Memoires (Part 11 - Skill, Motivation and the Blackwing Lair)

I don't know what it is about epic stuff that appeals to me so much, but I just can't get enough of it. Give me shining heroes and evil villains, two armies clashing, armour and swords gleaming, set to a stunning epic orchestral soundtrack and I will be a very happy man.

Actually, the visuals aren't even necessary; play an epic soundtrack to me and I'll daydream the rest of it.

Anyway, at this point in my World of Warcraft career, it sort of felt like I was writing my own fantasy epic, along with the rest of T3M. We were gearing up to take on Blackwing Lair, the next raid dungeon which had been released by Blizzard. It was home to Nefarian (Onyxia's older brother) and his evil minions. They were determined, as evil villains of this sort usually are, to take over the world, and of course, our role as the do-good heroes of Azeroth was to stop them.

We had a little bit of downtime after Ragnaros was killed to bathe in the afterglow of our victory, but then began on working getting everyone entrance into the lair, which involved a short quest in one of the lower level 60 dungeons. Within the week, we had everyone attuned and raring to go.

We charged headlong into the lair, and straight into the brick wall that was the first boss: Razogore the Untamed. Entering the lair was quite different from our first attempts on Molten Core, given that due to the newness of the dungeon there was no widespread information regarding fight tactics. The purist gamer in me was somehow quite pleased about this, and such was my standing within T3M that I managed to convince most of the raid that it would be a good idea to figure it all out on our own anyway, because that's what real gamers do!

As it so happened, Razorgore was the most complicated encounter to date tactically speaking. Whereas with previous bosses it would have been fairly easy to work out that one had to avoid the massive clumps of fire, dispel the curses and then kill the adds even had we not known the tactics, Phase 1 of Razorgore was a completely different encounter, which can best be described as controlled chaos.

Basically, succesfully completing the encounter involved having the Hunters run around the room being chased by dragons, the Warriors run around the room being chased by orc warriors, the Rogues and Mages run around the room killing orc mages and everyone else standing around the corners of the room, with their own little things to do. Apart from Priests, who were a little bit useless in the first Phase as our heals generated too much threat. For us, it was essentially a little bit like a cartoon, where as a Priest we stood in our allotted corner of the room, behaving nicely and every so often a warrior would run by (I imagine screaming his or her head off), followed a few seconds later by a throng of stampeding orcs waving their massive swords angrily (and probably also screaming their heads off). Then, every once in a while a Hunter would run by, huffing and puffing, with a small dragon hot on his or her heels. Meanwhile, one member of the raid had to mind control Razorgore (a medium sized dragon) and run around the room destroying eggs. Once all the eggs are destroyed, Phase 1 ends. After which, Phase 2 was fairly straightforward.

Run, dwarf, run!

Rogue kill mage. Razergore kill egg.

It was a bit of a shame that the tactics were so obscure, as my opinion on it now is that it was actually a really fun encounter which tested the skill of every player in the raid.

I know I've mentioned skill several times through the course of these Memoires, and you'll probably be scratching your head trying to define what skill actually means in the context of this game. In First Person Shooters, it's fairly obvious; reactions and accuracy, however, in the raiding environment a variety of factors come into play. There are a lot of people who espouse that MMOs take no skill - after all, it's just pressing some buttons in order. However, as far as I'm concerned, that's a fallacy - I've always found it fairly easy to tell how well various players performed.

Part of the skill comes firstly from how the character is equipped - good items will increase the maximum potential for performance, for example, a Rogue will be able to output more damage, a Warrior will be able to hold threat better and a Priest will be able to output a higher rate of healing. Of course, the second part then comes from how the character is played, there is a lot of knowledge and also "feel" gained during the levelling process about the best way to play a certain class. For example, Mages will learn certain spell rotations that maximise the damage output and also have a feel for how quickly a warrior can generate thread so they don't overstep their mark, Warriors will learn skill rotations that generate the most thread and so forth.

The last part of player skill comes from concentration, awareness and in a raid setting, discipline and communication. By concentration, I mean it's easy to maximise damage for one spell rotation, but keeping it up over the course of an entire boss fight demands a lot of concentration, especially once extra demands such as movement, positioning and line of sight issues present themselves. By awareness, I mean things like healers being aware where their group is and positioning themselves to be in range of everyone, off tanks being prepared to handle extra incoming enemies if the group is caught off guard and so forth.

Finally, discipline and communication, which I guess are more attributes than skills. To keep a raid running smoothly, the group needs discipline, players need to listen and react to commands given by the leaders and also respond and communicate well with each other. These were probably the most valuable skills, because although the encounters were demanding, there were none to my mind that relied on all 40 people in the raid performing at 100% efficiency for the full duration of it, and so as a raid leader, I would rather have had 40 people who were 90% efficient but were completely disciplined and communicative than 40 elite players who were only out for their personal glory. It's like football right? You can put 11 star players out onto the field but if they can't play as a team, then they won't win.

Anyway, back to Razorgore: we bashed our heads against him for several weeks, trying various methods and tactics, and it really didn't get us anywhere. Frustration began to mount. Despite this, I insisted still on not searching the internet for hints and tips on the fight, and urged the other officers not to either. My stubbornness led to some people deciding that their time was spent better elsewhere and the number of raid signups began to drop for raids to Blackwing Lair. Conversely, the number of signups for Molten Core began to increase well over the 40 person cap for raids.

This annoyed me greatly, because the primary motivation for me to raid was to defeat the challenges laid out before me, with the shiny gear gained only as a trophy to show for my efforts. However, for many other people it was the other way around, and not only did wiping in Blackwing Lair consume 3 hours of their time per night for no apparent reward, it also rapidly consumed their supplies of in game money and consumables such as potions and scrolls. Given that I was still a teenager and had my head firmly stuck in the clouds of idealism, I openly annoyed a lot of people I think with my evangelical message of "play for the challenge, not the items!" which didn't help matters. However, I wasn't stupid, and thus implemented changes to the DKP system to award extra points to people who showed up for the Blackwing Lair raids, as well as giving them preferred spots in the Molten Core raids which had by now become routine, and so was only run to get people items.

On a side note, whoever at Blizzard thought it was a good idea for bosses that take 40 people to kill to only drop 3 items was/is utterly retarded and should be mauled by angry kittens.

Angry Kitten

Anyway, money was an issue for a lot of the raiders, because dying in World of Warcraft incurred a durability hit to items and so a lot of gold was spent on the necessary repairs (broken items don't confer statistical bonuses to the wearer). This amounted to something like 15 gold pieces per night. For the many people in T3M who had jobs and social lives to attend to, there was no quick way of replenishing this gold as they did not play outside of raids and it quickly made them broke.

I scraped by by selling weapon enchantments to other players, and broke even, but barely. My in game wallet fluctuated between zero and 20 gold and it was hard going for a while.

Finally, after a week which saw the Blackwing Lair raids signed with only 30 people, and the Molten Core with 50 (and also after a lot of moaning and heated discussion on the alliance forums), we began to make progress on the encounter. This was aided by one of our officers, a paladin named Pious, doing some in-depth research on the encounter and bringing some interesting facts about it to light on the number of different types of enemies spawned. This meant a complete revision of the tactics we were using, but also yielded noticeable gains very quickly.

Throughout this period, school had begun again and I was now starting A-levels and preparing to apply to University. Trying to juggle school and what was now becoming like a full time job became a huge challenge. I became a bit of a recluse in school, spending my breaks in the library doing homework so I could log straight onto World of Warcraft when I got back to deal with any issues before the evening raid began. I spent whole lessons just browsing the alliance forums, partaking in debates and discussions and well, let's just say it was a wonder that I ended up getting into Cambridge.

Things came to a bit of a head towards the end of September. With coursework deadlines mounting, I realised I needed to take a break from raiding, and so I did. However, I felt awful that I was somehow abandoning the alliance in a time of need, as we were still struggling against Razorgore. The fears were completely unfounded, as there were capable officers that stepped up in my absence, however, given that I had personally led nearly all of the raids that T3M had conducted since it's inception, it felt strange to hand the reins over to someone else, even temporarily.

I devoted two weeks to hammering out all the coursework I had been neglecting, but still haunted the forums daily to chat and check up on the progress of the alliance - progress on Razorgore was steady now, however the raid was still struggling to pull the execution together flawlessly.

After my enforced two week break, I was raring to get back to raiding, and on the night of my return, as if it were a welcome back to the game, we slew Razorgore. A metaphorical sigh of relief was breathed by the officers - we had finally done it.

The straightforward Phase 2: tank it and spank it.

One dead Razergore.

I vowed not to attempt an encounter "blind" ever again, and also noted down the names of those people who had kept attending the wipe raids, even though we were short on numbers and down on hope, because I knew they were the most valuable assets that T3M had. The following week, the number of people signing up returned to normal, and we began our assault on the rest of Blackwing Lair.