This time the topic isn’t about developers and broken design, but players inventing they own rules and progressively wrecking the community. In the last day I had to go through a personal crusade about the organization of the guilds at the endgame of World of Warcraft, in particular about the system used by the “leet” guilds known as “Dragon Kill Points” (DKP).
Basically this system is a way to “bend” the standard loot rules in the game in order to favor a selected group. This is what happens objectively, it’s not an opinion and cannot be discussed. It’s not a case that it has been adopted by the more catass guilds because, at its roots, the system is meant to favor that group of peoples. It was built by them to favor themselves. If we translate this to other forms of government and politics (because guilds are a form of government and not much else at this same level) it can be quite obvious how this pattern can be identified as a “conflict of interests”. The peoples at the top make rules that favor themselves while discriminating everyone else.
What bothers me and that started an heated debate is that the peoples defending the DKP system justify it as “fair”. While the common loot rules the game already has, aren’t. Concretely the system allows each member of a guild to gain points by participating to guild events such as raids. These points can then be used to get the dropped loot, replacing the random rolls that are built in the game. Instead of rolling a dice on a item you need and comparing the result with the rolls of the other players, in the DKP system you bet some of the points you have achieved and, in the case your bid is the highest, you win the item. This to offer a direct advantage to the peoples that can be present to many raids and leaving out all those players that cannot afford to compete with the highest bids of the catasses. Who has “more” has the precendence on who has “less” (or nothing) to get even more. Who has nothing will keep having nothing if not the sporadic crumbs despised by those with the privileges.
Now every guild is free to build its organization. It’s true that this is just a game and there are no responsibilities to face, so all the possible choices are legitimate. But don’t fucking come tell me that this system is “fair”. Because this is bullshit. If you make a choice you must have the courage to stand by it and recognize its nature. You cannot go on and justify it telling me it’s fair when it’s obvious how it’s not. At least if “fair” hasn’t changed its meaning. In my language fair means also “equality”, or even “honesty”. If you built rules to advantage yourself over others what you do is NEVER fair, because it’s the exact opposite of the concept of equality. It’s a discrimination, it’s a way to bend the rules to your advantage and to your conditions.
The loot rules built in the system cannot be more “fair” than how they are. If you go in a raid, you can roll for an item. Everyone has equal possibilities to roll and get his chance to win. No system can be more fair than this. It’s impossible. If you then change this rule to bend it to your advantage the system is NOT fair. It can be a legitimate choice but you cannot pretend it’s fair. It’s fair FOR YOU. But way different from the meaning of the word. Even in the real life there is this constant shift in the meaning of the words in order to excuse and justify an egoistic and egocentric behaviour. Rich people thinks they deserved what they “earned”. They worked hard and the system will be always fair, for them. And they think (even if they do not explicitly admit) that the people starving next to them deserve that condition. This is the paradox of this world and it comes from excuses and pretensions of our culture. We hide our doubts behind the shield of false principles. Who accumulates deserves to accumulate more, who starves deserve to starve even more.
As I said this is a game and fortunately there are no responsibilities as in the real world, so everyone can choose how to behave. The point is just about being honest and admit that some rules are there because their aim is to give you an advantage over others. Building and maintaining a guild is never easy, in particular it requires a lot of time. While you can manage to play a game casually you surely cannot manage to run a guild casually. The “conflict of interest” comes from that. Only the catasses run the most successful guilds and it’a not odd to see that those who decide the rules are going to make rules favoring themselves. It’s typical, come on. I just want that they ADMIT this and do not come telling me that the system is built to be fair, because this stance is inadmissible. It’s blatantly false and pretentious.
This isn’t an isolated case, on my server I see a repeating pattern of guilds crumbling because all the players progressively leave to fatten the ranks of the bigger catass guilds. Smaller guilds just have no possibilities to survive and they move toward an unavoidable extinction. As you ding 60 you crash against a wall, you cannot progress anymore as before and joining bigger raids is the only possibility. All the accessibility (and the “accessibility” is the key) that characterized the game till level 60 simply vanishes to be replaced by the most painful grind ever. All the good premises of the game crumble like that to reveal what was known as broken in this genre and that the game was able to hide till that point. Catass for the win. The only gameplay that there is available is to catass and catass more. The accessibility of this treadmill is a progressive process of discrimination between those who can afford to go on and those who are left out.
This is the process that triggers the egoistical greed of the players. The whole purpose is to get shoulder penises and make your character stronger and stronger by competing with your friends over that loot. What follows is a comprehensible attitude if the game itself is strongly focused to promote this egocentric behaviour. Both the structure of the gameplay at the endgame and the consequent dynamics in the guilds are shattering directly the community into tight groups of elitists bending the rules for their advantage and discriminating even more the new or casual players. The catasses have more and will have more, while the casual players are progressively excluded, creating an increasing gap that will ultimately be the cause of a slow and painful decline of the whole game.
If the true purpose of a game is about learning, as Raph is trying to convince us, I really wonder what the hell we are teaching.
I am a catass.
“This is what happens objectively, it’s not an opinion and cannot be discussed. It’s not a case that it has been adopted by the more catass guilds because, at its roots, the system is meant to favor that group of peoples. It was built by them to favor themselves.”
Definitely right. Why would we create a system favoring people who would never be affected by its mechanics?
“The whole purpose is to get shoulder penises and make your character stronger and stronger by competing with your friends over that loot.”
Wrong. All of us have a desire for better equipment but it’s not our primary drive for doing raids and having a DKP-System. We want to raid for the fun of raiding, experience new encounters and overcome the challenges. Especially post-MC encounters, in BWL, ZG and AQ, are quite different then the ones you see in the game on your road from level 1 to 60. To succeed we need equipment to get to the players that most benefit the entire raid. In our system we allow druids, priests and warriors to bid for damagegear, but we expect them to pass on an item, if players that actually deal damage in our raids can improve with that gear. Although there is no penalty whatsoever, none of our PvP-active Shadowpriests has ever bid for the Talisman of Ephemeral Power – and they want it bad – because mages and warlocks need it, too.
“If we translate this to other forms of government and politics (because guilds are a form of government and not much else at this same level) it can be quite obvious how this pattern can be identified as a “conflict of interests”. The peoples at the top make rules that favor themselves while discriminating everyone else.”
This comparison is wrong. The catasses do not impose anything on casual players. We devised a system for ourselves. We raid 3 days a week for 4-7 hours per raid. Guild members are expected to be available for 2 raids per week. Casual gamers, that cannot play for more than 2 hours per day, cannot join our guild and are in no way affected by our DKP-System. And the guild leaders who devised the system, I’m one of them, are in no way favored above our regular guild members.
If you don’t like DKP-Systems, fine. Find some like-minded people and raid using random-rolling. But don’t tell us about fairness and greediness. We make our rules for ourselves. It’s like you joining a soccer team and picking up the ball with your hands and saying you want to throw it. If you’re with us, you play soccer. Nobody forces you to join.
“Hardcore Joe wants an uber drop. He will work towards it at 6 hours a day raiding for it. So after five days he gets it at 30 hours invested.
Casual Bob wants an uber drop, but can only play for 2 hours every other day. So it will take him 100’s of hours to achieve that goal.”
Transferred to my guilds system. Joe participates in 3 raids per week, Bob in 1. Both desire the same item, which drops every 5th raid. In week two the item drops. 1) Only Joe is present. He gets the item. 2) Joe and Bob are present. Joe gets the item, because he has more DKP. At this time Joe has four-times as many Points as Bob. Joe has attended 5 raids, Bob 2. On the 10th raid, week 4, the item drops again. Bob is unfortunately not there. On the 15th run, week 5, Bob isn’t there again. On the 20th raid, week 7, Bob gets it after having attended 7 raids. Bob would have gotten it on the 10th raid, after having attended only 4 raids compared to Joe’s 5 raids, if he had been there. That he wasn’t doesn’t entitle him to the item in week 2. The drop is deterministic and not random here, obviously, but on a large scale both get the item after roughly the same time investment, Joe gets it earlier though.
The problem I see is the itemdrops being random. While members of certain classes have their t1-sets complete, twinks have been equipped and further drops are being disenchanted, others are still far from being that well equipped, though they definitely put much more time and effort into our raids than beforementioned twinks. Best example, a hunter that has been in our guild for two days gets the petrified leaf while some priests, that have been raiding for months still wait for the eye of divinity. As Blizzard can obviously prevent paladin-equipment from dropping in horde-raids, I would really appreciate if the game could check the raid participants when generating the loot-tables.
As has been stated by others before, I am also under the impression that the OP is the greedy one here. You want items without working for them. The entire tone and style of your article says: envy. I would love to see more 5-man instances, too, and I agree that under the current system there is not enough content for level 60 casual players, because they have virtually no chance of succeeding in BWL and AQ40. But the answer to that problem lies in the design of endgame instances and content in general and not in DKP-Systems.
While I understand what you’re trying to say, take this scenario into consideration.
Mage A has participated in the past 6 raids over a 3 week span, no mage loot has dropped. Mage B has participated in zero raids over the last 3 weeks.
Raid #7: Mage loot drops.
Mage B beats Mage A on roll and receives loot.
Later…
Raid #12: Mage loot drops.
Mage B (2nd time raiding) beats Mage A (Full-time Participant) on roll and receives loot.
This is of course unlikely and a bit more extreme, but we’ve all heard stories about how a specific class almost never has any drops for it throughout multiple raids. I do not believe that rolling in this case is fair at all. Of course I don’t agree with the usual attitudes that are developed amongst players over DKP. It’s a tough subject to say the least.
I think People that disagree with dkp systems really just A) don’t understand the benefits, or B) want the reward for less effort
I have been raiding in wow for about 4 months now and have been using dkp since day 1. Forget all that many have mentioned as far as why dkp is good or bad you have to think of it this way. If a warrior goes to every raid he is more of an asset to the guild than a warrior who can play 1nce a week. Dkp is a way to reward the people who attend and contribute towards the guilds end game progression the most. Its not away to get the gm and officers phat lewt before everyone else. The gm appointed these people to be officers BECAUSE they are an asset to the guild. If this warrior that comes on once a week gets on and the guild is hitting onyxia.
Onyxia is killed in 15 mins and a helm of wraith drops. How could you possibly say that it’s fair for the person who puts less time into the guild and its progression? If that warrior gets the helm it not only sucks for the warrior who raids all the time but it hurts the guild as a whole imo. Now if that’s the item this less consistent warrior wants more than anything and a dkp system is in place, He can save those points for it. When it drops he can spend them, He has then earned the item.
I still think it hurts the guild in the end but that’s what he spent his dkp (or time) for. The fact is. Its like this, If you work 25 hours a week and your buddy works 40 (doing the same job) should you get paid the same cause its not fair you get paid less?
Face it, no loot system is perfect but the way I see it (and the way most raiders see it) is that dkp is the most reliable and fair way, If you want to be casual and participate in non casual activities you need to either join a casual raiding guild that raids 1-2 times a week or pick up a new game.
People that give an opinion about something without understanding the logic or function only proves to be an idiot. There are a gazillion resources on the web about DKP systems. Read one before making a idiotic post stating random rolling is more fair than a DKP system ‘designed’ to give everyone an equal share of loot.
I agree that the DKP system does keep the rich richer, but saying that random rolls are fairer is not always true. I have consistantly rolled poorly from level one to MC. As a result I got the pieces of my tier 0 gear and all but one or two of my blues when no one else in the group needed them. Now I’m just in to have fun but I have seen people melt down because they have had the same thing happen 20 5 man runs in a row and then see the NOOB get the item they wanted first time around.
The only time I beat anyone on a great item was for “finkles skinner”. first time through UBRS. A player that had run UBRS 25 times for that dagger dropped out of the raid. And no exaggeration for the next 5 runs I was on i did not win a single roll for anything. Just my luck.
Random means some people roll bad all the time , some people roll good all the time and most average people get stuck in the middle. As one of the people who roll bad all the time, and is a casual raider. I’ll take the DKP as slow as it is I actually get my gear faster than if I roll when it drops.
the best solution I have seen is to use a modified DKP solution where the individual houses have loot rotations so everyone gets a fair chance at getting those pieces, but again greeed begins to break that when you get people that won’t come on a run because you are not facing any bosses that might drop the pieces they are up for.
In the end no matter what system you use, the “Get Geared UP” mentality that WOW beats into your head twists most people into greedy Loot mongers and then the inevitable fights over who has been the most valuable, and why they should get the most start. Smart guilds nip this in the bud. And if necessary boot offending players who won’t stop it.
new loot systems wont stop the inherently greedy nature of a game that is all about loot.