[Gerbie2]

I don't agree that these alerts make the game more casual friendly. These alerts are a solution for people who are willing and able to alter their real life plans based on these alerts. A casual player who prefers to sleep at night wouldn't have any use for alerts.
The consequences of the alterts could be quite dramatic, because it enables people to do just as well while spending less time online, making it much less of a social game. Why sit online on IRC when you get notified of incomming? The question that raises then is: where is all the defence going to come from? Maybe people can buy ingame alerts to send to their galmates and allies? Perhaps an interesting game concept, but it would radically change the game as it is now. It wouldn't be the game I liked to play for years any more.