Goldilocks?

I read quite a few WoW-related blogs. I don't always agree with every one of the authors, and I don't always care about everything they write, but overall I enjoy hearing from people about all aspects of the game. One of the best things about this is being reminded that there are other people out there wanting something entirely different out of the game than I do. Whether that is every mini-pet available or an AV that lasts 12 hours doesn't matter. What is important is that checking my Reader reinforces the fact that WoW is a game with wide appeal.

But is that wide appeal diluting the things I loved about the game?

My guild is ranked in the top ten on our server (or at least we were the last time I looked at a ranking page), but we aren't cutting edge progression either. We've killed Sartharion with one drake up (did I mention how ridiculously easy that was?) and plan to tackle him with more drakes alive this week. In my almost three years raiding with xeno, we have gone from being a bit behind the raiding curve to being right in the thick of progression guilds. Every step has been a challenge, and overcoming those challenges was part of the appeal of the game. I love the feeling you get when a group of people from all over the world work together to accomplish a goal.

Many of those blogs I mentioned have commented on Blizzard's apparent watering down of the raid content. Most hardcore raiders dislike the trend to make things easier. There have been rants about the changes in WoW reflecting the overall tendency in our culture to make things fair for everyone. There have been parodies comparing WoW raiding to a rollercoaster that can now only go 10 miles per hour. I can understand these authors' viewpoints, but I'm not sure I share them.

Don't get me wrong. I do think that the early raiding content in Wrath of the Lich King has been very easy compared to raid content in both vanilla WoW and the Burning Crusade. But I'm not convinced that this is the end of the game. Blizzard has promised that harder content is coming. And although I've jumped on the "hurry up already" bandwagon, I think that the easier early content will mean that my guild can be part of the cutting edge when it gets here. We're farming Naxx, Eye of Eternity and Obsidian Sanctum. We're gearing up our regular raiders and their subs. We're teaching new members how to raid with us. And we're learning how to work together as a team. All of these things will help us conquer the next wave of content.

Are the raids too easy right now? Possibly. Mama Bear's bowl of porridge was too cold for Goldilocks, too. I'm hoping that Ulduar and the raids that come after that will be just right. And that the early content will have taught us how to use our spoons.

Balance.

We all need it. And we all struggle to find it. In our families. With our friends. At work. In our guilds.

Marnas retracted a post about our guild and the way raid spots are filled. A friendly, if somewhat bumbling, melee dpser caught me tonight with some complaints. Other friends and guild members have expressed (sometimes vehemently) their feelings about raid invites. Not surprisingly, these conversations generally happen when they are not confirmed for a raid.

Why do they talk to me? Well, for one I am an Officer, and my name often shows up on our website as the one confirming people who have expressed interest in attending the raid. Although I am the one clicking the confirm box, not all the decisions are mine alone. In fact, I am usually in communication with at least one other Officer, sometimes two or three, as I click. Why else do they talk to me? Probably because I let them. I let them blow off steam, and I listen to their concerns. There may not be anything I can do about it, but I try to listen anyway.

So what do we look for when confirming people to raids? Balance. But not just a balance of classes, or even a balance of roles. We also have to balance the conflicting desires of the people in the guild and the entire guild as a whole.

In the Burning Crusade, we made the conscious decision to focus on progression, which changed a lot of how we did things. Those changes have carried over into Wrath. In vanilla WoW we were a casual guild that raided. Confirmations were made on a first come-first serve basis. It usually worked out that the dedicated and talented players signed up first, so they were confirmed, but if you forgot to sign up for Molten Core early, you were likely to sit out, no matter how dedicated and talented you were. In Burning Crusade, we tried to make that same system work, but with fewer people allowed in the raids and the difficulty amped up in the early encounters, we quickly found that that did not work. Since then, our confirmations have been based on more elusive things than signup order. And of course, this doesn't always make our decisions popular.

Skill. Dedication. Preparation. Reliability. Availability. Loyalty. These are easy to type, but not always as easy to measure...especially in oneself. It's easy to say, "Soandso's been to two raids this week and it's not fair!" It's harder to acknowledge that Soandso has quicker reflexes than you do and only needs a fight to be explained once. It doesn't always seem fair, and I'll admit that often it isn't, that someone who is hateful and annoying gets to raid because they do more damage than someone who is nice. But when the focus is progression, sometimes the abrasive but skilled win out over the friendly, but bumbling.

In addition to the idealistic qualities listed above, the truth is a raid confirmation may also hinge on who you know. I know that sounds bad. But it doesn't make it less true. I'm not saying that the entire raid roster will be filled with people getting special treatment because they are related to or friends with an Officer. But if a decent player has the ear of an Officer, he or she is more likely to get into raids than a decent player who doesn't. Maybe these are truths that I'm not supposed to share. Maybe I'm breaking some oath of confidentiality by telling it like it is, but honestly, that is how the world works. I've gotten my last three job interviews based almost exclusively on the recommendation of someone I already knew working there. My qualifications got me the job (or the offer of a job) but the word of someone the employer already trusted got me the interview.

I know we sometimes trip and fall, but for the most part, my fellow Officers and I try to keep a balance between people and progress, guildies and friends, the guild's casual atmosphere and getting things done. We're walking a tightrope. And we're doing the best we can.