Most kids my age don’t have many responsibilities. They might do their own laundry, drive their little sister to soccer practice, or mow the lawn, but none of these things are difficult. When you finish them, you are done until your parents ask you to do the next mundane task that comes to their mind. I have the responsibility of leading a Top 25-US raiding guild in a game called World of Warcraft. Now, you probably have no idea what this entails, so let me tell you.
The basic premise behind the game is as follow. You start off by choosing a faction, horde or alliance, and then one of 10 classes. From there, you level up your character by doing quests, killing monsters, and completing dungeons until you are level 85. Unlike most games, when you reach the final level in World of Warcraft, the game actually begins. You can choose to partake in any number of PvE (Player vs Environment) or PvP (Player vs Player) activities. I could write you a 100 page thesis on the multitude of things you can do in the game, but right now I will tell you about the one thing that I spend countless hours on: leading a guild.
A guild is a group of individuals who work together to participate in a certain section of the game. My guild is called TM, which stands for Team Malice, and we are a premiere raiding guild. Raiding is when a group of either 25 or 10 players team up to clear dungeons together. Our guild cleared the most recent dungeon, Dragon Soul, faster than all but 20 guilds in the United States, which is a pretty impressive feat considering that over 10 million people play the game. Now I will tell you about how I started the guild, and everything I have done to make us US 21st.
It all started this past September. School was in session again, everyone was excited to be in their last year, and I was planning a way to start my own guild. I have raided in many top level guilds during the years I have played World of Warcraft. Many of them were successful, but for one reason or another I always moved on. Maybe the raiding hours didn’t work, I didn’t get along with the other members, or the guild just couldn’t progress at a level that satisfied me. Before I started Team Malice, the latter was the case. I was in a guild called Rebellion on the server Cho'gall, playing a troll hunter. After weeks of progression we had cleared the first six bosses of The Firelands dungeon. We were left with only one more obstacle in our way: Heroic Ragnaros. This fight was deemed by many to be one of the most difficult of the Cataclysm expansion. For a tier of content that was relatively easy, it was as if Blizzard had designed this fight just to torture players. We wiped for hours, days, and weeks and I was sick of it. Every time some moron got hit by a magma trap, or lava wave I wanted to punch my screen. Finally after we had killed the boss at a US 17th rank, I decided I had enough. I left along with a few other high caliber players in hopes of starting a new guild in preparation of a new tier of content with higher hopes.
There were 10 of us and we recruited on forums, in general chat, and through word of mouth. I felt like a beggar on a street corner asking people for some change so I could catch the bus home. Everyone looks at you with pity, and then moves along. The hardest part about starting a guild near the end of a tier of content is that no one wants to take a chance with you. When we left Rebellion we knew our new guild had a higher chance of failing than succeeding. We knew we might not even make it off the ground, but we were ready to take that risk. After about a week of hard core recruiting for at least 12 hours a day we found ourselves ready to sit down, once again, and try and down this boss that had already consumed so many hours of our lives. The attempts were awful, we wiped for hours. It felt like I was trying to teach third graders to do calculus. None of these players could do anything right, and I wondered to myself “what was I even thinking trying to start my own guild”. We continued on like this for about a week, and the future looked grim for Team Malice. After the raid that Monday night I sat in mumble with my good friend, and officer, Taylor and we talked about the future of the guild.
Me: I don’t know man; maybe we shouldn’t have left Rebellion. The guys we have here screw up even more, and I’m starting to think we’ll never kill Ragnaros.
Taylor: I mean wiping sucks, we both know that, but you can’t be so negative, it’s our first week and we’ve never raided together.
Me: I know but look at the kids we’re trying to kill this with. Some of them are still in normal mode gear and only two of our mages have legendary staffs.
Taylor: Yea, it’s rough, but you have to stay positive, think about all the time we’ve put in already, if we stop now it’ll all be for nothing.
Me: I know man, I don’t want to give up, but I don’t know how long I can deal with wiping like this, I kind of just want to apply to Blood Legion and be done with this whole thing.
Taylor: I mean you can do that, but what will that say about you at the end of the day. You’re just another leach who transferred to a guild who had full cleared.
Me: I know, I know.
Taylor: Look man, give it another week, I know we can down this guy, we’re all good players.
Me: Alright
Taylor: And one more thing, these kids need a leader, if we’re going to down Ragnaros you need to take charge, you can’t just sit back in Mumble and heal. You need to be calling out every little thing and hold their hands.
Me: I’m going to try man, but it’s rough.
It sure was rough. The next day after school I spent hours reading up on every class and what they needed to do on the fight. I compared our numbers with other guilds that had downed him, and looked at the gear and talent specialization of every player in our raid; we were going to down him. The next week’s attempt went better and on the following Monday, after three and a half hours of wiping, the boss was dead.
We were overjoyed. You could hear the pure unbridled passion in our screams on Mumble. This is something I will never forget. The happiness only lasted so long though, we knew Dragon Soul was coming out soon. Ultimately, we needed a plan.
Ragnaros taught me that no matter how grim things looked, if I took enough initiative I could make Team Malice into a great guild, and that is exactly what I planned to do. I spent more and more time on recruitment, making sure I got the best players so that we could make a name for ourselves in Dragon Soul. I remember that Tuesday night in December, we stood before Morchock, the first boss in Dragon Soul, ready to make something great happen, and we did. We got the world 7th kill, putting team Malice on the radar of the raiding world. We didn’t stop there. The next boss at hand was Zon'ozz. This boss took us 7 hours a day for 4 days and exactly 168 attempts. We snagged a US 25th Zon’ozz, kill before the week was out, and finished up the rest of the dungeon on normal mode to get everyone their Destroyer’s End titles.
Not a bad first week in my mind, but I knew that we were far from finished. Ultraxion was going to be a near impossible task with our current DPS and I didn’t even want to think about the headache that was Heroic Spine of Deathwing. The next week we got two more heroic bosses down Yor’sahj at US 34th and Hagara at US 40th. I was definitely happy with our progress so far, but our attempts on Ultraxion that week went terribly, and it seemed like we would never be able to survive the onslaught of damage during the last 20%.
The next week we chain wiped for two days straight on Ultraxion, we had sub 2% and even 1% wipes. Every time some idiot would forget to phase fading light I threatened to kick them from the guild, and I meant it. There was no way that all the DPS could perform so perfectly in their rotation, and healers could keep everyone alive, but one person couldn’t handle pressing one freaking button!
The next night we finally got it. I had gotten 4 wisdom teeth removed. I was heavily sedated, my gums had bled throughout the entire night, and my voice was a murmur at best. It was 2 A.M., two hours after raid was supposed to end. We had been wiping for 6 hours, and I was ready to call it. I told everyone that this was the last attempt so make it count. My voice was sore from hours of screaming “Hit your buttons”, “Push it”, and “Healers, dps” at sub 2%. Before the first hour of twilight, I noticed that we were 10 seconds ahead of our record attempt, and I had hope. I didn’t tell anyone on Mumble, I just smiled to myself knowing that after all of the failed attempts we had a shot in the last attempt of the night. As the boss’s health crept below .5%, .3%, .2%, and finally .1% people began to chatter on Mumble, but I commanded them to shut up and concentrate. We downed it that attempt and it was the first time since Rag that I remembered how great it felt to call myself the leader of Team Malice. Everyone was cheering and shouting in Mumble, and I was so happy with the way everyone had performed.
The next day I spent hours reading up on Warmaster Blackhorn and Spine of Deathwing, so that I could give us the best chance of placing in the US top 25. We downed Warmaster with relative ease and braced ourselves for one of the hardest fights in World of Warcraft history: Heroic Spine of Deathwing.
This fight wasn’t just hard, it broke guilds. Multiple guilds that had ranked in the top 25 in previous content had disbanded over this fight. And there we were a new guild, in our first tier of content trying to take it down. We were in trouble from the start; we only had three rogues and two legendary staffs. Bare in mind, every other guild who had downed it so far had 5 rogues and 5-6 staffs. Everyone thought we were screwed. The entire first week of progression we tore the first plate off maybe once or twice. I didn’t know what I could do to make this happen for us. To add more pressure, there were rumors about nerfs to the boss coming out in a week’s time. I knew that we needed to down it in the next week in order to gain recognition as a top tier guild.
I worked with two of our officers, Kalimist and Taylor, to recruit better DPS and heals in preparation for what I knew would be one of the longest weeks in my World of Warcraft raiding career. The first night of the week DPS was better, we were making it to the second plate, and we all felt that we could do it. Unfortunately this kill would not come with ease. It took 6 days and 40+ hours of raiding to bring us to Monday night.
This was it. The nerfs were coming out tomorrow, and we had to kill it. We wiped for 5 straight hours, I was tired, everyone was tired. I had been yelling “Break grip” or “Push the plate” for hours. I shouted at everyone “The boss will die when you want it to die”, and we continued forward. One hour later, I couldn’t deal with it anymore I exploded at them on Mumble, and threatened to disband the guild all together.
We were doing one more attempt, kill it now, or lose the chance of making a name for ourselves as a top US guild. When we got the first tendon to 36% everyone knew this was it. 10 minutes later the boss was dead, everyone was cheering and screaming, but not me. I sat there in silence, with a smirk on my face, finally realizing once again that it was all worth it.
The 8 months leading Team Malice has been the most rewarding thing I have ever done. It is hard to put into words the feelings I felt every time we downed a progression boss. It is unlike anything I ever felt before, and I can only describe it as making all of the hours of work feel worthwhile.
I still spend hours every week organizing our recruitment and sale runs in preparation for the Mists of Pandaria expansion. I have already saved up over ten million gold, and am recruiting new, better players every week. I am not going to settle for US top 25. In Mists of Pandaria I want to make Team Malice the top guild in the United States, and I will do everything in my power to make that happen.
1 Like
you will never be nma
3 Likes
can’t you just download the web page
?
is this a college essay?
dude sometimes i hear stories about how people put raid leader on job apps and college essays and i wonder if it hurts or helps u
like i feel like being the guild leader of method is probs really impressive but then they will look up method josh and see him sperging out about how some girl wont date him even tho he gave her tons of wow gold or w/e while grinding runescape ironmans and be like 'oh so this is u no thank u'
Yeah it was his college essay
1 Like
honestly i would love to read it if it were formatted
Sounds like a shitty raid leader tbh
1 Like
i mean yea, he was a high schooler
imagine being a refined 30 year old wow neckbeard and having your raid leader be some lil kid
Acting authoritarian will make your best players leave (their egos cant handle it and good players tend to have huge egos) and all you're left with are shitty players who now have performance anxiety
4 Likes
btw
super hot take: wotlk was best wow overall
everyone in this guild was an absolute narcissist especially including me holy shit
Feel like Mastrios accurately describes how many of you feel about me
You're fine
People don't hate you as much as you think