Raid and bench time and new raiders

[Xslia]

We have quite a few new raiders with us so I'm going to post this.

Back in the good old days - before instance raids - we had open zone raiding - we could max out the 72 spots on the raid and start a second raid group if needed. Everyone got to participate. Then along came Instance zones - at first 72, then it got trimmed down to 54. There was a time sony was considering dropping this down again to 42-45ish - I forget which.

Our numbers ebb and flow - as people do what they need to in RL - someone might not be able to raid Wed, someone else on a Thur - it's all variable based on school and family obligations.

Since we are in instance zones of 54, when we reach over that number someone has to sit out. The decision on who sits is variable as much as the raid such as: is this a brand new event we have not won - and is this a new raider with weaker gear and cannot survive the AE's - or someone who took a break for a few weeks and has not been inside at all over someone who has been here and been inside. Is it someone who we need to perform a specific function (mezzer, or vinelash) so we might put in an extra class of that type. If we know someone is going to log midway thru a long event due to kids or work situation. Do we need range vs melee or visa versa.

So if you plan on taking off work or school early because you need to have "x" flag credit, and get sat out and send me a tell - I'm sorry, but no one promised anyone a guaranteed raid spot. If you ran someone thru 40 missions to learn an event in group content - this does not "earn" you a spot over someone else. It's not that we are not appreciative, we are, we just cannot offer anyone a guaranteed spot or we have to start issuing markers that if X person logs in they always get in over X person - that's not what we want. But this attitude has occurred in the past - "I'm here now, I've earned this spot, boot so and so - he's new and I'm a veteran". The issue of sitting out seems to occur on first time wins. We do pay attention to who is sitting out and try and cycle them in for the next new event for credit on it first time - but it's not always possible.

As we break open new raids and content - new raiders seem to be hit the hardest, and please be patient with us. We never know if a raid will take 30 minutes or longer - if we wipe we may reorganize and go again or keep same people inside. Trust me when I tell you I know about bench time - I sat out almost 3 months straight on TIME raids when I first started public (but got in on the other content) - but then again Ashorty had 120 people show up for time raids for 6 months or better..

Some of you ask me if you can drop group and go xp - and the answer is no. Not that we are trying to be mean - but if you drop raid - and we do need you in for a second attempt or another event - you are not in the raid window for us to see to be able to swap in. Someone the other night asked me if they could go work on getting their portal quest done, they bound themselves in shard so it would have been an easy return to raid npc and for that one I said sure. Some asked me if they could work on kill counts while in shard - again I said yes as long as they could get to the NPC fast to zone in. Someone else ran around looking for collection items - again this was ok as long as they could get to the raid npc and zone in within 1 minute or so.

So have patience.

[Augustas-]

or send xslia a fancy new wine mug get in np