This entry is part of the series: The Casual Raider's Handbook
- The Casual Raider’s Handbook: Paying Market Value
- The Casual Raider’s Handbook: Gearing Strategies for All Play Schedules
- The Casual Raider’s Handbook: Planning, Scheduling, and Plotting (in-game and out)
- The Casual Raider’s Handbook: Don’t Procrastinate
- The Casual Raider’s Handbook: Working Stupid Hours
- The Casual Raider’s Handbook: Professions
- The Casual Raider’s Handbook: Night Before Raid Checklist
Let’s face facts. Your days mucking about online waiting for an event to come together (if you ever had that luxury in the first place) are over.
Planning is NOT just for Raiding
If you have 2 hours to do a heroic, you want to spend those 2 hours in a heroic, not 1 hour getting the group together and 1 hour actually doing the stupid dungeon (and not finishing). Time to be anal-retentive and pencil it into your datebook.
In-Game Calendar
What? You can’t make events there? Ask your GM for permission! As long as you’re not poaching from srs bzns official guild events, it should be cool. Or your GM is a turd. I mean, uh, did I say that out loud?
You could ask an officer to make the events for you if you’re in the type of guild with a hierarchy. I forget that those exist sometimes.
Forums
These SHOULD be frequently used by the casual player and are woefully underused! See, you can plot and coordinate on the forums at any time of day, from any device, without an authenticator. You can log into the forums from your phone, from work, whatever. If you have little time in-game, calendar events may be difficult to manage, because you are only coming face-to-face with the calendar once a day, if that, depending on how often you log in. You can login to the forums every day multiple times a day. So can everyone else.
What are you waiting for? /buttslap
Making Everyone Else Get with the Program
Isn’t THAT the million dollar question. Seriously, I have no clue. There are guild masters all over the internet at this very moment tearing their hair out, rocking back and forth, and muttering incoherently about “we have forums, you know” or “checking the damn calendar.”
If your guild happens to use one of the above, then that’s great. Stick to whatever they already happen to be using. Don’t try to herd the cats into a new spot by moving their litter pan. They’ll just pee on the floor in confusion.
If they’re using none of the above, and just dead-set against it, well you can try. If enough people are using a planning system, and the ones who don’t use it end up getting left out of crap because they fail to reserve their spot, maybe they will get cracking on it. More likely, they will whine about being excluded from “that clique of nerdy forum people” and fail to grasp the point. But again, you can try.
Worst Dungeon Clique Evar. Crits from friendly fire are huge!
I personally love the in-game calendar; I used it as a raid leader in two separate guilds and it worked wonders. I’ve also used forums, but I find that the forums are a tiny bit harder (despite the authenticator issue) simply because some people don’t/won’t check them, whereas everyone in the game is already 90% of the way to checking the calendar.
I totally agree with the real message of the first part of your post. Heroics (or raids, or whatever) should start when they start, not after waiting 20 minutes for someone to farm/craft/buy at the AH enchants/flasks/baby spice. As a raid leader, I never tolerated lateness, but I I saw in other guilds where I raided that it was tolerated to the frustration to a majority of the raiders. Raid leaders, hearken! Nothing shouts “THIS RAID IS AMATEUR HOUR” like having to wait to get started (apologies for the caps, but I feel in this specific moment they were warranted.
Great post!
I have an authenticator on my account, and it used to be that you could access the armory calendar without authenticator, which was GREAT. But now I can’t seem to access my armory calendar without authenticator, and my authenticator lives at my house taped to my PC, so no calendar-ing remotely for me! I feel safe and secure in the knowledge that if my account information is compromised, I am still totally safe from hackers trying to sign me up for events that I don’t want to attend via the armory. Hooray safety?
Re: checking the calendar… you’d be surprised how many people totally ignore it! Alas likes to do invites via targeted invite by rank rather than simply adding a guild event, so that the calendar icon BLINKS that you have the invite, and forces you to RSVP (yes, no, or tentative) to stop the blinking.
I had no idea you could do the calendar w/o the authenticator – ever! I can’t get onto the forums when I’m at work (not working, but I have office hours, etc when I have nothing to do), and it frustrates me that I don’t want to take the authenticator away from the computer.
I also used the targeted, flashing invites. I agree that using the general signup system frequently fails because people don’t check it, but when they see that ? mark flashing, that’ll usually get their attention.