DKP is the Devil

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Image courtesy of andehans 

Sure, it’s all about killing the boss. It’s a group effort, a bonding experience, and a hell of a lot of fun. The problems start right after the screenshots are taken and the congratulations are over – loot dropped. What was it, and who should get it?

There are two common systems for deciding who, of the 10 or 25 people standing over the body, should get the gear upgrades: Loot Council, and DKP. Both systems function well on a day-to-day basis. Like most governing systems, the issues come in at the extremes, when a piece is wanted by more than one player, and especially if it’s a rare item. My guild used a pure DKP system when I first joined, and has slowly migrated to a full-blown Loot Council. I think it’s brilliant.

Basic Overview

In a Loot Council system, the Raid Leader, Officers, Class Leaders, or a combination decide which player in the raid has earned the gear. Ideally, their decision is made based on attendance, viability, available upgrades, and the individual’s contributions to the raid and to the guild.

DKP, or Dragon Kill Points, is much less arbitrary on the surface. Guild members are awarded points for raid attendance, presence at kills, and sometimes other contributions to the guild (donations to the Gbank, for example.) This is usually tracked on the guild website. Then, when the gear drops, players are either allowed to bid, auction style, or simply purchase the piece for a set price. The raider with the most DKP has priority, and unless they choose to pass, wins the item. The price is then deducted from their DKP balance.

The Problems

For a Loot Council system to work, the people making the decisions have to have a working knowledge of the needs of each class (knowing that Spirit is nearly useless for Paladins helps when awarding healing loot), and the strengths and weaknesses of each of their raiders. It helps a lot to have class-leaders involved in the decision-making process, since they’re usually the most familiar with both. Most importantly, the raiders have to trust their officers. If favoritism or greed are real issues among your guild leadership, Loot Council won’t cause the collapse of your guild – but it will definitely speed it up.

For a DKP system to work, every individual raider has to know their gear, possible upgrades, and playstyle. Each raider spends their points on the items that will make the biggest impact for them. If players buy an okay item, without knowing that a better item for the same slot, or for the cost, drops one or two bosses later, it’s their loss. Supposedly. The best and worst thing about DKP is that it is completely objective. You raid, you earn your points, the bosses die, and each raider spends their points as they see fit. It’s the ultimate self-actualizing system. The problem? Raiding is a group-effort.

Why I Personally Hate DKP

The system doesn’t care if a raider played their heart out, and has no other viable upgrades. A more-tenured player has first dibs on anything that drops, regardless of benefit to the guild as a whole. DKP, by its very nature, focuses exclusively on the measurable contributions of the individual. It objectively tracks how often they’ve shown up, how many boss-kills they attended, and how much money they paid. DKP is, essentially, an attendance grade in what should be a meritocracy.

Not that attendance is trivial. Being willing to show up and throw down day after day is part of what makes a top-notch raiding core. And those who show up every day SHOULD by all means be rewarded. There’s a marked difference, though, between playing your guts out and just showing up, and DKP can’t differentiate. On the other hand, any good officer knows who their key players are.

As a byproduct of this individualistic focus, participants in a DKP system tend to build up an entitlement mentality. “This gear is mine, because I earned it and paid for it,” is dangerous when the whole point is to continue progressing, not as 25 individuals, but as a guild. I’ve seen it get nasty when passing is suggested to a more-tenured player – it’s not that they really need a piece, it’s that they want it; regardless of the fact that the increase to their own swollen stats would have a significantly smaller impact on the group than would helping a guildie get rid of one of several sub-par items. Obviously, even in a DKP system, responsible raiders do pass to other players – but then the recipient of the gear has just been granted a “favor” by a more-tenured player. And there’s absolutely zero back-up if the veteran isn’t feeling generous.

Raiding in a Loot Council guild, you haven’t done your job by showing up. You haven’t done your job if the boss merely dies on schedule, either. You are constantly auditioning, pushing yourself and your teammates, you are forever earning not only the gear that might drop that night, but the gear you’ve been awarded each night of your membership, and your very raid spot. Yeah, it can be stressful. But I prefer the shared stress of 25 people pushing to do their absolute best over the stress of 25 people trying to figure out whose fault that 3rd wipe was – on farm content.

I have yet to be in any run where the raiders weren’t congratulated on their shiny new purples. In a pure DKP system, I’ve never understood this practice. Congratulating a player on gear that was essentially defaulted to them based on their accumulated points rings very hollow in comparison to congratulating a guildie who was awarded gear for their contribution to the latest group effort. The difference is the same as that of receiving a gift or buying the damn thing yourself. There’s a bonding experience with the former that isn’t replicated in the latter. And friendships and guilds – long term relationships – are built upon multiples of those small bonding experiences.

In fact, I’ve seen DKP systems actively erode those bonds. If you’ve ever calculated your own DKP vs. another raider’s, found yourself wishing they just wouldn’t show so you can beat them out, or quietly tried to convince them not to bid, you’ve had some of those same anti-group effort sentiments that underscore the kind of bickering and jealousy that tear guilds apart. Doing your best and proving you’ve earned a piece is a world away from hoping that your talented teammate is a no-show. But, if there’s no Council that will hear your case, you don’t really have any other recourse in a DKP system. Even if you KNOW that a Druid won’t get the same benefit from the Crystal Spire of Karabor, you can’t argue with the points. A good Loot Council will listen to your case in the bids, and make their reasons known when they award the upgrade. It’s hard to have sour grapes when you know the other guy deserved the reward they got, but easy to grumble if their major contribution was signing the guild charter before you did.

Which leads to a more long-term tricky situation – certain gear was designed to be optimal for certain classes. Not things as clear-cut as a heavy-spirit cloth healing helm, but truly questionable items – rings, weapons, necks, and trinkets. Some of them are just better for some classes than they are for others, especially given available upgrades. DKP absolutely cannot account for class-optimization without some pretty strategic loot-master intervention. I’m not saying Paladins should never equip a Light Fathom Scepter or Coral Ring of the Revived, I’m just saying an equivalently geared Druid or Priest would get a LOT more bang for the Guild’s collective buck. Not only will the player keep the piece longer, which frees up more gear for more upgrades for other players down the line, but the raid will get more benefit from it while they wear it. And as heart-wrenching as 1% wipes are, they are much easier to avoid when every player in the lineup is optimized.

Switching from DKP to Loot Council is not a panacea for everything that afflicts your guild. You won’t miraculously find that all the gear goes to the exact-right player, or that no one gets their feelings hurt. And if you don’t trust your leaders to award gear, you have problems no loot system will patch up for long. Similarly, raiders that grumble about deserving players being rewarded are likely not the players you want to keep around – and they’ll remove themselves from your guild long before they have a chance to leech hard-won purples that can’t be recovered. A good Loot Council provides a level of deliberation, thoughtfulness, and a bias in favor of hard work and team effort that DKP can’t replicate. And if there ever really is a tie in terms of overall contribution and deservedness, a good ol’ fashioned /random will end most disputes.

Luv,
Wyn

30 thoughts on “DKP is the Devil”

  1. My guild just recently switched from Loot Council to EPGP. Our major problem with loot council was the inconsistency on raiders showing up. We honestly felt that Loot Council is the Ideal loot system for raiding guilds but it relies upon a raid that constistenly has the same members in it. We on a given raid night would have any where from 5-9 different people in it. Its at this point that it makes determining who “deserves” the loot hard because of all the factors. Plus, as Matt said you need a certain degree of trust between the players and leaders. That trust for us was eroded when players start to always question leader’s decisions. Not because of bad decisions but what we used as deciding factors.

    Either way, we switched to the EPGP system now. Our guild has turned around and we are now clearing MH, and are 4/9 BT. We are doing great. EPGP allows us to reward the players for good deeds and efforts, and at the sametime keep track of gear recieved.

    Short run down on EPGP is, EP = Effort Points ( Boss kills, Being prepared, On time … ) and GP = Gear Recieved Points. Its a priority based upon those 2 numbers. Its similiar to Zero-DKP but with the tracking of 2 numbers versus 1.

    Either way google it. EPGP is used by same end-game guilds, including mine. :-p

    Brunnor – Horde Gorgonnash

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  2. Personally i like the suicide kings loot system my guild has in place. Loot wheel as we call it, promotes taking small upgrades to gear instead of holding out for the major upgrades. The faster people take loot, the faster your name gets back to the top of the list to get another item. The only downside we are encountering are the random items/tokens that could be used for an offset instead of being sharded.

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  3. Loot Council becomes Favorites Council or Gear the Officers and Their Friends. I’d much rather be in control of my gearing than hoping the ‘powers that be’ decide I’m going to get an upgrade.

    Honorshammers last blog post..The Question

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  4. Not that it’s not possible for LootCouncil to degrade into exactly the kind of situation you describe, but, again, if you have officers that are that biased, the loot system is the LEAST of your problems.

    I was talking to Auz over at ChickGM about it, and although her guild uses DKP, she said:

    “I have a rule, if you don’t trust me, find a new guild. Even without a Loot Council, I pick who’s raiding and who’s not.
    I pick what instance we’re going to.
    I pick what boss we’ll work on.
    I pick what strat we’ll use.
    I pick who your team mates will be.
    So trust me or go home.”

    Aside from that, the “powers that be” always control your loot. 30+ UBRS runs, and no Ace of Beasts. 12 Illidan kills, and no Crystal Spire. Given how much is out of ANY human control, I’d like to have the distribution of whatever random pixels we get to have some thought and deliberation behind it.

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  5. I don’t know if it’s always the problem of a “corrupt” loot council, but just what might be perceived. If you have exactly 25 people in your guild, then I always thought the Loot Council would be best. In that scenario, you basically give it to the person that gets the biggest upgrade. And there’s going to be some favoritism in it at some point. Murphy’s Law will dictate that two people with the exact same gear have given the exact same effort… now who gets the gear?

    (I’ll keep my comments short on this one since I could probably go on for hours arguing both sides. But I don’t think it’s correct to call DKP the devil. There’s flaws in every system, and if you can’t see that… well… then maybe you need to stop being so close minded.)

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  6. Could call DKP bad, or call DKP a system that needs tweaking or you could call DKP Bush like.

    There’s always flaws in every system and I’m sure Wyn recognizes that and she has highlighted the flaws in a DKP system. The main reason I have never once trusted loot council is because I have never stayed in a Guild long enough to respect and understand the leadership. Either they’ve made bad plays and decisions or they’re just bad players. Therefore, I take what I’ve rightfully earned and I ship out.

    Would I trust my current Guild with loot council? No, because there have been some item controversies in the past and not everyone knows what item is truly best for which player. That and we’ve already invested too heavily in DKP. Perhaps when Wrath debuts, we can re-examine it as the entire loot system will get reset and overhauled anyway.

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  7. When my guild formed, we debated dkp, suicide kings, and loot council systems at length. What we decided was that the eight officers could do an excellent job as a loot council–but that we’d be hated for it. None of us wanted to be the one making the calls, even if we’d be exempted from decisions on our own items.

    We went with Ep/Gp, and there are in fact problems, many of which Wyn outlined, but it avoids the major problem with loot council.

    What is this problem? Everyone exaggerates their own contributions at the expense of other people’s. This is only natural: a person knows her own effort and accomplishments perfectly, but will certainly be less familiar with other people’s. It is an unavoidable blindness.

    On a purely practical note, dkp systems are faster. They allow loot distribution to take less than one minute, which is very important for guilds like us, who are trying to cram a full raiding agenda into 10 hours per week.

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  8. With the Damnation Army slowly but steadily moving ever-closer towards endgame raiding, I began to research DKP systems in order to codify ours.

    I found that there were two main considerations to DKP I had to take into account.

    First, that given the difficulties of securing participation in our non-dedicated, non-raiding guild, attendance had to be a consideration. We’re a casual guild, and although we strive for personal excellence, many of us do not have the time dedicated to task that seems required of dedicated raiding guilds. This argues in favour of a DKP system.

    Arguing against it in its normal form, however, is the fluid nature of our composition, since to access the > 5-man content we’ll need to work with others outside our guild command for the forseeable future. I was in the Isle doing my dailies when one of the preeminent raiding guilds announced in General that they needed a spot-replacement for a DPS for Hyjal, and that while loot would be on a DKP basis, the volunteer could ‘begin to accumulate DKP on the run.’ Established guilds who have been running steadily will have large stores of DKP, and newer members (or such like the one who jumped on the shot at Hyjal) would have some way to go before they would have more than a fortunate chance at a gear upgrade. So in order to prevent new contributors from being DKP-starved and completely locked out by the DKP-laden, another mechanic had to be implemented.

    Our solution was to use a ‘Roll DKP’ system. Instead of accruing DKP for downing bosses, players would get a ‘Roll Point,’ tracked similarly to DKP. Whenever a contested item dropped, those ‘bidding’ will whisper the loot master with the amount of Roll Points they are dedicated towards winning the item. Once these are set, the loot master will then have each player /roll the number of Points they bid, and the item goes to the high roller. All other points are lost.

    Obviously imperfect, it does address the immediate needs. Seniority and contribution are honoured as players of longer standing will have more Roll Points to bid. By the same token, though, everyone contesting the item will have at least a chance at winning it, so as to prevent junior members from getting ‘snowed’ by those with mass accumulations of DKP (the scenario described above where a player *hopes* another player misses the raid).

    Loot Council reminds me of Communism- bear with me, here. Great in theory, potentially disastrous in practice, which needs all contributing members to fully and selflessly embrace it to succeed. Human nature, alas, has shown otherwise, but if it works for a guild, more power to them.

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  9. No, I completely agree with your comparison to a communist system. Great in theory, and just as susceptible to the pitfalls of human nature.

    DKP is similarly analogous to Capitalism. (In the real world, my degree is in Economics. You’ve touched on a subject dear to my heart.)

    The analogy works so well because both the economic systems and the loot systems are methods for the distribution of resources – I think I just found the subject for my Master’s thesis on virtual economies.

    I’m quite pleased at the amount of attention and passion exhibited in the comments on this post. I figured I’d get a couple of basic “nuh-uh’s,” but I absolutely did not expect the volume of well-written and formulated responses.

    Thanks for the brilliant welcome back! 🙂

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  10. I find this interesting in that it would appear that most guilds use something at least slightly different … The main problem I see with DKP is this … I have a friend on Arthas who “auditioned” for the #9 at the time raiding guild on the server. Basically he ran a pug Kara with a bunch of their alts that turned out to be their officers.

    He was in pre-kara gear, but they took him on anyway. He went from Blues and greens into T5/6 in a matter of weeks, but ended up with so much negative DKP that he will never recover … it’s honestly not possible. It really doesn’t matter in the end, he is geared to the teeth and loving it.

    We use a loot council type system with my guild. The loot council doesn’t determine who gets an item, but instead limits the “bidding” (I will explain in a second), to the several core raiders that can use it. Those people that were there for the initial kill, (and are generally there for the follow up ones as well), then /roll 1-100. This is where the Kings Kill List takes over so to speak. The person that got the gear is not aloud to roll the next time it drops, (they already have it anyway), but generally no one new is either. The remaining players will /roll 1-100 until everyone has that piece of gear that is wanted by multiple people.

    The main place the loot council comes into play is determining which of the new people get to roll on said piece of gear once the progression raiders have it. Anyone that goes on any run after we killed a boss is told up front which pieces of gear are reserved, and whom they are reserved for before the run starts so there are no questions.

    Any piece of gear that is not spoken for before the run is defaulted to the loot council, and generally everyone that wants it gets to roll.

    It sounds much more complicated than it is, but it has worked very well for us … yes, even our Tier pieces are decided this way.

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  11. I like the DKP system my guild currently uses. It makes it pretty easy to become competitive quickly after you join, in my opinion.

    The way ours works is that gear is divided into several categories: Tier Loot, Normal Loot, Class specific loot (like the trinkets in SSC/TK), and offspec loot.

    Tier Loot costs 50% of your current DKP. So, if you have 200 DKP, they cost you 100 points. If you have 50, they only cost 25, etc. Normal loot costs 25% of your current DKP. Class specific and offspec loot don’t cost anything.

    If two people are within 50 points of each other DKP wise and they both want an item, they roll their DKPx10.

    It seems to have worked out pretty well, I got my first piece of T5 loot for 5 points, and was able to get plenty of upgrades, even though there was another paladin who had twice as much DKP as I did. He was saving for a specific item, which he got before I did, but once he did, he ended up below me in points. 🙂

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  12. A good loot council beats all other systems. But a loot council that is less then perfect or even perceived to be less then perfect is worse then dkp.

    Personally I prefer dkp with a bit of officier judgement thrown into the mix to remedy stupidity. Part of that is being a holy Paladin. Blizzard has allways tended to fail at itemisation for us, even if they put int on a item it can be a better upgrade for warriors then us.

    My last experience with Loot council I at one stage went 4 months with 0 drops. Partially random bad luck as teir peices were not dropping but every single upgrade that did drop was better suited to somebody else. I had 0 problems with any individual item but after 4 months? seriously throw me a bone.

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  13. My guild uses what would be a combination of DKP and loot council.

    All raiders are required to post an upgrade path for each of their slots. In it they rank every potential upgrade for a slot available from our current level of raiding.

    Officers and other members of their class critique the list, looking at items that may have been missed or items that should not be considered upgrades.

    Then come raid time the person with the highest DKP gets the item if it was on their list.

    Although this would seem to simply be rewarding attendance our DKP system operates with a rigorous system of bonus’ (for providing raiding mats or exemplary performances) and penalties (for repeated mistakes, not being prepared, etc).

    Also with everyone posting their upgrade path and having it open for comment we get some of the benefits of a loot council system.

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  14. My guild uses a Loot Council and it works perfectly. If you want an item, you say it. If more then one person wants it, all the officers except the raid leader vote over it and the winner gets it. If the item would be an equal upgrade to everyone, they will have to roll on it. In addition, you can’t loot an item for an offspec or if you are ‘On Trial’ if someone wants it for their main spec.

    Maybe I’m just lucky, but since my guild wants to see a steady progression they know that everyone needs to be improved and over time everyone will.

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  15. Loot, like Justice, should ideally be blind.

    Most DKP systems I have been in have been incredibly fair and let people get the upgrades they want within a reasonable time frame. Of course there are some drops that may benefit a raid more in the hands of one player than another, but you cannot simply look at that since attendance, raid role and similar must also be considered, and Hybrid gearing specs give Loot Councils nightmares, heck half the time I don’t know quite how my gear will work out after an upgrade since a trade off in one area will allow massive other gearing changes.

    Overall I find the idea of a loot council to be great in theory, but in practice to fail since the council cannot truly be unbiased and cannot normally see the full spectrum of carry through on loot based on the inclusion of odd specs and gearing paths.

    2ndNins last blog post..On Looting and dividing the spoils

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  16. “I have a rule, if you don’t trust me, find a new guild. Even without a Loot Council, I pick who’s raiding and who’s not.
    I pick what instance we’re going to.
    I pick what boss we’ll work on.
    I pick what strat we’ll use.
    I pick who your team mates will be.
    So trust me or go home.”

    Sorry what? That has got to be the most arrogant ego-centric BS i have ever read or at least the most bald faced from a guild leader.

    Sure i’ll respect your leadership and play along with it but to not question it? that’s insane.

    Auz is not perfect no one is and to not be subject to any criticism or help from anyone else will prevent further growth.

    As for the matter at hand loot council corruption is inevitable or even the perception of it and both are extremely damaging to a guild.

    Humanity seems to love to make excuses and reasons why they didn’t get that shiny new thing and unfortunately they never think themselves lesser to anyone else rarely do you find someone who will admit fully that they were outplayed.

    Rather instead you will find people who will go Hrmm priest got a crystal spine of karabor over me a druid but that priest is a friend of the officers…

    Actual corruption occurs quite often too officers and their friends usually get preference because again those that are in power usually like seeing their mates get stuff as it makes them happy so they tend to overlook the players who they aren’t as close to.

    It’s just human nature

    I’m not saying DKP is perfect but i’m far more reliant on numbers than humans to make decisions less variables more control.

    Perfect world it would work as would communism hell a lot of things work on paper but when tested rarely work.

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  17. Dang you, Matticus!!! I thought it was you writing this. You’d think I’d learn to pay attention to the two writers by now. I was actually kind of surprised about “your” view (since I’ve read your posts for so long.) Yeah… Wyn is different. I think she’s overly optimistic (not in a bad way, mind you). At any rate… my point still stands. lol.

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  18. Pingback: Chick GM | Response to DKP is the Devil
  19. Our guild has been around for over 3 years now, and only in the last 4-6 months have we switched from DKP to Loot Council. What finally sealed the deal so to speak, is that we had probably 1/2 to 2/3 of the guild with large amounts of dkp and people weren’t bidding on huge upgrades because they were bigger for others (who in turn also didn’t bid) because they wanted something else that they placed a higher value on. The best example of this is probably all the priests passing on some amazing healing pants out of MH because they all wanted the Archi staff back when we were first starting MH & BT.

    Our Loot Council is based off of 60 day attendance percentage and the quantity of main spec items the player has received in the past 30 days. Obviously we have gone around that when different situations have come up (gearing up dps with 4pc T6 over healers for our Brut push) but as guidelines they work quite well at distributing the gear throughout the raid & guild.

    Loot Council has worked remarkably well and the switch didn’t even create too many waves which surprised a fair amount of the officers after how entrenched we were in our DKP system. However, we also keep a very small guild so we have minimal rotation of the players who raid from night to night.

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  20. My main’s guild uses Loot Council, and I’m glad we do. But I know there can be problems. If you have a smaller, non-loot whore core, it’s a beautiful thing. But mostly it all comes down to whether your raiders will trust the council’s judgment or not. Our guys do, almost universally. We’ve lost 1 guy who felt like the council didn’t distribute loot fairly (i.e., to him), and he was a problem anyways so the officers were frankly relieved to see him go.

    I’m with Auz…you either trust your officers or you don’t. That means believing they know the game, that they’re going to make a great decision most of the time, and that when they make a mistake it was an honest one (and yes, mistakes will happen–part of buying into a loot council system is accepting that the rare mistake will occur and not getting worked up over that). At the same time, I seriously doubt Auz was advocating that you shouldn’t question the leadership, period. Of course you can question and criticize, and good officers listen. But they don’t have to change their minds, and if they don’t, it comes back to trust–will you accept the judgment and suck it up, or will you nurse your disappointment? Again, if you can’t let it go, if you don’t trust them enough to do that, why are you raiding under them?

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  21. I’m the DKP master, and warlock class leader, for Assaut on Shadowmoon. I wound up in a dkp system because of the original officer in my guild who ran our system. He favored a zero-sum, fixed price system; thus, that was my first loot distribution system. My best friend plays Alliance on Vek and won’t raid in anything but a loot council system.

    I don’t think I could ever be in a guild that uses a loot council. I would feel such a lack of control in loot distribution. Even if Assault was running a loot council system, I wouldn’t feel comfortable with it, and obviously, I would have a good deal of influence over awarding of loot to members as a class leader.

    The interesting thing about our dkp system is how it has evovled throughout our history. I took over the system and did a complete overhaul on pricing and looting rules. The unique thing that has become apart of our system is the “semi” loot council that has developed among our raiders. Among each class has developed a tight nit group of friends. We’ve been lucky with players that have been come apart of our raiding core. Yes, we run a dkp system where the highest dkp bidder wins, but our members care about the guild more than themselves, so we don’t see the person with the highest dkp bid when an item is a huge upgrade for another player. Another warlock and myself who both have our t5 shoulders and the top two dkp totals in our system, passed on the Hatefury Mantle to our newest warlock who had his t4 shoulders. We both would love those shoulders, but we also would rather see our guild progress ass a whole.

    We are unique in that and quite lucky to have such players as members. DKP is an economic system (which is how I became dkp master, I’m obbessed with finance, lol) and it will evolve differently in each guild. We can’t be afraid to change our systems if they aren’t working. The guilds that recongize this are the guilds where their looting system works, no matter how they choose to distribute loot.

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  22. Having seen both, I agree entirely. Every time I was in a DKP guild I felt more selfish, excessively concerned about loot, and less willing to compromise. I do still feel that if you have a DKP system, DKP should be the last word – when you try to have a mixture of DKP and council you will have drama. So DKP sooner or later will result in ineffective loot awards.

    At some point I joined our local “server first” guild, progressing from Magtheridon to Vashj. They had loot council, and it was absolutely the correct thing to do for progress. I never got any loot from them, other than Kara stuff, and that was right too, since in the end I decided progression raiding was not for me and I quit. But while I was in the guild I never cared about loot personally. I cared about doing my best in the raid, and when it was a close call whether I or a more established member got the item I was flattered. Altogether a better system.

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  23. I’m an officer in a Sunwell guild that uses a pure DKP system. While I’ll be the first to admit that DKP has some major issues, that can pretty much be said of any loot system. The important thing to do is realize those weaknesses and try to compensate for them the best you can.

    As to the idea that players that are “defaulted” gear shouldn’t be congratulated. I’m sorry that is complete rubbish. Our DKP system is designed to cope with the largest problem we have as a raiding guild, attendance.

    We have between 36-40 members at any given time, and getting that many adult professionals (the type of guild we are) to show up consistently is a challenge to say the least.

    So if say someone has been showing up every day for a month, farming, grinding, pushing content finally gets to see an item they want drop off Illidan. They earned it and should be congratulated in my opinion.

    The idea that someone else who shows up one day a week but is amazing and tries their hardest should have priority over that other person who shows up day in and day out strikes me as one of the many things that can go wrong with LC. By what criteria do you judge one player as more deserving than another? It’s all too subjective and even if you think you’re being as fair and objective as possible, I guarantee there will be players who disagree.

    Also as someone said above, a DKP system closely resembles capitalism. I guess the fact that most of us are young professions, the system makes sense and seems fair to everyone. In fact, I think the players have often referred to our dkp/hour as a wage.

    Our DKP system is also paired with a pure rotation system that makes sure attendance and access to loot tables is fair. Out motto is “everyone sits.” From officers all the way down to initiates. Everyone has the same access to raids. We warn initiates that they will raid immediately once accepted and it’s pretty much true. There are no bench warmers in the guild.

    The biggest issue I think in regards to DKP is having a top heavy bloated system that locks out new people. We’ve fought this by keeping the amounts of DKP awarded small. I always shake my head when I hear of people with 6000+ DKP. It often doesn’t take more than 2 weeks for new people to become competitive.

    But we’ve also combat bloating with progression. When you farm the same content for 3 months, pretty soon people stop spending DKP. New loot tables will drag the top down as new more desired items begin falling. We’ve also reset our DKP (T5 to T6) and plan to do so again before expansion.

    Ultimately your loot system should be tailored to your guilds individual needs and personalities. It should solve problems for you, not cause them. No one loot system is, or should claimed to be the best solution for all guilds.

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  24. We are a casual guild and we use a /roll system, to give you an idea on the basic layout I’ll highlight.

    Because we don’t care about being first to kill whomever and to keep focuse on keeping our guild casual, loot is given out by lady luck.

    However to combat the ‘New guy that just turned up’ and won the loot well we don’t have any new guys so to speak. The price you pay to the guild to take part in the system is a 12 raid turnout where you don’t get to roll on any loot.
    If this price seems too steep for you then yeah our guild may not be what you are looking for, but once you’ve paid to the ‘spirit’ of the guild you’ll understand how the guild works, everybody starts an initiate rank working to pay ‘spirit’ to the guild

    This keep the guild casual, they is no bickering on decision made, no envy on someone else that has more points and most importantly you don’t feel that you have to turn out for all the raids running.

    You turn up to lots of raids you get to roll on lots of items, you don’t turn up to raid you don’t roll on a lot of items. The guys that are there all the time inevitably end up better equipt.

    Sometimes you win sometimes you don’t… but all qualifying rollers have the same chance as each other. All took part in ‘this’ raid instance, all have equal share of getting it just cause you were in last weeks raid doesn’t give you extra bonus on next weeks raid, they are two different runs.

    Systems be it DKP or Loot Council or any other favour the few, and those few are in charge of too many guilds

    The /roll system was made for a reason, seems only a good guild can make use of it sadly

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