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What type of loot system works the best?
Loot drama is most often the biggest and juiciest type of drama. Lots of different guilds handle loot distribution differently, though most either do need/greed rolls or use master looter paired with some sort of external system. Sigtyr on the official forums brings up the loot council method, where a few individuals in the know get to decide who gets what piece. Sigtyr certainly feels that, despite objections from the peanut gallery, this system works the best for his group. This discussion raises a good question: Is there such a thing as the "best loot distribution model"? When Star Wars: The Old Republic launched, Bioware seemed to have gotten a whiff of loot drama in games like WoW and even EverQuest (where anyone could loot anything, anywhere), devising a new system that is in use in its normal-mode operations (the SWTOR equivalent of a raid). There, most loot is auto-assigned based on class and spec. Personally, I've found that model to be frustrating because, among other things, it doesn't select against someone's receiving the same piece over and over again. Overall, I think that system fails because it takes the option away from the players and makes gearing up through operations as frustrating as needing on a piece of gear in the Raid Finder.
Officers' Quarters: Guild reputation in Cataclysm
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available this spring from No Starch Press. Two weeks ago, Blizzard revealed all the latest updates concerning their game plan for Cataclysm. Among them were a host of changes to the new guild systems and a guild UI overhaul, which were originally announced at BlizzCon 2009. Last week, I discussed Blizzard's decision to axe guild talent trees in favor of automatic perks at each level. Most of you disagreed with me on the issue, and I wasn't surprised. Most people would rather have all the perks, and I understand that. I still believe that offering guilds a way to define themselves using in-game elements would be incredibly useful, but we'll have to keep waiting for that. Moving on to another part of Blizzard's plan for guilds, I'd like to talk about guild reputation and where I'd like to see Blizzard go with it. No more guild currency Part of the announcement in mid-June was that guild currency as an idea has been scrapped. Instead, players will be able to purchase rewards with gold. I don't think anyone is mourning the loss of yet another type of currency.
Patch 3.3 compatible addons
With patch 3.3 just hours away, we thought it might be nice to do a quick list of major addons that have already been updated to give you something to do while waiting for the servers to come back up, then waiting in the login queue, and then waiting for Dalaran to load. You've got a good fifteen minutes worth of downtime just trying to get out of Dalaran. Oh, and don't forget to set your game client to load out of date addons to cover all of the ones that haven't updated yet.
Officers' Quarters: Want loot? Buy us a server
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.As an officer or a guild leader, doing favors for your friends is one thing. The situation described below goes way beyond that. This one just blows my mind. Let's jump right into it. Hey Scott, I'm by no means an officer or leader of a guild but I am a very active raider. We use the EP/GP loot system in our guild; it calculates how often you raid vs. how much gear you acquire and based on that gives you priority when looting. Myself, a raider who attends almost every major raid, and an officer who tries to be there when he can, have both been wanting a certain item to drop. I finally pass this officer on priority and if the item drops it should be mine. Our last Naxx raid the item drops and I put in for it, and suddenly it gets awarded to the officer. I confront the guild leader about this, knowing he is friends with the guy and he gives me a vague answer such as "I'm sorry I know you're pissed at me, but that item has been destined to be his for a long time, I'm sure you'll get the next one." What kind of answer is that?! This is supposed to be a fair loot system right? So I go and confront the officer that was awarded the loot, after several minutes he told me that he had made a back door deal to get that item. He had just bought the guild a new Ventrilo server, and the condition he made to the guild leader was that he gets that item when it drops.
