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Friday, February 15, 2008
Guilds and summer holidays
I spent a day in Paris for work, and picked up a new French MMO print magazine at the newsstand there to read in the train: GameGeek. Some news about MMOs in general, but most of the magazine was covering World of Warcraft. There was one interesting article describing the history of one guild from early 2005 (when WoW came out in Europe) to now. And prominently in that guild history figures the problem of summer holidays.
People in Europe get a lot more holidays than Americans, and thus many spend 3 weeks or more in summer on the beach or traveling. France is practically shut down during the month of August. Of course raid attendance during that time on European servers suffers mightily. And many an European guild split up during those summer holidays, because some people wanted to continue raiding and rather joined up with other people spending the summer holidays on the computer and not with their previous guild mates tanning on some beach in Spain.
The story is only interesting because I've heard that story several times from various people on various European servers, especially French and German ones, but very rarely from people playing on American servers. Continent-specific guild drama, triggered by different public opinions on work-life balance. Funny.
- posted by Tobold @ 3:20 PM Permanent Link
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It's funny because my guild got more raiding done in the summer because all the college kids had more time to raid regularly.
Foton at afkgamer just wrote about something similar at his guild during the Christmas holidays.
For us old folks holidays are times of obligation and business. I guess the college kids just finished their finals and don't have much to do. You know when I was that age I thought I was busy with family stuff and finding part time work for 2-3 weeks.
For us old folks holidays are times of obligation and business. I guess the college kids just finished their finals and don't have much to do. You know when I was that age I thought I was busy with family stuff and finding part time work for 2-3 weeks.
# posted by 
: 15/2/08 17:08
: 15/2/08 17:08
I don't think it's a different 'public' opinion on work-life balance. The vast majority of americans would love to have as much vacation time as europeans get, but our capitalist overlords won't allow it, and any attempt to pass legislation to that effect would be shut down by corporate interests.
Maybe someday people will realize that having a well rested and happy workforce is not going to cripple the U.S. economy. Sigh.
I won't even bring up the fact that the 21st century workplace rarely even requires a 40 hour work week. I spend half my day screwing around on the internet and still get all my work done.
Maybe someday people will realize that having a well rested and happy workforce is not going to cripple the U.S. economy. Sigh.
I won't even bring up the fact that the 21st century workplace rarely even requires a 40 hour work week. I spend half my day screwing around on the internet and still get all my work done.
# posted by : 15/2/08 17:38
: 15/2/08 17:38
"I won't even bring up the fact that the 21st century workplace rarely even requires a 40 hour work week. I spend half my day screwing around on the internet and still get all my work done."
Hold this fact away from your boss at all costs. If he notices, he will in an instant begin to give you enough additional work to cover your 40 hours.
On topic:
I play on a german server, so I'm quite familiar with the problem. But I never heard of someone change guild because of that. There are usually some guilds where most of the people choose to raid and the missing people get temporally replaced by desperate people who's raid majority is in vacation. And after one month everything returns to normal.
Hold this fact away from your boss at all costs. If he notices, he will in an instant begin to give you enough additional work to cover your 40 hours.
On topic:
I play on a german server, so I'm quite familiar with the problem. But I never heard of someone change guild because of that. There are usually some guilds where most of the people choose to raid and the missing people get temporally replaced by desperate people who's raid majority is in vacation. And after one month everything returns to normal.
# posted by : 15/2/08 22:32
: 15/2/08 22:32
I think a lot of American guilds experience more drama during the time period between Thanksgiving and Christmas, because you get a lot of people traveling and spending time with family at that time. I don't think many guilds are necessarily aware of this though. But it seems like clockwork, every time December rolls around in my guild we have a little bit of a shakeup, and that's what I blame it on.
Our guild did the reverse - we slowed down and eventually broke up when school got started. There's just more time to raid over here in the summer time, particularly for people still going to school.
# posted by : 16/2/08 00:56
: 16/2/08 00:56
We also have the opposit winter effect. The population increases dramatically when the weather goes nasty and the daylight last less than 6 hours per day.
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# posted by : 18/2/08 10:59
: 18/2/08 10:59<< Home
