Choosing a Loot System for Your World of Warcraft Guild

Choosing a loot system is a very important part in both the creation and upkeep of your guild, and many guild leaders and raid leaders don't find that this is such a large portion of what makes and maintains a guild. There are many different types of systems, and different systems work well for different guilds. There are a few things to take into consideration when thinking of the type of loot system you will put into place for your group of people.

-Progression: Giving loot to the people who will help the guild progress the most. Gear goes to healers, tanks, or otherwise top-performing players before other players are considered.

-Reward: Giving loot to the people who are doing as told and are there more often; Loot goes to the people who have worked the hardest to earn it.

-Upkeep: How hard it is for the person in charge of loot distribution to keep the system in tune.

-Fairness: How fair everyone in the group of people finds the loot system, this will vary greatly from person to person, as they will all have a different idea of what loot system is actually the most fair.

With those points out of the way, I'll go into detail on what the actual different loot systems are, and why they have such increasing popularity amongst different guilds.

Loot Council
In a loot council, there is a selected team of people in charge of distributing loot. The loot council is usually made up of officers and the raid/guild leader, often, three of which are a main dps, tank, and healer of the guild. This council will determine who gets what loot. There are many different ways to run a loot council. The people in charge of distributing loot may decide that tanks and healers get loot first. They may decide that the people who raid the most often get loot first. The main downfall is that the loot council may decide that the most deserving people are always the officer and GM, or personal friends. This will drive new players as well as other players who aren't getting as much loot away from the guild. This system works for some, and does not work for others. In my honest opinion I think this system would work well for a system in a small or relatively small guild where most people already know each other, I could see it causing some real problems in large raids or in a guild where many aren't familiar with each other, their play times and/or play styles.

DKP
Dragon Kill Points, or DKP, is a very common form of currency that is the basis of the loot system in place in many top-end progression raid guilds. DKP, like loot council, can be skewed in many different ways to affect the way the loot is distributed. Typically, DKP is awarded to raid members based on attendance, time spent raiding, and bosses downed during a raid. Also, there typically is a bonus for staying the entire length of the raid. DKP can be used to bid on items that drop during any given raid. There are many different ways the bid works, sometimes it's simply the highest bidder wins. In other systems, each item has a given value, and the player with the highest current DKP who has a bid in place will pay the price of the item. Other systems have set-in-stone bid limits, like 5 dkp, 10 dkp, or half of your current total dkp. Which ever way the system is skewed, this system tends to favor large, established 25-man raiding guilds.

Suicide Kings
Suicide kings is a rather simple loot system, directed towards smaller, casual raiding guilds in my opinion. In this system, there is essentially a list of all of your active raiders, and this list symbolizes priority. The players at the top of the list have the highest priority. When a player on top wins a piece of loot, they "suicide" and are shifted all the way to the bottom of the list. If someone else rolls against you, and you are below them on the list, you will lose the roll, however you will win the next roll against them since you will now be higher up. There are a few variations to this loot system, including a DKP add-in with it. However, I won't go into detail on how that system works. There are add ons for this system to make management rather easy.

Open Rolling
To win an item under this system, all you need to do is show up to the raid where the gear you need drops, and /roll in game on the item it is you wish to receive. If you are the highest roller, you win the item. The biggest problem with this system is that one player can take all of the loot before another player has the chance to get it. Another major flaw is that the player taking the loot can be a pick up group player, or may be new to the guild and is taking all of the loot from the players that have been actively raiding for months. It is in my opinion that this is a good system for very new raiding guilds, especially if you're running in 10 mans (where you won't roll against others that often, anyways) with the same people on a regular basis. Of course, this system can be skewed by the loot master to make things a bit more fair as well. I've used this system along with a loot council to really shake things up and make them more fair.

The importance of the loot system is not to choose what is easiest for you, or what is going to get the individual the most loot, but it's about the way your guild will function, and where you're interested in going with it. I hope that the descriptions of the most popular loot systems I have given you will assist you in choosing the most appropriate system for you and your friends. :)