WotLK Spotlight: Overclock, with Auro & Stormy!

Are you among the brave souls who have ventured back into Northrend to battle Arthas and his scourge? Or perhaps you never got to experience the frozen halls of the Lich King the first time around? Whether you’re new to the battles that await or a seasoned veteran, the upcoming launch of Icecrown Citadel promises to be epic.

Typically speaking, the “Race to World First” (RWF) for each new phase in World of Warcraft Classic has, until now, been very quick. Almost every raid from Classic TBC and WotLK has been cleared, including hardmodes, within 2 hours of its launch. However, after multiple rounds of PTR testing and some substantial changes to the Lich King fight, the RWF for Icecrown Citadel is shaping up to be a momentous one.

In anticipation of the battle for World First Heroic Lich King, we sat down with Auro and Stormy, leaders of Overclock, one of the top Classic WotLK Raiding guilds in the world. We asked them about raid preparation, their goals for ICC and beyond, and what it takes to lead a hardcore progression guild. Read on to learn all about Auro, Stormy, and Overclock, and be sure to tune in to watch their Race to World First ICC over on Auro’s Twitch Channel starting at 3pm PST on October 12th!

Table of Contents

“Our guild has historically stuck true to our core principles of respect and maintaining a professional and inclusive environment. This has been true since the beginning and has really shaped the way our internal culture is.” –Stormy

Q-1: Hello Auro and Stormy! To kick things off, can you tell us a little about yourselves? What are your Warcraft stories and background? What should we know about who you are?

Auro: Sure, yes so I’ve been playing WoW since 2005 and began raid leading as an early teen. From Vanilla and onward, I’d played competitively every expansion outside of MoP. In addition, I’ve spent a lot of time in the guild called HC (now “GN”) on Mal’Ganis, with some of it as raid leader, achieving World 90th for Mythic Kil’Jaeden. I’ve always been interested in Addons, and before Legion launch, I wrote an Addon named “GottaGoFast”, which is now at over 2.5million downloads. WeakAuras have also been at the foundation of what I write. After Battle of Dazar'alor, I began Classic WoW and became officer in RISE, the #1 NA Speedrunning Guild. Finally, I’ve been the GM and Raid Leader of Overclock since the launch of TBC and Stormy has been at my side co-leading through a majority of it.


Stormy: My gosh, well my story is a little more non-traditional. They say that most people who play Classic WoW had played when they were younger, but this was my first time playing the game. I’d had some familiarity with it growing up, but COVID-19 really pushed me to try new hobbies. I got sucked in extremely fast. Outside of the game, I’m a practicing physician so once my role of co-GM of Overclock became a reality in WotLK, it required a real paradigm shift in my time management. From Classic to early TBC, I played primarily in Rouduoduo’s AMG GDKP. It was during this time I won the now-infamous 600,000g Ashes of Al’ar, which was in news articles everywhere at the time. That was really exciting! At some point through the expansion, Auro reached out to me for recruitment. Over the span of several weeks we spoke and I joined as a trial. From there I participated in Overclock’s world ranked BT speedrun as well as in our SWP progression race. It was a real culture shock at first. True hardcore raiding can be grueling and everyone has to make sacrifices. I think I’ve come a long way, thanks to Auro.




Q-2: What is Overclock’s origin story?

Auro: Overclock started when I decided I wanted to raid lead again after speedrunning with RISE. Work began on the guild far before TBC's launch and we recruited players from competitive guilds across all NA realms. We wanted to be a competitive guild that was as dedicated as the EU guilds.

Stormy: Our guild has historically stuck true to our core principles of respect and maintaining a professional and inclusive environment. This has been true since the beginning and has really shaped the way our internal culture is.





Q-3: What’s it like running the guild together? What kind of culture does your guild have and how do you work to maintain that?

Auro: Our guild has a very unique structure that we feel has been a cornerstone to our success. We do not have class officers, there is no hierarchy between Trials and Raiders, and there is no seniority among our members. Stormy and I co-GM and traditionally we have had a team of Advisors, who help advise our decision-making. They advise us and we make choices with that knowledge. In recent times, we have scaled back our number of Advisors, using other resources instead. It has trimmed down turnaround time for important decisions and optimized a lot of the process for where we focus our attention next.

Stormy and I manage a roster of about 35+ raiders and with our responsibilities overlapping, our raiders know that talking to one of us means they are talking to both of us. We make all of our decisions together and that is made simpler with our internal triaging process she and I have. It allows us to focus on higher priority items and knock through things pretty quickly. This is something she primarily oversees and sets the agenda for, but it has made the work a lot less stressful, so I definitely appreciate it.

Stormy: Auro definitely has a lot of experience so I just try to make sure we’re on track and that certain things don’t slip under the radar. We’re a pretty effective duo and I’ve loved working with him. I think our raiders definitely appreciate the transparency we provide and our willingness to take criticism. Actually, that’s something we even ask during our interviews with applicants because we want fresh ideas, we want people to feel open. That doesn’t mean all ideas are great, but we gotta start somewhere. I’m in charge of recruitment for Overclock so that’s definitely one of the traits we look for in players.

We have a culture of respect, professionalism, and dedication. People here really do share our passion for the game. They like to theorycraft, mingle, and just talk about the game. At the end of the day, we are a hardcore guild and innovation is at the core of competition. With that said, we think that a respectful environment is the basic building block for innovation because if our raiders aren’t comfortable bringing up untested ideas then we aren’t pushing boundaries, we’re just copying everyone else. So Overclock is all about hard work, but we still have a lot of fun together while we raid. You have to when you raid as much as we do!

“People here really do share our passion for the game. They like to theorycraft, mingle, and just talk about the game. At the end of the day, we are a hardcore guild and innovation is at the core of competition.” –Stormy

Q-4: Describe the ideal Overclock raider.

Stormy: The ideal Overclock raider is someone who is dedicated to being the best they can be at WotLK. We look for players who perform well but at the end of the day we recruit the player not the class. Many of our top players were recruited as different classes than you'll see them playing today because at the end of the day, everyone in Overclock has to put the guild before themselves if we want to succeed. Earlier we mentioned players who perform well, but we want to be clear that performance is about more than DPS or throughput. We look at the impact each player can make on the raid with their utility usage, their awareness, and their attitude.




Q-5: Let’s talk about Icecrown Citadel! What are your goals for Overclock for ICC Launch?

Auro: Overclock is competing for World 1st in ICC. It has been our goal for the entire expansion and we feel like this is the most important race in the Classic WoW Trilogy. Not only is Arthas an iconic boss, but ICC is a special raid where you start seeing more complicated mechanics from bosses. These mechanics often overlap in different combinations that can vastly raise the difficulty of the encounter. In retail this is a common concept, but so far in classic it hasn't been a prominent factor because it really starts in ICC.

“You have to balance risk vs reward for every decision you make because you only get one chance. You have to build plans for anything that can go wrong because things will go wrong.” –Auro

Q-6: How will you reach your ICC goals? What kind of preparation and time commitment goes into being one of the best Classic guilds in the world?

Auro: Reaching our goals for ICC has been a process we started long ago, with preparation for the tier beginning before ICC PTR ever opened. We consider the entire expansion as a preparation because the most important aspect of competing for World 1st is player quality, but you have to be successful before you can gather a strong enough roster to compete. With ICC, we started strategy discussions immediately after TOGC launch between our leadership and a small group of our most dedicated and trusted players.

Overclock runs multiple raids every week on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays from 8pm to 12pm EST. The common term in the competitive community for our divided raids are "splits". The goal of splits is to funnel item drops to characters we think have potential usage for progression. With our average roster size of 35 raiders, we are able to run 6 TOGCs and 6 Ulduars every week which gives us many opportunities to gear useful characters. We are able to complete those splits in 8 hours between Tuesday and Wednesday, so lately we have not had to raid on Thursdays. We've heard it takes about 3-4 hours for an average guild to clear TOGC + Ulduar on Heroic Difficulty and we will complete three sets of Ulduar and ToGC Heroic within that time. One common misconception is that playing competitively takes a deep time commitment, and though during PTR it does, outside of that timeframe we are more efficient than most guilds.

Gathering gear is an important part of the race to World 1st which begins the moment the last race ends. Overclock designs new splits every week in order to optimize loot in each run. We keep one raid roster, and create fresh splits for each time slot each week. This is a time consuming and important part of the work that we do every week. It takes several hours because we ensure there is a loot target for every item. Sometimes sudden absences or emergencies can threaten this, so that is part of the struggle in management. In order to gear for ICC we expanded the number of raids we do, designed new tools for split management, all while decreasing the amount of time we spent raiding every week.

For this tier specifically we designed new spreadsheet tools to optimize loot in each of our splits. We keep track of any character we deem important and the tools are able to show which raiders are competing on each item per split. This view allows me and Stormy to avoid scenarios where multiple important characters need the same item in the same raid. They still happen but it helps reduce the problem and increase the power gain for the guild across each raid.

The more traditional part of the preparation is PTR. Once Blizzard opens ICC on the public test realm, we raid as much as possible while it is open. This is an exhausting and incredibly important time for the guild where everyone’s efforts are needed. All of our raiders work hard during this time period, even if they are not actively playing in the raid.

PTR has a few stages for us: learning, optimizing, and mastery. During the learning stage we try to clear the raid with basic strategies that are proven to work. We learn about the pain points of an encounter, as well as the encounter’s weaknesses. At this point in time, I start working on our WeakAura pack, something that is continually iterated upon throughout the PTR process with new releases. Stormy functionally tests them then releases them to our guild. Once we've learned the basic strategies, we begin optimizing. We test out more risky strategies on bosses for kill speed, or in some cases we experiment with different compositions to abuse an encounter’s weaknesses. While speed is an important factor for racing in progression, consistency and reliability is key. The last stage, mastery, is where we begin speedrunning. We will do mock speedruns with players swapping back and forth in real time, if needed. We simulate what it would be like on Day One, recovering as quickly as possible if we wipe, managing class cooldown timings, and finding flaws within our plan. Anytime we have broken out of this formula, by trying to optimize or master the raid too early, we have seen regressions in our results.

Stormy: This tier we spent 102 hours on the Blizzard PTR. In addition to that, we continued to do our normal splits (+8 hours per week). In totality, our guild has raided approximately 130 hours in the month of September alone. This does not include the tremendous amount of time it takes in managing Overclock for me and Auro, or the hours of theorycrafting done by the dedicated raiders within our guild.

Auro and I wanted to personally thank the entire guild for their hard work and dedication for the upcoming tier. It is a very fun time, but there is no doubt it is stressful for our raiders. We have all made sacrifices at work, at home, and in our personal lives in order to make this possible. It hasn’t gone unnoticed to the both of us. We’re extremely proud!





Q-7: What song will be playing in your headsets when you kill Heroic Lich King for the first time?

Auro: Something from my SoundCloud playlist.

Stormy: Bigwigs’ victory notification!




Q-8: What are you hoping will be announced at Blizzcon regarding WoW Classic?

Auro: We are confident that Classic Cataclysm is coming and are extremely excited for it. That expansion had some very fun raid tiers and it would be great to see the new strategies the Classic community would develop!




Q-9: Are you #nochanges or #somechanges?

Auro: We are both definitely #somechanges! This game was designed for a much different playerbase than today. In the original timeframe, things were tuned for a less knowledgeable player and this is simply no longer the case. The tools we have for communicating, analyzing the game, and displaying information within the game are completely different from what was possible when the original game launched. Changes have to be made to create an engaging and challenging experience for the modern player.




Q-10: Progression vs. Speed Running: Discuss!

Auro: Progression and Speedrunning feel similar but in reality are very different. We enjoy both but this expansion we chose to focus on progression. Guilds that focus on more than one goal put themselves in a more difficult position to succeed because their attention is split.

Progression is one day that you prepare for in private. You have to balance risk vs reward for every decision you make because you only get one chance. You have to build plans for anything that can go wrong because things will go wrong. You are trying to complete the content at a much more challenging gear differential because you are almost exclusively using gear available from the previous tier. This is a factor in ICC more than it has been for any other progression race. Additionally, all competitive guilds do not stream their PTR. It is a rare time in the game where we all work secretly to establish our strategies and reveal our plans at the same time. You'll see each guild choose different strategies for each boss, and in their pathing of the raid. It shows a guild's ability to innovate in a way that speedrunning can’t.

Speedrunning is about completing the instance as quickly as possible. You know you'll have multiple attempts between the day the raid opens, and the final reset where the new raid is not available. Whoever has the fastest time of the raid on that day wins for the tier. The strategies and compositions for speedrunning are generally more optimized and risky because if anything fails, you will not be able to get a world record. Information is shared between the guilds because the logs must be public for the speedrun to show up on the leaderboard. While some guilds create novel strategies (more than others), at the end of the day most of the runs look very similar.

Stormy: Yeah and something to also consider is that the difficulty spike from TBC to WotLK makes progression the more interesting category to focus on, especially with some of these realm first titles that are available for most races. Overclock has a long history and focus on innovation during progression, so this is the best time for a guild to showcase that strength.




Q-11: Do you play Classic Era, Hardcore or Retail on top of WotLK Classic? What are your favourite parts of each version of the game?

Auro: We played a bit of Retail at the start of Dragonflight but outside of that we only play WotLK. I loved playing Classic but I could not play it again. I'm never ranking to grand marshal again and without the R14 weapons Classic is not worth playing, in my opinion. My favorite part of WoW is Raid Boss Progression though and that is what I miss most about playing Retail. The Lich King feels like a retail boss at the gear level we are doing the fight on and it feels good to be back.

Stormy: I really enjoyed Classic TBC the most but without Auro, it wouldn’t feel the same. Classic WotLK opened up new levels of complexity to showcase players’ talents in DPS rotations, so as someone who went from spamming Shadow Bolts endlessly in TBC, it was a welcome change. The game has a lot of nuance to it and I just never get tired of it.




Q-12: What would you rather fight, 1 100-ft tall Murloc, or 100 1-ft tall Murlocs? Why?

Auro: One 100-foot Murloc! Murlocs are slowable so one big one is way easier to manage.

Stormy: Oh, that’s an easy one. Same answer!




Q-13: What is the guild’s most controversial food take?

Auro: Some of our raiders are proud of their healthy BMI and we encourage and support it.

Stormy: Totally, we even have a voice channel that serves as a reminder to stay at a healthy number.

“One common misconception is that playing competitively takes a deep time commitment, and though during PTR it does, outside of that timeframe we are more efficient than most guilds.” –Auro

Q-14: What’s one thing you wish people knew about your guild?

Auro: We wish people knew how hard we worked. Our entire guild is dedicated to the game at a level you will not find in other guilds across our region in NA. This is apparent in the management of our raiders, of our loot, of creating true splits with true loot assignment, but also in our boss strategy and decision-making.

Stormy: We are the top guild of our region for progression and with that comes mostly positive attention but there is the occasional negative blurb or misinformation that bubbles up somewhere. The both of us have always had a policy to never engage in rumors and it’s served us well since TBC. It’s just not important. At the end of the day, we think our guild is a very special place where good players can find other good players who care about the game just as much as we do. We’re pretty confident in who we are and what we represent to the community.




Q-15: How does ICC compare in difficulty to the other raids released in Classic WoW?

Auro: ICC is significantly more difficult than any other raid released in Classic WoW. Primarily there are two factors that make it difficult - mechanics and tuning.

The mechanics of the raid are more complicated than what we have seen in other raids up to this point. You start seeing mechanics that require team-wide efforts to accomplish. But there are also mechanics requiring more personal responsibility and thus cannot have one player carry it. It affects the raid more adversely and creates a new layer of challenge to raiding. Not only are these mechanics more difficult to deal with however, the mechanics increase in complexity and frequency which leads to noticeable overlaps between them. These moments of overlap force the raid to create new strategies for dealing with the combination.

ICC is tuned for much more powerful characters than what we have in TOGC gear. Originally ICC launched over a span of two months where only Normal mode sections were made available. After those two months, Heroic mode was finally released. From that point forward they start applying a 5% Damage / Health / Healing buff that stacks up to 30%. Players can choose to toggle this off but essentially Blizzard had already planned that they would make the raid easier with this buff so the initial tuning is more difficult than previous raids.

We are looking to clear the entirety of ICC with mostly TOGC gear. The damage checks are tight, especially on Lich King. When damage checks are tight, that increases the impact of the mechanics, and the overlaps force us to innovate compositions that can consistently clear the raid. Tuning is essential in a raid to provide the feeling of “difficulty” and impact the mechanics have on you. If a mechanic exists but doesn't have a large enough impact then it doesn't have the intended effect. ICC is tuned in a very difficult manner with a large difficulty spike at Sindragosa and Putricide and a huge difficulty spike again when you reach the Lich King.





Q-16: What is your least favourite mechanic in ICC?

Auro: Unchained Magic. The mechanic is poorly designed and while it is extremely easy to deal with for competitive guilds, more casual guilds will struggle to meet the compositional requirements to kill Sindragosa on a regular basis.




Q-17: What do you see in the future for yourselves and for Overclock?

Stormy: Overclock is always looking towards the next big thing, and as we get ready for ICC launch that is the only thing we are giving our full attention to at the moment. We haven’t even discussed Shadowmourne because that’s a post-ICC discussion. We really hope to continue playing competitively and that the community continues to support us.

Auro: Right and broadly speaking, Overclock will always strive to compete for World 1st Progression with whatever Blizzard has in store next. We hope our raiders and everyone is excited for the upcoming ICC race because we have done as much preparation as can be done. Be sure to watch!

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