Hello everyone !
On Hydraxian Waterlords, I’m Artemis, but some know me as Diana or Haynar. I’ve been thinking about what the challenges in BC will be early on, how pugging is a nightmare when you’re not already in a stable pug community, as well as the link between both and what we could do to improve the sense of community on our server.
Discussing this topic with friends led me to ask Quasar and Ruvak for help to develop this app : (Just add this code on imgur after standard url : /a/XMBEMIC )
I’m the kind of lazy developer who’s like “Hey let’s spend hundreds of hours coding an app so we don’t have to do a task for half an hour a week \o/”.
By the way, this is not a sales pitch. App is free (also free of ads) and the raid leaders I already talked to about it (as well as my other friends) are all going to use it anyway.
It’s going to be a huge plus to our quality of life on the server, and I’ll try to explain why in this post.
I’m just sharing it with everyone because I thought it could be useful to you all. If you don’t want to, don’t use it, simple as that 
it’s an app I mainly developed for myself because I don’t like using discord bots to do what a real app should do, and I didn’t like the other existing tools.
Plus, I can add features to this tool whenever I want, so if enough people on the server want something more out of it, if I can do it, I will.
I’ll try to make the explanations short and simple (about why it will be useful) but those who know me also know that a post of mine that isn’t 20 pages long is a fake. I’ll do my best though to keep it as short as possible though.
*Here’s how I realized this is something that will be useful to our server : *
About 6 months after my previous guild, I came back to the game and leveled up my warrior to 60. I just wanted to get some gear for BC, maybe run Naxx. So I asked around “who’s running pugs I could join”.
The answer was like “almost everyone has MC raids open to outsiders” or “there are actually many pug raids you can join”. I thought “Oh, great, it’s going to be easy then”.
… Naxx came out, and pugging on a low-geared character became a nightmare. I joined like 10 to 15 discord servers to track who was doing what, but there wasn’t always a fixed schedule as all guilds were focusing on Naxx, more or less completely abandoning their pug days in favor of more Naxx raiding days.
Of course, the rest of the time, everything is fine. Pug communities or Guilds running pugs usually are running them on a fixed schedule. Though during “this kind of times” it gets chaotic. You have to keep asking everyone every week what they are doing, track who’s doing what, and so on, if you want to setup pug raids.
*I’m quite sure TBC will have the same issue, and here is why : *
- We won’t all be leveling up at the same speed.
- Even when our roster is full and max level, and we regularly run 25-men raids, you can’t just split that in half to run Karazhan since it’s a 10-men raid. You’ll always have around 5 players looking for a Karazhan every week at least.
- Many players will have alts that will also want to run Karazhan.
- Nothing is ever as easy as it looks like when you’re managing communities. Just because two guilds have exactly 25 players in their roster doesn’t mean that they will both have exactly 5 extras that can raid together every week.
- I could add a much longer list, but this post is long enough and you get the idea.
Conclusion ?
=> Having a calendar for the whole server, one centralized place showing who’s organizing raids and needing players will just make our quality of life ten times easier.
We won’t have to be on every guild’s discord to keep track of who’s doing what : you can open the web app, register, and subscribe to a raid with a click, then be done with it.
The app also tells you which raid needs what (ranks, healers, etc.) which makes organizing this a bit easier and intuitive. This way we’ll avoid having a 10-men group with 3 tanks and 4 healers while another group cannot go.
It also avoids having to spam LFG or whispering every lvl 70 logged in at the time to ask them “how many lvl 70 are there in your guild ? what are their class and spec ? how about we run Karazhan this day ? Oh you can’t ? Then this other day ?” and so on.
*Extra information : *
This won’t replace the social experience. The app isn’t a blizzard-style matchmaking tool, where you get matched with randoms and never talk to them again.
It’s nothing more than a sane tool to manage a server-wide raiding calendar, that will allow us all to get together, meet new players, and play with our friends more often.
Discord was never meant to be used as a forum or a calendar in the first place. Bots help but having a tool that is actually supposed to work a server-wide custom raiding calendar will always be better.
Now, for those saying “but why would we use this app when there are other similar ones around ?” well it’s like saying “what’s the point of a new car that suits exactly my needs, can run without gas or electricity, looks good, and is free, when other cars already exist ?”.
Obviously, if it suits our needs more than other apps do, people will use it, because that’s just how it works.
I’m just sharing with everyone here a tool that I developped for myself but also think will help us play together and improve our sense of community on the server.
I just realized over the years how much more important good social interactions were compared to “clearing raids in a record speed” with people that are not interested in the social aspect of the game.
Raiding with many different people early in TBC will help communities build themselves, grow, and thrive, allowing us to spend time with like-minded people instead of being forced to play with people we don’t appreciate.
I think this is the most important thing in order to enjoy our gaming experience.
If you want an early access to the web app when it’s officially online or if you just want to know more about it, you can join my discord :
/hZYyRr9C
Hugs to you all, I wish you all a lot of fun in The Burning Crusade 