For the Love of the Guild Part 3 of 3

This is a 3 part piece on helping guilds distribute loot in a fashion that helps encourage people to show up to raids, but still be as fair as possible while doing so.

If I ran a guild, I think this is how I would solve it:

Each Toon is handled on their own.

6 main Ranks:

1 – GM
2 – Officer
3 – Progression Raider
4 – 70 Raider
5 – Member
6 – Initiate

Initiate - Someone is brought into the guild as an Initiate. After 2 weeks of no problems they move to member. As an Initiate, they are not aloud to roll on any gear, but can receive gear that is designated for DE.

Member – The bulk of the guild, and probably where most of the alts will reside. When they raid, they get to roll 1-30 on gear during progression content.

70 Raider – Once someone attends 2 raids in the same week, and has the status of at least member, they achieve this rank. The raiders are aloud to roll 1 – 70 on any gear drops during progression content.

Progression Raider – Once someone attends 4 raids in the same week, and has the status of at least 70 Raider, they are promoted. Progression Raiders are aloud to roll 1-100 on any gear drops during progression content.

In order to maintain your current rank, a person would have to continue based upon their current raid schedule. The exception to this is if someone goes on vacation, they may miss 1 week of raiding without a drop in status. If they are gone more than one week, their position will begin to decrease.

The officers will be handled in the same fashion as everyone else, but will maintain their rank. Their current status will be marked in the notes next to their name so everyone can see where they stand currently.

I feel that this would be a lot of work, but no more work than a DKP system. It would allow a guild to maintain membership, reward those who are always there, and still give the new members a chance high end gear. Majority of the gear by simple math alone will end up in the spot the guild wants it most … I also feel that this should apply to anything that would be progression. To give an example, for Defiant that would be:

SSC
Tempest Keep
Mount Hyjal

When a guild first converts to a system like this, it would ruffle some feathers. I feel that everyone should be brought down to member, and begin to progress from there. It would make the first couple of weeks very interesting as everyone is rolling really low numbers. I would also handle this per character; so for instance, I run both my Pally and my Priest, although my priest is my main. Therefore it is unlikely that my pally will ever make it above member, and therefore would probably not see any new gear. That is ok however, because it would allow for things to begin switching if the need ever arised for him to start going more. It would also encourage people to bring their mains as the "alts" do still get to roll, but have the same chance of recieving gear as every other guild member that shows up every once in a while.

I am curious how all of you handle the loot systems in your guilds, and if you have any suggestions on a better way of doing loot, or an improvement to my system.

Progression Content - Anything that isn't "farm" ... once you start DEing items from a boss, you have killed him enough times to be considered on farm. Once you are past that point, the entire guild rolls 1-100. Exceptions may include trinkets and other rare drops which are to be pre-stated before the raid makes the first pull.

Ok, so maybe tripple XP might be just a little over the top.

Introducing my Lvl 30, first horde toon ... Hakaru

For the Love of the Guild Part 2 of 3

This is part two of a three part piece on loot and helping persuade people to come raid.

How do you get people to show up to raids? There has to be some type of clear cut thing to make this happen. This is my argument for DKP. It’s simple; it’s straight forward, were you there, prepared, repaired, and ready to go? Did you kill the boss or not?

The general statement that you get from this is it punishes the people who can’t go. I will be honest, I am one that needs to be done raiding by 11pm EST, (10pm server for my server), and if I am not I need to get offline. I work too early in the morning for me to raid any later. If the raid runs late, I have to leave. The guild knows this, and plans for it. Therefore am I going to get upset if they down a boss after I leave and I get no points for this? No. My fellow author Remie is on call 2 nights a week and generally doesn’t go with us because of it … on the nights that she doesn’t go she doesn’t get points. Your house catches fire mid raid and have to go … sorry. It wouldn’t be fair to the other 24 people in the raid to make exceptions.

My problem with DKP? It’s very hard to stick to as compassion generally come into play. If a guild does stick to it, it tends to cause ill will as things do happen.

It also allows anyone to “purchase” any gear whether it is for their class or not. If they have the points the gear is theirs. There is no question about it. It doesn’t matter if they have not shown up for a month, they built up the points before that and now here they are, taking a piece of gear. This also does not help ensure that gear gets into the best hands to ensure that we as a guild continue to progress.

This method is anti-progression, unlike a loot council, but is a very clear cut straight forward way to deal with gear.

Tomorrow is part 3, a discussion and suggestion in another way to handle loot.

From a different Point of View.

I want to start a new thing on Friday's called from my Point of View.

I need your help. Have you ever wondered what it looks like when you are tanking Mag? Or what it looks like when someone is healing Hyjal? Or what BT looks like from a hunter's UI?

Now would be the time to find out. Don't rely on everyone else to show us tho. Send me a screen shot, (the default size is fine), via email with your server, what fight you are at, your guilds name (if you want it included), your toon's Name, Race, and Class, and on friday's I will showcase what you see from your point of view!

The email address is above, I am looking forward to seeing what you guys send me!

For the Love of the Guild Part 1 of 3

Good Morning!

I am going to break this post up over several days because it is very lengthy. There has been a lot of discussion lately on how to convince people to come to raids. Give those who come some incentive to continue to come to every raid they can make, while avoiding the alienation of those people who only come every once in a while. There are several thoughts on this. I feel I have a system that might help with this that avoids a DKP system.

I am going to start with some history, then discuss the first option, before moving onto my idea, which is comprised of ideas from several people on the third day. Comments and suggestions are appreciated through out the entire thing!

This comes about because I have been slowly watching the raid attendance of my guild decline. When I joined this guild, they had an interesting loot system in place the likes of which I had never seen. They had no interest in a DKP system, so instead it was very simple. Your first raid, you didn’t roll, your second raid you rolled 1-25, your third raid you rolled 1-50, and then after that you rolled 1-100 like everyone else.

It’s so simple it makes you laugh. It’s fair; there is no question in there. Suddenly we found ourselves faced with Tier 5 tokens. The officers and the GM decided that it was bad business to pass out T5 armor based upon random roll so we went to a loot council. Basically the loot council decided who got to roll. Again, fair and straight forward.

It was about this time that we decided that a “Progression Raider” status within the guild was in order. There were 30 or so of us that agreed to be a part of this progression raider team. The idea was that this group of people would be the first ones to see boss fights; we would be willing to pay the repair bills, and wipe our way towards T6.

This lasted all of 2 weeks. Summer hit and we started losing people to RL and circumstance.

This also meant that the recruiting had to start in order to back fill the lost positions. In order to ensure that everything stayed fair, this meant that there were new people now rolling on gear next to people that had been here all along.

Occasionally this means that people feel they were shorted … many times they just continue on rather than speaking up. SPEAK UP PEOPLE!! (this is not me btw, I have never been shorted gear nor do I feel I have)

This has made some people feel that there is no longer a reason to show up every night to raid … they feel that it is simple … show up when I need something, don’t show up when I don’t … This is the behavior I want to talk about.

Tomorrow: How to fix this option 1

In case you wondered ...

When you make Anetheron really mad ...



He hits you really hard and kills you twice.

Big Bear Butt Blogger

You know, there are days where I am just plain upset and feel like ranting .. then there are other days where I read someone else's blog and it is so funny, so full of win, I have decided to dedicate today's blog post to it. I will warn you ahead of time that this is going to take some time to read, as B3's post is long, and then if you take the time to read the forum it gets longer ... but I promise it is so worth the read, and the laugh, just make sure you grab the /popcorn before reading.

(Make sure you read the comments, there is another thread down there too)

Guild Ninja Loot Drama OMIGOD Wait What?