Nine Swords

I think we've got two potential motivations for a second raid on Sunday: timing flexibility and demand. Scheduling is hard, and figuring out a "better" time for NA 9s sounds vaguely Sisyphean to me. However, determining if there is sufficient demand *at the current time* is something we can discover by just allowing for an unlimited number of Sunday sign-ups (for a limited set of time), with the caveat that there is only 1 guaranteed raid team of 10 that will come of it. Like I said, I understand why sign-ups are limited to 13, but it does prevent us from knowing if there are 14 or 24 people that want to raid at the current time on Sunday.

So, I propose that we leave the sign-ups open-ended for a limited time and attempt to run two raids *at the same time*. If we get more than 13 but less than 20, then yes, up to 6 additional people may be disappointed by not being in the raid. If we get 20 or more, I will volunteer to lead a second group - Provided that Claretta and I can coordinate and attempt to get 2 viable teams vs. one Über-powerful team and one non-viable one. If we can't make 2 viable teams, then Claretta's team has precedence. Additional work, yes; But it shouldn't be odious. As a bonus, with simultaneous raids comes fun social opportunities (Lurker races: Guys vs. Girls, Ciritty & Claretta vs. everyone else, etc.)

We do this once, maybe twice. If we don't get two viable raids out of it, we go back to the way things were. To me, a couple weeks of crazy signups is a small price to pay for getting 10 more cabbies an additional Lurker kill each week.

I respect the current system, and think it has a well thought out steady-state. However, I'm not convinced that a second raid will get off the ground without help. As it stands, just designating a second leader and asking them to organize the second raid shifts *all* the risk onto that leader. They need to give up their chance for the current raid just to investigate if a second one is possible. Meanwhile, all the current regulars will probably sign for the raid that is most likely to down the Lurker easily, which will further hamper the development of a second team. I believe in altruism, but am also firm believer in the behavioral economics theory of bounded rationality. Individually assuming all the risk of getting a second raid off the ground may be enough of a cost to discourage anyone from putting together a strong second raid.

Hopefully this comes across as I intend it, as an attempt to make helpful suggestions, and not as an armchair quarterback.
I'll shut up now.

If you ran the NA Sunday raid 2 hours after the EU one, there is always the possibilty of people who were reserve for EU being available to make up numbers for NA.

In Scotland (using local time so the zones don't get confusing), the EU runs at 1900, which would make the NA one 2100. If I was reserve for EU and not required, I would be happy to then come along on the NA one if needed.

After a few more NM's I should be ready for NA raids. Just need the time to learn the raid. I've kinda of held off cause I have spent so much time catching back up.

Important is to get enough NA Raiders. The current time on Sunday is picked because it works best for the EU based players. When looking at the past Sunday raids we would have 1-2 sign-ups from NA Raiders.
If we want to have a 2nd Sunday NY Raid which would work for our NA Raiders it has to be on a time which works best for them. So first there should be enough NA Raiders who can run on that time, supplemented with EU Raiders.

Let's say that 2 hours after Sunday (EU) Raid works best for the NA based Raiders, it would be a borderline time for most of the Central Europe and East onwards players. For players like Naite it shouldn't be a problem since it would be 1 hour less late ^^

So my point is that there should be enough NA Raiders who can sign up for this 2nd run. Looking at past sign-ups, running this 2nd one at the same time might not yield the highest possible numbers of NA signups (or more then what we usually see for the first one).

My comments here will be in point form for brevity.

1. I don't think there are any grounds for opening signups past 13 to just see who would be interested. If there were more than 13, I feel that we would know about it due to more people asking to sign up. That happens ~some~ weeks, but not nearly enough to indicate numbers for a second raid. Most often it's the same people signing up, instead of lots trying to get in.

2. You absolutely do need a raid leader willing to take full responsibility for things.

3. I cannot personally stay up any longer than the existing Sunday raid as it is. It's 4am Monday morning for me. By the time it is over I need to either go to bed or start work. I know others are in the same boat, including many of our regular core raiders such as Ciritty, Katelin and Durendal.

4. Raids are more than a collection of 10 random players. You really want to start not with a general question of numbers, but to see if you can get a core group of experienced tanks, healers and DPS signing up every time. Every raid depends on this core group. Even after a year, if our Sunday group is missing certain players, it becomes difficult.

Ok. The current system actually works pretty well for me, so I have no desire to further rock the boat.
In general I'm willing to help get a second raid going. Let me know if I can.

I'm not trying to discourage anyone. But it's important to go about it in a focused way, rather than just gather players randomly, which is my biggest contention with the proposals as presented. If you want to start a second raid, would be best to find a core group of tanks, healer, and good DPS.

From there you can just gather players.

That's how the EU raid got established.

If my proposal came across as random, or haphazard, there is a communication gap at work. It's a very different methodology than what is in use, and doesn't seem like it will be a good fit here, but it has focus. I'm not trying to push for it anymore, but to call it unfocused, or sum it up as randomly gathering players, is a gross miscarachterization and ignores about two thirds of what I proposed.

This thread appears to have taken an intriguing detour with the proposal for a second parallel raid. While that's not really what Gambit's suggestion was about, it is an option. I doubt though that we have a big enough member base in the cabal to get close to 20 people online at the same time that are capable of raiding. Your best shot at that however is to think about doing them back to back, with some players being on both teams using alts as per their individual progress. That's a pretty hard-core thing to do though, and if you want to follow through I would encourage to discuss it separately.

I believe the miscommunication here is about the idea of a fourth raid slot that's on the weekend and Americas-friendly in its time. And to establish that, opening sign-ups further isn't the solution. Even with a hypothetic demand for 20 raid slots at 19 UTC, we can't translate that into 10 slots at 19 and another 10 at 21. It might be that a Doodle could help with that though, to figure out who would be willing to raid when and how many in total you'd be getting for hypothetic time slots.

I think we should wait a bit more so our NA team grow. I created this topic mostly to help and encourage people who wanted another raid on weekends, and since last raid we just needed 1 pug (and only because 1 cabal member couldnt come) I thought we had enough people. After reading some posts here I rethinked and prefer to wait a bit more to mature our team. But theres no reason to argue about it, because I know that very soon we will have a complete NA team raiding 2 times a week.