But how many Gurgthocks are available? Because we're going to need about double their number once the expansion comes out. And what if they flip the dynamic on its head and the most difficult instances, the ones that require the most leadership and on the spot thinking are the 10-mans? We'll need to quadruple the number of Gurgthocks. That you have Gurg, and he does so out of the goodness of his heart is ideal. Perfect, as a matter of fact.

But I need to encourage leadership at every level, PvP and PvE. And I want to set up a system to recognize, reward and retain the people who make things happen for other people. Depending on people's generosity doesn't work in the real world, so we adopt less idealistic mechanisms. I'm taking some of those less idealistic mechanisms into WoW.

http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/laws.shtml

If the responses in this post have taught me anything at all, it's that I'm going to receive a lot of resistance to this idea. This may make it not worth the trouble.

The larger question I'm trying to address is how do you create more leaders? How do you find more leaders? How many guilds have failed from incompetent leadership? How much more enjoyable would Arathi Basin be if leaders sprung up spontaneously. Limiting the number of opportunities available to groups to the number of leaders who are willing to give generously of themselves leads to a scarcity, a failure to take advantage of all the things that are there to take advantage of.

As long as people get the job done, I don't particularly care what their motivations are. If they extract purples from the instance and treat people in a fair and respectful matter, I don't really care if they're doing it for the love of the experience or the love of loot. They got something done that benefit far more people than just themselves.

With such a low barrier to entry to raid-level instances, I'm thinking of a collection of individuals who PvE raid when they want to and PvP raid when they want to. All I want to offer is the a) the opportunity to do the small raid-level PvE instances for gear as organized by raid leaders, b) the opportunit to raise money in ways that can only be accomplished on a raid-level scale (e.g. running AQ20 to sell the class ability books) and c) the opportunity to meet other intelligent, capable PvPers.

Limited benefits, maximum freedom. I think I can find some handful of people whom that proposition will appeal to.

1-day ban for blatant trolling

On-topic: I am the best-geared shaman in our guild because I have 99% attendance over the past 18 months. A good loot system should pretty much naturally reward the attendance levels typical of a raid leader. The only true "perk" I've ever gotten out of this position is being the AQ40 Scepter bearer, and I'm grateful for that.

If you can't find at least one person for every 25 in your guild who can lead without some sort of allowance, then the pool from which you're drawing is shit or you're not giving your folks due credit.

I know what you're trying to do. And what's likely to happen is individuals will begin to feel some sort of entitlement while others grow resentful. "What the hell? I'm at every, single raid, coming up with boss strats as much as the next guy, and Johnny McLeadsraids is always ahead of me in DKP despite getting the lion's share of loot." Add to that the fact that leading a group of 25 (or even 10) is not exactly the same as leading a group of 40; especially if it's the same people, give or take, week in and week out. (Permagroups tend to lead themselves after a brief breaking-in period.)

I'll say this and stop commenting on the subject: I'd hate to be part of a group whose membership thinks so poorly of me that they'd give me preferential treatment to convince me to help out a little extra.

Start training them up now, at least thats what we've done by removing the DKP from 20 mans and MC and letting class leaders and guild members lead raids to there with officers taking a back seat. Its the only way you're going to be able to get enough competant leaders that people are comfortable following in time for the expansion. In addition , as a raid leader, it lets you see other peoples mistakes and work out how you can improve your own raid leading too.

Along the lines of Groucho Marx's, "I wouldn't want to be a member of any club that'd have me," the best leaders are the relucant ones who take it up because it needs doing. It's very much being the quarterback of the team and while there are some people want the position for the glory, who will end up screwing their teams in the long run, there are other QBs that can give up the personal fame for the team's best play, making other people look good.

Moving back to the first post but addressing the audience - has anyone anywhere ever seen a guild where there were real second class citizens, and the guild prospered? To the contrary, is there anyone who can't cite a dozen examples of guilds that've fallen apart where those in the know could easily point out who the favored sons were?

Re: Bonus points for raid leadership.

Terribly, terribly bad idea. You never want to do anything that flexes a raid leader's sense of entitlement muscle.

Above and beyond the resentment issues, the big thing is that once you're giving extra points to raid leaders, you will suddenly sprout a huge list of unqualified raid leaders in it for the points. Sorting through these people to find the useful ones is going to be a drain on actual raiding time, and then you have another resentment issue from the rejected raid leaders.

Good raid leaders will derive additional compensation for their work: they enjoy it. They want to do it. Not rewarding the job is what's going to get good raid leaders for your guild.

The first rule of organized PvE is and always will be "sense of entitlement is a bitch". Do not taunt the sense of entitlement.

Now, for point systems.

Again, I'll plug constrained bid: you award points however you'd like, and then you give the item to whoever has the most points and charge them a fixed ratio of their current points. You maintain a couple of stacks -- one for weapons/trinkets, one for durability armor, and then slip jewelry in whichever stack feels better. Mostly, the key is to put high desirability items (e.g., weapons for melee, trinkets for casters) in a separate stack from the bulk of drops (e.g., set gear, set tokens, and armor that fits the same slots), so you have a high value stack that players can horde for their next weapon upgrade (or whatnot), and a high turnover stack for distributing the less sexy gear somewhat evenly. You might want to add another bidding option -- a small fixed value -- for low value items, but this solves problems (getting bids at all on low-value gear) at the expense of others (possibility of collusion).

But anyway, we've been using the system for over a year and been very happy with it, but I've only heard of a couple of other guilds using it (and one of them copied our system and modified the point stacks, the other was asking for a copy of my php work supporting it). I'd be happy to go into more detail with it if anyone is interested, but I've posted about it a couple of times to very little response.

I believe in honoring commitments. If your guildmates had signed up with you in advance to go to a raid or to go to AB, then yes, of course they are honorbound to join you, and it is entirely their fault for starting up something else at the time. But if you never warned them in advance, and they have already made a commitment with a group of 5 random players, and are in the middle of fighting through Stratholme or some such nonsense, I think ditching those random players is "didn't you ever listen to your kindergarten teacher" level rudeness.

Maybe a belief in honoring my word and treating others as I would like to be treated makes me fit only for friends and family style guilds. So be it.

Well if you really get serious about seperating PVE and PVP items it's gonna take a lot of going through loot and manually assigning. As far as guidelines, any strictly tanking plate is PVE gear. Hybrid stuff like conquerers is not, but wrath certainly is. Misc tanking gear is not so much PVE only as a lot of priests and warlocks love high armor/sta items for PVP. Resistance gear like you said. Also most items without stamina are pretty poor for PVP. For instance the eye of hakkar and a lot of the caster stuff coming out of naxx are perilously low on stam (or have none) and most serious PVPers would not want to wear them in PVP. Healing gear is typically terrible if you have PVP alternatives too. It's all low stam, no extra armor, full of regen stats which are largely useless, and +heal which is nice but not usually a focus when gearing for PVP, there's also a trend of low Int going round /sigh. Very subjective all of it though.

I meant PVP restrictions. Say if there's a phat 2hander that drops, it's going to benefit a warrior much more than a hunter taken in a vacuum. Same for +dam gear on mages compared to priests (unless shadow is really good for group PVP come expansion of course, and depending what XvX arenas you care to focus on as a guild).

No, not really, not for leading the big raids anyway. But then I've always been someone who prefers to deal with guild problems with cuts and recruitment rather than engineering a way for people to do what you want them to do. So my response to there not being enough leaders is to try and find more until you have enough. As far as leading arena teams, I do think there are enough people capable of leading one as needed. When I was in a PVP team there was a number of people who could just pick it up and lead when the usual leader was too exhausted to do more than go where the leader pointed and hit stuff with his 2hander. The small number makes it quite easy to do, think of how many people in a guild you've been in could easily lead a guild 5man. It's really not hard at all.

When you sign up to a guild that's going to ask you to do this there's either a spoken or unspoken agreement (depending on what they put down in their app form/post/etc) that you are going to drop anything you are doing and come running when the guild needs you whether that be for a world spawn or unscheduled raid. So in effect you have two conflicting agreements and you're going to break your word one way or the other and let one side down. Personally I feel terrible whenever I have to break from an instance, but in the end my guild has to come first so I make my appolagies and leave.

Hi,

We have about 25-30 people who are interested in rolling this sort of guild with us on a new server when TBC comes out.

Details here:
http://forums.subcreation.net/viewforum.php?f=23

And loot system discussion is here:
http://forums.subcreation.net/viewforum.php?f=45

and here:
http://forums.subcreation.net/viewforum.php?f=47

--Alcaras

And you give freely of your time and energies and that is admirable. I do as well. When I put together cross-guild PvP groups for AV and AB, I did so because I enjoyed a) winning, b) the challenge of PvP and c) the privilege of being in the company of genius.

In that eight months of PvP raiding, I found three other people willing to step up and lead. And even then, it was in limited roles: taking control of a single group or some portion of the raid. I’d see people who I knew to be capable of leading and I’d say "hey, do you want to lead?" And they said no. Was that reason to kick them out of the raid group? No, of course not. But it still left us short leaders.

Fast forward a few months. I’ve stopped PvPing being burned out after reaching Field Marshall. All the various PvP leaders from Bleeding Hollow got their desired ranks and then stopped, themselves burned out. And then, the A-Team left possibly leaderless, people stepped up.

A rogue, who never wanted to lead anything more than the stealth team in AV, stepped up and started leading. After him, a warlock, whose abilities I admired greatly, but could never get him to talk on vent much less lead, ended up leading. They stepped up when the need was there, an incentive. If they hadn’t, they wouldn’t have achieved their goals of getting to Grand Marshall.

Their names are Draeke and Demonsire, two of the most well respected PvPers and PvP leaders on Bleeding Hollow. And while they would always have been among the server's best PvPers, it was their goal of achieving GM, that incentive that lead them to lead.

In this theoretical guild that I’m sketching out, I can’t offer the title Grand Marshall to motivate raid leaders. So I need to take other steps. I intend to be the disciplinarian. I intend to focus on recruiting quality people. I’ll deal with the politics and I’ll take the heat for looting rules and whatever else. But these only make the job potentially pain-free. In order to create some sort of incentive, whether they ask for it or not, I’m going to reward their efforts. Their role-modifier is bound entirely to the success of the raids they lead. The more raids they lead, the more successful they are, the more they’re rewarded. If they prove to be incompetent, I’ll remove them.

By the way, in my mind, the guild will be more like an association of PvPers than the goal-oriented team that PvE guilds are. Maximum freedom, minimal demands, some opportunities for light-core PvE. People tell me they want to lead raids, I vet them as best I can, then let them try if I think they’ll succeed. They arrange for logistics, do the boss research themselves, recruit people from in and outside the guild and then go do it. If they succeed regularly, more power to them and loot for all. If they fail consistently, I revoke their raid leader status.


On one end of the size scale, I’ll have minimal to no worries. Ten, maybe fifteen people, and I can do it all, no problems. At the flip side, what if I grow large? Two hundred people isn’t unreasonable given the current size of some guilds. So that’s about four to six 25-man raids possible on a given night or maybe ten to fifteen 10-man raids.

When you have people lead, out of the kindness of their heart, how do you hold all those different people to expectations? When they’re leading, essentially as a favor to you, the worst you can do is revoke their right to lead raids. But all that does is screw over yourself and the group of people they were leading. You still have nine or twenty-four people who want to PvE.

When you provide an incentive, then they have that to lose. They may be more willing to work with you, more receptive to criticisms, feedback, suggestions. They may be less willing to simply give up and say "forget it."

The larger question that I’m trying to address is how do you find enough leaders to fill the roughly doubled number of opportunities TBC will bring? This is my answer. If there are other answers, I welcome them because obviously this mechanism will have difficulty flying.

If they continue to lead successful raids, generate wealth for themselves and others, treat folks with respect due an individual and don’t make a fuss, then they can feel entitled as they want. To a large extent, they deserve it. If they start making extraordinary demands, then I’ll suggest maybe they should leave and start a PvE guild. If they go passive-aggressive, I’ll remove them from the guild. Such is the benefit of having low PvE expectations for the guild.


Then I’d suggest that he apply to become a raid leader and then start leading raids. Perhaps volunteer to take over the raid that he’s been participating and letting the previous raid leader take a break. But there are those who talk and those who do. I’m going to reward those who do. If there are politics that come up because of it, then so be it. But not doing the right thing because of politics is letting the tail wag the dog.

If I can’t come up with an alternative loot system to achieve the same goals I’ve set out, then this may prove to be the limiting factor to the growth of the guild. And that’s fine with me since PvE is a means to an end, not the end itself.

I don’t have a guild now. Work demands prevent me from dedicating the time required. Further, I think there will be a greater need a few months after the release of the expansion when the instances are smaller and PvP has a more prominent place in the game.


Who is to say that the leaders who step up are necessarily qualified to lead? I don’t need to like them and I’m not setting this system to line the pockets of my friends. Do they treat people respectfully and do they produce results in the form of bosses killed? These are external criteria that can be judged by third parties. If the answer is yes, more power to them. Keep them at it. If the answer is no to either, then remove them. Why must their motives be called into question?

Further flipping the dynamic on its head, let's say a raid leader calls a PvE raid and not enough people show up. In any other guild, the problem is seen as being with the members. But this is a PvP guild and PvE serves PvP. So I'd judge such a situation being attributable to the raid leader. Getting enough people to show up is step one of having a successful raid. If he didn't have enough people, why didn't he call it off or work to make sure he had enough people of the right classes?

There have been countless threads about how people don't want to do any other instances besides the easy ones like MC or BWL. Leaders bemoan their guild members who don't show up. By making the focus of the guild PvP, we bypass that issue. PvE guilds want to progress for the sake of progression. Perhaps this is due to all the leaders seeking the thrill of the next instance to be beaten. With the focus of guild being PvP, if members don't want to show up for next hardest instance, then so be it. If they grow tired of the guild's lack of progress on the PvE front, they can either accept it or quit and join a PvE guild.

Gonna harp on this point because apparently you're missing it. How are you going to deal with the ton of PvE-centric loot that no one is going to spend points on because ostensibly they're only their to get pvp gear? Saying "we'll cross that bridge when we come to it" is kinda silly.

If your priests are all shadow, what are you going to do with the huge +healing loot that blizzard has itemized for PvE advancement. If your warriors are only token tanks, how are you going to get them to give up their shot at a shiny PvP weapon in favor of taking loot that only helps them tank?

If you don't require anyone do take PvE progression loot, how do you intend to make meaningful strides in terms of PvE loot you have access to? This system might work fine if every instance you do can be tanked with a twohander in dps plate and healed by vampiric embrace.

A) all your raiders are there to get PvP loot
2) you're assuming standard PvP specs for most classes

Assuming you get some pvp-healing types healing might not be that hard to organize, for warriors the difference might be a little more stark.

Why? So we can go on for three pages with you adamantly refusing to take another's advice?

I tell you what. Since you're wholly convinced you're right and we're all wrong, go implement your idea and let it run its course over the span of, let's say, 6 months. After that, come back and start a new thread telling us how things went.