A new raid tier of WoW opened, and this week is week 0, the normal/heroic week. And now I think, when I had mentioned I probably spent 8 hours preparing for Kil’jaeden that first week of the Tomb of Sargeras raid, it may have been an understatement. Continue reading
The faces of a person
You know that movie, I’m not there, the biopic of Bob Dylan? It’s where multiple people portray different times of his life, also showing different faces of the person. I am sometimes amused by the different faces of me.
I’m amused by how I can be so radically different in how I react to things, depending on what thing it is. Continue reading
Last boss of a new tier
The last boss of a new raid tier on that first heroic week is always an aspiration for any mythic raider. Often, most mythic guilds cannot manage to kill it that first week, and the next week when mythic opens, many guilds end up killing the first mythic boss before going back and killing the last heroic boss. Otherwise, several mythic guilds don’t really start mythic until the second mythic week, using the first one to actually clear the raid on heroic difficulty. Syzygy always full cleared on the heroic week though, and usually this was made possible by the extra time I, and sometimes a few other raiders, put in by pugging the last boss before our raid to gain experience. Normally, one would expect that a difficult boss can only be killed after the raid has wiped a lot of times on it, and learned the intricacies of the fight (how many seconds after the last ability do we have to recover? When do some bad overlaps of mechanics happen? Does this fight benefit from overhealing, or overdpsing? etc.). Sometimes, you can push your raid group far ahead by having the raid leader experience and know all of the details of the fight, and use good callouts and raid leading to pull the group through. That is what I would always do. Basically, my guild would benefit from the struggle my pug groups would go through. Continue reading
Ambivalence about returning to WoW
Recently, I’ve been watching Syzygy raid almost every week, watching the raid leader of the weekend team, Shandare, stream. And my feelings yoyo.
On the one hand, the atmosphere and the friendliness between raiders is usually really good, and it makes me feel like I want to be part of that again. Also, Shandare is like the most amazing raid leader, and I want to be a part of what he’s a part of. I also know I would enjoy the game if I did not need to be responsible for a guild, yet was able to contribute and make things better by being there.
On the other hand, during my research I am reminded of all the stress and unhappiness that happened before. Also, I don’t know if I can play WoW and be casual about it, and I do not want WoW to be my entire life again.
So. Ambivalence.
Rereading past conversations
I saved a bunch of conversations that made an impression on me from WoW. While preparing for each post, I go back to the conversations that happened during that time, and in the process, sometimes pass through various other ones. I really shouldn’t stop and read those, since they don’t have anything to do with the time frame I’m writing about, but seeing folders of them, or scrolling up through private messages, I sometimes get curious and spend 10 minutes here and there reading through them.
One that I read was about how this buyer thought we were the most wonderful guild, and that buying from us was the best experience he had in game in his entire 12 year WoW history. That I was the sweetest raid leader he’d ever met. That put a smile on my face.
One that I read was about a PUG from a top guild telling me I was the best raid leader he’d ever come across, better than most at top guilds. That made me feel good about myself.
But then I also come across other ones. Continue reading
Progress with a Twist of Discontent (II) (10/04/2016 ~ 10/10/2016)
Though I had considered skipping heroic farm to push harder on mythic bosses, our failure on Ursoc the week before (on 10/03) showed me we needed gear too badly. Without having done splits we were behind. However, frenzied recruitment had landed us with 30+ good people, so my strategy was to go into heroic our first raid day (10/04) with 30 people, and funnel gear into the 20 I planned to bring in for Ursoc. Not too long before our raid, Abc texted Amber about a personal emergency that would keep him away from the game for a week. Looking back I feel very lucky this happened when it did. The failure on Ursoc the last day of week 1 could very easily have been magnified and used to lower morale. But thankfully, Abc was not there to make everyone feel bad. Not that guild drama and problems did not occur, but none of it carried the same weight drama from Amber’s clique did, and it was a great week. Continue reading
Progress with a Twist of Discontent (I) (09/27/2016 ~ 10/03/2016)
The first day of week 1, when mythic opened for Emerald Nightmare, we went into heroic instead, to farm the bosses and get more gear. That first day, we killed all the farm bosses, which was pretty decent. We wiped 2 times on one boss, 1 time on two bosses, and all the other bosses we one shot. We now had 22 raiders, despite losing a couple of strong players the week before, and all our raiders could learn from their mistakes quickly. Most of the players we had were doing strong numbers, and we only had a handful left, if that, who did weaker numbers. We also now had new raid officers, and everything was just looking up in general. It was a welcome relief from the stress of the week before, and I was finally being able to eat and sleep again. This did not mean I actually had much time to rest though: after raid, I spent a few hours studying how top guilds did mythic that first day, and thinking through what strategies our guild could use. I then wrote down guides for a couple bosses, and asked Amber to make an announcement for guildies to read them.
The illusion of the straight sailing ended after these few hours of study. Apparently the smoothness of the raid did not mean the complaints and criticisms, particularly from Amber’s clique, would stop. Continue reading
New Officers and Management (09/27/2016)
In the first week, there was quite a difference in the performance between people. The first day there were a few people who were very obviously slow learners, who would simply not react to things quickly. By the second or third day we had already been able to replace them, and by the fourth and last raid day, we we were able to ensure that everyone in the group was a decently fast learner. However, performance in WoW isn’t just based on whether or not one can learn to react to raid mechanics quickly, it is often also based on numbers. Each spell you cast will do a certain amount of healing, damage, or defense. The defense is rarely tracked (so it is not easy to measure how well a tank performs), but healing and damage are usually tracked by every single raider. Each spell you cast can take a certain amount of time and do a certain number of damage or healing. The damage takes away boss health, while healing increases the health of the raiders. Each of these things have numerical values, so there is always competition between dps, or between healers.
Magic Johnson = WoW raider?
When I played WoW, I felt that irresponsibility in the face of adversity was part and parcel with the fact that it was a game. As my friend and erstwhile fellow raid leader Matildah recently told me: “It’s because the game is voluntary, Liji. Voluntary.”
I personally had always felt that, at least to the leaders of WoW raiding guilds, the responsibilities of the game often did not feel voluntary. Sure they’re voluntary when things are good and easy. But there are bound to be times (often constantly) when things are not good, and not easy. When the game no longer feels like a game and no longer feels fun. If things were purely voluntary, and leaders could just quit whenever things got rough, thousands of raiding guilds on WoW would be unsuccessful. They would disband before most of them make it through a full raid tier (on average a few months). I have not yet heard of any raiding guild, even top guilds, that do not struggle with some sort of drama or problem during any given raid tier.
Yet, WoW raiders will often act in irresponsible ways (to their teammates), and feel justified in doing so. Because, well, it’s a game. It’s voluntary. Continue reading
August 2017: How my weekday group is almost(?) falling apart
I wrote this at the beginning of August of 2017. At the time I wrote it purely for myself. I found it again upon rereading old drafts, and have decided to post it with no changes. This was a particularly raw time and the situation mentioned in here was traumatic for me. I will likely spend a lot of time writing about it when I get to this period.
I need to rant. Maybe none of what I’m writing will be fair. Maybe all of it will be whining about no big deal. But I don’t care, I need to rant. Continue reading
Lijiworld 