My guild is, by design, a very casual guild.  The guild started as a group of friends who wanted to be able to raid consistently without having to find PuGs every night.  Thus, I began the recruiting efforts for our guild.  We were all relatively casual and the purpose of the guild from the beginning was to be able to allow us to raid together without requiring strict attendance policies and other rules.  A side purpose of the guild, probably a result of my own personality, was to allow as many people as possible to be able to experience the end game of WOW who wanted to.  Our motto has always been to take people as they are and help them become who they want to be.  We try to help people improve their gear, their spec, and their skills.  Helping people has always been a strong motivator for me, which is also the main reason I started this blog.  We tend to prefer new, but skilled players because they tend to create the least amount of drama for our guild.  Having a good time is always the main priority.

Since then, we’ve raided at least 3 nights a week, 3-4 hours a night and grown tremendously and we’ve found a lot of great people.  However, because of how casual we are, our raid roster can change quite a lot each night.  Despite our large size, we still occasionally have to pull in people from other guilds to fill in our remaining spots.  We have a good relationship with many other guilds and we usually run with the same PuGs every time, so this usually isn’t a problem.  However, finding a good loot system that can work with this type of guild can be challenging.

Choosing a Loot System for my Guild

Initially we used a simple /roll system with priority going to main spec and correct armor type and no loot memory.  This system worked well because everything in WOW is subject to the RNG (random number generator), including which loot drops, so its something that’s simple and people are used to dealing with it in-game already.  Its also fair - everyone has the same chance at each piece of loot.  However, the downfall of this system is that there’s really no motivator for geared members to continue running our raids for that one last drop that could just as easily go to a PuG as go to them.  It doesn’t reward those members who raid every single night (besides their extra chances at loot) and it doesn’t help guild progression as much as other systems would.

So, over a few weeks, we tried out a few different loot systems to find one that would work well for our guild.  We wanted something that wasn’t too complicated and wasn’t that much different from a conventional /roll system, but that did more to reward our frequent raiders and spread the loot.  However, we didn’t want a system that would also discourage PuGs and new guildies from running with us, since we were still recruiting and growing and our ultimate purpose has always been to help out new people.

Our Final Decision

We ended up going with a simple DKP system that had a little inflation to award frequent members but not too much that it would turn off new members.  The basics of the loot system are as follows:

1. You earn 1 DKP for each boss kill.
2. You spend 6 DKP for each item (5 for 10-mans).  Its common to have negative DKP.
3. There is a 50% DKP decay every Tuesday morning (you lose half your unused DKP each week).

There are quite a few other details relating to BOEs, PuGs, and what happens if someone doesn’t want an item or if two people have the same DKP, but this is the jist of the system.  It works well because people who earn the average of 2 items per raid will end the raid back at close to 0 DKP.  If you earn more than 2 items, you’ll start next week with negative DKP.  If you earn less than 2 items, you’ll start next week with positive DKP.  New people coming in will never be far behind and may actually be ahead of some guildies who have won a number of items in the past.  It encourages people to spend their DKP and raid each week, but also rewards those who decide to save their DKP.

Downsides of this System

There are at least a couple downsides to this system that we’re willing to live with (for now):

1. The first downside is that DKP is only rewarded for boss kills instead of time spent raiding.  This encourages people to come to farm nights, which we’re okay with because of our guild goals.  Fast progression has never been our goal, while helping others gear up has.  So this encourages our more geared players to help out our less geared players.
2. The second downside is that there is a bit of inflation.  This isn’t a problem for the most part, as long as people are getting gear (or missing raids).  But people who come to every raid without winning any loot are going to accumulate quite a lot of DKP over time.  However, we’re okay with that because we feel those people do deserve first priority on loot due to their dedication and helping others.  Its also not much of a problem because that situation happens pretty rarely in our guild.  It might be different for your guild though.

Summary

What loot system you choose for your guild should take into account your guild’s goals, attendance policies, and how much time your loot master wants to put into managing the system.  Ideally your loot system will be fair, easy to understand, and will help your guild accomplish whatever its goals are.  For examples of a number of typical loot systems, check out Wowwiki’s article on the subject.  Feel free to post your thoughts on the above system and let us know how your guild handles loot in the comments below.

Happy looting!