reliable advance notice on server events, please?

Zells

I run events for a guild, and the lack of advance notice on server events is extremely frustrating. I would like to be able to post a calendar of the upcoming month's guild events, and I'd like to be able to link our events to anything happening on the server side - i.e., if there's an Orisinium event, I'd like the event leaders to know when it is, preferably the month before, so that Orsinium activities can be included in the calendar that week, and so we can promote holiday/event-related guild events during that time frame. Etc. In order to do that properly, we need advance notice, but we usually don't get any.

The last event (the Orisinium event) wasn't even announced via a news/event article; it was included as info in the Crown store offerings for the month. That's... kinda BS, y'all.

The lack of lead time on the server events means the community as a whole can't effectively promote or organize participation in them. Isn't that what you want?

Dusk_Coven

Zells wrote: »

The last event (the Orisinium event) wasn't even announced via a news/event article; it was included as info in the Crown store offerings for the month. That's... kinda BS, y'all.

All events were in Announcement posts days before it started. https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/56741
As well as in the Crown Store Showcase. https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/56715
Bookmark the announcements page.
And because of the indrik feathers you know there will be an event every month.

Grimm13

Dusk_Coven wrote: »

Zells wrote: »

The last event (the Orisinium event) wasn't even announced via a news/event article; it was included as info in the Crown store offerings for the month. That's... kinda BS, y'all.

All events were in Announcement posts days before it started. https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/56741
As well as in the Crown Store Showcase. https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/56715
Bookmark the announcements page.
And because of the indrik feathers you know there will be an event every month.

I believe the OP wants more notice before. Such as 3 months out for events. You bet ZOS knows what events will be during the year.

Zells

Grimm13 wrote: »

Dusk_Coven wrote: »

Zells wrote: »

The last event (the Orisinium event) wasn't even announced via a news/event article; it was included as info in the Crown store offerings for the month. That's... kinda BS, y'all.

All events were in Announcement posts days before it started. https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/56741
As well as in the Crown Store Showcase. https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/56715
Bookmark the announcements page.
And because of the indrik feathers you know there will be an event every month.

I believe the OP wants more notice before. Such as 3 months out for events. You bet ZOS knows what events will be during the year.

Yes, more notice. And while I missed the Orisinium event news announcement when it did post, the first notice was through the Crown showcase, which was frustrating.

Three months would be fantastic, and we know ZOS schedules in quarters, so it should be do-able. But even 3 weeks would help us plan and set up event participation in advance.

And yeah, because of the Indrik feathers there will be an event almost every month... _and that's exactly why I believe we should be able to know the schedule in advance_. ZOS has made the events a major part of ESO game-play. During the week the Impressario is live, guild events can go flat b/c everyone is farming berries and feathers instead - it's a week to 10 days we're losing each month with almost no advance notice. Let us work with that instead of fighting it. Give us the exact dates of the event the month prior, and the guilds will help funnel people to them.

Square252

Theres this one i found a while ago:
NA:
http://benevolentbowd.ca/calendar/calendar-na-atlantic/
EU:
http://benevolentbowd.ca/calendar/calendar-eu/

afaik all recent downtimes were on it. It's unofficial, so everything on it has to be announced first, but it gets updated pretty quick.

Zells

Square252 wrote: »

Theres this one i found a while ago:
NA:
http://benevolentbowd.ca/calendar/calendar-na-atlantic/
EU:
http://benevolentbowd.ca/calendar/calendar-eu/

afaik all recent downtimes were on it. It's unofficial, so everything on it has to be announced first, but it gets updated pretty quick.

Those are great, and thanks for linking them. Also a huge shout-out to benevolentbowd for posting them and keeping them current.

But the advance-notice info in that calendar is based on what it was last year, which I already have. ZOS has been changing the event schedule year to year, so while it's a likely guess, we can't count on the dates or even the event they'll be featuring. I've built calendars around last year's line-up and had to scrap them... that's why I'm asking for ZOS to give us the upcoming event info directly, and in advance.

Danikat

Great example of this: there's a free trial event starting tomorrow, which was announced today. https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/56885

This is exactly the kind of thing where ZOS as well as players could benefit from giving us more notice so we can plan for it, so existing players can encourage their friends to try the game and make sure they'll be online at the same time to help them, and so guilds (or individuals) can be on hand to welcome new players and answer their questions. (And equally so those who don't want to deal with lots of very new and possibly temporary players can avoid those zones so both they and the newbies have a better experience.)

All of the above would increase the possibility of people trying the game for the first time having a good experience and wanting to buy it, but since we're left with very little time to plan (and quite likely other plans already in place) it's a lot harder for any of us to contribute.

Zells

Danikat wrote: »

Great example of this: there's a free trial event starting tomorrow, which was announced today. https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/56885

This is exactly the kind of thing where ZOS as well as players could benefit from giving us more notice so we can plan for it, so existing players can encourage their friends to try the game and make sure they'll be online at the same time to help them, and so guilds (or individuals) can be on hand to welcome new players and answer their questions. (And equally so those who don't want to deal with lots of very new and possibly temporary players can avoid those zones so both they and the newbies have a better experience.)

All of the above would increase the possibility of people trying the game for the first time having a good experience and wanting to buy it, but since we're left with very little time to plan (and quite likely other plans already in place) it's a lot harder for any of us to contribute.

Yes, @Danikat - that IS exactly what I mean, and thank you for the great examples of Things We Coulda Done If We'd Known.

C'mon, ZOS, help us help you. We love this game; we want to promote the events you're putting time and money into creating. Give us the time to do that.

Dusk_Coven

Danikat wrote: »

Great example of this: there's a free trial event starting tomorrow, which was announced today. https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/56885

Maybe they don't want to give botters time to pre-plan.

Same with free ESO+ trial -- if people can plan ahead they don't need to sub for the crafting bag, which is what most people probably sub for. As it is, people already can predict it fairly accurately and probably plan ahead so they don't have to sub at all. They just use the week to do all their Surveys.

In any case, free trials are different from events. Days into an event, some people are still totally clueless about what's going on and how to participate.

bmnoble

Can't remember how many times I had to tell people about the XP buff items eg the Cup of Mead/Pie/Cake during some of the other events.

They really do need to improve the advertising for some of the events, a lot of people never open the crown store and ignore the UI messages once a day from the crown store.

A lot of players never visit the forums or follow the game on the various social media sites they advertise this stuff on.

Would it be so hard to send an in game mail to every account explaining the event, I know most of us will delete it since we know about the events but plenty of new players or returning players are always turning up and are out of the loop during a lot of these events.