The End of the World (of Warcraft), Part Two
I quit World of Warcraft last week, having played more or less consistently for the last fourteen years. That's an uncomfortably long time to dedicate to anything so ephemeral, and it's taken a little longer to wrangle down thoughts on the next leg of my mental stroll through this weird, weird journey.
Pancakes, 2008-2011
It's August, 2008, and things aren't going as well as they could be.
<with Pancakes> (or just Pancakes from here on out) had been running raids with some reliable level of success. We killed things, found new members, and started making tangible progress, until people stopped showing up as much. Our progression slowed to a crawl, and for some reason, I wasn't happy with it. Black Temple and Mount Hyjal were out at this point, and as several other guilds were delving deep into them, we were...still kind of languishing in Serpentshrine and Tempest Keep. I wanted a break from having to show up at raid time only to find we had a ton of people missing, and couldn't actually get things done. 25-man raids were still somewhat unreliable for us to staff, the people that were showing up were upset, and general morale felt pretty frustrating.
So, instead of doing the smart thing, and buckling down to try and figure out a solution, I did the wrong thing. I left. I went to Ascendance, a popular raiding guild staffed by people I only kind of knew. They raided four days a week and were making a good push.
Needless to say, my time with Ascendance didn't last long. I was still in communique with the Powers, and a part of me knew I was never going to fully click with a new roster the way I did with the Pancakes. I hung out there for about two months, was drenched with new gear, and decided..."y'know, I think I was actually happier with people I enjoyed raiding with." I decided to go home.
Our progress was slower, but the people were happy (for the most part). We struggled with mechanically complex fights, but we excelled on more turn-and-burn fights (for the most part). We killed bosses, got neat loot, and made a name for ourselves on Dragonblight, preparing to really tackle things with aplomb when Wrath of the Lich King hit. No qualifier on that last bit.
It's April, 2009, and the best raid in the game is out. It's going to nearly destroy our guild.
There's not a whole lot of extremely memorable moments from the early stretches of WotLK, at least for me. We raided as a 25-man, and when that didn't work, we had 10-mans to fall back on. The re-released Naxxramas brought on the second incarnation of Toast's Pancakes Squad, the first being summoned forth in Karazhan to some effect, and we got things done. I knew there was some resentment between the two 10-mans, even back then, but I was still too young and driven by victory lust to critically think about it. We had our guild HR department in Sorhyn, who was remarkably capable of putting out interpersonal guild drama fires, even all the way back then, and our roster was growing to the point where those fires came up every now and then.
Ulduar came out to riotous fanfare. It was a massive raid, with hard modes(!), and a secret boss(!!), and the most theme park-y aesthetic of any raid to this point(!!!). I loved it then, and love it to this day, and still acknowledge that the time we spent with Ulduar, as a guild, very nearly destroyed both our morale and the fabric of cohesion that bound us together.
There were several reasons for this:
Ulduar had our first real legendary to deal with, and when we made the decision to work on giving Val'anyr to a member of the officer corps, as opposed to another healer, there was a heaping batch of drama. Admittedly, the non-officer healer was just as valid an option, there was just inter-officer drama about whether or not it was the right pick for someone who was really only raid-focused as opposed to holistically guild-focused...which, if you think about it for too long, doesn't make a lot of sense.
The disparity between the two 10-man groups became extraordinarily apparent in Ulduar. TPS was miles ahead of the second group, and while we were having a blast running that raid, the other group struggled to progress, and sometimes even to field the people necessary to raid. We caught a lot of flak for being elitist with our roster, for not wanting to carry people like we did in the 25-mans, and for generally being more insular and cliquish than Pancakes had historically been. I don't dispute any of those criticisms, because they were entirely truthful. We pushed for Algalon back then largely because we wanted to beat another guild's group to it, because the idea of Alleyra having that kind of record was so profoundly disgusting to us. We formed a separate sub-group solely to make that happen...and it did. I'm still proud of that Starcaller title.
Our progress was slow. It always was, and would be for a while yet, but I think the roadblocks we bumped up against were more pronounced this time around. XT, Mimiron, and then Yogg-Saron himself were all dramatic hampers to our desire to move on, Yogg in particular. Lots of long nights, very tense conversations, and heartbreaking wipes at any point in these encounters. At a certain point, I was convinced Twizzlers was deliberately trying to ruin our attempts by running into clouds.
We eventually persevered, but in the six months it took us to clear Ulduar, factoring in time with the Trial of the Crusader as well (which, along with our server first 25-man clear, gave us Geth's Path of Frost moment that will live in infamy) there were slight cracks in the foundation of our 10/25-man groups.
It's April, 2010. The cracks are growing.
Icecrown Citadel was a breaking point for me. Our progress was still steady, our roster was still mostly intact, but I was still far more invested in the 10-man group than I was in the 25. It didn't hurt that I had, more or less, free reign over who I could bring in, and it really didn't hurt that - for a while - I could tune out the issues our 25-man was having in the back half of ICC by focusing on the progress the 10-man was making.
The server was rocked by the OCK's untimely demise, orchestrated by Alleyra (see above) with an attempted rescue by an enormous contingent of Powers and Dramablight veterans that spanned two message boards, got picked up by official WoW fansites and resulted in tens of official WoW forum bans being handed out as we tried to bring to light the truth of who Alleyra actually was as a person, which is an entirely different story that doesn't quite line up with this current tale. It didn't work, he still ended up with the OCK's Shadowmourne, a bunch of people were rightfully angry and left, and we mourned as they faded out. We lost a Power in that argument, a decision I wouldn't actually be okay with for close to seven years as he left the channel to raid with Alleyra instead.
I remember the conversation we had on the day it was announced that 10s and 25s were sharing a lockout in Cataclysm. It was quick, brutal, and it would lead to some of my happiest moments with Warcraft, and also the single worst move of my time with the game that led to me taking nearly three years off. I think we'd just come off of a frustrating raid of no progress...maybe against Lana'thel? And we sat down in the officer chat and I point-blank said, "Hey, when Cataclysm comes around, we're doing 10-mans. I'm gonna hand-pick the nine people I want to raid with, and it kinda sucks, but I cannot do this 'carrying low-attendance, low-performing people shit' anymore. I want to see the game on my own time."
Bless the other officers for agreeing with me, for being okay with that change. It was a categorically stupid idea, but they went along with it for some reason.
It's December, 2010. Toast's Pancakes Squad is in full effect.
Cataclysm brought a handful of important changes. I was a Blood Elf. Cariono was a ladytauren now. 10-mans were the order of the day, and I was happy. Toast's Pancakes Squad was raiding four nights a week, we were progressing with ease, and making a name for ourselves again. We got a series of top-3s on the server, several Horde 1st/2nd kills, and a heaping batch of resentment from anyone who wasn't one of the ten or eleven people apart from myself who were actually raiding. We shrugged it off as long as we could. We were killing shit! I had fun writing posts again! What did it matter that people were smarmily calling us out for being elitist (again) in our own forums, for being upset that their own group wasn't getting as far (again), for believing that I'd stacked the cards in my own favor (again)?
We were progressing. We cleared out everything but Sinestra and had time to spare before Firelands was out. I was so happy with what we'd done, that - on some level - I'd stopped thinking about the people and was focused on the progress above all else. As you might expect, that was a bad idea.
So, instead of doing the smart thing, and buckling down to make sure that the people who I got to raid with were taken care of, I did the wrong thing.
It's July, 2011.
Our 10-man roster changed slightly at the start of Firelands. I dropped someone from the roster a few weeks in without telling them. When they logged on for the raid, I...honestly don't know that I said anything in response. It was curt, and cruel, and a thing I shouldn't have done, after the kindness they'd expressed to me over the years; it was not the way to treat someone I'd called a friend.
People started to leave the guild for other guilds and raids that would have them, because the other 10-man was in such a languid state. Eventually, I blew up at someone posting a harmless, heartfelt post in the forum. Other people jumped to his defense; I buckled down and bared my teeth. It was callous and uncalled for, a nineteen-year-old narcissist believing wholly that he wasn't the problem with the guild. We lost a significant portion of our roster, people that had been there since Burning Crusade, who had believed in the mission of our guild as a "softcore raid guild." I didn't want to admit that I was in the wrong. I'm not sure a nineteen-year-old has the vocabulary for it.
We killed Ragnaros on July 13th. It was the fourth kill on Dragonblight. Toast's Pancakes Squad raided for two weeks after that, and then I quit World of Warcraft for nearly three years. I was so thoroughly, completely done with it, but for all the wrong reasons.
