elsewhere. And in opening my eyes to this very real concern regarding my leadership of DoD, he solved the equation of my own inexplicable frustration and apathy toward Tier 4 -- which turned out to be much larger than just Tier 4.

In a sea of faceless strangers, our validation -- our contribution to the social environment of Deathwing-US -- came in the form of showing off what we had accomplished, the physical manifestation of our prowess. Our gear. But that gear no longer held any value or worth, for that very same gear was seen everywhere across the city of Orgrimmar. Everyone had that gear because everyone was PvPing. A few weeks in some arenas was all it took. Technically, the stats were different on each set, but visually, PvE gear differed in no way from PvP gear, save a minor palette shift in color. All the work we had poured into Maulgar, Gruul and Matheridon -- instantly invalidated. In my mind, PvPers were being treated exactly as PvEers, for an entirely different level of effort and dedication -- the qualifiers weren't even the same! They were being judged on their ability to stomp opponents into the ground; I couldn't care less! Yet there they were, hopping around Orgrimmar like rabbits, throwing their Season 1 gear in my face, while my guild bashed their faces against raid content.

I didn't want them to be treated like us. We were not equal.

---

We hear "never judge a book by its cover" and we know the idiom is a valuable edict to live by. It means well. It's the right thing to do. But it also takes effort, and doesn't come naturally to everyone. Only through growth, maturity, self-awareness and an ability to introspect can many of us rise to that level, and put our mind at ease in the knowledge that we have become great in the absence of external validation, that other people's judgement matters little. But to many in the faceless void, the quest to be accepted never ends. Their efforts must be validated, otherwise, they seek it elsewhere -- or worse, resent the success of others. Blizzard's decision to use the same sets of gear for two different schools of thought was most certainly one of practicality. From a business perspective, the costs of reducing labor by recoloring a pre-existing set of armor was a sound decision; it allowed them to hit their delivery date that much quicker. But the psychological impact it had on the player-base was vastly underestimated, and may have even been a contributing factor as to why TBC still struggled to grow interest in PvE after Vanilla.

I can only speak for myself in that it devalued our accomplishments, made us feel like raiding wasn't nearly worth the effort, and provided a backdoor to personal responsibility, as players gave up raiding and moved to arenas to acquire the same gear. To this day, I feel that it was Blizzard's First Mistake, and I hoped that they would not repeat it.