Avarice Alliance - "Off Days" for raiding

[Kevin]

Speaking selfishly, I've pretty much given up on being able to do the lower instances with Lurkers/Avarice. Mostly due to time restrictions on my part (which I'm working on) but also due to the fact that when I DO have time, everyone is raiding. And I don't play at wierd hours, either. Soloing to 60 doesn't bother me much, it's more the fact that I'll miss out on the group dynamics. I don't think Avarice wants a noob warlock with AH blues & greens running through MC with them.

Anyway, all that is to say that maybe a night off would be good.
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When I think back the situation of lower level alts getting groups has not gotten any worse or any better for me since day one. Unless I hooked my toon up with another group of toons and kept playing at about the same pace as them I had problems getting lurker groups for all the instances. I would need to take 2 to 4 days in most cases to get one, sometimes I could get a lurker "pick-up" going if I was lucky. At that time it was because people were raiding scholo, strat, UBRS, etc or were doing simply doing 5 mans in Sunken Temple when I was at Gnomeregan level.

When the alliance formed there was a larger total pool of people to try and get spur of the moment groups together but I had about the same success rate for 5 mans at any level. What got a lot easier were loot raids or 5 mans in DM for loot. But that isn't what I'm usually looking for.

I've had the same success rate of getting a pre planned 5 man off the ground or a spur of the moment 5 man off the ground since day one to now really.

However I can see where all the raiding is hurting others with this more that it hurts me. I'm only looking for spur of the moment 5 mans when I'm not raiding. :)

I also keep saying I'll take more nights off when we get longer waitlists but that hasn't happened yet either. I signed up waitlist for Ony last night. I was #2 on the list. I ended up in the raid because I wanted to go and I didn't want to go. I went because there were only 2 paladins there and that becomes a pain for the pallies and I didn't realize that another pally was on the waitlist. Had it been an MC run I would not have gone. I went because Ony is so short.

You are also not the only one to raise this issue and it was a consideration when one of the options was simply an off night.

Even if we don't want to admit it Lurkers are now a pretty hardcore raiding guild so we suffer the problems of hardcore guilds and lower level alts or mains. We are still a somewhat casual guild as well so suffer the problems associated with that (lots of people with odd schedules that don't always overlap) and we are a member of a guild alliance with the problems associated with that. Sure all these things have benefits too and I still think the benefits out weigh the drawbacks but it does cause some other fun issues like this one. We don't raid enough for some, we raid too much for others. We don't spend enough time with alts for some, we spend too much time with alts for others.

Now as to a solution to some of this? I'm going to push Guild Event Manager again. Again two reasons for this. One it has all the functions that the base of guilded has. With guilded being unsupported now we probably want to move away. Two if we all start using it you have another option for scheduling groups and hopefully getting more stuff done with the alts. Three invites for 40 mans are a lot easier with it. :)

I don't think anyone would take offense in CA or Basin or Harpell or Keepers if we all used this and I put up a 5 man LBRS that I said I wanted all lurkers for if possible so you can still do just guild stuff. I don't think any Lurkers would take offense if someone else put up an event that was Basin prefered or CA prefered. Sure with the easier chat we are getting to know the other guilds better, but we are an alliance and not a merged guild for reasons. I know that some days I just want to play with only lurkers, most days I don't care. So if we use GEM heavily most of my events that I put up would be whoever wants to go and I figure that would the same for most everyong, but you could very well see some that I said were lurker prefered and I wouldn't be surprised to see that from others. Heck I would put stuff up there that I planned with "squad goofball" just so others knew better that hmm we've got 4 5 mans scheduled there I better look at a time. Nothing wrong with just wanting to play with your closest friends at times. :)

Of course the whole GEM thing should probably be in the GEM or Guilded thread I started.