From Zero to Hero

There are some truly terrible players in this game. If you read this blog with any consistency, you’ll know how foreign a statement that is coming from me. I’m of the belief that anyone can be a decent player if the can find the right information, and to that end, I try and point people in the right direction. But, I have to admit that I wasn’t always like this, and at one point I thought the person I’ll be discussing today had no hope of ever becoming a better player. Not only was I wrong, but this particular player is now a well respected guild member, and a good friend. This is his story…

Back in the day, when I was but a mere low-level rogue I came across a guild name that I, as a young Alliance player, thought was incredibly cool: Sword Through The Horde. I mentioned in vent just how cool I thought that this name was, and was promptly told how terrible this guild was by the members of my own guild. Looking back, they were right; STTH was probably one of the worst guilds on the server. From my perspective, at least as much of it as I can remember, they tried to be semi-serious about some semblance of progression, but never could seem to retain enough good members to be successful at it.

Anyway, I was informed that of all the players in their guild, the leader was by far the worst. iharrypotter (not kidding) the priest was known to be one of the worst and potentially most hated players on the entire server. He had a bizarre half Holy / half Shadow spec that was beyond terribad for both healing and DPS. In fact, beyond terribad might be giving it too much credit.

I found myself mentioning it in Vent every time I’d bump into him. One day I thought hat I hadn’t seen him in a while and armoried STTH. I found a skeleton of a guild with a different Priest as its leader. Upon further inspection, I realized that the leader hadn’t changed, just his name. I put the new name in the back of my head and all but forgot abou th Preist formally know as iharrypotter.

Fast forward a few months to just before the 3.1 patch, and Bucklers (my guild) is experiencing a recruiting surge. We ended up picking up quite a few new people. We generally run a heroic with every one who applies to our guild, but sometimes the other officers run them instead of me. The player is pretty much in if they:

• weren’t terrible
• show potential
• show interest in learning to improve

I didn’t personally go on the run, and no one knew it at the time, but the Priest formally known as iharrypotter was officially invited into he guild.

One night while I was raiding Ulduar, a month or so later, a Priest mentioned in guild chat that he used to be named iharrypotter. A few Bucklers left guild (as a joke) which got under my skin a bit, and I’m sure upset Chmelyk (as he’s known now). But the whole drama issue died fast, as Chmelyk wasn’t playing at the time.

Eventually he started to ask what it would take for him to get into our Ulduar raids, and we told him what we told everyone else: bring flasks, do X DPS unbuffed, and have Y iLevel gear. Well, he worked out some spec and rotation changes, got his gear in line and basically passed all of the usual tests we throw someone’s way before letting them raid in the current tier with one of our main raid groups. He was invited into our progression Ulduar 10 raid and not only played competently, but not once did he endanger the group. We cleared to Mimiron in that raid attempt, which was as far as we had gone up to that point.

Don’t ask me when and where but at some point while being in Bucklers, he became motivated to improve. He ceased being iharrypotter, the worst player we knew, and became Chmelyk, our friend and very capable shadowpriest. He’s a great guy to laugh with in vent, and has taken our plethora of iharrypotter jokes (to this day there are many) in stride. I raid with him weekly, and while he may have been a player that needed to be carried before, now he’s someone that can help carry others if needed. Oh yeah, that cheesy title at the top; his idea. I always ask people before I post about them. He jokingly suggested the title and I ran with it.

I guess my point is, try not to judge too harshly the people you run into, because you just never know who the might grow to become, especially if you’re willing to lend a hand.

– Sam