As we get closer to 40-man raids, DKP will be making a return for most guilds. But Cue the Credits is all-in on loot council. Here’s quite a bit of detail as to why.

Over the years we have tried every possible system to remove the human element from decision making in regards to loot before settling on loot council. Particularly when it comes to raiding while maintaining a progression-positive item distribution stream. From all iterations of DKP to Suicide Kings. Even going so far as creating our own layer over loot council dubbed PRS (Player Rating System). Each system has it’s flaws, but any numerical or automated system cannot account for every variable that is required to be addressed within loot distribution. I’m not going to cover each in system detail, but I will break down the most common one in Vanilla.

Dragon Kill Points (DKP)

DKP is a loot system created in 1999 during Everquest’s reign. Prior to that, loot in their 72 man raids was largely determined by a /roll. DKP was seen as the ‘perfect’ answer to the randomness of part-time players getting top-tier loot. So when WoW came out in 2004, the idea of earning points for your time in a raid was pretty well standard.

With so many players to move through, insufficient tools to really build a sense of community, and lack of external resources to properly track all the needed data for an ‘honest’ council… DKP really was a good system for the time. The mere concept of allowing a small group of players to control the output of loot for everyone was unfathomable. To the point where if anyone tried it, their Officer core was assumed to be loot whores and abusers who just funneled loot to themselves and their cliques.

The holes in the DKP system didn’t really start to reveal themselves until World of Warcraft hit it’s stride in 2005. With a larger loot pool and fewer players, a variety of loopholes and issues began to emerge. Especially when it came to low attendance raiders.

Weaknesses of DKP

• Forced Progression – Healers and tanks especially, were required to take expensive pieces of gear in order for their raid to progress. This kept core roles consistently in the negative by having pieces they may not have even wanted forced upon them because it made the most raid sense.

• New Recruit Tax – Fresh players to the raid group were dogpiled gear that the main raid did not need, pushing them into negative DKP. Essentially putting a “Welcome to our DKP system” tax on anyone new joining. Sure, they got a new set of purples. But they were being disenchanted anyway. This kept any new recruits at arms length from progression drops for a significant amount of time.

• Class Collusion – Minor upgrades were rarely taken, and in some cases disenchanted. Even with supporting discount “rounds” being applied. This too, ended up being abused with class cartels. A Hunter item would drop, nobody would take it at full price until the last discount round. Freeing up more DKP for cross-class items. This created massive disdain for certain classes that Blizzard created targeted items for. This was particularly common for items such as Hunter Bows and Warrior Shields. Which due to how DKP item value was assigned based on slot, those items were generally quite expensive by default. Plus, disenchanting tiny upgrades for the sake of shooting towards a larger item is simply ridiculous at a macro level.

• DKP Hoarding – Arguably the largest issue DKP faced was hoarding. Around 2006-2007, players began to realize that if they were roughly last to receive loot they ended up with a DKP surplus. This is while not being terribly behind in gear. But when “the” item dropped, they were first to claim the games best in slot. This was particularly a problem for folks that only raided once a week, but decided to show up once a major progression boss was nearing death. Since a DKP system is built to be hands-off, there was little stopping someone from coming in and dumping all their DKP on a major end game item. Every iteration of DKP afterwards was attempted to be designed in a way to deter from this, but they too had their own shortcomings. Zero-sum and Silent Auction DKP became the most common alternatives. Another attempt to thwart the hoarding was DKP decay and attendance % caps. These had their own batch of issues and convoluted the formula even more in that nobody wanted to be benched anymore because their DKP would lose value if they weren’t present for kills.

• Inflation – In order to keep low attendance raiders away from sniping end boss items, there was a rather substantial buffer applied to progression DKP. For example, a farm night may earn you 100 DKP whereas a progression night would net 400 DKP. This definitely kept players who weren’t at every raid from picking up core pieces. But once progression was over there was a massive split between raid core. Folks who had zero (or negative) DKP from buying items regularly, and those who had more DKP than they could ever spend from being a bit more tactical with their choices. The inflation inevitably caused raid tiers to reset each time, creating a “use it or lose it” mentality across content releases. New recruits simply could not compete with progression raiders fat DKP wallets. Plus once inflation resets were introduced, suddenly negative DKP meant nothing…

Cue the Credits used different iterations of DKP for over a year before ultimately moving over to loot council. We were one of the earliest successful US guilds to use it and caught a tsunami of hate for doing so. Accusations of corruption within the council was extremely common, which is obviously false.

But even with those claims, we maintained our most stable raiding core yet. From AQ all the way through Uldaur.

Recruitment too, was a breeze.

The Loot Council

After trying to make Auction DKP work for awhile, it became clear that it just wasn’t quite fit for our group. I had been considering going to a full loot council for awhile. We were effectively running one since we were blacklisting certain items from being picked up from folks exploiting the DKP system. This became clear around early AQ40 with the introduction of raid acquired Nature Resist. It was simply unfair to funnel it to someone and charge them even a percentage of it’s value. I believe most guilds who held onto their DKP systems opted to not charge for NR items but chose to council them. It was pretty messy for all and caused quite a stir behind the scenes for most guilds.

The swap to loot council went very well internally. Part of this was due to some basic guidelines we set in place to make sure everyone was getting a fair shake.

• Merit / Performance Based – Those who put in the most effort had first claim on certain items. This includes gearing outside of the raid, mastering their class, bringing a great raiding attitude and having enough consumables to excel when needed.
• Everyone gets a shot – The length of time within Cue the Credit plays a very minor factor in general loot decisions. Outside of extremely rare items with massive impact that extend across months if not years. (legendaries)
• Raid Rank Mattered Again – In a DKP system there wasn’t much of a drive to reach certain ranks within the guild. Once Loot Council came around, we made it quite clear that VIP Raiders and Class Leads held a higher notoriety within the council against a standard Raider or Member. Reaching these ranks was fairly easy for anyone with enough drive to do so, but the separation was important.
• Attendance Weighs In – This is a no-brainer, but in general those with perfect attendance will always be at the top of the list.
• Keep the council transparent – Most of the mid-late gear decisions we make are largely done in the primary raiding channel. This is to remove as much mystery into the decision making as possible. While discussions need to be had in the background regarding loot, we actively try to keep our thoughts open.
• Progression is Paramount – The gear is distributed for the betterment of the guild, not our social status internally or externally.
• Weapons & Trinkets Stand Alone – Due to the demand and nature of critical items such as weapons and trinkets, we try to keep those on their own level of distribution within the council. Taking a few sidegrades and minor upgrades does not impact our decision in regards to these items. Counter to that, someone may be floated some extra “larger upgrades” due to not being in early discussion for said items. It’s a balancing act.
• Scale of Upgrade, Perspective Matters – Our council knows the loot tables of all the encounters extremely well, especially as it pertains to BiS. We actively try to avoid overwriting effort in terms of BiS grinds. For example, if there is a rare blue pre-raid BiS item and it’s slightly better purple variant drops, the members without the same blue BiS would be looked at first. From there it would be determined if they have put in similar effort into gearing themselves and simply were unlucky.
• Prepare for Rotations and Avoid Disenchanting – Sometimes, but not often, we do take into consideration an item handout based on boss position with a raid tier. If a Mage doesn’t need the first 6 bosses outside of a single item, handing that item over opens up a new slot for a bench player to replace. Lowering the chances of disenchanting gear around that Mage who needs 1 item.
• Contributing Does Matter – Classic is very much a group effort compared to the individual stack everyone is likely used to in retail. Things take longer and more effort, especially for a guild focused on getting things done as effectively and quickly as possible. Where one guild major forego a certain consumable for a particular boss, we like to be fully prepared. Donations either to the bank or to other players are definitely taken into account. (Within reason).
• Help Us, Help You – As transparent as we make our council, we require the same of the members. Classes need to work together and determine certain key items in advance. We are perfectly fine with making the final difficult decision, that is the job. However if a random cape drops that is a moderate upgrade for every Mage, the number of interested parties should be limited due to prior discussion. Be it publicly, or within their own class. Let us know what you really want!

An additional note: As it relates to Molten Core, all decisions being made are for the goal of reaching Blackwing Lair in the strongest way possible. There are certain pre-bis items that stand toe-to-toe with Molten Core drops, and they will be treated as such in the general distribution. Everyone loves purples, but Cue the Credits prefers group power over individual minor upgrades.

Veterans of Cue the Credits know the drill, the above is nothing new. There will be slow gear months with a juxtaposition of those with rapid gains. Our loot council doesn’t distribute equally so much as optimally. Over time everyone will get what they have earned and the guild will be better for it.

3 of the players on the council will have been responsible for loot distribution for over 15 years. We’ve been through it all. Loot is not worth causing drama over, ever.

See you online.