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Nothing seems to cause more drama in a guild or raid than loot distribution. It never seems to matter how or why someone got a piece of gear from a raid boss, someone else is always upset.

That is why, over time, many different systems have evolved in MMO’s, including World of Warcraft, to help deal with this issue. In general, each one aims to make loot distribution more fair, even, and transparent. But are these systems even working and relevant in the newest expansion for World of Warcraft? How do they stack up in post-Cataclysm Azeroth, and which one is best?

An Overview of Loot Distribution Systems

Before we look at how they all stack up and try to determine if they are still relevant, let’s do a quick review.

DKP – This is the original “Dragon Kill Point” system. In this system you essentially earn points over time for contributing to your raid team, and then you can spend them on gear. How you earn them, save them, and even spend them all varies depending on the exact DKP system being used. For more details check out our Beginner's Guide to DKP.

GDKP – This is a modification of DKP that uses Gold instead of points. This is used for mainly PUG groups and runs, and generally arranged by a group of players that over-gear the content being raided. Players bid on and “buy” the items that drop, all the gold goes into a pool, and at the end of the run everyone gets an even share of the gold that was paid to the run. You can find a more information in our Guide to GDKP.

Loot Council – This is a system used by guilds for guild runs only. A group of the respected and knowledgeable players in the guild form a committee of sorts that looks at various factors and awards the loot that drops to players in the raid. Their decisions are based on many factors and vary from guild to guild. You can find more details in our guide on How to run a loot council.

Why not just random for everything?

That’s a fair question, and for random groups it does work out alright most of the time. However, for a guild run it causes severe problems. Sure, given enough random rolls everyone will win and lose the same amount, however, to get enough rolls to be statistically valid you are probably looking at a minimum of 1,000 rolls. Are you likely to be actively running the same content for 1,000 drops of an item you want? Probably not.

Random rolls also lead to some people getting lucky and getting ahead in gear significantly before others do. When this happens other players can feel cheated, or the player that has all the gear can also feel like everyone else is holding them back since they contribute so much more DPS or Healing now. This could lead to either the players not getting loot leaving the guild, or the now over-geared person leaving the guild looking for a better geared group.

To be fair, both of these things can happen with a controlled loot system, but they also tend to happen far less often.

Even though it's a fair question to ask why not random the first time, players that push for it tend to be the ones that feel lucky and just want their loot with no commitment and then bail from a guild. These are not the players you really want in your guild anyway, so when they push for random, kick them.

Pros and Cons

 

Pros

Cons

DKP

  • Predictable and trackable
  • Fair and even
  • Keeps distribution even, assuming even drops
  • Hard on new players to a group as it takes time to earn points
  • Takes some effort to run and keep organized

Loot Council

  • All factors are considered
  • Can tailor gear distribution to the benefit of the guild
  • Least transparent of all the systems
  • Can be viewed as playing favourites

GDKP

  • Great for PUG Groups
  • Great for players that want raid loot but are behind the gear curve
  • Great for players that are already done with that content
  • Reduces the number of regular PUG groups raiding


Is one system better than the others?

This is really hard to answer, as GDKP is really not meant for guild raid groups. Between DKP and Guild Council though, one system isn’t significantly better than the other. One is based on math and probability, the other is based on current state and knowledge.

DKP has the least chance to cause issues in a guild since it is completely transparent. Loot Council can cause issues, but is also capable of making the decisions that allow a guild to progress faster through content.

Does GDKP work in Cataclysm?

This is another hard one to answer since we are still relatively early in the expansion cycle. At this point the answer is both Yes and No.

I’ll answer the no part first. No, because raids are significantly harder than in WotLK, which is a good thing as they were too simple before, and so far there is only one tier of content out. Even if you count the heroic modes as a separate tier of content the gear isn’t that much better yet that it allows players to out gear the content. Also, since both 10 and 25 player raids share the same lock out timer, it is impossible for a solid 10 player raid to form up on the weekend as a 25 player GDKP run and take extra players.

Now onto the Yes part. There are groups that run it on some servers with real success. For example, there are a few posting in the forums that have pretty much all of the current content down in GDKP runs. They are a little different than the old WotLK runs where anyone could go, as these require people to have a certain gear level and sign up for several runs so that they learn the fights, but it is still working. You probably won’t see them on all servers any time soon though, or maybe ever on low population servers, since it requires a good number of players to support.

Overall

Anything organized system is better than a random roll. There are some guilds that still random for everything and manage to survive, but to me that is just blind dumb luck. The issue is that inevitably someone will get more gear than another player. This usually happens with DPS, so I’ll explain what happens based on a DPS example.

Say Player 1 gets lucky and wins several drops in a row and their DPS shoots up to 50% more than Player 2. A few weeks pass with no drops for either player, and everyone forgets about those early drops. All of a sudden Player 2 is being criticized for not keeping up on DPS and not contributing enough. Another item drops and once again Player 1 wins the random roll. This makes Player 2 seem even worse in the standings, and causes even more tension. Player 2 ends up leaving the guild and you are now short a DPS player.

Guildwise it would have been better for the DPS players to be more even as they would both be happier, and if either died in a fight the group would be better off in the fight. When DPS varies drastically from player to player, fights become harder if you happen to lose the top DPS, but don’t change much if you lose the bottom DPS. Because sometimes a loss can be kind of random, it’s better to have everyone close.

For me this means that in the end, I don’t think it really matters which system you use to distribute loot as long as you use a system.

Some groups really like loot council as it takes into consideration special circumstances, such as Player X is main and here all the time and wants an item but it's really only a small upgrade, Player Y is a backup player and wants the same item and it’s a huge upgrade for them and they show up to help whenever needed. Under normal DKP, it would probably go to Player X, while the loot council could decide that keeping a backup player geared and loyal is worth more than a small upgrade for a main player, who would likely get it on another run soon anyway.

Other groups like a completely transparent system so that they always know who is going to get the next piece. This means there can be no calls of favouritism or loot going to friends. It is all based on numbers that are available for everyone to see at any time.

That all being said, I still prefer a loot council system for guild runs as it can take all factors into consideration at all times and “try” to do what is best for the guild. Sometimes that is what is best for an individual player. Sometimes it is not. Either way I find that a group of experienced players making informed decisions as to what should go to who ends up with the guild as a whole getting further, faster in raid content.


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Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

About The Author

Byron has been playing and writing about World of Warcraft for the past ten years. He also plays pretty much ever other Blizzard game, currently focusing on Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone, while still finding time to jump into Diablo III with his son.

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