Four things I learned playing World of Warcraft

I have a confession to make. I love World of Warcraft, and I've spent a fair deal of time on it. 

I've been a raid leader and a guild master - this was before my real life career took off. Now it's time to look back at the time spent and analyze what I was left with.

First of all, what WoW allows is a binary arbitration of a group of people who are geographically distributed on multiple time zones, then has a huge amount of them work together with a latency of about 30ms, no matter where they are in Europe - all this in a virtual world where a single misclick or a bad move means instant failure and devastating consequences for a lot of the participants. Nerd rage is commonplace.

Stepping back on that thought, it is a mind boggling technical feat. I'm pretty sure the back-end servers do not host a lot of managed code or layers of arbitration. It would be impossible, although I am certain the hardware those servers run on are bordering on ridiculous. 30ms latency - think about that for a second. It's about a single blink of an eye, which means that latency gives you almost no room for error. The game, though, takes advantage of that low latency.

Pressure and managing your state

At work, you'll sometimes (more often than I'd like) run into a situation where your boss and any amount of co-workers are standing next to you, having an argument behind your back, while seven servers are on fire - and the only one who knows how to fix them is you. They're all going insane trying to find the one to blame and what the problem is, usually ending up with the wrong culprit and an issue that isn't even there. Getting upset is the worst thing you can do.

These situations need a clear head, determination and the guts to keep yourself focused on the important things. Taking a step back and thinking about what you're doing even when you're in a hurry is the key thing. Dealing with the feeling that a lot of people are breathing down your neck is something you learn to deal with well while playing WoW. Lose your own state, and you lose your direction. For software development - be it managers or super corporate magnates demanding you need to be done by yesterday - it is a developers personal responsibility and matter of pride to still take the time needed to make things work reliably, and to fight for the right to do that. Otherwise it'll all just creep back on you.

For the game as well, doing something 200 times over just to get progress on it can have its effect on your state of mind and the state of minds of other people. People get super annoyed, and they will not hold their feelings back. Managing your own state while trying to keep the spirits of the group up and focused on the things that matter is a really difficult endeavour, but it has to be done - because losing the spirit to get things done means losing all chance of victory.

Multi-tasking and delegation

In WoW the raid leader is in a unique position where they need to be coordinating the effort and the timings of when people do what and call all that out precise to the second, while doing exactly the same things everyone else is doing. This often leads to a situation where the ability to perform is severely impaired. Noticing when you become this bottle neck to the group is key and delegating the high load moments among your people is what brings you victory. In my experience, people must be told that they suck before they notice it - but being good at something means you scrutinize yourself and what you do, thus enabling you to work better.

In the work life I am not in a position where I could delegate, but I am certainly able to ask for help if I so require which is the next best thing. Knowing when you'll be at your wits' end before you get there is a valuable skill. Moreover, self reflecting on what you are doing is the most important thing ever.

Skills matter

Just like ol' Sturgeon phrased it, 90% of everything is crud. This is equally true for work, for the game and for all things organic. Surrounding yourself with likeminded people and people with their hearts and motivation in the right place is the only way to fight this. Making that leftover 10% the only 10% you know about is a way out. Finding people you can work with and challenging your mind against theirs makes you that much richer.

Skill really matters - guild or corporation.

Objects in mirror are closer than they appear

I feel like I've learnt the most important things about myself though.

From my perspective most people live in denial about how important their goals and ambitions are - by that I mean they highly over-estimate their own importance.

There is a huge amount of pressure on people to succeed at this day and age and it is not uncommon to find yourself feeling bad when you spend time doing something that seems menial or nonvaluable. I look back at all those days spent on that game, and I feel bad - I honestly do. The only reason I can figure for that is how society states you should be doing socially accepted things.

In the game I met hundreds of different people and learned that people handle differently and given anonymity are also much more volatile. I also learned that about myself.

I came out of that experience with a lot of likeminded friends, fond memories, and as a person with a lot of real people skills in my back pocket. Time not wasted!

Most importantly, I learned that becoming too entangled with something can be detrimental to the way you think about it, and sometimes stepping back to see the bigger picture can lead to better things. 

It could be a solution I've created or a choice I've made or problem I'm stuck with - stepping back might just put it all into perspective.

To summarize: sometimes you have to go far to see what is near, and vice versa.