I have great desire to raid, and no one to watch my child and put her to bed when everyone else is raiding at 7 p.m. central. Is that an offer to come babysit? Everyone who could babysit for me doesn't understand the concept of why I'd want to have a night off to play a "stupid game". It's not stupid to me, but it's stupid to them, and every time I've asked I've gotten a flat-out no (or worse, the one time someone did agree, they kept leaving my daughter in the computer room with me so they could go do other things and I had to bail on the group I was going to go instance with at the last second). So I've resigned myself to the fact that I'm not able to raid or instance until she's asleep for the night, at least until she's older and can entertain herself better.

So yeah, I don't think it's unreasonable that maybe instead of a guild saying "come at x time or don't come at all" you try to work around everyone's schedules and find a convenient night or two. I'm not the only one in this boat. There are plenty of people who don't work regular 9-5 jobs or who have evening classes that they attend who also can't make the standard raid times. This is especially the case in a smaller guild where people know each other better. In a larger guild, you can maybe even get enough people to run different raids on different times/days.

While the content has gotten more accessible, clearly the arrogant attitude about what people who cannot come on some raid leader's perfect schedule has not.

I didn't say this was something for everyone to use. We decided early on when we would raid based off of when most people were available and made that our established raid times until evidence suggested we needed to modify our times, which we did due to school schedules.

The guild I'm in right now raids from 1130-3am every day except for Friday and Saturday. If you can't be on when the raid begins you don't get a spot for that night, you'll be put on the wait list for when someone does leave. There is a certain give or take between the raid and the raiders and that means that some people need to be left out in the cold.

You can try and make me seem like some arrogant asshole who's yelling on vent about more DPS and all that but it couldn't be further from the truth. I just feel that raids are like a sports team and if you can't show up for practices you don't get to start.

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Sorry Dana, but I think you're offbase here. If a guild is setting up raid times and you're one of the people who will start raiding with them they should try take into account thing like "Hey Dana can't make it before 8pm server" but if you join a guild with an established raid time you need to bend to their times. Same thing if 24 other people can all make the one night you can't, and any other night loses several other people. Take this out of the realm of WoW - if you signed up for a softball league and then found out the games were too early for you would you expect the team to reschedule all of the games? Of course not. If you were on a team though, and next season's schedule was being decided on with two options, then sure, they should consider your constraints when deciding when to play.

Of course things change... a raid time what was good for someone might no longer be due to a new kid, job, etc. If that's happening to a few people you can either all say "Hey, let's revisit the hours" or you can say "Gee, I'm sorry Dana, but this is the best time for the other 9 folks." What's unreasonable is for individual raiders to expect the raid team to revolve around their schedule while being unwilling to shift days or hours themselves.

@1 has it precisely right in this case - do the people want to raid? Or is it something they don't really care about? If they want to raid, I'd do something simpler that the post suggests - I'd ask them

1) When CAN'T you raid? (job, kid duties, etc)
2) When WON'T you raid ("I can raid Friday or Saturday, but I won't raid both - I go out once each weekend.")

Find the days that aren't blocked out by either of these for any of the raid team. If every day is blocked by someone's CAN'T take the least blocked day and recruit as needed. If there's a day that's not blocked by any CAN'Ts but is blocked by someone's WON'T talk to that person about what's up with the won't.

At some point though, the raiders need to actually want to raid and if they don't really care or have so much going on in their lives that they can't make and keep schedules committments, you need to replace them.

@ Diana,

I understand your problem (lets face it - most ppl here know somewhat of that problem). My suggestion would be, are there no babysitters, friends, relatives, etc who can have your little one for a few hours, at THEIR house? That is unusual not to have ANYONE in my experience. But no matter, you could be the only one in your guild with that problem, or one of many.

In my guild we have people with similar problems, i personally have played 'placeholder' a few times (ie started the raid on time, as soon as the late member logs, i leave and surrender my place to them, it does sorta suck from my point of view, always saved, but few badges/loot to show for it, but im geared enough so makes sense). If theres many people with the same problem, the raid wont start cos they wont have enough people, thats when the authors points system should be used.

Another thing not mentioned is HOW LONG people can play for. A 10:30 start time is great for night owls, but a 2:30 finish time is not recommended if you work at 7:30

OFC building this into the points system means you would have to rate each hour or two, and get averages, building up a hour by hour raiding profile is long and not easy, rerating is long, but the results mean you should get a full raid with everyone there for as long as possible. It also means people should fall asleep at the keyboard, and keep their jobs longer too :)

Hope something there helps. GL and hope your daughters well and happy :)

It's now 4+ years since WoW launched, meeting parents of young children in WoW is no longer a rarity, and I'm sure there's plenty of nightowl raidgroups for people with busy lives in the early evening. If you can't raid during "prime time" (early evening to midnight), then find a raidgroup that suits your schedule better.

Sometimes you simply cannot compromise, and time is one of those things. You can only be in one place at a time, so you have to make a choice - as an officer you must set the raid dates that suit most people best, and those who cannot make it have to either deal with only raiding once in a blue moon (when they can make that schedule) or find another group to raid with. If it means recruiting new people, so be it.

It sounds mean, but people move on and it has been 4 years, there are many new parents out there (many of which met through WoW), so there is an emergence of raidgroups with off-hours. I mean, if you got a new job that had you work weekends, you would find a raidgroup with better times!

Dana, a lot of people who can't raid in their local prime time join servers where the prime time is different.

Quite a lot.