Well, we had a couple outstanding challenges lying open this week, but nobody asked for volunteers or tried to negotiate with the team captains to move them to a more favorable slot.
Really, that's what it takes, and it's why I was getting so burned out, just about every day I was passing messages back and forth trying to get the matches in order so they'd be feasible for both teams' schedules. Just letting random challenges sit until game day doesn't get us anywhere. If someone is organizing a match, they need to keep everyone posted with updates, push for volunteers, and communicate with the other team ahead of time. And if I'm not going to do it all the time, then others will need to do the same thing.
I do think we need to put some limits on when we will accept challenges, and publicize them. We do best on the weekends at our usual time slot, and while we do have some people available in the evenings in the US, we won't be able to easily handle some of the 10 vs 10 stuff that's being tossed our way. That will make things a bit easier by cutting down on the amount of negotiation needed.
And I'm going to indulge myself in a little rant here. Dealing with the volunteer situation is really irritating. It sometimes feels like trying to herd cats. We've had people volunteer and then not show. This is why we have alternates, since it's unreasonable to expect real life to take a backseat to a video game, but it seems that when I get a list of volunteers ahead of time, game day will sometimes have a completely different set of people showing up. If you're not sure that you can make it, TELL ME.
Fortunately, we also have a lot of people who didn't volunteer who show up, sometimes at the last minute. But what bothers me is why didn't these people volunteer in the first place? Or at least say they aren't sure they'll show up but they'll try? The whole point of getting a big clan info list together complete with mailing list is to provide advance notice for matches! It doesn't matter if you think you'll always be available, REPLY. Making assumptions about people being there is where we'll hit problems when real life finally does intrude.
For that reason, on the last couple matches and going forward, I've been setting the priority on the rosters to be first those on the volunteer list in ascending order of experience, and only then if there's still room do latecomers get in. If you don't volunteer, even if you have less EXP than someone else on the volunteer list, they get priority simply because they bothered to respond ahead of time and commit to being there. Participation in the clan is more than just showing up five minutes before a match. VOLUNTEER. REPLY.
than it dwindled down to 200 