My previous guild died for me when wotlk came and they decided to use Suicide Kings on loot rolls instead of the basic system we used back in TBC (politeness, roll if you need, pass if someone else needs it more, if there's a dispute, settle it talking in group).

I really dont want to group with people who need a complicated loot system to raid since it means the group just isnt united.

I would argue that it's a matter of the organizational difficulties of 10-man vs. 25-man raiding, rather than personality or "friendship" issues.

Sure, if you have 24 friends that are guaranteed to show up every raid night and are guaranteed a raid slot and only care about downing bosses, you wouldn't need a loot system in a large raid. Few of us (the truly hardcore raiders) are so lucky!

Not to mention that it's much easier to evaluate who should be awarded a piece of gear when there are only 2 or 3 to decide between. Sometimes I curse necklaces, cloaks and rings. Loot would be so much easier otherwise.

Ooh, Backspace, you've hit on a sociological issue I've been pondering over for some time...

Being someone's "friend" means waaaayyyy different things to different people. Standards run from incredibly high (I'd trust you to put a loaded gun to my head after I banged your girlfriend) to incredibly low (We're in the same 400-person chem lecture and I asked you a question once).

Additionally, as RealID has brought to light, people place different priorities on whether "MMO" or "RPG" matters more to their game experience, and in general whether online relationships hold any significance to them.

These two things aside, it is entirely possible for someone who's your "best online friend" to end the relationship over a single issue of loot drama. Conversely, it is also entirely possible for the "guildie who you'd camp over and over if you could pvp your own faction" to pass you a piece of loot without lording it over you.


Even past that, I think it would be unreasonable to expect someone to never ever get upset over loot no matter what. In my personal experience, when I was just learning to raid, a fellow mage took me under his wing and showed me good glyphs, specs, rotations, etc and made sure I understood what I needed to do for every boss fight. He overgeared me initially, but even as I caught up and started to pass him, he'd still try to get loot passed to me for being diligent. Everyone has a limit, though, and one day it was just one drop too many for him. Initially I argued with him because I won the roll and to be frank I wasn't used to not getting what I wanted in raids. (Fortunately for my humanity, it didn't take long for me to realize what was going on and I ticketed the loot to him).


tl;dr People have different standards for friendship and expectations from WoW, and just by human nature there's always going to be a few isolated incidents of drama over the long run, even from a drama-free group

I still don't see what's wrong with plain old DKP. As long as the points are reset relatively frequently (e.g. the beginning of a new raid tier) standard bidding DKP rewards attendance and dedication and encourages consistency and Loyalty. Nobody wants to leave big DKP backlog to go to another guild, and if you have been there busting your butt with a guild for months, you don't want to lose your choice upgrade to somebody who got there last week. Institute a decay to keep people from hoarding and you're golden.

@Heilig

Not every guild is designed for the sterotypical "raider". My guild is casual/family and so our loot system needs to let people who rarely raid have a chance at loot.

I used DKP back in classic and TBC and still feel that even for a progression minded guild it causes more problems than it solves.

Unfortunately, idealism starts to die out when confronted with things like... trinkets

It's amazing how much drama can erupt over an item that as many as maybe let's say 13 people all want. With a 20% chance to drop each week, you're looking at an item that would take over a year to get one for everybody in the raid under ideal circumstances.

MY raid started LK with an SK system. When we decided we didn't want to do 25 man anymore and devoted ourselves to 10 man I ran it with Master Looting and discussion + rolls.

Now that 80% or the raid has been running together for over a year and the rest of us at least six months, we've scrapped master looting entirely. People know what they need and they know what the raid needs. Need if you in any way need it cuz if you hit greed it's probably gonna get auto-sharded. Occasionally someone "needs" something more than someone else and they are free to make their case to the winner and receive a trade or the raid leader will need on a BOE just to make sure it doesn't get sharded, then it gets rerolled for selling or use.

We've had to make some tweeks in the system. For instance the Rogue always has priority on daggers while the Hunter always has priority on ranged weapons, if a one hander drops then it's open for both of them to roll on. It's funny when we sub people in and forget to mention it. When we know the loot tables we're looking at and the specs of the people we're playing with, loot is already half divvied up before we ever start playing, it's just a matter of seeing drops and getting them into the right bag.

The ideal loot system is Loot Council. Period. Anything else is an attempt to recreate through a system of complex rules what an LC does naturally: i.e., distribute gear to the people who can best use it to help the raid improve. That means factoring in who shows up, who knows the strategies, who has good raid awareness, what class and spec someone is playing, and what their current gear is.

If you trust your fellow raiders and have a group of people who are knowledgeable about what gear is best for what classes/specs, run an LC. If you think your leadership is going to play favorites, or if you think your guildmates are going to whine every time a piece they wanted goes to someone else, that's when you use another system.

@Sleutel

People have a lot of unconscious let alone conscious bias. Points or roll based systems remove the effect of that bias.

Loot council mostly works fine for old raiding groups who have been around for ever. But it is a nightmare in newly formed guilds or ones with a lot of new raiders.

Judging "efficiency" in raiding is incredibly subjective.

+1.

Our guild has always used the "who wants this?" method, and I can't imagine using anything else. It just wouldn't be as much fun raiding with a group that doesn't often have arguments over which person deserves a piece of loot more ("it's more of an upgrade for you, you should take it!" "Yeah, for my offspec" "Your offspec that you play half the time, and you show up to more raids than I do" "I don't even want it that badly, it's yours!" etc.)

I love my guild.

My guild has always succesfully used Loot Council for 10 mans. yes peopel can be biased but we have a solid officer core that everyone trusts and gets on with, and the reasoning behind decisions could always be discussed in the event of an issue.

However when we expanded into 25-man runs we found this took way too long. With more loot pieces dropped per boss, we could spend 15-20 mins discussing and assigning all the loot. During Ulduar we used EPGP - a modified DKP system, which worked alright, but still suffered from inflation.

For ICC we switched to a 'List' system, which actually works very well. Every guild members submits a monthly list of 10 items they want, in order of preference. When an item drops the raider who has that item on the highest position on the list wins it, with rolls to decide in the event of a tie. This obviously requires some preparation in advance, but it allows for extremely quick and easy loot allocation, as all raiders have already attached importantance to available loot items before they even set foot in the instance.

At the end of the day, a friendly 'who needs this?' system is the best, but failing that I recommend Loot Council or List systems, mostly because people will rarely ever feel like they were screwed over.

I agree. My guild is mostly irl friends (I think I'm the only pug, is that's what you wanna call it) and we use group loot. It works great. Even if you need it for offspec you need and if there is a loot discrepency just say so In vent. We've never had a problem. Alot of the time someone will give ther ms piece to someone who needs it for os because it's a huge upgrade, or they're just chill about It and raid for the experience not the eipix lootz like alot of people seem to lately.

I love this way of raiding because loot gets done quickly and easily and we're a pretty causal guild raid two nights a week and we still are 11/12 working on the lk. With 3 hardmodes on farm. Not too terrible IMO.

I acually totaly stopped doing 25 mans cuz I don't enjoy the environment and I never get loot so I don't see the point in going.

It's not about complicated; It's about simplicity. We use KSK because it makes looting fast, transparent, and straight-forward. You want something, you bid on it. If someone hasn't gotten anything in a long while, they are likely going to win. If they haven't participated in a while, they decay. Simple, makes looting super fast.

People not only get aggressive about loot, they get passive aggressive, saying they'll let other raiders have something they really wanted, and then it's a big drama issue that I don't want to deal with. The only arguments I have ever seen from KSK was when I first said I was going to use it and everyone was frightened of something new. After 1 raid everyone loved it and enjoyed spending less time on loot and more time raiding.