The Worst Expansion Ever

When the next expansion was released the guild was still stronger than ever. After several months without any new content, everyone was eager to beat the new raids as quickly as possible. We had a great setup and quickly cleared all available content. As I mentioned before, this was when Play Out reached its peak during my time in the guild. Our kills started to show up on the EU guild rankings, although in the 200’s and 300’s (and once in the 100’s). But for me, and many others, this was the end of hardcore World of Warcraft. Basically, it comes down to three things:

Most importantly, the “casualization” of the game. Many of the changes made in The Burning Crusade were motivated, since some aspects of Vanilla were pretty insane. Even so, I thought they took it a bit too far already in The Burning Crusade. Wrath of the Lich King was a whole different story, though. So many things made the game cater more for casuals than hardcore raiders. To begin with, the contrast between Sunwell Plateau and Naxxramas was just too big. On most of the bosses in Sunwell Plateau pre-patch, one player making one mistake could wipe the entire raid. And classes actually made a difference. You couldn’t just go with any tanks, any healers and any DPS. But the main thing was the introduction of Normal Mode and Heroic Mode raids. This, and the fact that even Heroic Mode raids weren’t difficult at all, so you had to resort to achievements to distinguish yourself as a successful guild. In The Burning Crusade, everyone knew we were the only guild to kill Illidan for a very long time. Who the hell knew we had the Glory of the Raider and The Immortal achievements in Wrath of the Lich King? This may seem strange to some people, but a strong driving force in games like this is not only to progress in the game, but to be better than others. When the lines between our guild and the less successful guilds got blurred, it wasn’t as fun to raid five to six times every week anymore.

The cookie cutter solution for boring farm raids.

Second, Wrath of the Lich King took the streamlining of the classes too far. Already in The Burning Crusade, we were joking that every class could do everything and soon Warriors would get heals and Paladins would get Stealth. The glaring weaknesses most classes had were part of the game and overcoming them made the game interesting. For me personally, the uniqueness of the Shadow Priest was removed completely when the spec went from a unique utility class to a regular DPS class, and I started to raid more and more as Holy.

Third, flying mounts, easy summons, looking for group tools, etc. all made game play more comfortable. But the feeling of being in a living world was removed. The entire world felt completely unnecessary when all you did was fly around and queue up for things.

Illidan and Beyond

With Spasi being the obvious raid leader among us, and Leffe being submerged in tank duties, Memory and I took care of the day-to-day organizing and social aspects, including all the drama. And trust me, there was a lot of that. As with most raiding guilds, we too had our share of eccentric personalities and influential, often national, groups. I’d like to think that my major contribution to the guild was holding it together for so long. A typical day consisted of some shit storm emerging, Spasi wanting to handle it by saying “he can fuck off/piss off”, and me convincing him to let me sort it out. As with most guilds, typical issues concerned loot, not being picked for raids, having to raid with noobs, conflicts that emerged between guild members outside of raiding, and people or groups of people just hating each other.

Handing out gems and enchants after a successful raid. "Form a line. We're not in Italy."

Though I didn’t realize it until much later, this was when World of Warcraft started to become more reminiscent of a job than a game for me. Even so, some of my best memories are from this time. Nothing comes close to our server first kill of Illidan. After the scheduled raid was over, we did one more try and failed. Then we held a vote and 23 persons wanted to keep going. Two tries later he was dead. On top of that, he dropped the shield, the staff and a glaive, i.e. basically the jackpot. We refused to just hand the loot to ourselves and instead of using the typical approach with the loot council, for this occasion we rolled off. Leffe won a two way roll, Dingus also won a two way roll, and I won a three way roll, so everything ended up in our hands anyway. Of course, there was a lot of drama surrounding the glaive anyway, since some people that thought they deserved to roll didn’t get to.

Longest roll win streak on Darkspear.

It seemed like the entire population of Darkspear was greeting us in Shattrath City when we returned after the kill. In a way, I think we contributed to making Darkspear less of a dark backwater among the World of Warcraft realms, although more so in Wrath of the Lich King than in The Burning Crusade. We reached M’uru before the final nerf, a boss that most guilds except the very best in the world got stuck on. Thus, technically Darkspear was just as progressed as many of the most advanced realms in the world. This would continue in Wrath of the Lich King, where we reached our high point in terms of global guild ranking. At least during my time in the guild.

Members waiting in Sunwell Plateau while officers are discussing.

Shortly after the Illidan kill, Memory stepped down and I became guild leader, a position I held from the beginning of Sunwell Plateau until right before I quit after clearing Ulduar. The endless drama I had to deal with under the surface took its toll. I constantly had the feeling that the guild was on the verge of collapse due to all the tension between different groups. I had to deal with all of this in between raids, but the actual raids themselves also felt like work. However, I still loved the progression fights, and that somehow motivated me to do all the farm raids that were necessary.

The Creation of Play Out

This whole debacle happened while Salvation was working on Reliquary of Souls in Black Temple. We picked up where Salvation had left us, and quickly killed Reliquary of Souls. Thus the era began, when Play Out would get every server first kill until I quit playing, and a while after that, though I don't know the details about what happened on the server after I quit.

Reliquary of Souls down by Play Out.

We reformed the guild, much thanks to Spasi, who was the most ambitious of us when it came to transforming to a high end raiding guild. Spasi streamlined a lot of things using all kinds of different tools I had no idea even existed. On my insistence we also ditched the DKP system and moved over to a loot council. We started focusing recruitment on classes we were in direct need of, not just anyone that seemed good enough, and people that had low raid attendance were kicked from the guild. We were truly the only competitive guild on the Horde side, so we could pick and choose among the good players on the realm. And we put a lot of work into planning ahead. Personally, I also think the whole atmosphere in the guild changed to the better, but clearly I am biased about that. All in all, we professionalized the guild and brought it even further than Salvation in the hardcore direction.

Illidari Council down, one step closer to Illidan.

Still, Darkspear has always been a bit of a backwater realm, and even though we were by far the top guild on the realm for a very long time, we were never a top guild in the grand scheme of things. I believe we had one kill in the first EU-200, and a few slightly slower, so by no means were we ever a high end raiding guild by global standards. This was a constant source of tension throughout Play Out’s existence. We never had enough really excellent players to fill all 25 raid slots. We had lots of great players, but not enough of those genuinely exceptional players, and there were constant pressure from people considering transferring to more advanced realms. Spasi suggested transferring the whole guild from time to time, but even though the rest of us were pretty serious about raiding, we never wanted to leave Darkspear.