Right now, I’m playing the waiting game on my undead shadow priest Anexxia. Specifically, I am waiting to see how our raiding schedule shakes out. And this is why I have had a sad as of late.
You see, I love raiding. I’ve been raiding ever since my first character hit 58 in vanilla WoW days and was goaded into coming along to a guild alliance’s MC run. I’ve been hooked on it ever since. Fast Forward to WotLK. I finally found a good server and home for my shadow priest, in a guild for whom I am currently serving as an officer. I managed to complete all of the WotLK raid content, including getting my Starcaller title. Some pretty amazing and rewarding accomplishments.
I’m still wearing my Starcaller title but I don’t feel much like a raider at the moment. My work schedule has been erratic and unpredictable, and we’ve done some changing up in our schedule.
One of the things that I really liked about our guild’s raiding schedule was it offered up 4 or even 5 possible raiding nights per week, all of which started at 6:15 Pacific. Even if I got waylaid a bit at work, I could get home in time for the raid. But even before the expansion hit, we had some East Coasters lobby for an earlier start time. And thus, we now have a 5 Pacific start time raid night, soon to be 2 raid nights.
So, depending upon how things shake out, that leaves us with either 1 or 2 Pacific time raid nights during the week. And Saturday which starts at 6 Pacific. There aren’t too many folks who work on the weekends, and for those who do, 6 Pacific on Saturday is no better or no worse than any other time on Saturday. Although I used to count Saturday as one of my raid nights, RL schedule changes on my SO’s part mean I would be choosing raiding over the one weekend night we both have to go do something, so that’s out.
This leaves me at 1 or 2 nights per week I could possibly raid. Which is usually about how much I want to raid. but here’s the wrench: we’re going back to our old seating system that seats you based upon how many times you sign up and seated versus other folks. So, back when I could sign up for 4 raids per week, I’d get seated once or even twice depending upon signups. Now, I could sign up for our 1 or 2 nights, and be sat half the time or more often depending on how the math works out. That could put me at raiding 4 times per month on Anexxia. unless of course, like my schedule for the next 2 weeks, I have work-related events that either spill over past 5 or mean I will be stuck working late to make up the time after 5 on those few possible raid nights.
That’s just not going to work for me. I don’t see that I can improve my character, learn the fights, and be a rel part of the team if i am seated in 4 raids per month. I get that could work for other folks but for me, it’s like being a visitor, not being an active member of the team.
So for now, I wait and see what happens. I am signing up for raids when I know for sure I can attend, and I am crossing my fingers it will work out. I’ve spent the entire weekend stressing and bummed about this. And there’s absolutely nothing I can do to influence the outcome one way or another.
Wish me luck.
It is frustrating when a guild changes raid times, as many members count on them, and have arranged their schedules to attend. People don’t always think about that when deciding that the old times just don’t fit into their schedule anymore.
We now have the ability to pick from a list of shorter dungeons, which means a nightly marathon is no longer necessary for progression. Possibly your guild can follow the example set by others and shorten their nightly raid times to include everyone. In my experience, longer raid nights just lead to tired and burnt out players anyway.
I’ve had the same problem, except it was my work schedule that changed (went from working 8-4 EST to 4p – Midnight… ugh).
On most servers, at least in my experience so far, it appears the bulk of raiding happens during the day eastern time; even my attempts to find a late night raiding guild on west coast servers has come up bunk….
I understand your dilemma. We are struggling with more than 10 that want to raid but not enough for 2 10s yet. Schedules have been erratic for main tanks for even group 1. Many are not raid ready yet and starting to burn out on heroics grind to gear. The gauntlet to raid-ready is harsh. Many have been slowed by this and distracted by leveling alts.
This bottleneck is very, very frustrating.
Pretty much what happened to me with my last guild (still love them to death) but RL things happened and I couldnt make the weekend raids like I use to. They would raid once a month or so during the week which I could make but after awhile I felt more and more like an outsider and behind of everyone. Then it got to a point where the weekend raiders were getting the weekday spots too due to progression and I rarely got seated (sad panda).
I hope things dont get that way for you and Anexxia 🙁