We know this is always a contentious point and we will never please everybody with this but we just want to be really clear and open with everyone about how the seating plan works.
The seating picker is a guide for you to pick preferred seating at the event, it helps to give us an idea on who wants to sit where and in which groups.
If you would like people to move around you to accommodate group members, in the first instance please try to sort things amongst yourselves. The seating picker lets you select other participants and message them through the forum PM system.
"Defragging"
As the event nears capacity, the number of moves starts to become difficult so we may 'defrag' the seating plan to close up any gaps and move people to accommodate as many people as possible. That may mean you don't end up in the original seat you picked. Obviously this is where people feel the process can be unfair to those who booked and sat themselves earlier on, but at the same time we want to do everything we can to help people sit with their friends and team members to make the event enjoyable for everyone.
We try to do all of the room defrags at the same time to help improve how the process is communicated to everyone. We will alert everyone to the start of this process via the forums, social media and an email out to everyone.
We use a number of factors to plan the defrag. The main one is the clan tag which allows us to see who is in the same group, please make sure everyone you want to sit with has the same tag set. For competitive teams, we also use the tournament system, so please ensure you've signed up to your tournament too.
From that point, the detailed discussion around timescales, drafts etc will be posted on the forums, so please continue to check back for updates and any actions that may required.
We do have other options we can consider, for example not having a seating picker at all and just mass seating everyone at a particular time before the event, but this makes a huge amount of work for our volunteer team. Similarly we could say that the seating picker is final and we won't intervene, but that would mean people choose not to attend if they cant sit with friends/teams.
Hope that clarifies how everything works!
