The Terror of Entitlement

As many of you know, Blizzard launched Diablo III last Tuesday, bringing to an end an almost twelve year wait. As possibly even more of you noticed, Blizzard failed spectacularly, at one point they even crashed World of Warcraft's login server. That's right, Blizzard managed to screw up the Diablo launch so supremely, that it crashed games that launched almost a decade ago. The servers pretty much melted, and the glowing, slightly radioactive remnants congealed in the bottom of the crater, spelling out "Error 37".

As with many major failures on the part of Blizzard and other major game development companies, the consumer backlash was vicious and omnipresent. Blizzard failed to anticipate just how many people would try to play Diablo III, and were caught embarrassingly unprepared, leaving the game unplayable for the majority of launch day. Throughout the day, error 37, the error code that indicated that Blizzard's servers were not up to the task, trended globally on Twitter, even when Diablo III itself did not. That's the equivalent of having more people knowing about error 404 than the internet.

This was mostly because of the DRM package that Blizzard decided to apply to their series that traditionally had a single player component to it. When Blizzard announced this style of "always-on" DRM, consumers questioned the necessity of it, and also pointed out its flaws, namely that a break in the connection, on either end, would render the game useless until it was repaired. While it would be annoying to not be able to play because the internet went down on the consumer's end, at least the consumer could do something about it. The bigger fear was that Blizzard's end of the system would do down, or that further down the line, Blizzard would turn off the servers, and leave consumers with nothing but eight gigs of useless data. Lo and behold, day one, and the exact scenario that consumers warned against takes place in probably the most visible failed launch since Vanguard TV3.

In response, the consumers responded in more ways than merely Twitter. Blogs lit up, the forums caught fire, reddit upvoted "error 37", and perhaps most damaging, unhappy consumers crushed Diablo III's user score on Metacritic, driving it down to a 4/10 as of Friday night. A lot of the gaming news sites seized upon this, painting the unhappy consumers as "whiney-snot-nosed-brats" in some of the most sardonic, virulent, and condescending editorials I've ever seen.

This has been a landmark year in terms of consumer anger in the video game industry, and Blizzard hasn't been the only target. The problems that are causing these reactions are endemic throughout the industry. Capcom got busted selling "downloadable content" that was already coded to the disc for Street Fighter vs Tekken. Bioware got busted for the same thing with Mass Effect's "From Ashes" DLC, and also caught flak for launching not one, but two incomplete RPGs in the past six months. EA got busted attaching hidden expiration dates to the "Online Passes" that enabled multiplayer on several of their games, essentially tacking on a hidden subscription to games like Need For Speed. That, along with EA's forcing consumers seeking to download games online to go through their Origin program, which was revealed to be chock full of spyware, got EA rated the Worst Company in America this year.

In each of these scenarios, the gaming media rose up and defended the developers and publishers, castigating those who complained as over entitled whiners who were never satisfied. They fall back upon the same pedantic arguments as if it were religious dogma: Stop whining, It's just a game, there are more important things out there, the developers need to do this, and they need to make a profit. It's as if they have this carved on a damn tablet that they keep over their desk as they write these arguments.

Either they don't understand what's going on, or they're being apologists. This past year, and the trends that it has brought up stem from unacceptable levels of greed that would not be tolerated in any other industry. It's evolved far from its original roots, and the consumers will not stand for it. Each 0/10 vote for Diablo on Metacritic, or 1/5 review on Amazon, isn't an indictment of the game itself, it's a vote in protest of the policies that surround the game, and the company that produced it. The mighty have begun to become corrupt. I once said that Blizzard lost their right to say "Soon™" when they shoved an unfinished Cataclysm expansion out to release in order to beat the Christmas rush. Since then, they've released two absolutely garbage raiding tiers that had less content combined than T6 had on its own, they shoved Diablo III out the door without PvP or AH functionality, the two things that they explained made the draconian DRM package necessary, and upon D3's launch, they completely failed to prepare for the rush. This from the company that once scrapped Starcraft: Ghost entirely because it failed to measure up to their standards. Bioware has become even worse, having fallen from a company that produced Baldur's Gate, Knights of the Old Republic, and Mass Effect, to the company that shoved The Old Republic out literally missing half of the endgame raiding tier, launched Mass Effect 3 with a heavily plagiarized ending that only made sense if you understood the context that it was plagiarized from. Not only that, but they locked portions of the game as it came on disc, until you paid extra for the privilege of unlocking the content you already had on your computer, the same questionable practice that got Capcom's rating with the Better Business Bureau knocked down to below that of Bank of America. In no world should these failures be considered acceptable.

What I find most interesting is the lines of division that have formed. The gaming media, aside from good ole Tycho, continue to cling to the infallibility of the game developer in these business models. The people, aside from the consumers, who point out time and again that these policies are bullshit? Time Magazine, Forbes Magazine, the International Business Times, The Consumerist, The Better Business Bureau. I think that's very telling.

Developers have enjoyed a long detente with the consumers, one that they had admittedly earned through producing excellent products in an emergent field. However, they have not maintained their standards in recent releases, and there seem to be no signs of a spontaneous return to form. As such, it is up to the us, the consumers, to make our displeasure known through the tools at our disposal, until such time as they understand that just because Video Games are a relatively new industry, that does not give them license to financially abuse us. We wouldn't take this from any other industry. Why should we tolerate this sort of disregard here?

Siege Addendum: Mistakes of Futures Past

Sometimes, they just don't learn. Some things are like watching a cheap horror movie where everyone repeats the exact same mistakes that got everyone else killed in the previous movie. No, you can't keep your loved one around now that s/he's a zombie, they'll just break loose and eat everybody. No, the bathroom is not the safest place to run from a slasher killer, there's only one way in or out, you'll die in that bathtub. But do they learn? No. They seem like they learn, but they have the memory span of a goldfish, and they constantly repeat the same hackneyed plot scripts with a fresh coat of paint on them.

WoW's story telling is quickly devolving to that level. In the wake of the NDA on the MoP press release, and a shockingly quick turnaround to Beta, there's been a lot of information getting put out. I already spoke about the Siege of Orgrimmar, what it represents, what its flaws are, and what Blizzard should avoid to really fuck things up.

If the raid devolves into "Help Thrall defeat Garrosh!" for Alliance players, then it would be, as I said earlier, the death knell for the Alliance as a interesting faction, they'd be nothing more than foils to help propel Green Jesus to greater glory. It's an incredibly demoralizing prospect.

This was something that Blizzard seemed to have picked up upon during the massive discontent at the direction of the story during patch 4.2. Dave Kosak wrote a blog post attempting to address the discontent, writing most of it off as a byproduct of good storytelling *snicker* There was one thing that made me thing that they had at least an inkling of the actual root of the problem.

If you’re a die-hard Alliance player, I can understand if you feel left out of Thrall’s story arc. Thrall feels like “their guy,” and Thrall’s journey over the last couple of years may not feel like “your” story, even if his mistakes are about to send the whole world into a potential death spiral. Fair enough. Stick with Thrall as he fulfills his destiny at the end of Cataclysm, and I promise we’ll catch up with other characters -- from both factions -- as we pick up the pieces in the aftermath.

So, just tough it out until the end of Cata, and then the focus will be off of Thrall, and onto other characters. Ok, you're asking for a mulligan. Make use of it.

Back to this week, and the flood of information showing that Garrosh was being deposed, and rampant speculation as to who would take the reigns of the Horde. The usual cries for a basic campfire were thrown around, and a lot of people thought that Vol'jin would be a good choice given the foreshadowing from the Troll starting zones where Vol'jin swore that the last thing Garrosh would feel would be Vol'jin's arrow piercing his heart. Others mentioned Overlord Saurfang, Garrosh's mentor in Northrend, who swore to kill Garrosh himself if he began to lead the Horde back down the dark paths that led to their downfall on Draenor. That speculation ended very quickly when Machinima Realm released a video of an interview with J. Allen Brack, WoW producer, who explicitly stated that players are fighting to restore Thrall as the Warchief.

There's another, someone less high profile source that has also been putting out information. At Blizzcon 2010, someone caught Alex Afrasiabi and Chris Metzen in a continuity error on the lore panel for the upcoming Cataclysm expansion. This led to an alteration on the Beta, and ultimately live servers, an that person became a wow celebrity, with his own avatar in game. He's known as the Red Shirt Guy, after the shirt he wore when he caught Blizzard at their own convention. Among the perks he received was a personal interview with Chris Metzen on the path of lore in the upcoming expansion. Now that the Beta has opened up, he's been open about some of the things Metzen told him about. He asked about who gets to kill Garrosh in Mists, and Metzen's quote was "Garrosh's been a bad boy, and Thrall's gonna have to give him a spanking."

*Sigh* Really? This whole expansion, this whole story arc that's been brewing since Burning Crusade is going to culminate in Thrall, again. People didn't like it in Cataclysm, when he was ostensibly, neutral. How bad are you going to have to warp the story to make the Alliance feed into the idea of replacing Garrosh with Thrall and being ok with it? Everything involving the Horde or Alliance directly in the past two expansions is being thrown away for the greater glory of Go'el, just like Staghelm's narrative was chucked aside to puff that orc up a bit more. Cairne's death, Vol'jin's animosity, Saurfang's guilt, Ashenvale, Turajo, King Wrynn's return and rehabilitation, the destruction of Theramore, the Siege of Orgrimmar, the entire war between the Horde and Alliance, none of it matters as anything more than a plot device to allow Thrall to be painted as the messianic bringer of peace in addition to the World Shaman, Aspect of Earth, and the Once and Future Warchief.

Enough is enough. Most of the core of the story is already locked in. WoW is on rails that they can't leave at this point. But the Siege of Orgrimmar is still the final content patch of the expansion, it's at least 18 months away, and there's still time to fix the crescendo of this flawed song. Here's how:

There's several arcs that need to be wrapped up. I mentioned several of them. In order to establish the final raid, both factions have to have a reason for participating. Contrary to Blizzard's thinking, the Alliance actually doesn't need any more motivation to invade, they just need to do so. The content patches leading up to the Siege should feature the Alliance turning the tide and beginning the march towards Orgrimmar. Do not have them just show up overnight. Scenarios will be a powerful tool here, because they will allow the developers to play create additional content in certain zones that they would otherwise no longer attempt to overhaul again.

There needs to be at least three points on the road to Orgrimmar. First is the turning point. The Alliance needs to decisively defeat the Horde, and get them on the run. This could take place on Pandaria. Once the tide has been turned, the pursuit needs to be shown. With the destruction of Theramore, the Alliance two real roads to Orgrimmar, either from the North through Ashenvale, or from the South from Feralas. I prefer the second option, Feralas is closer to Pandaria, and Shandris Feathermoon's sentinel army has been begging for a real use. Show the might of the Alliance on the march, traveling across Feralas, towards thousand needles, where they will cross into the barrens. Horde resistance in this scenario should be guerrilla, tricking the Ogres of Dire Maul into attacking the Alliance flanks, blowing up the roads, and setting up traps. Once the army is established to be on the move, then the next stop is Orgrimmar, pretty easy.

Getting the Horde players to be willing to depose Garrosh is more difficult, especially trying to do so in a manner that doesn't just cut off the hanging plot lines. There needs to be something that Garrosh does that makes Horde players hate him. The answer, in my opinion, lies with his relationship with Varok Saurfang. After taking time to properly mourn the death of his son, Varok returns from Northrend to witness the destruction of Theramore, and as with the lion's share of the Horde military, he travels to fight over Pandaria. As he serves, and sees what Garrosh has created. After the Alliance routes them on Pandaria, Saurfang realizes how close Garrosh has become to the orcs like Orgrim, Blackhand, and Grom, who led the orcs to the brink of extinction, and decides to live up to the promise he made to both Garrosh and himself. He confronts Garrosh, who challenges him to Mak'gora. This mirrors the challenge laid down to Garrosh from Cairne during the Shattering. Garrosh defeats Saurfang, the student surpassing his master, and kills him, much to the outrage of the soldiers present. Saurfang was an old soldier who had served the Horde faithfully his whole life.

Seeing another dedicated elder of the Horde struck down by Garrosh in a duel resonates with Vol'jin and Baine Bloodhoof, who had watched Cairne die in the same manner, fighting for a last chance to keep the Horde away from the monstrosity that it has become. As the full fury of the Alliance reaches the walls of the Horde's capitol, Baine and Vol'jin decide that the time has come for their words to become actions, rather than merely speaking their discontent in shadowed halls, they rise up against the Warchief. In Orgrimmar, the heart of Garrosh's power, Baine and Vol'jin's rebellion is savagely persecuted, and with their backs against the wall, facing both the relentless shelling of the Alliance and the implacable blades of the Kor'kron, they resort to desperate measures. Baine throws open the main gates of Orgrimmar, allowing wrath of the Alliance to flood into the city, creating chaos. Garrosh and his Kor'Kron loyalists find themselves suddenly fighting street to street against two enemies, and the end of his reign is suddenly far closer than he could have ever imagined.

That's how I would like to see it done. It empowers the Alliance, and allows the Horde to reclaim a piece of what it once was while still evolving, rather than devolving into the complacent entity that it was under Thrall. I could flesh this scenario out for days, involving every race in both factions, but I just wanted to get the bare bones out there.

I mentioned that it wasn't too late to change the ending here. Here's how. Blizzard reads the forums. They know when you're angry about something. You lit the forums on fire when you were unhappy, and they responded. You didn't like Garrosh, so they're letting you kill him. Express your displeasure. There's already a thread on the official forums where people are expressing their irritation at this development, and Daxxari is actively asking people if they would rather see someone else as Warchief. Go post in that thread, make other threads discussing potential alterations that you'd like to see made. When those threads cap out, make new ones. Don't let it rest. Keep the fire alive.

Quoth the Crab: The Choice Doesn't Matter

One of the important philosophies of game design is that interesting choices are fun. The word 'interesting' is key. Choosing between a talent that grants 10% damage and one that grants 5% damage, all else being equal, isn't interesting.

This is a quote from Ghostcrawler on the merits of the new talent tree in Mist of Pandaria. However, I'm not here to talk about talents, or Mists of Pandaria, or even anything Ghostcrawler works on. I'm here to talk about the Power of the Aspects buff in Dragon Soul, which will soon be ratcheted up to 10%.

With the impending increase, it's uncorked a mass of discussion on the matter, and once again, WoW Insider draws the lines, on both sides. Dan Desmond wrote an editorial on the effects that these sort of nerfs have on the raiders in the instance.

Well, it seems I was wrong, for in the very next tier of content Blizzard released, we saw progressive nerfs to these difficult fights. Personally, I prefer to keep these encounters the way they are, at least until a new tier is released. Something just feels wrong to see the hardest fights available made easier through a series of hotfixes. Even with respect to my own guild's progression, having sweeping nerfs hit Firelands just as my guild was putting in some really good attempts on Ragnaros felt like Blizzard moved the finish line, taking what would have been a very gratifying kill and turning it into an accidental one-shot that contained none of the catharsis we had felt during previous boss kills.

In response, Adam Holisky wrote an editorial on the merits of the nerf for all guilds, and in the end, he fell back on that same flawed defense that so many others have leaned upon.

Because there's an easy answer if everything I said in this editorial rings false to you.

Just turn the nerf off.

Now, there's a lot of flawed thinking in Adam's editorial, and I'll get around to those flaws in other posts. What I want to talk about now is the supposed "Choice" that raiders have to turn off the Power of the Aspects. Ghostcrawler said that a choice that had one option that was obviously more beneficial than the other isn't interesting, it isn't compelling, and ultimately, it isn't a choice at all. This is the situation that the non raiders who fall back on this line don't understand, there is no choice to turn off the debuff. Any guild that has already cleared all the content has no reason to do so, and any guild that hasn't cleared the content gains no benefit from doing do. Raiding guilds live on three things, interesting content, recruiting, and consensus within the group. While the nerfs may or may not undermine how interesting the content is for your raid group, it can only have a negative impact on the other two aspects.

Consensus: One of the primary arguments that people make against these kind of nerfs is that they wanted to see what the content's really like, not to be given their kill as charity by the developers who take pity on them. The dissenters claim that they can simply turn off the nerf, and everything will be the same as it was before. This is not true. Raiding is a team activity. You need nine or twenty-four other players to go along with you in order to raid with any serious degree of success. While you might get enough satisfaction to justify turning off the debuff, you need consensus within the group. The odds of everyone in the group agreeing with you is slim, and even one person in the group who would rather raid with the debuff will put the group in a very awkward position. You're asking them to sacrifice their personal progression, not for an achievement, not for loot, not for a mount, but for something even more trivial, for your pride. If they give in, then they feel resentful at your imposition, and if you give in, then you feel disappointed with the instance. Ultimately, the very fact that a choice had to be made alters the dynamic of the raiding experience, even if you choose to turn off the buff.

Recruiting: Just as dangerous as the volatility of forcing the issue into a group dynamic is the impact that the buff has on recruiting. If you're in a raiding guild, your guild is recruiting. There's an almost constant rate of attrition that takes its toll on a raid's roster. Kids, school, work, burnout, and new games are all among the factors that might drive a player to set aside raiding. If the group wants to continue raiding, they need to replace those people. One of the primary things that players look for in a guild that they choose to raid with is progression within the current instance. All else being equal, a prospective raider will tend to sign on with a guild that's further progressed. With no way to differentiate themselves from guilds that do use the debuff, a guild that decides to pursue raiding without the buff deliberately hamstrings themselves on the recruiting front. To make matters worse, any guild can claim to have gotten their kills without the debuff, because there's no way to prove it one way or another.

There is no choice here, it's akin to being given the choice between a raisin bagel or a kick in the crotch. These nerfs aren't about tuning, they're about longevity. Just like ICC with the Strength of Wrynn, we're going to be stuck in Dragon Soul for another six months. There is no tier of gear after this to help the flagging guilds. So they give us the Power of the Aspects, and jokingly tell us that we have a choice, while they cite the exact opposite logic to justify their decisions in other aspects of the game. If Blizzard had made it an actual choice, they would have given an incentive to raid without the Power of the Aspects. A title, or a mount, or even just a simple achievement for clearing Dragon Soul without using the Power of the Aspects would make it an actual choice, not this mockery that we're faced with at the moment.

At What Price, Victory?

It's been a hectic month. But as things calmed down, I had a chance to chill out with my shaman officer. We spent a while talking about the old Legacy. It was an interesting and enlightening conversation, that dragged on entirely too late at a night, but all the same, was worth every second.

Last night, Legacy lost a long time member. One of our arcane mages left the server. Wound up in a guild on Firetree horde-side that just got their first kill of Deathbringer Saurfang last week. I kind of feel like the QB who got dumped for the fat guy... This departure kinda stung, because she was one of the few remaining members of the guild who remember the simpler times. Back when I wasn't the GM, I was just another member of a guild struggling to down Thaddius. There was a dynamic to the relationship that simply can't be found with the newer members, as they've only experienced me as their guild and raid leader. There are really very few members of the guild still running with us who remember those times.

• Members of Legacy who predate my GMship: 7
• Members of Legacy who predate my membership: 4
• Members of Legacy who were there for the first raid: 2
• Members of Legacy who were there on the first day: 1

Spinks had a recent post asking what you were willing to sacrifice on the altar of progression. This got me thinking about the Mage leaving, and tied back to the conversation with the Shaman. Legacy has made progress. I've built a guild that went from being ranked in the mid 60s on the server to the top 10. What have I sacrificed? We don't raid any more hours than we did back then, fewer actually. So I didn't give up time. Of my real life friends who play, they're all in the guild, so I didn't give them up. I didn't have to give up tanking. I didn't have to compromise my schedule. What have I sacrificed?

Then it hit me. Between the Shaman and I, we remembered most of the member of the guild, past and present. We remember why they left, and what they did afterwords. What guilds they came from, and what guilds they went to. I started checking back. Legacy made a lot of changes to get where we are. I took over as GM, we built a website, we switched to a dkp system, we changed the raid attendance criteria, and changed the raid schedule. Each step of the way, people left. Some people continued playing, some did not. But in every case, someone who was at the time completely happy with their guild, found it so far changed that they couldn't stay in it. For the 8 of us who are happy with all the changes made, there are at least 54 people that we know of who either quit raiding, or quit wow altogether due to those choices. There's another 70 or so who still raid with other guilds.

That's what I've sacrificed to get the progression I desired, other people's happiness. It's a sobering thought, and one that kind of eats at me from time to time. Every time that one of those people who thought they found a place that suits them leaves, it bleeds a little bit of the color out of the game for me. Every time one of them leaves, it isolates me a little bit more from the time when I was just another player. At times, I hate it, but in retrospect, if I could, I think I'd make every one of those choices the same way again.

Rage and Grace

Well, raiding comprises a lot of ups and downs. Doubly so if you're a raid leader. The past week has had a lot of them.

I missed out on the guild's first run into ICC 25. They one shotted Lord Marrowgar, but then proceeded to spend nearly 2 hours wiping to Lady Deathwhisper. Mainly due to trouble getting the adds under control in phase one. Which would have been my job, had I been there. Which made me feel pretty miserable. Making me feel even worse was that my latency dropped down to a manageable 800ms immediately afterwards. Touche, Murphy.

Once my connection had stabilized, I gathered up my ten man, and rolled into ToGC10. There, our superhuman Disc/Holy priest suddenly contracted my connection issues. Ever see a Resto Shaman try to solo heal Heroic Jaraxxus? It's not pretty. So the priest stepped out, and I grabbed one of our other priests, who, while being a skilled and effective healer, had never done ToGC 10 before. ToGC is still tuned tight enough that you can carry a DPSer, but not a tank or Healer, especially since we two heal the whole thing, save faction champs. So there was basically a training wipe for each fight as the new priest adjusted to the unhealthy demands we placed on the old priest. We still picked up Mad Skill for the new priest, who adapted as quickly as I could ask him to, however, it was a little disappointing not to get insanity.

We had a lull until our monday raid, which would polish off ICC 25, during which, my mic broke. Have you ever tried to coordinate first attempts on a new boss without a microphone? Not fun. With all the spam from people's addons and DBM in particular, raid warnings just don't have the same attention grabbing qualities as the giant voice roaring into your ear.

To make matters worse, for some reason, my combat log stopped working. That meant that all my addons which depended on the combat log gave me nothing. Nothing on parrot, half of DBM didn't work, and most frustrating, recount didn't work. I use recount for analysis purposes. I can quickly find out who has been targeting the proper targets, who got hit by the wrong attacks, and most importantly, why someone died. I had none of that. I was essentially flying blind, relying on my officers for information. It was quite disconcerting.

All of this leads up to the raid on Monday. We walk in, and smoothly one shot the gunship battle. It was even more epic on 25 man than it was on ten man. I took the role of the jump tank this time, and spent the fight crossing blades with THE High Overlord Saurfang. A privilege I have not had, save the one time my guild blew up Warsong Hold for the sole purpose of killing Garrosh Hellscream. Jet packs are fun. I mean really fun. Despite being an extremely easy encounter, this is probably one of my favorites in the game. I also picked up a sexy pair of tanking shoulders. They do however, make me look like one of those oddball warrior tanks. Hopefully I can pick up a nice set of tier 10 shoulders soon, seeing as the pally T10 looks pretty good this tier.

Which brings us to the younger Saurfang. Deathbringer got a little crazy. It took us five tries to get him down. And even then, the rate of accumulation of blood power was unacceptable. I'm not exactly sure of what exactly was going wrong because all my tools for analysis depend on the combat log, but do know at one point I panned my camera around and saw our demo lock tanking two blood beasts in illidan-form. /facepalm. Angry Dammer boiled to the surface, but angry raid warnings don't really carry the satisfaction of being able to actually talk to someone. I think they got the message though, as the next attempt, we dropped Deathbringer, and collected purples. Double vanquisher dropped, and we moved on.

One of my goals, now that the guild has begun properly raiding 25 mans, is to clean up the old progression objectives that we failed to down when the content was current. So we started with Sartharion with three drakes. OS3D was a fight that we attempted many times in T7, and it kicked our ass. It didn't help that our tanking corps at the time consisted of three prot paladins, who were utterly gimped prior to patch 3.2, but well, we just weren't that good back then. This time, we came in a rolled it. It was satisfying. The group walked off with new titles, and I walked off with a new flying mount that I won't use, despite the amount of DKP I dropped on it. It's very pretty, but my rusted proto drake flies circles around it. I'm planning on the Ulduar Hard Modes next. Maybe not Firefighter, that was hellish on 10 man.

Next up was Tuesday's ten man night. With my combat log repaired, we dove into Icecrown, and aside from still puzzling out the traps on the pre marrowgar trash, we were textbook in there. Every boss was smoothly one shot. Deathbringer Saurfang didn't get a single Mark out. It was beautiful. I picked up a mace from Marrowgar that I'll probably only use in a farm set, and even then, that's assuming that I don't get a 245 DPS weapon out of ToGC 10 by then. Crusader's Glory just has way too much survivability tied into it for me to surrender it for some more hit and DPS.

Right before the Deathbringer pull, we were inspired by our fellow alliance raiders. Crisis, the top alliance guild spammed the server with their realm first Tribute to Insanity 25 man. Congratulations guys. Sorry Wrathy, I'm sure you'll get Insanity this week too.

We then proceeded to ToGC 10, where the exact opposite happened. Things got sloppy. Ranged DPS got murdered on beasts by standing in the path of the kited worm. DPS didn't switch to the last volcano on Jaraxxus, leading to a kill with only 4 members of the raid left standing. Control was almost non existant on Faction Champions. I wound up having to replace the DK assigned to kite the warrior in order to get them down. That was a bit of a wake up call, and the group rallied to one shot twins and Anub to salvage Mad Skill. I got a trophy that bought me a nice new chest piece for my ret set.

The ups and downs of raiding were ever present. Combined with whatever electromagnetic field of fail I've been projecting lately, it made raiding quite the game of chutes and ladders. But that's part of what makes things so much fun.

Alliance Pride

Everyone's favorite gnome, Larisa, recently posted about the lack of so called "Alliance Pride". I take extreme pride in my being part of the Alliance, because while we may have pompous, boisterous, and balding leaders, at least we aren't evil. And make no mistake about it, the Horde is seriously shady. When Blizzard describes one of your capital cities as a "Sprawling Bastion of Evil", well, that about sums it up.

You can tell the ideology of a society by the examples they venerate. 90% of everything the Horde builds is named after either Ogrim Doomhammer, or Grom Hellscream. Ogrim was a brutal dictator who enjoyed torturing refugees and wound up condemning nearly the entire orcish race to death through his poor decisions in the second war. And Grom, well, despite the rose colored glasses people seem to remember him through, to say that the apple didn't fall far from the tree is an understatement. Garrosh is following exactly in dear daddy's footsteps. And let's not forget about the places named after Kargath Bladefist. What are they gonna call their next territory? Gul'danistan?

Not to mention all the flaws in the Horde races themselves.
Orcs: Have been trying to ride their one good deed to a get out of jail free card for genocide and warmongering.
Trolls: I could go on for hours about all the screwed up things the trolls have done, except that the Horde didn't get any of those cool trolls from ZA or ZG. No, they got the Darkspear Trolls, who were nearly wiped out... by murlocs. Mrglrghlrghl!
Forsaken: Death to the Living! Need I say more?
Blood Elves: You drained the light out of Mu'ru, and nearly ushered in Kil'Jaeden himself to Azeroth... and to top it all off, you all act like Valley Girls addicted to Meth, yes, even the males.
Tauren: I don't really have any beef with the Beef. Don't really get what you're doing over there.
Goblins: Great, a whole race of Gevlons... just what we need...

Lorewise, the Horde has been one of the worst things to ever happen to Azeroth. They cut down forests simply for the sake of pissing off the Night Elves. They stab the alliance in the back whenever the Alliance attempts to fight a more dangerous foe. They develop the tools for genocide, with a history to match. The Alliance might not be perfect, they might have done some rash, or arrogant things, but they've never been involved in anything half as shady as the Horde has done in the past few years on Azeroth. I have little desire to spend my time in game collecting the skulls of innocent peasants.