Or so Kottke calls this query: What do you do with the kids when mommy and daddy need to meet up with their WoW guild to do raids?
Well, now months later I’m finally level 60 and my husband and I are both in the same guild. I’ll be starting my raids with them this week actually. The problem? We have two small children who need to eat dinner and raids start at 5pm. Ack! How are we going to make dinner?! There are no problems with the kids running around playing and such while we raid. They’re already used to that, they play in the computer room and we can get them things that they need (you know, cups of juice, snacks, what have you) when we have breaks. Before it was easy because if I was running an instance and in the middle of combat my husband might be in a a space between pulls where he could safely go afk for 30 seconds you know. But now we’ll be on the same schedule essentially. We both play support classes too (he’s a holy priest, I’m a resto druid) so the guild ideally would want us to both be in a forty man raid. It’s not like we can easily switch off any raid nights other than say, ZG and AQ20 runs.
It’s more of a logistics problem than a real stressor. It’s just that it hadn’t really occured to me when I joined his guild that eventually we’d both be raiding on the same nights and thus on the same schedule game-wise. For tonight, since dinner is already thawed out, I’m just planning on eating with the kids at 4pm (about two hours earlier than our normal dinnertime) and letting them snack when they get hungry later one. We’ll make a plate for my husband (who doesn’t usually get home from work until just about invite time) to heat up and that will take care of tonight. But what about the rest of the week? The rest of the time I’m raiding. I suspect that it will be me who shows up to fewer raids, because I’m the mama after all and that’s who the kids often want. Ack, who’d of thunk that the social problems of parenthood in America would follow me into Azeroth 😮
I’d try and figure out how sympathetic I am based how seriously I think the writer is actually taking the problem.
This is something that Margie and I had to manage with Katherine more than once. And, y’know, you just suck it up (and always remember where the bottom line priority is — hint, it’s not with the Guild/SG/TF). There are things you can do to work around it, as the writer notes. But things will happen, and you need to be able to hop away from the keyboard to deal with everything from unplanned boo-boos to scheduled night-night time. And if what you’re doing and planning regularly interferes with your home life with them — maybe some reevaluation of the gaming schedule is in order.
On the other hand, I think it’s perfectly fine to split the “who deals with the kids tonight” duties, regardless of what the kids “want” — that’s something they have to suck up. 🙂
I’ve been a single parent for the whole of my time spent on WoW, and the same goes for LotRO, obviously. My reaction to that post is different, I think, due to that perspective, and can be summed up fairly well as: “Why are you raiding with a guild that needs to you be on during prime family time?”
If I’m online at ALL between 5pm and 7pm (Kaylee’s bedtime), it’s to move my character from Point-A to Point-whereever-I-need-to-be-later, and even then it’s only if Kaylee is eating and getting in her Dora-Explorer fix. The guild(s) knows I’m 85% afk during that time, if they see me at all, and understand that I will turn down party invites, raid invites, and probably won’t see or be able to respond to even (or especially) idle chitchat.
I play after she goes to bed, and have frequently asked folks not to holler in Ventrilo during the nighttime groups, because it can wake up my daughter. I’ve gone so far as to mute one guy in Vent who just couldn’t learn to talk quietly.
I don’t sign up for Raids I can’t make, and make it clear that 7pm Mountain is the absolutely earliest anyone will see me.
In short, I make the game fit my life. Not the other way around.
Well said. As is the rest.
I agree. Except for the ONE evening a week that my friends and I (and our wives) have designated “Game night,” I don’t touch the computer after work until after my wife is asleep. Two of my friends have small children and are constantly going AFK suddenly and with little explanation. And that’s just on one night a week. I couldn’t fathom putting my GAMING desires over my children’s need for attention multiple days every week. If they were teenagers, maybe you could justify it, but small children? Jeez, lady.
I went over to the thread and she says snippily, (paraphrase)”I thought others could relate and offer advice.” Yeah, I can relate. Being a parent is hard. Once you choose to have another person to take care of for 18 years, you don’t always get to do everything you want.
Very true.
I think it’s quite possible to reach a reasonable balance — find groups/clans/kinships/whatever that operate at other times, trade off duties, etc. And from a humorous standpoint, it’s also fine to ruefully joke about it (“*sigh* … if only I could train the kids to feed themselves, wash themselves, and maybe take care of the laundry while I’m grinding up to 40. And … hey, I could give them my login and they could sign into work for me …”)
But if someone is *seriously* ruing having to take care of the kids when there’s a raid schedule to meet … that takes a pretty delicate touch to not come across as … kind of goofy.
Due to the kids and sharing the computer with my wife’s business/office I can’t get on to play until after 10pm at night, later when my wife works late (she’s an artist, so whenever inspiration strikes . . . .). Even with a really active SG I had to do something to maximize my gameplay: I organized my own events.
*gasp* I know, unheard of! And you know what? If you schedule it, they will come! There are soooo many people in the on-line community that you can find folks to play at nearly any time. And I’ve met a lot of really nice Australians!
Some people are less tempermentally (or organizationally) suited to doing that than others. Other games (WOW?) seem to be focused more on groups/clans that aren’t as easy to organize around (in the case of the OP here) — which means it’s important to look for a group that isn’t scheduling on top of other stuff you need to do.
Looked at another way, I’m sure there are WOW groups that are regularly scheduling raids during my office hours. I don’t join them because, well, I have an obligation to be working at the office, rather than playing WOW. Dealing with the kids is more “flexible” but is an even higher obligation.