Monday (8 Feb) - New DKP Rules for the Guild

Monday (8 Feb) - New DKP Rules for the Guild

Wild's guild is planning to reinstate DKP loot rules for the 25 man raids. For those who don't remember what DKP is, it is a generic term for any system that uses some kind of points system as the basis for awarding loot during a raid. Simple rolls with the highest roll winning leave who wins loot to chance. Guilds don't like this. The most common concern is having a raider who raids once a month wind up with loot that a raider who comes to every raid hasn't gotten. Nearly every dkp system is heavily weighted by raid attendance; the more often you show up, the more points you get to spend on gear. Instead of rolls, raiders bid dkp points to win loot.

The guild wants to try a new system that we haven't used before, primarily because it promises to reduce the amount of work that loot masters have to do to maintain a functioning dkp system. An addon called EPGPLootMaster promises to automate the entire process. However, there has already been some confusion about the addon. Initially, the guild put the word out that everyone had to load the "client" EPGP addon prior to the Tuesday raid (tonight). When Wild checked the addons for "EPGP" about five addons had that in their name. On the guild forums one of our new raiders posted a link to the addon he said was the right one. A day later the Guild Leader posted a link to a different addon. Raiders who don't bother to read the forums were also guessing which they should be using.

The system won't go "live" this week, but they do want to test it. Should be a lively test if not everyone has the right addon.

Personally I'm ambivalent about what loot distribution system we use. If EPGP had been in place for the Toravon fight last week there is no way Wild would have won a dkp bid for those T10 legs. But then again random rolls are, well, random, and bad luck with the dice can lead to long periods where you don't win anything. What dkp does, ultimately, is award the best, latest loot to the raiders with the highest attendance first; once they have what they want, the rest of us start to receive the items they already have or don't want.

After claiming that the hunter Mery was willing to help out in pvp if needed, Wild figured he'd better meet with her to make sure she was ready. Mery has been off on her own for a long time. And it showed. Her gear was sorta "eh" and she had not bothered to relearn her talents since I don't know how long ago. She'd been so excited to get some game time she did two Valentine's Week dailies before she even met with Wild. One of those dailies required collecting kills (how interesting is it that killing things is associated with a week of romance). No wonder she had so much trouble getting the kills with no talents in place. Mery got that all sorted out, and although her gear is still only average, at least Wild got her some modest enchants for most of it. Mery was close enough to level 36 that Wild gave her time to get there. Merry and her pet gorilla, Sassy, will be ready if needed.

Philly got some game time out on the Isle and raised her xp to 46% of the way to level 72.

The rest of the Wild clan were given the day off to play hooky as "the hand" was pretty sore on Monday after a weekend of dungeon crawling. The stitches come out today.