Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all my readers; may you and those you love be safe and filled with joy, this year and the next.

And the same wishes to each member of Run to the Door, who make this game as fun as it is.

I’m going to take a moment to brag on my guild. It was established to be a place where players- initially a fairly solid circle of friends who’d been grouping mostly with each other inside a much larger, more loosely-run guild- could go and be assured that there were no jerks who would swear at you for standing in the fire… where you’d know that accidentally equipping your Lucky Fishing Hat for a boss attempt would get a gentle reminder to put your helmet back on (while the person reminding you was obviously trying not to laugh). Where you could find a hunter trying out a melee build for kicks, just to see if it could be done.
So we wanted it to be friendly. But we wanted something else.

We wanted a place where it was understood that you could spec and gear how you wanted, and be judged on how well you performed. Dreamstate healer? Sure! Melee hunter? Sure! Don’t want to take Moonkin Form? Fine by me! Just don’t let the rest of us down, eh?

And that’s more or less what happened. We don’t have so much a bunch of cookie-cutter builds as a continual experimentation with different builds, gear choices, and playstyles, with each player doing exactly as they please, and with the implicit trust- so far borne out completely- that no one player is going to let the others in the run or raid down.

Then there’s loot. We have had people refuse to take loot that was an upgrade for them because it was a larger upgrade for someone else. Literally refuse, as in “I pass, I’m not rolling, GIVE IT TO THE OTHER WARRIOR! Make him take it, he needs it more than me!”

Shards in guild runs? They pretty much never get rolled on, because the enchanters are using them to buy all kinds of recipes (almost exclusively ones requested by the guild). Crafted items? “I’d make it for you if I had ingredient X, but I don’t.” You get Ingredient X, you get the item. Can’t farm ingredient X? “Farm ingredient Y that I need, and I’ll farm the X for you- and take your time, eh? Here’s your new toy, no hurry to pay me back.”

So the loot works out nicely too.

But it turns out that, aside from being genuinely nice, curious and occasionally downright lunatic people, the initial circle we formed (and the friends and other players we’ve attracted since the guild’s formation) have one other thing in common.

We all really, really, really hate losing. There is a definite, unspoken law in the guild, and from what I can tell it works like this:
“This game is out to get us. We’re going to kick it right in the solar plexus and tell it where it can go.”

This law finds its expression in all kinds of ways- daily runs of a heroic for a week with the same five people because one of them wants one drop; absolutely blurring through the Stratholme Gauntlet to get as many drakes as possible out to guild members; A group of five people running six back-to-back heroics in three hours so one person can get the last badges they need for some T7; watching the friendly rivalry most of our DPS maintain about DPS fly right out the window because offheals are needed or someone needs to pick up a loose mob; Racing each other’s groups through the same heroic…

For the most part, though, this unwritten ideal finds its expression in everyone in the guild being very, very good at what they do.

Naxx-10? We spent a weekend, never having been in there before, and knocked out all of Spider and Construct wings. Then we went back the next weekend and, well, you can see above what the result of that one was.

Then we one-shotted Sartharion, scrambled together a quick group and did a three-minute Archavon, and then…

…then…

…Malygos wiped us all over the floor. Six times. That fight has damped us slightly but we are back up and raring to go.

I play this game because of the people, really… and I’ve found some really amazing people in this guild. May you all prosper, and may we have another year of the friendly rivalries, amusing banter, and pure fun that the guild produces, teaching each other new tricks, providing each other new anecdotes, and stabbing monsters and taking their toys away.