You and the invite system

This post might seem familiar to those who were here more than a year ago

I'd like to remind everyone about the history and reasoning behind our invite-system, and common misconceptions. Please read it all, as it is very important to us that you do. (Click read more!)

The invite system was created when we started to do Karazhan runs to prevent the drama's other guilds were having (and still are) when it comes to group make up for raids. We didn't want to just invite the first 10 people that signed up - that would be unfair to those slower with signing up. We didn't want to put anyone in a position of 'selecting' raiders because that would be too prone to favouritism. In short, we wanted a fair system that would give everyone an equal chance to go to raids (or as equal as possible, because the raid organisers (us) still have to get a group that *works*), so the KIL (Karazhan Invite List) was developed. Later it evolved into the GZIL, then the NIL and the UIL. It's current incarnation is the ICCIL, the Icecrown Citadel Invite List, also known as the 'Icky'.

In this system, you sign up for the runs you are able to attend, and 24 hours in advance one of the officers (currently Neti) checks our priority-system to see who has gone more often than others, giving the guildies who haven't been for a while priority. I won't go into the exact workings of our priority system here, as there is enough written about that here.

A few common misconceptions about the invite list system:

- People that aren't on the ICCIL yet, aren't allowed to sign up for events. They are, they just don't get first dibs for a spot when there's enough people that *are* on the ICCIL (because being undergeared increases the raid difficulty), or guild friends that meet our gear requirements. It makes organising raids much easier for us if we're aware who is available in advance

- There's 11 sign-ups! I don't need to sign up, I won't get a spot anyway. By not signing up when you see there's already '11 signups', you're turning our fair rotation system into a 'first come, first serve' thing. And that's exactly what we wanted to avoid when we designed this system! So please sign up if you want to go, and let the list take care of deciding who gets to go (well actually Neti does, but he uses the list to do so).

Also, if you really want to go, it always pays off to sign up, even if there are a lot of other sign-ups! Experience has shown that sometimes the line-up for a raid tends to drastically change due to people unexpectedly having to cancel. It's nice to have some backup sign-ups in that case. If you aren't that interested to come, but you want to come to fill the raid if needed, you can always sign up and put into the Comments that you sign up as 'backup'.

- According to the ICCIL I was 100% sure of being in the line-up, but now I'm not. In principle Neti will give spots to the players with the highest invite list priority, there is however one major exception: if it turns out that the line-up according to the ICCIL is in fact too imbalanced to be able to down one or more of the planned bosses, then Neti might adapt the line-up to a more feasible set-up. When this has happened it will always be noted in the line-up post.

- I was in the first run for this instance, and now I'm not in the follow-up run! Especially new guildies seem to think that people who are in the first run of the week automatically are qualified for consecutive runs. They're not, in all cases people higher on the ICCIL will have priority! So this means that if someone who has ICCIL-priority signs up for say Monday and not Wednesday, he will 'bump' another player from the Monday raid, who signed up for both runs and who already played on Wednesday. The reason for this rule is that we have quite a few of players who can't attend all the runs in one week, and this way it is still possible for them to not attend all runs and still be able to play.

Some guildies have noted in the past that it is possible to abuse this rule and for example wait until the guild has cleared almost the whole instance, and then sign up for the last run of that week so they only have to play the 'juicy' end bosses. There's nothing in our sign-up system to prevent this behaviour, and the reason for this is that you're not expected to do so.

Our invite system is meant to distribute raid spots in a 'fair' manner over our guildies, and assumes that all our guildies are True Lemmings, who take into account the interests of our guild as a whole and of their fellow guildies in particular. Trying to abuse our invite system is seen as very unlemminglike behaviour and will result in removal from the guild.

That being said, until now no-one has ever been kicked for abusing the invite system, and we want to keep it that way.

If there's anything regarding all of this that you have questions about/want to discuss please contact me in private (pm via the site, message in WoW or a whisper) and I'll make a list of things to address