Skip all the history and take me to the Loot Rules —->
Throughout vanilla WoW, we were part of a conglomerate alliance of smaller raiding guilds that would combine our best to get the necessary 40m raids that were required at that time. Called “The Horde Alliance” (I know, how unimaginative!), managing multiple guilds forced us to choose a DKP system for loot distribution, we called it the Merit System and it was based on EQDKP. However, as we grew to have our own static raid team of 40+ people, we found the system to lack in many important ways.
MOVING TO LOOT COUNCIL
DKP awards attendance and does not take into consideration the specific roles that need to be fed the best gear first — our tanks, our healers. And it also didn’t account for personal progression in skill and proficiency. So, TLP moved to a traditional Loot Council distribution system when The Burning Crusade was released.
We established a council of Class Leaders from our members; one for each class. We figured these folks would be the most knowledgeable of what items would work best for all the specs of that class, incorporating guildies’ own preferences, and aspirations of the guild as a whole. This worked exceptionally well. That is until a Class Leader would quit the game… and then it became hard to manage.
The one positive of having class leaders was that they really worked hard with their people to help them improve. They were the top of the top for that class, so they spent a lot of time coaching their people. And that also worked very well. We saw BIG improvements in people’s performances. But it would inevitably burn our Class Leaders out. And that put our loot distribution into a frenzy when we didn’t have one person that could take on those roles.
Every member of a class had a private channel, for example… TLPDruids, TLPPriests, TLPRogues, etc. If something dropped from our raid and a guildie wanted it, they would link their current piece so everyone could see it and the Class Leader would make their decision on who got it, talking it over with everyone in that class. For all intents and purposes, that worked FABULOUSLY. Members loved the transparency and generally most of them really trusted our class leaders. We literally has ZERO DRAMA in comparison to almost every other guild running Loot Council behind the scenes. But again, if a class leader quit the game… *sighs*.
A MEMBER-BASED LOOT COUNCIL
After Wrath of the Lich King, we modified our loot council system even more. We wanted to remove class leaders from the hassle of dealing loot altogether in the hopes that would lessen the burn out. It did… some. But also as we got better and better, there was less dependence on class leaders in general — any of our members could be a class leader at that point. So, with Battle for Azeroth we completely eliminated class leaders.
Now our MEMBERS are our loot council. Our members decide where the piece is best served to align with our guild goals. We EXPECT members to want to HELP each other. And if there is a disagreement, the Raid Manager, Raid Leaders, and Raid Assistants decide the break off — often they roll off. For high priority items, we talk about that stuff ahead of time in our designed Discord channels and we create a LOOT LIST for those pieces. This does not apply to EVERY loot piece, just the ones that are most desired by all classes — think Sikran Necklace!
OPEN COUNCIL RULES
ALL MEMBERS MUST HAVE RC LOOT COUNCIL INSTALLED & LOADED.
Our current loot council process is as follows for all “GUILD ONLY” raids:
- The raid leader is set to Master Looter. The addon will automatically pass on all dropped loot, including BOEs, for all guild members.
- A “Loot Master” initiates the OPEN VOTE, a timer of 2 minutes is set.
- We can do loot distribution during trash, at a specific break time, or at the end of the raid.
- Guild members would then select one of the following options:
- Main Spec Need — this is a big upgrade for your primary raiding spec.
- Offspec Need — this is a big upgrade for your secondary spec.
- Minor/Side Grade Need — this would be a small upgrade for your primary raiding spec.
- Transmog Greed — this is not useful to either your primary or offspec, but if no one else needs it you would use it as a transmog.
- Pass — this is not useful to you in any way listed above.
- Guild members can vote using the VOTING FRAME on the items that drop for everyone.
- Guild members can opt to abstain from voting, if they don’t really care to do so outside of their own needed items.
- Voting closes after 2 minutes, with or without all votes.
- All items are distributed at the specified “loot breaks” mentioned above.
REMEMBER: Items last 4 hours for tradability and our raids last 3 hours, so there is plenty of time to distribute items. So be patient and kind to your raid leaders.
Members can dispute a loot decision to the Raid Manager or Raid Leader, but since everyone gets a vote… its hard to dispute that. Its fully open and transparent. So do not be “that” guy.
When the raid is open to PUGs, we adhere to OPEN LOOT ROLLS with the exception of rolling for guildies. We roll on ANY ITEM we can roll on and then internally distribute that item to our guildies.