Building relationship with Estel, Estel's parents, and my parents was like trying to increase Aldor/Scryer rep at the same time.  A man as intelligent as the rogue hokage immediately realized that as the pipe that links all three, only positive comments are allowed to pass through.  Any negativity is best swept under the carpet or sugar coated before delivered to the other side.  Estel also did a lot of quests for me to hand in for free (like pouring a glass of wine for her father at the perfect moment on the dinner table, bringing in her mother a fruit basket etc) to build rep.   My parents and Estel's mother for the most part shared a similar background, taste and intellectual capacity.  Estel's father 's RL arena ratings are much higher and required far more massages on his ego.

In any case the nightmare of dealing with all four parents is finally over, although my own parents did come over to Shanghai to see the sights, which leaves me and Estel very little time alone before I head back to NYC on Sunday.  If there is one thing I learned in this trip, it is the sight of a true RL gladiator in action.  In every city we visited (even my father's tiny home town that he never been to) there were people lining up to take us to dinner and bring us to hotels and all expenses were waived.  Estel's father had an endless pool of contacts in his network and it is easy to see why.  On a dinner table with 16 people he not only remembered everyone's name and title the first time he heard them, he also remembered every little detail like how many toasts each person made with him, how sincere were their compliments, whether someone was not liking the food, how much wine someone far across the table had in his cup etc.  In term of raw technical skillz, he doesn't really have anything strong in particular, but his guanxi (connections) are exactly what got him so far up on the ladder.

It really reminded me of the words my class leader said to me at my annual review.  I did get a whopping 20% increase in MH DPS on a terrible year for financial markets in general.  A lot of it was because my MH DPS was too low compared to my peers so they gave me a very nice upgrade.  But the other part is also because I did put in the hours to earn my DKP and did more DPS than these with far better gear and raid experience.   In any case, he saw me as a tremendous talent and offered several new raid encounters that will increase my exposure to the right people within the guild.  "Because it is not what you know, it is who you know."  There are indeed exceptions to this rule, but self-made billionaires like Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Mark Elliot Zuckerberg met very strong and powerful allies at the right time to become who they are today.

Like I have said countless times before, if you only treated WOW as a game, you will never get as much out of it as someone like me who treat it like an alternative reality.  WOW is a mirror image of real life and many powerful lessons can be taught with it.  When your application get rejected by a raid guild, it is not your gear/experience, it is because you don't know the right people.  Looking at the latest TR ladder, once again it confirmed my belief that there are at least a dozen rogues in EVERY BG who can perform as well as Neilyo when surrounded by the right teammates, they just never made the proper connections.   Even right here on Gameriot, I was shocked to see Lipton's 11 comments A Gamers Wedding article double Jasi's 166 comments Deep 8 Review in traffic.  All because of it being featured on Kotaku.

Is it fair?  The real world, just like WOW, are filled with imbalances.  You either find a comp works for you or you delete your own character and re-roll.  Never underestimate a connection even if it won't yield immediate benefits.  Jasi originally got in touch with me with an offer to fill my priest spot and it never worked out.  We didn't speak for months and suddenly he was writing for WOM.  Connections alone won't win you the game (I am not sure if Lipton can sustain his traffic), but you absolutely, positively must have it to become a gladiator in RL.

In any case, the TR ladder is very interesting and I will be back in town Sunday at midnight.  A lot of the top teams are waiting for the final push and who knows, maybe I can be the missing piece to your puzzle if your team currently can not compete for top four as is.  There will be a second qualifying round to fill spot 5-8 and I will definitely be more serious about it now the wedding is out of the way.