The problem with loot council

I used to think the loot council method of awarding raid drops was super. That was when I was an officer and was more concerned about the success of my guild than reward and recognition for individuals. Now I am a probationary raider in another loot council guild and see the system from the other side. And I have to say, it's not as super as it used to be. I can see the flaws and cracks in the system — but more importantly, I can also see that what I thought as an officer was good for my guild may well have contributed to its collapse.

A loot council, as I mean it, is simply a group of raiders who decide between them who gets the drops. In my experience, it usually consists of whichever officers of the guild are in the raid at the time, although it doesn't have to be. Each council will have its own ideas and guidelines for making these decisions, but the primary reason for using a council over other distribution systems is to ensure that the loot is put to best use for the good of the guild. And this is where loot councils start to break down.

The problem is that the needs of the guild are constantly in flux, making it very difficult to write up a clear and consistent set of rules — one day a guild may want to reward a player for their commitment, another they may want to better equip a tank or healer for an upcoming challenge, sometimes they may need to use loot to keep key players loyal. Every drop, every day, is different; a loot council will often have to contradict past decisions to achieve present aims. And this is compounded by the fact that different players may be making the decisions from day-to-day, possibly creating even greater inconsistency in the process.

For the player base, this can be confusing and frustrating. It is demotivating to miss out on upgrades week after week when there is no apparent pattern to the awards. It's even harder when loot council decisions are made in private and not explained afterwards (as they invariably are). This lack of transparency is easily avoided with some clear guidelines on a forum or in the guild information, but these are often necessarily vague to allow for every eventuality.

Loot council principles also lead easily to bad decisions. Loot councils may take current items into account when assessing an upgrade — something which you can't control easily with other systems — but that doesn't always mean the right person gets the item. I have seen items with spirit go to shamen and paladins over cloth and leather users, items with agility go to death knights over hunters and rogues, and items with mp5 go to dps over healers. While the individual benefited from an upgrade, people who could have benefited more lost out, and as long as a player is sporting a sub-optimal piece of itemisation, they will be on the lookout to replace it as soon as the next opportunity arises. In the long-run, this is not the best use of gear for any guild.

To be fair, not all loot councils allow players to roll on sub-optimal gear, or would necessarily award it over more suitable players. But the system encourages council members to make these mistakes by its very aims — almost anything can be justified for the good of the guild. Such a selfless act is easy to defend and player may feel churlish to challenge. In loot arguments, "good of the guild" is the trump card and needs no further explanation.

In the end, a loot council is a self-consciously biased court that casts judgement on players without the right to reply: X raids more than Y, N is a better player than M and so on. These judgements are rarely scientific but based on personal opinion and knowledge — and are therefore open to both conscious and unconscious influence. How do you know X raids more than Y? Or that N is better than M? You just think it, or you have the evidence to back it up? How long have these comparisons held true, and what makes you think they will remain so?

Of course, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Many players on loot councils make good decisions on loot every day, and it contributes effectively to the progress of many guilds through challenging new content. But I'm not talking about players, I'm talking about the system, and this one, I have come to realise, is fraught with pitfalls to catch even the best guilds out.

A sure sign that you have fallen for them is a rising turnover or falling signup. Chances are, the people leaving or not showing up are the same ones not getting loot. Here, the loot council can easily lull you into a false sense of security. You naturally value the players receiving the loot over the ones who aren't (that's why they got the loot), so you may well think the missing faces are expendable. Until, that is, you realise you can't field a 25-man raid without them. And before you know it, your two ten-man teams are one, and even that becomes a struggle.

To be fair, many guilds have made loot council work for them. I'm not saying it's unworkable, just flawed. To avoid the pitfalls as best as possible, a guild must be absolutely transparent about the process it uses to award drops and it must be consistent and fair in applying it. I would also recommend keeping detailed and visible records of drops and decisions, so that both the council and regular raiders can monitor the system's implementation and keep a check on bias and misuse.

Of course, some of the problems here are common to other distibution methods too. There's no value judgement intended on DKP or rolling here, just some food-for-thought on one particular system.

The Goldilocks guild

I've been shopping around for guilds ever since my last one imploded. I've got a bit of a Goldilocks complex — it can't be too big or too small, it can't be too hardcore or too casual, it's got to be just right.

Which basically means the guild I'm after doesn't exist. They either don't need a shadow priest, raid too early, raid too late or too often, are too good for me, or not good enough, they're a bunch of jerks or too disorganised, or just don't have the numbers or skill to make a go of it.

The problem is compounded by the situation on my server, which seems to be haemorrhaging good Horde raiders at an alarming rate. Alliance outstrip us 5 to 1 by some accounts, and Horde feels like a faction in decline. With so much doubt, and a lot going on in my real life, I could very easily have procrastinated all year.

So last week I finally settled on a compromise: I joined a guild that doesn't need a shadow priest.

I took along my resto shammy instead and healed my first Icecrown run last night. So far, I'm really happy with the guild. The officers are friendly and mature, but also strong leaders. We started on time and finished on time, and we didn't mess around much inbetween. They run loot council, which means dishing it out was a bit drawn out, but I can live with that. They even offered me the BoE trash pants from Icecrown — on my first run with them — but I declined; I'd rather build up some goodwill first.

So we killed Marrowgar, which was fine if a bit hairy during the air phase (every time I stopped to cast he flew RIGHT AT ME). And we moved on to clear the trash before Lady Deathwhisper. We didn't engage her, just took the trash rep and moved on to ToC. (The sight of her room brought back some very unpleasant memories of Blackheart's room in Shadow Labs.)

It went well for a first run with a new guild. And I can live with healing for now, even if ultimately I'd rather be melting faces. I have a sneaky plan to switch mains if it ever looks like they can do with one less healer. We'll see. Meanwhile, there's plenty I can do to improve Merlot's gear through the Icecrown 5-mans, badges, and the odd pug. And I really need to renew my Loremaster efforts; Merlot the Patient does nothing for me.

Weathering the storm

About two weeks ago I quit my guild in a huff of indignation without much of a clue what I would do next. And since then, I've been putting off writing about why.

Actually, I've been putting off thinking about why, because I don't want to corrupt my memories of a very happy time with the guild. It's tricky gauging how much to say about what went on. Skullcrackers is a real guild with a lot of great players. I was very happy there for the best part of a year and have no wish to turn on them now.

If I tried to catalogue the problems in Skullcrackers, you would doubtless recognise many of them from your own experiences. Guilds the world over face the same issues — how do you balance the conflicting wishes of 'casual' and 'hardcore' players, how do you recruit tanks and healers, how do you ensure enough players are online at the same time to raid, how do you keep experienced players interested while newer players gear up, how do you make that jump from Kara to Gruul's?

But what defines a guild isn't the problems it experiences but how it responds to them. The guild that faces up to its problems will go on to prosper; the ones that ignore them will wither and fade away.

While we had endless chats in Skullcrackers about how we could recruit more tanks and healers, how we could ensure reliable raid attendance, how we could actually make some progress through ZA while gearing up enough players for 25-man raiding, we never took any significant action to tackle them. When even the guild master is an hour late to raids without apology, while the guild is haemorrhaging its best raid-level players, you begin to see how cheap words are.

It would be easy to blame the GM for the fate of the guild, but that would be unfair. As an officer, I have to accept part responsibility for the fact that Skullcrackers struggled to address any of these problems in a meaningful way. But when I stop beating myself up and consider what I could have done better, or differently, I draw a blank. I genuinely tried to drive change and force the guild to adapt for many months; resistance or apathy simply beat me down.

That's not to say I am blameless for the problems the guild had; simply that it was the right time to leave, and leaving was the best thing for both me and Skullcrackers.

So now I join several other ex-Skullcrackers in Freak on a Leash, hoping we don't fall prey to the same flaws. We have the benefit of knowing where Skullcrackers went wrong, and vowing not to make the same mistakes. But knowing and doing are two different things. Just like Skullcrackers, we are having to recruit fresh level 70s and help them gear up through Kara and heroics just to move forward.

At the back of our heads, I think we are all aware that the time for raid progression could well have passed. With the expansion looming, if we can't build a balanced roster of active, like-minded players soon, we may have to accept that the future of Freak lies in the 10-man raids of Northrend. There's no doubt that the development of more 10-man content will make it much easier for guilds like Freak and Skullcrackers to prosper, we just have to hope that we can all make it there in tact.

Getting recruitment right

In guilds, as in companies, recruitment is the foundation of achievement and success, but get it wrong and you will be counting the cost for years to come. If you're one of those guilds that welcomes everyone without question because you think it's elitist and 'hardcore' to ask questions first, this is for you.

Imagine if your company put a job add in the local paper. Something along the lines of:

Acme Manufacturing is recruiting. We need more people to make and sell stuff with us. All ages and abilities welcome. Just turn up to get a job.

Then imagine they invited you and your colleagues to pluck people out of the local mall and drag them along to the office with you in the morning. Anyone who turned up was automatically hired.

The best people already have jobs. They wouldn't turn up on the promise of a random opening — they'd want to know what it involved, who they would be working with, what their hours would be, and how much they would be paid. They'd want to know what you have to offer that would be worth the switch.

And the ones who did turn up? They would be the ones who are out of work. Maybe they've never had a job before, or maybe they were sacked from their last one. Maybe they're fresh out of college and don't know what they want to do yet. They just need some cash to pay the rent. How many do you think would do a good job? How well would they fit in? And how long would they stick around? I can tell you right now: the losers would hang around forever disrupting your work and making your life a misery; the rare, intelligent guys you get on with would move on as soon as they found something better.

No company could function this way. Not even some surf shack hire company, not even a junk mail postal service. Yet I see guilds making these basic mistakes every week, and I've been in guilds crippled with problems that often, at the root, can be traced back simply to a lack of a decent recruitment strategy.

Think about the guilds you have known. How many members did they have? What proportion of those members were active in guild chat? How many responded to requests for help? How many members regularly took part in guild runs? How many members organised runs themselves? And what were they doing in the guild if not these things?

This is where so-called casual guilds can take a leaf from the books of 'hardcore' guilds. I dislike those terms for exactly this reason — it's not hardcore to be smart about who you want in your guild.

All recruitment, whether it's done with a wink and a nod between friends or conducted on the most professional terms, must follow a basic pattern:

The big idea
Somebody somewhere has to think up the job. "Guild chat is a bit quiet, let's get some more folk in" does not count. It's simply common sense that you should know before you recruit what type of people you want. Are you a pvp guild or a pve one? Are you a raid progression guild? Who are your active players now? Where are the gaps in your class and role profile? When are you most active? You must have a vision for your guild, otherwise you simply can't move forward.

The approach
Maybe you have someone in mind, maybe you need to advertise. Either way, someone is going to be approaching someone else. This is why you need to have a good idea about what you want first. If you choose to advertise, be specific about the nature of your guild and the type of person you are looking for. How do you know if someone is good for your guild if you don't know what you're looking for? How do they know you are right for them if they can't see how they'll fit in? Maybe you can't get enough across in trade spam, so set up a website or wiki where you can expand on the basics.

The talk
For top-end raiding guilds this may well be a formal written application; for more relaxed guilds it could just be a few whispered lines. This is where you ask the important questions like what spec are you, what do you hope to get out the guild, and when are you usually online? They're going to have questions too, of course, and it will save a lot of trouble if you answer them up front. At the least, make sure they understand what you expect of them, whether they be in terms of raid attendance or simply following basic guild rules. And again, it isn't 'hardcore' to probe a bit deeper — if you are looking for a main tank, you are allowed to ask what experience they have; if you are progressing through T5, it's only sensible to ask about their gear. This is also your chance to get to know the player, however superficially, to gague how they might fit in your guild. And I hope it goes without saying at this point, but you are allowed to turn them down if they don't match your criteria or you don't think they will fit in. This is one of the biggest problems with 'casual' guilds — they think it's elitist to turn people down. Let me put your mind at rest: it's not.

The test
Or sometimes, tests. This is where you make sure you get what you want in your member. There's always a test, even if they don't know it, even if it's just an officer keeping an eye on the new member for a few weeks. Be clear of your intentions from the start — you can put them through a trial run or two if you need specific skill and experience, or you can simply set a probationary period to see how they settle down. The important thing is the new recruit is aware of the rules from the beginning.

Of course, recruitment isn't the only factor in a company's, or guild's, success or failure. But it's a critical one, and critical to get right.

If all you want from a guild is a big roster and a clever name above your head, feel free to ignore me. But if you've ever found yourself struggling to fill a raid spot, or wondering why half your guild is in warsong gulch when you wanted to run ZA, I strongly recommend you examine your recruitment and see if any of this applies to you.

A night of disappointments

• Zul'Aman raid cancelled
• Quit guild in disgust
• No beta invite
• Blessing of salvation is being removed

More on the beta notes (and guild drama) when I've had time to order my thoughts.

Counting the cost of turnover

In business, staff turnover is the rate at which people join and leave a company. The quicker people come and go, the higher the turnover. In some industries, where the work is seasonal or the staff base is transient, high turnover is a way of life. Travel and tourism, which often employs students, is a prime example. But high turnover can be very costly to an organisation both in terms of recruitment and productivity so most companies strive for a low staff turnover. A high figure can often be symptomatic of problems within the business.

The same can be said of guilds.

Think of it this way. A guild invests time and effort recruiting. It takes time for the new members to settle in, get to know existing members, find their place in the guild, learn the ropes. The guild invests further time, sometimes even gold and resources, on gearing up the new members, teaching them strategies and ways of working. Perhaps some of the long-established members take a step back in their progression to help out. In return for this care and investment, the new members are expected to contribute to the guild in whatever capacity they have jointly agreed.

When this agreement breaks down, productivity (i.e. progression) suffers, morale plummets, sickness and absence jumps and, inevitably, people leave.

High staff turnover can often be traced back to two simple factors: either employees are dissatisfied with their work, conditions, or compensation, or too few employees are performing to expectations.

Break these down further and you might find a dozen or more root causes, from low pay to poor health and safety. The point to remember about staff turnover, whether in your company or your guild, is that it's a warning sign — a great big flashing neon sign, a screaming siren that indicates something very serious is wrong.

If your guild suddenly starts haemorrhaging members, you need to ask yourself why. What is causing them to leave and what are you going to do to prevent it happening again? Because if you are loosing long-standing members, then chances are more recent recruits will have even less reason to stick around. As damaging as it can be to have long-standing members leave, it is much, much worse for your guild to have members come and go repeatedly, never finding their place in the ranks, never contributing, never growing as players. You will find yourself in a vicious cycle of recruit/recover/recruit/recover, your progress arrested, your underlying issues festering and spreading all the while. And every person who leaves your guild dissatisfied is liable to share their experience with friends, further reducing your potential pool of recruits.

Guilds can't weather high turnover the way companies can. If they don't act to stem the flood of members quickly, they may never recover. The survival is dependent upon the guild's ability to recognise changing circumstances and its willingness to tackle them. Successful guilds will evolve to find a new player base, a new direction in WoW; guilds that ignore the signs will simply die or fade away.

Too many cooks?

You can get away with a lot in a five-man instance: shadow priest healing? No problem. Four hunters? Trap away! Does that flexibility extend to raids? I'm guessing not. My guild is just starting to think seriously about raiding and this is one of the issues we will inevitably have to tackle.

There are really two questions here: firstly, do you have a balance of classes in your raid pool, and secondly, are they specced for the roles you need in your raid?

Having never raided before, I can speak with the complete conviction of a novice and say I believe there is a role for every class in a raid. And probably for every possible spec of those classes. That suggests to me that a good raid group would have a balanced mix of classes. But it's virutally impossible to find that balance on a server where hunters outnumber all other classes and good tanks are rarer than gold dust. So immediately, you might see an important gap. Buffs like Gift of the Wild, blessings, and certain crowd control can make your job as a raid group that much more achievable.

And what roles are those classes going to play? We all have to get to 70 somehow, and most of us choose the high-damage route. So you end up with a guild of retribution paladins, enhancement shaman and feral druids. And, er, shadow priests. And there is probably a role for all of these players in a raid. Just not all at the same time. This is a fundamental flaw in the game: it encourages all players, of all classes, to get good at killing things on their own in order to level. But in doing so, you learn one style of play at the expense of all others. I've grown rather fond of melting faces and don't much fancy the prospect of going holy. Not to mention the fact that I haven't done much healing and would pretty much have to learn my class all over again. I imagine the same difficulties for all of the multi-role classes.

There's no point in forcing players to fulfil a predetermined raid role — they will either suck at it or grow bored and leave. But unless you have a good balance of classes and roles, you'll at least have to ask players to consider it. The decision could mean the difference between them making the raid and sitting it out.