Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Loot Council Gone Bad

I was checking out the WoW forums for some of my old servers and found this Post.

Please Note: In my brief time on Hyjal I had no contact with anyone in Casual or involved in this drama as far as I know. My comments are purely based on posts on the forums. Please to not take anything said here as an attack on the guild or its members both past and present.

Summary: The posted thread is already closed due to length and a vast majority of the posts are useless. So here is a quick summary.

Casual is the #1 ranked guild on Hyjal and has been clearing SWP for a couple of months. Dispite this expertise they have had bad luck when it comes to Epic drops. The Warglaive Off-Hand finally drops. The loot counsil has a decision to make. Give the Epic sword to a long time member Aquasheeps (who claims to be an original member), or to a new recruit who already has the Warglaive Main-Hand so that he can complete his set. They did the later. As a result Aquasheeps then took at least 200,000 gold from he guild bank and /gquit.

My Observations:
As an outsider with little information this is almost impossible to determine right and wrong, but I do find a couple of interesting points here.

1. Aquasheeps is being treated like a hero on the forums. Who new that someone could take 200,000 from a guild bank and a large chunk of the wow community would support him? I don't think this isreally support for Aquasheeps but is more of an anti-hardcore backlash. You don't be come the top guild on a server and one of the top guilds in the world without making some enemies. There are a lot of "Casual got what it deserves" posts which I think are mostly sour grapes.

2. There seems to be some in Casual who thinkAquasheeps was wronged even after he took the gold. One member did post on the forums saying that the counsils decision as cause some people to question if Casual is the best place for them and that he has been approched to quit with them.

3. I am a long time supporter Loot Counsil systems, but this level of drama would never occur with DKP as long as loot was distributed with in the rules. This level of drama is only possible with human interaction.

My Commentary:
Using the limited info available, it seems to me that both sides are wrong. The loot counsel bricked the choice in my opinion. Yes, having a set of warglaives on one person will improve raid DPS especially in SWP, but does that matter anymore. Casual has been clearing SWP for weeks, the little bit of extra DPS isn't going to change the guild ranking or make the fights all that much easier. Assuming that Aquasheeps was a long time valued member as he says, then he should have been rewarded for his dedication with the epic.

That said, Aquasheep way overreacted. If he really did help found the guild then, he was probably part of the discussion to use loot council. Some times people make mistakes. It sucks. I was in ZA the other day and the Hood of Hexing dropped. A mage rolled need on it even though she had T5 and won. I haven't even seen her wear it since then. Yes it does piss me off, but mistakes happen.

Ultimately the game should be played for the fun of it. So that we can see new fights that test our abilities. So that we can hang out with friends. Getting shiny purples and oranges are great, but nobody uses the level 60 legendaries anymore, other than to pull them out and say "hey, look what I got."

If a loot distribution issue causes you to go raid the Gbank and quit then there were probably other issues also. If the people you play with are friends then your not going to do it.

Anyway, good luck to everyone involved. This just proves one thing I had kind of suspected anyway, Hyjal Drama > Eitrigg and Garona Drama combined.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think that a lot of people agree with your opinion.

As Casual had already beaten the game and the added DPS would most likely not benefit the raid in any tangible way, it was silly to give the Warglaive to a relative newcomer when a longtime member should be rewarded for his performance and dedication to the raid. If they didn't have the bosses on farm I might reconsider my decision, but it's clear that they don't need that boosted DPS -- and giving the offhand to the longterm member might have been an equally large increase of DPS depending on what he currently has equipped.

However, that really doesn't give Aquasheeps the right to clear out the guild bank. It's just socially wrong and a poor image to set for oneself. Down the road when Aquasheeps attempts to join another raid and progress then, will he be remembered as the guy who wrongly missed out on the opportunity for a Warglaive or the guy who was an asshat and can't be trusted because he might ninja his new bank the next time he gets upset?

To further the fact that he's wrong, Blizzard recently announced a change in their guild bank stealing policies: they will enforce cases where the bank has been robbed without the consent of the leadership of the guild. Personally, I dislike the idea since it removes personal accountability and responsibility from players, but the guild could theoretically turn to a GM and have the entire thing rectified if he agreed with their interpretation of the events.

Also, regarding Anonymous posters, I think that Blogger allows you to remove that feature. It'll fix the problem if people can't post anonymously. I've been across many blogs without it.

Graylo said...

Thanks for the comments.

I did turn off anonymous comments breafly, but it unfortunately also turns off the name/url option. I don't want to require anyone to sign into anything to comment on my blog, but if a do continue to get a bunch anonymous comments I my bite the bullet and turn it off.