I hate to dig up prior posts.. heaven help me if people hold me accountable for the rubbish I say.. but weren't you just telling us that EM events should be run outside of prime-time hours to service a minority of off-shore players who played irregular hours?
Probably I lack the gift of being able to explain my thinking...
I will try to explain it again, hopefully trying to be able to make myself better understood this time.
# 1
Events should be as participated as possible given the shard population.
I go as far as saying that if an Event is not widely participated, given that shard overall population, then the moderators for that Event organization should be penalized, even removed if several Events are not widely participated.
Participation shows to me that the Event was a success, scarce players participation shows the Event was not organized well, whatever the reasons, and therefore something should be done about it.
Now, if # 1 is the goal (ample participation to Events), since players play at different times and have different schedules, this means that Events should never EVER be a one shot thing of an hour or 2.
They should always span on several days, possibly even across at least one weekend, and at various times of the day so to ensure participation from players of different time zones or different gaming schedules. I mean for the
same one Event, not different ones....
And the success of the Event should be totalled at the end of it, after it has been run for several days, at varioud times and as many players as possible have been able to attend it, if they wished so.
Of course, it is possible that moderators do not have all the time that would be needed to have the same one Event span over several days, including at least a weekend, at different time of the day to facilitate players participation.
This means, that having 1 or 2 moderators per shard is not enough. We need "teams" of moderators for each shard so to ensure that the same one Event can effectively be run over multiple days at various times of the day, including at least 1 weekend, by the various moderators for that shard taking "shifts" for the playing of the Event over all those days and times.
So, when I mentioned having moderators play the Event at off hours, I meant the
same one Event that
also plays at prime hours only, catering to different players having different schedules.
If the Event is the same, that at one time we have 3 people participating and at another time we have 50, it matters nothing since the overall participation for THAT given Event is still the total of the 53 players attending, at different times, that given Event.
I hope this one time I was more clear about my opinion on this issue.