Raid Etiquette

Raiding is a feat of coordination. You and eleven (or sometimes 23) other people are getting together to complete monumental tasks that take a lot of working together and relying on one another to accomplish. It can be difficult to get this many people together and coordinated, but it's exhilarating when it works. It's like a sport, where all the members have their thing to do and do that for the team to the best of their ability. With a little effort from each teammate, everything can work very smoothly. However, when people aren't putting in any effort to make things work, then things fall apart and we end up wasting 11 (or 23) other people's time.

Sign up. It is much easier to get a raid together when we get enough people signed up. It wastes a whole lot less of our precious time together if we don't have to be searching for people in order to be able to go.

Show up. A little early, please. When you sign up, you are saying, “I will go if you will have me.” When your raid leader confirms you, then it's like shaking hands and saying we have a deal. For raid leaders: confirm people a couple days in advance if you have that option. Sometimes this is simply not possible due to low sign-ups, but confirming people lets them know what they're doing so they can plan ahead.

Be ready.

• Familiarize yourself with the encounter. If you've never been to an instance before, then read up on it. Ask your fellows questions beforehand. Ask the leader questions. The raid leader will explain the strategy for the evening, but these instructions will make a lot more sense if you've familiarized yourself with the upcoming raid.

• Have your equipment in good order. Make sure everything is repaired and that you are bringing the right weapons with the right damage type(s). Make sure you are traited properly.

• Bring plenty of consumables. This includes, but is not limited to, hope tokens, scrolls, pots (morale, poison, and status remedies), stat food, restorative food, and resistance soups.

• Over the long term, optimize your character. This means raising your virtues, earning all your class traits, finding that super cool gear you always wanted. It means figuring out what your role is in raids (often quite different from solo or small fellowship, and even more fine-tuned than full fellowship instances), and optimizing your ability to do that. If you're not a dps class, then don't spec for dps. Figure out what you are most needed for, and be able to deliver.

Be available. Don't be doing something else beforehand that has any chance of running over time. When your raid leader is starting to coordinate everyone, be amenable.

Be present and attentive. Don't be chatting in other channels, don't be in other windows or watching television or chatting on the phone. Do be in the raid channel and voice program (if specified). Do have your 'say' chat visible also, because that's where you get to see what actions the bad guys are announcing that they are doing. Do listen to the strat talk and don't be afraid to be involved. It's best that everyone be on the same page about what's going on.

Don't be distracting to others. Music is nice, but not when raid instructions are being delivered. Jokes and banter are fun, but too much of that stuff interferes with communication. Off-topic conversations signal that you enjoy your company, which is absolutely terrific, but it also signals to the raid leader that you are not taking this seriously, which can be dismaying for those involved in coordinating the event you are disrupting.

Try to keep your AFKing to the designated break times. Everyone needs a break from time to time. If everyone takes a break at a different time, this becomes counter-productive. For example, in a 12-man raid, if each person takes one 5-minute break, that's an hour of down time. However, if we are a little bit coordinated about our break time and all take our breaks at the same time, then that's only 5 minutes of down time – a savings of 55 minutes! Let your leader signal when a break time will occur.

Don't hog the air waves. Speak up when it's critical and shush otherwise. Keep your broadcasts short and to the point – especially during boss fights. Sometimes several critical things are happening simultaneously that your teammates need to know about, so make sure you are letting others be heard. Use push-to-talk so that your background noise doesn't trigger at the wrong time. If you're using a mic in sync with speakers, then turn your game sounds down or off so that they don't drown you out when you are telling us important stuff. Plus, many people turn their player voice volume way up so that they can hear everything. Hearing your battle-sounds through your mic at a max-cranked volume can be painful.

My computer killed me

Okay, so it didn't really kill 'me', but it is responsible for the first and only death of my warden character on LotRO. I had taken her (level 36 at the time) to do an epic escort quest to save Dori from being held captive in an enemy stronghold. In the middle of this, my computer locked up, but the game kept playing from the server's side and my character, I think (I couldn't see anything happening) stood there and did absolutely nothing while the bad guys surrounding her sliced, hacked and stabbed her to death with their almost trivially weak little axes.

The interesting thing about this is that when I restored my computer to function and logged back into that character, I saw this:

1. Character selection screen (posted location: Nan Amlug West)
2. Loading screen
3. My warden, standing in the stronghold by herself. Time elapsed: maybe one second
4. Another loading screen
5. My warden, standing in a rez circle (posted location: Kingsfell)

The interesting thing is, the game spew said that Dori had been defeated, and that I had succumbed to my wounds, but it didn't say I had been defeated. It also did not give me the standard 'defeat tooltip' that every character sees upon their first death.

So perhaps my character did NOT die. I am conflicted about whether I can still say I have never killed my character, since I technically didn't, and the game may also not think so either, given the weird behaviour exhibited. It's really tough to say. I did wake up in a rez circle. I did not see my warden die. I did 'succumb to my wounds'. I did not get incapacitated.