How you can turn a terribad BG into a valuable leadership training ground

Gevlon is on strike.

Some bitter losses in WG crushed whatever remained of his fighting spirit, so from now on he refuses to leave another order to the entire raid group. He'll only act in small teams that are doing things on their own. And the objectives, to actually win the BG, will have to take a second place. No more leading of ungrateful M & S (his label for "morons and slackers" in case someone has missed it.)

This means that Gevlon takes the same path as the Superior People in Atlas Shrugged, if I remember it correctly. They went on strike, leaving the rest of the world citizens to handle whatever challenges that awaits them, without using the services of the elite anymore.

I'm not sure of Gevlon's motives for his decision not to lead. Maybe he's just very Randian in his view on life, following in her footsteps. Mostly it seems that he judges that the M&S are beyond the reach of any leadership, so there's no point in even trying. It's just not possible to direct them and help them to become useful. And it's also apparent that it's about his own enjoyment of the game. He has noticed that he simply doesn't like to lead other people. Fair enough.There's no reason to burn out yourself on a game activity that you don't enjoy. Better leave it to those who are natural leaders and can't stay away from it.

Missing the opportunity
However I think Gevlon is missing an opportunity here, namely to develop his ability in this area, which I'd argue is the most best and most useful longterm benefit you can get from spending a lot of time playing WoW.

While the usefulness of increased hand-eye coordination can be discussed, as well as the value and longevity of virtual friendships, the leadership training that players get as they run guilds and premades, is pretty solid.

I wouldn't recommend you to put it on your CV yet (maybe in a few years, when gaming has become more socially accepted). But if you're really interested in those perspectives, you can easily go from min-maxing your gear stats to min-maxing your management skills.

Azeroth is nothing but a huge sandbox, where you try out your own ideas of how to lead a group to a common goal. You can learn to become better at leading by trial and error in longlasting guilds or short-lasting BG:s. I'd dare say there's a lesson to learn in every situation. Even when you're starting from a bad position, having a sub-optimal group of "M&S"ers, you can learn from it.

Riding the M&S horse
If we go outside of WoW for a moment, the art of taking command in a BG or a pug reminds me a little bit of horse riding. If you're taking riding lessons, it's a normal thing to change horses every week. Inevitably there are horses in a stable that are considered "better" and "worse". Sometimes you'll get THAT horse, which is hard to get started and isn't easily motivated to jump or to gallop. It's a slacker who'd rather stay in the stable, munching on his oats. When this happens you know from the start that you'll have to work twice as hard as anyone else during that lesson.

But if you put in the effort, if you do it right, you will succeed, and what a triumph isn't that! The horse was never on autopilot; it was you who made it happen thanks to your leadership skills. You made the difference!

It's all a matter of perspective. Running a BG or a raid instance doesn't have to equal maximizing the amount of XP or honor points per hour. You could as well see it as a training ground for yourself to work on your confidence, to become better at giving orders, organizing other people, adjusting to the situation and motivating them to cooperate towards a common goal. And with those eyes, a crappy random group can be as good as a premade guild run.

It's the same thing in real life. Sometimes you are asked to do something with the odds to succeed against you. Sometimes you have to lead a group of average - or below average people - who you wouldn't have picked in the first place if you were given a choice. It' s a normal thing, really. Most grownups have to learn to cooperate with and lead suboptimal groups.

What is special in the case of random BG:s is that you have to be quick in everything. You haven't got more than a minute or two to establish yourself as a leader, to catch the attention and trust of the group, to figure out a strategy depending on the group composition and to assign players to different tasks. It resembles a bit of management in a real life crisis situation, where you also have to grasp the situation quickly, being clear and confident in everything you communicate.

An M&S leader
There are tons of management books, but in the end, a good leadership isn't just something you can study in theory. You learn it by doing, and I can't see why you shouldn't practice in WoW when the chances appear. By resigning from the leading role, Gevlon is missing out a chance to try out one of the most challenging, interesting and meaningful roles in WoW.

One of his commenters goes further, accusing Gevlon of being an M&S in his leadership.

"The best guild on your realm and the worst guild on your realm had access to the ***exact same people.*** Just because most of the people could be dramatically better, does not mean that leadership doesn't matter. A leader can't change human nature or gravity or the speed of light. But good leaders can accomplish more than bad leaders with the same people. It is not easy and it is not a science. But some people hire engineers and make an iPod; others make Zunes."

I liked this part, where the same Anonymous talks about what constitutes the optimal strategy for AV:

"I remember TBC AV and people were talking about the optimal strategy. The optimal strategy is what is the most that can be accomplished with the players in the BG. Not a guild premade; Not what some M&S leader wished they were, not what they could be or should be but what they are."

That's my philosophy too. A good leader has the ability to detect and the best use of the talents and abilities of a given group. They look for the gems.

Less random groups in the future
As you know, things are subject for changes right now. Come Cataclysm, there will be more incentives to run content within the frames of a guild - be it in raids, dungeons or rated battlegrounds. The content is also supposed to be much harder, which probably is a good reason to avoid pug groups as far as possible.

With this in mind, it's not a daring prophecy to say that we're likely to spend less time in randomly assembled groups in the future. So if you want a real challenge to see how far your talent for management might take you, you'd better do it now. See if you can bring that terribad battleground group to a win! See if you can make people listen to you!

If you succeed you'll be rewarded with a sweet sense of accomplishment, which is way better than any title or loot drop in my opinion.

Unless you prefer to be on strike of course and would rather lose a WG than to take command over it. The choice is yours.

A rant about our fear of temporary changes

I will start this post by throwing the first stone at myself. I’m not better than anyone of those people that I’m about to attack. It happens that I whine too, and I’ve probably bitched a bit myself in the past. But I’m not worse than I can change my mind, OK?

Now with this settled, I just want to let my heart out about a thing that is bothering me: the conservatism of the WoW community, at least the vocal part of it. It’s absolutely astonishing.

Whenever there’s a small temporary change in the game mechanics, people go nuts about it, complaining, bitching, moaning, whining about the cruelness and stupidity of the developers. Eventually they manage to create a negative atmosphere around the whole event, effectively taking the fun out of it for everyone else, even those that from the beginning didn’t have any clear opinion about it of their own.

The scourge invasion
For instance it happened before the launching of WotLK, with those infectious scourge running around in the capitals. Do you remember? I was sulking and bitching myself! Maybe not in this blog, but at least in my head, and probably in whispers to people I know. Now afterwards I just want to apologize. I was dead wrong and I’m sorry about it.

Blizzard gave us a twist, a new sort of challenge, something we had to figure out how to deal with on our own, not by doing what we’re always doing. And how did we react? We tossed the gift away, like spoiled kids. It wasn’t like the game was going to be like that forever. It was a matter of weeks or even a few days, since they were forced to stop it sooner than they had planned (even though they’ll never admit they did). But we couldn’t cope with it because our bank alts were killed. Seriously, our reactions were completely out of proportion.

Children’s week
The outcry about the Children’s week achievement last week is another example of it. I’ve complained about it a bit myself, not aloud, but in my head. I was thinking about writing a post about the stupidity of forcing PvE players to go to the BGs, thus destroying the gameplay altogether for the PvP:ers, since our incentives were completely different to theirs.

I /signed wholeheartedly at the well put rant of Euripides, who suggested that the achievements should rather have been about winning the BG:s. In that way the motives of the regular PvPers and the temporary PvPers chasing achievements wouldn’t interfere. But giving it a second thought I’ve changed my mind.

Yeah, I know it was a pain to get it done. It took me quite a few hours to succeed. Especially I remember a WG that went on and on forever. Both sides refused to attack, just assembling in respectively flag room, orphans up, waiting for someone to come so they could retake the flag. The situation was quite absurd.

On the other hand: was it really so bad? They screwed up the BGs the way they’re normally played, but they gave us something else, a new sort of PvP. I caught myself many times thinking that the true opponents in BG wasn’t horde, but alliance players, competing with you to capture a flag or a tower. You had to invent new strategies on the fly. Was it best to sneak, wait for another alliance player to do something brave and foolish, and then grab the chance? Or should you by emotes and telepathy try to convince the achievement junkies on the horde side to cooperate with you?

You could pick up some strategic advice from bloggers about how to do it, but in the end, there wasn’t just The way to complete this, since the BGs varies a lot, from server to server and battle to battle, depending on the players. You had to think for yourself. It was unpredictable and actually rather fun, if you just didn’t cling so desperately to the idea that everything in Azeroth always should be the same.

A new approach
I’ll end this rant with a promise, which I hope you’ll hold me to.

Read my lips:
Next time there will be a game-mechanics changing temporary event for a week, I’ll refuse to join The Leage of Organized Whiners. I’ll open my eyes, try to see the new and fun in it and adapt to the situation.

Seriously, those things don’t break the game for us. They shake us up a bit, which is exactly what we need sometimes, whether we realize it or not. They break the routine and the grind that we constantly complain about, the repetition that we find so boring.

They’re not a problem. They’re a possibility.

How I overcame my phobia about battlegrounds

Until recently I’ve been just like a kitten whenever entering a battleground: cute and sweet but utterly defenceless. The claws and teeth just weren’t sharp enough to deal with the merciless combatants in those places. Or maybe a better description would be a chicken? A headless one, just running around like everybody else seems to be doing, pretending I know what I’m doing.

It’s really nothing I’m ashamed of – it’s just that I’ve chosen to explore and advance in another part of the game. I’ve always taken a pride in that I’m not one of those who have geared up in PvP and then want to go raiding. I’m PvE geared right through – mostly by badges, a few drops and some crafted stuff.

Forced to PvP
But lately I’ve more or less been forced to do some PvP. I realized I needed the Medal of the Alliance trinket badly for some raid encounters. And I also had to increase my stamina in certain raid situations – the best way seemed to get Guardians Silk Belt to replace my Belt of Blasting whenever needed.

This was nothing to question or think about – I simply had to do a bit of PvP to support my PvE progression.

So the last few weeks I’ve been around in quite a few Alterac Valleys and a decent amount of Arathi Basins (the 40 badges that belt requires is quite a lot when you lose most of the time) and just a few of the others as well, when it was the daily quest and I hoped for some additional honor.

And I haven’t only got the gear I wanted – at the same time I’ve gone from being completely hostile or even in war with those places to be at least friendly, if not yet honoured or revered.

The post of today is about what I do, as a PvE fan and PvP noob to make battlegrounds a bit more enjoyable. Maybe it can give some inspiration to others who’ll find themselves in the same situation.

I volunteer to watch the flags.

Running around as a headless chicken you don’t do much to help the raid group you’re in. Finally I found something that I actually could do: I volunteer as a flag and tower guardian.

It clearly needs to be done by someone, but many players seem to find it pretty boring – if you’re unlucky or lucky, depending on how you see it, it won’t give you many honorable kills or a nice position on the chart. I don’t mind the job at all.

I sort of get into the role as the lonely outpost, watching the battle at a distance. Especially in AB you can see the fight by the next flag. The nukes from the mages, the cries and the victories and losses in the horizon - the war frontier. You look out if someone is coming your way and pull the alarm if needed. You can even entertain yourself with some closet roleplaying, thinking about the ongoing war and why you’re into it, to protect the glorious city of Stormwind and the peaceful Elwynn Forest. Or whatever it is that you’re fighting for.

Sometimes it’s a lonely business. It’s just me and my vanity pet. I go around puffing some low rank AE from time to time to see if any rogue is trying to sneak up on me. But at other times I find myself in party with other fans of flag watching. And that brings us into the second thing I do to have a more enjoyable time:

I socialize.

If you’re on a watching assignment or if you’re perhaps waiting for the start signal to take down Drek in AV, you’ve got plenty of opportunities to get to know some other players from your realm.

The beginning is often just like when dogs greet each other, sniffing in… well… you know.
Our way of doing this is that we inspect each others gear and spec. This is often a nice opener for a little conversation, which runs along until some enemies turn up and we get our hands full.

If things work out well we manage to defend our flag until they’re gone – and then we chat a little bit again. It’s really very enjoyable for a talkative innkeeper like me.

Some players seem to draw this even further than I do. Like the rogue I met the other day, while I was watching one of the towers in AV. I had a look at his gear and was just about to complement him when I noticed he didn't have any head for some odd reason. And then suddenly it was all gone and replaced by a tuxedo, and he burst out in one of those peculiar nightelf dances. Luckily enough no enemies turned up for the minutes we stayed there, having a miniature party on our own. We kept in touch for the rest of that BG, talking about guild progression and stuff like that. And so, a little bit too quick in my opinon, Drek was down and we had won and that was the end of our friendship.

"See you" he said, but we both knew it was a lie. He was on another server of course, it's quite unlikely that we'll ever meet again. Still it was one of those random meetings which can make PvP a pleasure.

I stick to the things I’m fit to do.

Considering my talent build and gear is intended for raiding – not PvP – and that I lack experience and skill in duelling, arena and such stuff, there are things in the BGs that I’m more or less suited for. A perfect assignment for me in AV is to take down the NPC bosses, since my nuke power is pretty OK. I can take them down quicker and easier than many others. So I try to be around the bosses as much as I can.

Taking a mine, if it’s needed for reinforcements, is another perfect job for Larísa, provided I don’t get lost in the corridors, which happens from time to time.

A not-so-perfect job is to be right in the middle of those spots where there are 10 hordes and 10 allies in the middle of the road. I’ll be pretty likely to die if I run in there, without any frost shield or other skills and utilities to survive.

Sometimes I can sheep someone however, if I stick to one of the sides. But generally I try to avoid the huge crowds if I can and find better things for me to do.

I fight wholeheartedly even if the odds are against me. But I don’t expect victories.

PvP is much more fun if you actually try to win. Since I started to put in a bit more of feelings into it, to fight with passion, I enjoy it so much more. Even if we loose a lot most of the BGs if it isn’t an AV, it’s more fun to so when I know I’ve done the best I could.

I’m present not only with my char, but in my mind, and I’ve stopped looking upon the BG as something that just needs to be ended, something I wait for to be finished. The “I-really-hate-this-attitude” didn’t help me at all, it just made me miserable.

At the same time I try to keep my expectations low when it comes to how quickly I’ll gather the marks requested for a gear item. I don’t expect to get anything more than 1 mark out of every BG. Anything more than that is just a happy surprise, nothing else. This attitude saves me from feelings of disappointment and frustration.

Even if we loose I’ll get my reward and gear eventually, so there isn’t much to complain about. And I’m rewarded in other ways too. PvP is actually great training for my ability to react and improvise and I know it’s really what I need to perform better in raids.

I call for help from my tiny helper gnomes.

I know this sounds really silly, but it’s a fact. The BGs really became more fun since I got my Tiny Voodoo Mask trinket from Hex Lord in Zul Aman. It’s got a long cooldown so I can’t use it more than a couple of times in a BG, but oh how I enjoy it whenever I do it! OK, those three miniature gnomes that spawn aren’t any great damage dealers, but they sort of interrupt the enemies and do cause some confusion. And above all they make me smile.

I guess I can’t recommend everyone to get that trinket – it takes that you’re in a guild that regularly downs Hex Lord and that you’re a bit lucky with rolls. But perhaps you’ve got an old one collecting dust in the bank? The Ancient Cornerstone Grimoire from Onyxia could work the same way; it’s something fun to treat yourself with if you from time to time find the BG a bit dull.

The End of my PvP Career?
So, I’ve got my belt and my trinket and even a Stormpike Battle Charger as a nice bonus from all those AVs. Does this mean that my short PvP Career has come to an end? Nope.

I’m seriously thinking about getting the neck as well – Guardian’s Pendant of Subjuction with spellhaste or possibly Guardian’s Pendant of Conquest with crits.

I can’t say I’m totally thrilled at the expectations of running more BGs, but at least I’m not annoyed anymore. It’s pretty much an OK thing to do a raidless night when the LFG channel is empty and you just can’t bear the thought of picking another herb.

It’s a bit social from time to time. You see some fun stuff, and 1 out of 20 BG:s you can even enjoy some real cooperation going on, reminding a little of what's going on in a real party.

My days as a PvP hater are definitely over.

Owned in Arena

Oh, oh, what a noob I was yesterday when I was running around with a flag attached to my bottom, trying to catch a glimps of the opponent team.

Our little improvised 2x2 team had six losses in a row and the fastest match was over in like... 10 seconds. All because of me. The opponents probably just couldn't believe their eyes. What kind of a strange little mage was that, that was merrily strolling around, and then stopped up, just stood there like a statue? What was she actually doing? It was supposed to be a match, not an execution. Why didn't she show any resistance at all?

They couldn't know that they had been lucky enough to encounter the worst PvP player on the whole Stormrage server. Being teamed up with an excellent Arena veteran of a rogue wasn't enough to save it. It takes two for a tango, as the saying is.

What was the problem? Well, first of all I think it was my lack of mobility. To see the targets quickly, to catch them, get myself into spellcasting distance and actually DO something. There's no time for standing and contemplating - nobody else does it. One thought too many - and you're owned - believe me.

Then I must admit that I had a hard time to find my way at all in there. "Take left and run up the ramp to the bridge", my partner suggested when one of the matches was about to begin. Still somehow I managed to miss the ramp, run in way too far and got completely lost.

Mind you also, neither my gear, nor my spec is suited for Arena games. Larísa was built for raiding purposes, without any compromises. And the same thing counts for my spells and keybindings. I do have for instance Dragons Breath on hot key, but it's not one of the weapons I use daily. When I throw it I have to think first, it doesn't come naturally.

Did I improve? Well, maybe. A little, if you put it nicely. I got a feeling of what Arena matches are all about. I had another macro on my repertoire, a combination of frost-nova and blink, that isn't bad to let off a second faster than before. In one of the games I actually managed to first counterspell and then sheep an opponent - and keep him sheeped, which helped my teammate to take down another player. Yay!

Above all I got the insight that I need to practice, practice, practice. And I actually don't believe that I need to run real Arena games to do that. I should start from the very beginning, by duelling. So from now on I'll stop doing as I've used to do by instinct, clicking "decline" whenever someone challenges me. I'll grab the opportunity to duel whenever I can if I'm not occupied doing other things.

Of course I'll be humiliated, but who cares? The main thing is that I'll learn, I'll improve little by little and slowly crawl up from bottom of the trashbin of lousy PvP-players. My intention is not to climb the ranking lists or to be able to say that I've won so and so many matches. It's not to enhance my PvP statistics in Armory (right now it looks like if I haven't a single hk, which is wrong, I've actually killed 687 players, but there seems to be a minimum level to be shown).

No, If I'll improve in PvP its only because I want to become better in PvE. I want to know my own class better as well as understanding other classes. And above all - I want to become a bit quicker in my feet, more movable. Right now I often find myself just standing there, like tired and heavy, just throwing my fireballs over and over again from the far distance. Many times that works very well - but not always. Some fights demand that you're more like a jumping frog - something that seems to come natural for PvP players.

Playing PvP is good for you, no doubt, but is it fun? Well, that adrenaline rush that my partner enthusiastically talked about I didn't feel at all. Of course I needed to be focused and present, but it wasn't close to the feeling when you take the last dps out of your mana pool, when the raid boss got a few percent hp left and the major part of the raid is dead. When you're on the verge between success and despair after a long evening of hard work, and when one single crit in the right moment can be crucial. That is what I mean by a kick!

But what do I know, maybe a horde rouge got the adrenaline rush of his life yesterday by taking down Larísa. Good for him. See it as an easter gift from Larísa.

PS I now noticed that Arcane Brilliance has published a lovely article: 10 things every Mage should know before going into the Arena. If you read it it was only expected that I would die. If you don't have a healer in your party, you're always the first target. The opponent will kill you before you can say Iceblock, the writer says. So true. But you get quite a few good suggestions in the article and I'll try to learn from them. Who knows, next time I may survive a whole minute!