Lead the Way, Part I
Grouping is often difficult enough during off-peak hours, and it's even harder when you're half a world away. Here are some tips for grouping in the off-peak hours when most of your favorite mates are in their racks.
Place a request on the world channels. This is often the easiest way to get into a group. By putting a simple call out on the lowest level world channel you maximize your coverage. If it is a game like Everquest 2, where you can mentor lower level characters, be prepared to do so. The great thing about mentoring is, depending on the level gap, you will be able to gain a significant amount of achievement XP while maximizing your ability to play in zones you have outgrown. In addition you also will be helping out low level players who will look to group with you later since they know you'll be online when they are and are willing to help them out. They will eventually reach your level or higher, since they probably have more time than you do, and will want to group with you more often. As you group with people, make sure you put them on your friends list. Most games will give you notifications as to which of your "friends" are online. This will allow you to expand your contacts online and your player pool to group with when you do find time. Also some games allow you to attach notes to the name. Use this space to add where you went and what date. Most players like me often group with people where months pass between groups, so they might not remember. But by giving them a recap of the group you will jumpstart their memory and they will probably want to group again.
The Looking for Group (LFG) window is another place to look for groups. Some games, like DDO: Stormreach, have special windows that are used to find groups. These are helpful tools but buyers beware, not all games that have them use them. Everquest 2 is one of those. The window that was implemented a little over nine months ago has yet to become used widely by the community. Stormreach on the other hand relies heavily on the LFG window due to the zone limiting chat channels. Groups are not able to hold "open calls" that are server-wide, and so are pressed to use the LFG window for additional support.
Using the guild to your advantage is another option for the time pressed gamer. There are two main reasons why players join a guild: community and status items. The first is the obvious reason why this can help you. By joining a guild you have an available pool of players that you eventually will know quite well. You chat together, group together and eventually become buddies with each other. However, if you are half a world away, as military players often find themselves, the availability of an off hours pool is rather hard to come by. There are some guilds that are designed for the "odd hours" crowd, but they are few and far between. On most U.S. servers, the peak times are from 7pm to 2am EST, so if you're a soldier in Germany where the time is +1 GMT you are seven hours ahead of the eastern seaboard. (Germany is six hours ahead, or GMT +1) You're looking at a duty day ending at 5pm (Berlin local) it is 11am EST in New York, not many people are on during this time. Even most of the 3rd shift workers, like me, are already heading to bed. The good thing about "odd hours" guilds is that they have members, however limited, usually on at anytime. Granted you may see only two or three members on at a given time during your play period, but this a good time to show leadership and lead a group through a group zone that is well known for needing one. Playing up the possibility to do more time consuming and group oriented zone will increase the possibility of players showing in the off hours. This also shows the leadership that you are there as a necessary and valued member of the guild.
Next time in "Gaming Behind Enemy Lines": We continue our look into picking up off-hours game time by going our own way and looking at how solo content can help improve your level and your skills in combat.