How do you make time for raiding ?

[Dotsson]

I have a son thats 4 years old. Also have a new girlfriend which isn’t the son’s mother. So I always have to prioritise my son before gaming. But this is how I manage it,
I work 7-16 mon-fri. I pick son up at work around 17 and g home to make dinner etc. At 19:30 approx its bedtime for my son, so around 20:30 I can log in. Im in a guild that raids 3 days/week 22:00-01:00, Iv’e told them that du to my RL I might only be able to raid 1-2 days/week in worst case scenario. And they accepted that.
When its not raid time I choose to spent time with gf, watching movies etc. A huge plus for me is that she started playing aswell after we meet, so she is in a learning stage which is rly fun. She logs on even when im not playing so it’s not only because of me :P
But no matter how fun raiding is, you always have to prioritise your real life situation and value the important parts of it. Its mainly the late nights that’s killing me slowly :P In bed around 01:30 and up 05:30 isnt that fun when you went over 30 years line ^^

[Deleted]

But no matter how fun raiding is, you always have to prioritise your real life situation and value the important parts of it. Its mainly the late nights that’s killing me slowly :P In bed around 01:30 and up 05:30 isnt that fun when you went over 30 years line ^^

So recognizable, colleagues asking why i look so wrecked and if i had too much alcohol ("nahh just the neighbours making noise at night" )

[Poppincaps]

I'm a high school student, so it's easier to set a time where I can just sit around and play, but it does kinda suck when I get called to hang out with friends and I have to stay in. For me personally, Sunday and Monday are the perfect days to raid for me, because I generally don't go out on those days. Find what days are good for you and see if you can create/find a team that suits your time frame.

[vindicatorx]

I don't I stopped raiding officially on the first tier of CATA I don't have the time to fully raid and I just do lfr.

[Aoyi]

I raid from 9:00pm-12:00am, two days a week. This gives me plenty of time to do what I need during the day and spend time with my wife before sitting down to raid. We don't have children yet, so I have a bit more flexibility than some others. It just comes down to setting a schedule and sticking to it. I've let my guildies know what days I am and am not available. Weekends are always left free to spend time with my wife/family.

[ihatepeople]

It's all about time management and finding a guild that suits your schedule/lifestyle. Finding a casual-semi hardcore guild is usually easier IMO because the majority of people who play this game don't raid competitively or kill heroic content while it's current. If you can't seem to find a guild that suits your schedule, then you probably aren't using all of the resources available to people that are guild searching. I've been raiding since Vanilla in every variation fo the spectrum (casual, semi-hardcore, hardcore). I've never been in a bleeding edge guild but this guild I'm in currently as well as my former guild were/are pretty competitive. I like killing things when they are current so I am in a guild that pushes progression but not above outside committments (most of the people in our guild are older and have families etc.).

My guild raids 5 days a week for 4hrs a night. We start pretty late so that gives everyone time to do what they need to do. Our officers/GM are also very mature about absences, if you have something come up then they don't mind too much about missing raids. We also have Fridays and Saturdays off. To some it sounds like a job, but we kill things reasonably quick and after that is farm time when we only raid 1-2 days a week. This first tier in MOP sucks though because there are too many (IMO) damn bosses.

TLDR....Figure out what extra time you have to work with and find a guild based on that. There IS a guild out there for you.

[fangless]

Have a 9-5 M-F job and a wife that lets me have my hobby for 3 nights a week.

Easy peasy.

[Auloria]

I found a guild that had raid nights that lined up with my boyfriend's band practice nights. I found out his guitarist also plays wow and joined his guild for mop, but that doesn't work out as well because now I'm raiding when they don't have practice. :-P They only raid 2-3 nights a week though, and have strict start and stop times, so it's not so bad.

[wildemu]

i just sign up for openraid.us stuff so i can raid whenever i want. pvp too.

I'm done with organized times and the tues-thurs crap, that fits a certain rigidity i can't follow.

[Astrobandaid]

get home from class get my bottle of rum and coke and sit down for raid time. tuesday - monday. my girlfriend understands what I do so she isn't a problem when it comes to raiding.

[Darkfrosty]

I just recently decided to stop playing because of this reason. Working a full time job then coming home to raid didnt leave much time for anything else at night and I started to dislike raiding because of this. Its not impossible by any means but it doesn't leave much room for anything else. I decided spending time with my g/f and enjoying other games that I can pick up and put down at any point throughout the night was a better choice especially after raiding through every expansion come to realize its really just the same thing over and over again.

[Faroth]

Our raid group has never been concerned with finishing a raid with no buff or doing hard modes, so that has offered a much more relaxed raid environment. Nobody stresses over loot, we don't have raid drama like some raids. In fact, as raid leader I've had to drop the hammer and force a decision because loot that dropped was up in the air while two members said "No, you take it, it's a sidegrade for me." "No, it's a sidegrade for me and your spec benefits more" until I finally just had to roll it off and hand it to someone. Hahaha!

That said:

I and one or two others raided twice a week into early hours (dang West coast raids) in BC. My current group formed in Wrath.

We raided twice a week in Wrath; a shorter 2-3 hour raid on Thur and 4 hours on Saturday due to two people's work schedule. In Cataclysm we dropped to one night a week; 4 hours on Saturday.

Of my group:
All but one of us is employed full time and a few are getting additional education/degree/certification in their fields on top of their jobs.

1 tank is married with 4 children; it was just something he scheduled that he was doing on Saturday night. Sometimes we had to break while kids were going crazy or someone got hurt, so we'd just chat on vent or call an official break for drinks, bio etc while he took care of it.

One healer is single, but has a government job that sometimes took him not out of town, but out of country. We sometimes had to cancel if he was unexpectedly delayed on a flight or called to leave unexpectedly. Btw, no, his job isn't all that exciting despite the world travel and rushing off to who knows where.

One healer was engaged, now married, but he got a total pass because his finace, now wife, plays WoW too.

One of our DPS is married and going to school for updated certifications in his field.

The rest of our raid is single folks of various ages, but that didn't mean they were chained to WoW.

The biggest flexibility our raid group had was the collective group. Half of us know each other IRL and the other half somewhat know each other IRL with a couple of exceptions. We all agree that raid rule #1 is: Real life comes first. The nine of us put the RL events of one player above our online time.

If someone had a wedding, a birthday party, a friend is in town, or just didn't feel well we just asked for notice as soon as possible. If we could rotate positions with alts and/or subs we would raid. If we couldn't, everyone enjoyed a night off to do something else on a Saturday night. It went a long way helping morale and preventing burn out to have those breaks and nights off.

Did our progression get delayed? Sure, a little bit. But all in all, in the end ilvl is just a number and heroic gear is just different colored pixels.

As for making the time? One of our group members explains it quite well to his friends and family who aren't up to speed on the social aspect of online gaming with one simple comparison:

It's like being on a bowling team. I get together with 9 other people and do something together. They've committed their time to playing a game with me, just like if we were bowling, and I commit my time to them. If we have to, sure, we cancel, but 4 hours on Saturday is my equivalent to "bowling night."

So, to paraphrase Walter....

"Fuck it, Dude...let's go raidin'."

[Shammyspice]

Not having children to keep track of helps! But 5 nights a week is ridiculous, I don't care how much time you have on your hands! :P
My guild raids 3 nights a week for 3 hours, starting at 8pm...it's late enough of a start time to get home from work & spend some time with the fiancee & ends early enough for me to get a good amount of sleep for work the next day.

I used to raid 5 nights a week, 4 hours a night til 1am...that was when I worked 2nd shift though. Can't really do that anymore, nor do I want to. I like to have time for other things in game other than raiding, such as working on alts or pvp or whatever.

[Deleted]

I just LOVE the freedom you get when you don't have a schedule anymore. The ability to just...DO whatever you want, when you used to being "forced" into raiding for hours.

Now don't get me wrong - raiding in WoW is -the- most fun you can have in gaming. Period. No other game comes even close to it. But after tasting freedom im not sure if i could go back..i quit about 1 year ago and got an offer to join a really good guild with some IRL mates that is pretty casual, but i just couldn't take it, knowing what i'd have to sacrifice.