Steven scrutinized the list before him, face lit by only the glow of his laptop's cool radiance. His fingertip mapped each entry as he obsessively compiled the data into a spreadsheet. He logged every detail - strengths, weaknesses, raid buffs, and opportunities for improvement - with precise and fastidious concentration. His mind worked as hard as it had ever done, engineering numbers and formulas to solve what was less like a raid roster and more like a complex riddle; ensuring accuracy, fairness and balance with every calculation.
Hours ticked by as he crafted a roster with excruciating detail, meticulously allocating every buff and preparation for any eventuality. He took into account individual temperaments and playstyles, carefully ensuring each member was treated equally - noting down his decisions for review later.
Steven felt a rush of excitement as he clicked the save button. He typed in the name ‘RaidRosterFinal’, and pride swelled up inside him as he backed away from the computer monitor to admire his masterpiece - every variable neatly combined into one harmonious result.
Before this moment, he'd never understood the concept of 'pride in a good day's work.' He thought pride was something that billionaires told employees they had to make their employees work harder free of charge.
"What if we paid them more?" one billionaire would inquire, monocle glinting in the dim light of the theatre.
"No," the other replied, twisting the upturn of his mustache, "just tell them they're doing a good job or something."
Steven leaned back in his chair with a satisfied smile on his face, basking in his accomplishment. He eagerly posted the raid roster on the discord, sure that everyone would love it. Sure, he had taken a few liberties with the raid times, but with a little bit of cooperation from everyone Steven was convinced that success was inevitable.
Steven glanced at his phone, a notification from Joel flashing on the screen. He tapped on it absent-mindedly, not considering that this message had anything to do with the roster he'd posted about. The text filled the dimly lit room and Steven felt his world fall out from under him as he read what it said.
Joel's words were a neon beacon of betrayal, he offhandedly mentioned he had rerolled out of Wildborn over a week ago, and just hadn't gotten around to telling Steven. He acted as if this wasn't a betrayal of the highest order.
Steven needed a Wildborn, every raid needed one, and exactly one. without Joel, his raid roster had a huge hole right in the middle of it.
Wildborn were the jack of all trades class that had something for every mechanic, a damage profile that could be tailored down to the smallest detail for even the most obscure situations. And that wasn't even mentioning their dual raid buffs, more than any other specialization in the game.
He'd found Joel a month ago, aimlessly strolling down the wrong direction in a one path dungeon. Now that the kid finally got his life sorted out, he was being difficult.
Steven had to be careful though. He didn't want to spook off Joel and lose a player - this could just be a temporary phase and the situation rectifiable.
Steven stared at his glowing laptop screen, typing and deleting the same message over and over. His mind raced as he attempted to find the right words— he wanted to express his support while still nudging Joel to stay with the class. Finally, reluctantly, he hit send. "Hey Joel, just got your message about maybe quitting Wildborn and switching to something else. If you need any help figuring out the Wildborn class I'm more than happy to lend a hand. I'm glad you reached out and hope you'll stick with us for this raid."
Steven was anything but glad that Joel had reached out. He wished the jerk would have kept his promise and stayed in the class he said he'd play back when he'd made the raid roster.
Then came Joel's reply- a frigid stab to Steven's heart: "Nah, I'm done with Wildborn, it's not fun anymore. If you guys need to replace me, I'm ok with dropping out of this raid."
Steven felt the pieces of his stabbed heart drop into his stomach at the thought of losing all that time he'd put into Joel. He wanted to tell him what a waste of time he was, but instead, he swallowed all the hurt and anger and did what he was 'right' - thanked Joel for his time and cooperation. This wasn't fair to Steven and it especially wasn't fair to his raid roster, who had never done anything wrong to anyone, but he was the one in charge, and that meant being an adult even in a situation where the other party was acting like a spoiled brat.
The Guild Leader's brow furrowed as he studied the raid roster on his computer monitor. He had put so much effort into its design, but too late he noticed that a single misstep could cause the entire lineup to unravel. He tinkered with it, desperately trying to fit the pieces together in the right way—but nothing felt right. He eventually brute-forced the changes and saved the document – RaidRosterFinal2 – feeling a sense of hope that maybe this time he'd cracked it.
No sooner had Steven finished celebrating his small victory, his consolation prize, when another message popped up on his screen — Brenda, a really promising tank Steven had recently recruited who he was planning on being a big part of their raids, just quit. Not just quit, she bailed. And not just bailed, she straight up ghosted. She left the in-game guild, discord, and blocked him before Steven even had a chance to react.
He shook his head in disbelief; two major keys to his roster gone in less than an hour? Steven glanced at the deteriorating spreadsheet once more, it was nothing more than a dream kept together by a duct tape of lies now. How could he possibly adapt the roster to this catastrophe? Defeated, Steven stared at a loss at what to do next. He felt like he was trying to hold a bucket filled with water while holes sprung up one after another — no matter how fast he worked to plug each one, there were more that followed.
Before Steven could even begin to process Brenda’s departure, yet another message appeared on his screen—Devin, possibly the worst Brush Wizard Steven had ever played with, had left without warning, grumbling about Brenda leaving—before quickly slipping away too.
How dare Devin leave? where would he even go? Who else would take someone with his rating? Steven had spent at least 20 minutes on Devin alone in his roster, making sure everyone around picked up his slack. Devin was even worse than Karl, who at least faced towards the boss when he hit every wrong button during the raid.
Steven's eyes widened in shock as the chat channel suddenly erupted with dozens of overlapping conversations. An avalanche of words and phrases flew by him, faster than his mind could comprehend. The chatter intensified as if a hundred people were all shouting at once, with messages whizzing past his screen faster than he could read them. He frantically attempted to keep up with the relentless flow of conversation-
“No way, who even wants to raid on a Friday night?”
"No world exists where Brenda should be the main tank."
“What are you talking about, Brenda rocks!”
“My cat walked on my keyboard earlier and made a better raid roster than this”
With every passing second, the discord roared more fiercely, and Steven felt himself slowly being swallowed up by the storm. Some of those comments had really hurt.
Direct message after direct message rolled into his inbox, the little bell ringing each time to taunt him. Steven's heart raced as he watched the message counter rapidly increase on his computer screen. He was too scared to look away from the guild chat channel and see what anyone had sent him.
He scrambled to click the lock icon next to the chat channel, desperate to prevent further chaos, and hastily posted a link where everyone could resubmit their applications so he could make an updated raid roster before finally logging out with an audible sigh of relief.
Sure enough, the inbox alerts ticked off quicker than ever before and his stomach twisted in knots from all the stress. Skimming through them, it became clear that one thing everyone could agree upon without fail was how inept they all found him as a leader.
His stomach churned at the onslaught of stress and anger, though he couldn't tell if it was because of that or the meatloaf surprise his mother had made earlier for dinner.