Keep in mind too that loot discussions bring out the best and worst of people, so while I don't expect to see flames, I do expect that every person will have a different opinion; and that its all relative and all personal.

As a casual I hate dkp. If you like it, skip this post and stay happy. Also as a casual I've seen many systems and none really will cater to get gear for casuals; but then that is perfectly fair. No regular attendance = no regular loot. Simple. Many moons ago I was more hardcore, and this comment is based upon both experiences, but I was never a true "wow is life" player.

What DKP means to me: It is sign that the guild has gotten mature enough to see the need to reward the long staying and regular members. Its also a sign that they are not mature enough, or close knit enough to use another system that has subtle but powerfully different aspects (see alternatives below). And there are a plethora of alternatives, tweaks, and special rules.

If the guild uses a straight DKP model for loot, then they need to consider two things:

A - separate dkp tables for different raids.
B - moving raids off dkp when they are "farmed out".

A - You do this so that the guys who regularly attend can see a point of differentiation between Class Drops, drops from specific instances, and general drops.

It could be that you have the extra tables for Tier Tokens (t4, t5, t6), could be by Class (warlock, druid, etc), or by Instance - or even a combo.

Consider the Karazhan runs where a range of toons attends  each with different gear needs. If you have a general table and a class table the distribution of Tier items becomes easier to track, and one member will not always be at the mercy of the entire raid, but will only need to compete with those of the same valid classes in the run.

B - Moving a run to open roll / off-farm

When a guild is good enough, and the majority of the players have all that they need, you place the loot on officer assigned (or even open roll). This means that the regulars will still get items, but the loot from that instance is no longer a priority. In affect the guild is saying that the gear that drops there is now made redundant by other items that are now on farm. This is usually a death knell for the instance runs for that place as well. As a progression guild will not waste a night running where no items can by be gained.

Might also be useful to create a Toon gear wish-list for the farmed items. Make people nominate what they want publicly ahead of time, and then there are less hassles.

So what are the loot alternatives? (you'll need wowwiki or google to read all the details folks)

- Zero sum DKP is better than straight DKP, and zero sum is one of the most popular dkp systems used.

- Suicide Kings is better than a DKP system. Go read about the different SK systems in depth, and you'll see that it is just as viable for the regulars, but allows the semi-regulars to still get rewards.

- Class lists are a must, and INstance lists are handy.

- a method of rolls: major upgrade, minor upgrade, offset, then open roll will work if you play with the same set of players each week. The roll priority is given to the toon that will get the most benefit, with the raid leader having final say. I think this suits 10 mans particularly well, but doubt it would work in the old 40 man days, and suspect even 25s would get ugly.

- Officer assigned. The guys running the show decide all loot, and you get loot by attending, contributing, and not screwing up. I like this method, but it does not work in "political" guilds, or any pug run.

In the end players need to do their homework on the system being used, and perhaps leave or discuss this in guild. Keep you self happy, ignore your "internal loot whore" who wants everything first, and be honnest with what you are seeking, and what is reasonable for the guild to use.

Update:

- Blessing of Kings has a comment about the Loot-Council, and Loot in general.

BoK talks about loot being for either Reward or Investment. In general terms the Loot-Council looks at loot as an investment, and DKP looks to be a reward system. SK is certainly a reward system. My preference would be for an investment system, but again this would actually disadvantage me as a casual.

Guild leading sucks in gear progression games. If you find someone willing to do it for you, respect them. Especially if they don't yell at you when you mess up. If they do yell at you when you make an honest mistake, leave. Find another guild. If they don't, it's not ok to get on their case when they can't fit you into tonight's Karazhan run. Because you are casual rogue/hunter/mage #17 and we only ever need one rogue. Maybe if you logged in more than once a month we'd know your name. Don't be that guy. If you're going to be casual, be nice to those of us who do our best to accomodate you. Accomodate us. (If you detect bitterness, you read that paragraph correctly.)

Be a damned team player. Step up and help a guildmate if it's their first time doing something, or if they're getting their butts pounded by Destruction. Hell, do the same for anybody you see floundering around. Exercise common courtesy, like you would in real-life. Make nothing a pissing contest and everything about how well you can work together to burn up some suckas. Furthermore, don't *constantly* beg for people to walk you thru crap that they've been through. They did it themselves: you should do it yourself too. You can do it. We did it. If you're too lazy, well, don't talk to me. Unless of course you want help pwnin suckas.

Here is a definition for you. "Sucka: A Destruction player." (Nothing personal. But it's true. Ask Mr. T.)

Here is another definition for you: "Ally: Anybody on your side (in our case Order). Even if they're a complete jerk." That's right. I'll heal complete jerks if they are fighting suckas. I won't be kind to them, but I will support them. Victory > Social Justice so far as I'm concerned in WAR. I sincerely hope each and every one of you feels the same way.

I'm excited that WAR will have built-in machinery for guild management. I'm excited that gear in WAR seems to fall in chests and bags that are opener-appropriate (if you open it, there is gear in there that you can use), so loot management will be *easy*. No more DKP. Fuck DKP. That's right. I said FUCK it. And fuck the assholes that created a looting system that required players to form an ephemeral economy based on time we put in to your stupid, intermittent-reinforcment based video games. I'd like to zero-sum Blizzard's face.

Here's another definition: "Zero-sum: I hate DKP."

Mull that one over.

My girlfriend arrives tomorrow morning for a visit, as my employer decided to pay me to take her to Six Flags for the day. Then this weekend one of my friends is getting married...so I'll be all over the place visiting with friends who are in town. And I won't be following WAR. @_@ *gasp* I know. You guys will be fine. I have faith. Well, I will probably peek at some blogs and the forums, but don't expect any big articles until Monday. Maybe we'll get lucky and find ourselves in Open Beta end of next week.

Maybe I'll get the poopie pounded out of me by flying monkies tonight while I'm drinking myself under a table to ease the pain of another flock of flying monkies that I'll encounter in fifteen minutes or so. But you know. Statistics is everybody's favorite game.

I'm here all week.

Unfortunately, the system as it was implemented turned out to work in my guild's favor. When they did Kara runs that were strictly made up of people from their own guild, they accumulated DKP on their old pre-alliance table. When we did combined guild runs and raids, their DKP added to the guild alliance table.

This didn't work out well. For many of the people in their guild, their DKP was being split between two tables, while for my guild our DKP was all going on the guild alliance table.

Didja follow that?

When the time came to use DKP for raid drops, my guild members always seemed to have higher totals.
That's how I wound up with the T4 legs, even though I had picked up the T4 helm and a couple of other items just within the past few weeks.

Also, the way the system was set up you earned MUCH more DKP for Karazhan than in Gruul's Lair, since there are so many bosses. That made it so you had to raid Karazhan weekly, even if you didn't need any items from it. If you skipped Karazhan, you would be left in the dust DKP-wise.

The decision was that we would no longer award DKP for Karazhan, since the whole place (except the two dragons) is essentially on farm status anyway.

Now I foresee another problem. If we are only awarding DKP for 25-man content, and we only do Gruul's Lair right now, DKP totals are not going to go up quickly. Two bosses and one hour of raiding = 7 DKP. The fixed cost for a drop from a raid boss is 30 DKP. So you would have to raid for four weeks to almost make up the DKP you spend on one drop. Is that too much?

Should we increase the DKP awards for 25-man raid bosses? Reduce the DKP cost of the drops? Maybe continue to give DKP for Karazhan but at a reduced rate?

I'd suggest that we go to a completely different system, but they seem attached to the one that they have. It just seems to me that you can't cut the weekly DKP award to 1/4 of what it was without making some other adjustment to the system.

As our guild pursues a merger, one of the issues we will likely have to deal with is DKP. We don't use it. I don't like it. However, many other guilds do use it and its likely that we'll have to deal with it wherever we end up. Both of the guilds we are currently exploring as possible merge partners use some variation of it.

DKP seems to me to be driven by a sense of entitlement. Its saying "I raid more than you so I get the loot." There is some merit to that, I suppose. But it is disheartening to the player lower on the DKP scale to know before even setting foot in the instance that they have no shot at the good drops.

Example:

This weekend when we went to Kara, I lost the roll for my T4 gloves. Ah, well. C'est la vie. The person I lost the gloves to was a hybrid pally that mostly solos but came in with us because we had an open spot in the raid. It was his first raid, I believe.

When the gloves dropped there was a tiny moment when I thought... "I deserve those gloves! I've been on every Kara run this guild has ever done! I'm the top DPS! I'm the Guild Master, for crying out loud!!!" Those are the kind of greedy, selfish thoughts that drive DKP systems. In reality, I had no more right to those gloves than anyone else. We all contributed to kill Curator, we should all have a share in his loot.

In fact... it might have turned out better this way. The pally that came with us got several epic items on his first raid. Perhaps the thrill of the loot will lead him to become a more regular raider and contribute to our guild's success. Isn't that a better result than me getting the gloves just to say "I haz T4!"? Its not like I'm hurting with Gloves of Dexterous Manipulation.

Our own loot experiences aside, when we merge we'll probably have to learn a DKP system. I assume that we will start at the bottom of the list and have to go through several raids with no shot at loot before we've accumulated enough points.

Are there any good DKP systems out there?

It's early days at the moment so we're relying on regular rolls to the master looter for drops, but people get a point for signing up to the raid ahead of time and then turning up, a point for each hour spent in the raid, and two points for a boss kill. It may take a while to set in, but dammit if we don't get people actually doing their bit for the progress of the guild, even if it's just reading the GMotD once a day. We don't ask much.

I have a guild tip also! Guildies have been coming online and not reading the message of the day (which, granted, Blizzard don't make it easy by printing the message and then scrolling it out of view with all manner of "Joined Channel:" messages, but still) and asking out of interest what the daily heroic quest is. So I've started putting the daily heroic dungeon in the message and then no-one has an excuse. Someone asks what it is, they're banged to rights! Point them in the direction of what would take, at best, five seconds to check when they first entered the world and someday they might think to do it out of habit. Psh. People. What are you going to do with them?

There's also been talk of using Ventrillo but I have my reservations, first and foremost being that I broke the microphone socket on my computer. Oh yeah, I have the mic still all set up, stuck to the underside of the shelf above my monitor and positioned to allow casual chat whilst even reclined back without need for fiddly headsets that only seem to give me Hot Ear. This dates back to my pre-WoW days of playing Scrabble online and wanting to keep a conversation with a distant friend over gTalk going at the same time, but an ill-advised tidying up excursion made sure it got yanked a little too hard in the direction that such sockets don't like to be yanked. Now it crackles. Incessantly.

Secondly, won't somebody please think of the magic of WoW? A level 70 night elf rogue might look all bad-ass in his gear and turn out some considerable damage to match, but when suddenly he speaks with a faux-bad ass voice of a squeaky thirteen-year-old overdosed on his own misguided sense of machismo, that magic shatters. I've seen how certain players regard themselves over the city channels, I do not want that in my ears.

Thirdly, I like to have gentle music playing while I'm at work. Nothing too loud, nothing too vocal, Selected Ambient Works Volume 2 worked well in tests during the last Karazhan party. Stuff like that. Mogwai, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, perhaps even Sigur Rós or The Orb at the weekends or when it gets late. Keeps me calm, it does. Helps me to keep my head while making sure that all around the bosses are losing theirs. That'll be gone won't it?

No, voice chat wouldn't work for me. Voice chat is for amateurs. Not going there. Uh-huh. Nope.

first ---

the website for my record label (The Sound Yard) went live sunday night/monday morning. The Sound Yard is structured on the principle that the internet takes the majority of the cost out of the delivery of music; thus, all music from The Sound Yard is available for FREE (to download). find out more/download a couple of EPs on the label's site ---

www.thesoundyard.com

next ---

i recently checked the statistics on last.fm. let's throw a little party. my ep hit 3000 plays over the weekend. hoorah.

check it out here: http://www.last.fm/music/Bradley+Kenyon

finally ---

a friend of mine recently put some music up on last.fm. let's help him out/give him some plays. you can do that here: http://www.last.fm/music/Andrew+Riffel

Sachsenhausen var nazisternes første KZ-lejr. Arkitektonisk skulle den udstråle kontrol og magt. Den var mønsterlejren for alle efterfølgende lejre. Beliggenheden så tæt på Berlin, medførte, at den blev SS's træningslejr. SS blev for eksempel trænet i de mest effektive eksekutionsmetoder på sovjetiske krigsfanger (10.000).

Her sad til slutningen af krigen 200.000 fanger fra 40 forskellige nationer. Titusindvis blev myrdet og døde af ubehandlet tyfus, udmattelse og sult.

Lejren blev efter krigen omdøbt til 'Speciallejr 7' af kommunisterne, som her opbevarede krigsfanger fra Wehrmacht, nazister, anti-kommunister, systemkritikere af DDR og uskyldige. Mange havde siddet i lejren under nazisterne og fortsatte lejrlivet under kommunismen. Ifølge DDR's historieskrivning havde der aldrig eksisteret en sovjetisk speciallejr på stedet. I 1948 sad der 50.000 fanger i lejren, der nedlagdes i 1950.

Kort over anlægget. Den nederste barak i højre hjørne er der, hvor europas bedste fasknere fremstillede store mængder falske engelske pund-sedler og til sidst også falske dollar-sedler. Udenfor kortet fandtes den såkaldte 'T-bygning', der var SS-administrationen for alle KZ-Lejre. Den T-formede bygning i højre side, var det såkaldte 'Zellenbau' med 80 enkeltceller. Her sad de såkaldte 'prominente' fanger - bl. a. formanden for Danmarks Kommunistiske Parti Aksel Larsen.

'Station Z' med resterne af krematoriet, gaskammeret og udenfor skydegraven og galgerne.

Den del af KZ-Lejren, som kommunisterne byggede efter krigen. Her døde mindst 13.000 af sygdom, sult og udmattelse.

Loot Council is basically a dkp free system. Where loot goes to is determined by all the active officers and the gm at the raid. Between them, they will make a decision to give an item to a person, usually whoever they consider will benefit the raid most with said item. Sadly, it is this reason which may make it flawed. If a person makes friends with all the officers and turns their favor, it could potentially lead to favoritism, based on the morals of the officers. Even worse, it would create immediate distrust of the officers the moment it starts. Luckily, my guild, Echoes of Hellscream, has seem to avoided that fate. Now, for the pros and cons!

Pro's of Loot Council

1. It has no DKP.
2. Items usually go to who needs it most.
3. It relieves the "have to be at the raid" pressure slightly.
4. The balance of power helps keep it fair.

Cons of Loot Council

1. Subject to severe favoritism if the person has good standings with all officers, i.e. corruption.
2. Takes a long time to get loot out, can cause wipes.

That is actually it. So far I have not seen any problems with Loot Council, except when it gets deadlocked so long that the next wave of monsters come and wipes the raid.

Anyone have any Loot Council horror stories? I need data for this looting system.

First, I will sound off the first of a week-long series with explaining to you exactly what Zero Sum DKP is, and why I hate it so much that I would kill Mr. Pinchy if I caught him.

What is Zero Sum?

You may be asking though, as I write this, What is Zero Sum DKP? Well, Zero Sum DKP is a system of DKP in where the player starts out with (naturally) '0' DKP. The player is then awarded DKP upon item drops. So if you killed a boss and an item drop, you would get DKP based on it's value which was predetermined by the guild leader and his/her officers. Now, from what I have heard and experienced, this is most likely the most popular and used version of DKP available in World of Warcraft at this moment, but do not quote me on that. ;)

Advantages

1. Zero sum starts everyone on a equal footing. Everyone gains the same as long as they are in the raid.
2. Zero sum allows players who start later to not get an advantage over veteran players. You won't have to worry about the newest paladin trying to roll for your Crystalforge Chestpiece.
3. Zero sum is easy to implement, even a gnome could do it.
4. Zero sum can be easily modified to suit your needs.

Disadvantages

1. Zero sum is entirely dependent on drops, so if you have a bad wipe night, or are trying to farm new content, you are screwed.
2. DKP Split. (See Below)
3. Veterans can keep the new guys from getting loot for months using DKP whoring.

To me, the bad is outweighing the good in this situation. If your guild is farming BT and Hyjal, and has very little wipes, then this is the perfect system for your. However, if you are trying to clear a raid instance, then you are just asking for headaches. For instance, in my former guild, "Trinkets", we had a Zero Sum DKP system, which I really didn't mind, until we got into some bad wipe nights. After the whole fiasco, I finally got my t5 Shoulders, and what do I see, to my dismay... I am at negative one hundred and fifty-four points (-154). My jaw dropped. I was that much behind, just for one item?! It got worse as the weeks went by and my dkp only went down to -134 before I called it quits and left. I couldn't handle the fact that not only.. One, was I wasting my time on wiping and two, that I was getting nothing from it.

People can call me impatient for that, but as it is said on those bumper stickers: You can't have and give something for nothing. Before Ileft, I noticed half my guild had negative DKP and the other half had positive dkp, which leads to.......

DKP Split

What is the DKP Split? The DKP split is when the members in your guild either have really high DKP, or are 'high' into the negatives. This usually doesn't cause a problem, until you finally get that Kael'thas down and all the veterans churn out the bulk of their dkp for the items, if not all of it. What you have left is everyone near negatives or in full negatives. Now, you may not see this as a problem, until the next week, when the person who has the most dkp has only eight (8), and has to spend 200 dkp on his chest piece. There it is, total collapse.

Total Collapse

Your guild is pissed, there is mutiny abound, now how the hell do you fix it? Luckily, a few brilliant people came up with alternatives and ideas.

1. You would get dkp if you attended or were on the waitlist.
2. You would get dkp if you farmed stuff and have it to the guild bank.
3. You would get dkp if you did pvp with the guild on weekends.
4. You would get dkp for arriving ontime, with consumables and food.

There is much more where that came from. The blessing of Zero sum is it is adaptable. Your guild on hard times? Add incentive dkp. Need people to show up on time? Give dkp for arriving ontime. Need Matticus to stop dancing naked? Give him dkp!

Από το συνέδριο του Γερμανικού ΚΚ 23-24 Φλεβάρη 2008 (μόνο στα σουηδικά από τον υπεύθυνο Διεθνών σχέσεων του ΚΚ Σουηδίας)

Spüren Sie es, liebe Leser? Von "Themenarmut" kann nicht die Rede sein! Aber, schauen wir doch mal gemeinsam genauer hin. Draußen scheint die Sonne, hängst du die Rübe aus dem Fenster, friert sie dir trotzdem ab. So ist das eben. In Afghanistan gab es nun mittlerweile zwei schwere Selbstmordanschläge in den vergangenen beiden Tagen, die viele Todesopfer forderten. Leicht neigt man dazu zu sagen, so sei das eben. Welch Verhängnis. Der Kosovo ist nun eigenständig, die Mehrzahl der europäischen Staaten wollen die "abtrünnige Provinz" nun völkerrechtlich anerkennen. So ist das eben. Oder auch nicht, denn internationales Recht gilt eben auch für westliche Staaten. Und in Pakistan steht der Sturz von Musharraf vielleicht kurz bevor, demokratische Verhältnisse seien das eben, nur was kommt dann? Seine Gegner sind keine weißen Tücher, gehören den Machteliten seit Jahrzehnten an, sind politisch belastet.

Also: Themen ja. Diskussionen nein, sagen die da oben, oder wie Adrian Kreye in der SZ schreibt, "ihr da draußen".

Langsam muss man überlegen. Museen verbarrikadieren die Eingänge, lassen ein nach langen Leibesvisitationen und filmen every single step. Das war gestern. Heute regen wir uns über den nächsten Kunstklau auf, trauern den schönsten Bildern nach und morgen sehen wir den wunderbarsten Fälschungen in die Augen. Und kurz danach vielleicht, in ein paar Jahren, redet Hans Leyendecker nicht nur von Politik- und Wirtschaftsverdrossenheit, sondern auch von der nun beginnenden Kunstverdrossenheit.

Das sollte dann doch mal zu denken geben. Nicht das wir in wenigen Dekaden ein anderes, vielleicht noch viel wichtigeres Übel zu verkraften haben: die Diskussionsverdrossenheit.

Der Glasperlenspieler (wartet schon auf die Reaktionen zum politischen Ende des Fidel Castro, den er immer ein wenig mochte)

Links:
Bücher und Kurzvita von Hans Leyendecker
Homepage von Adrian Kreye

Nachtrag:
Zwei der vier Bilder des Züricher Kunstraubs sind offenbar wieder aufgetaucht.

Dabei dürfte es schwer sein das Thema Feinfühlig anzugehen, den sobald auch nur ein Hauch von Sympathie gegenüber von Stasi & Co. zu vernehmen ist, hat man als Politiker verschissen. Das müsste auch Frau Wegner wissen, es gibt genug Beispiele. Aber vielleicht war sie ja auch zu euphorisch weil sie es überhaupt so weit gebracht hat. Wenn sich da mal nicht jemand zu stark aus dem Fenster gelehnt hat.

Bei Stasi, Hitler und so weiter hat die Geschichte gezeigt das die Nachteile gegenüber den Vorteilen überwiegen und zumindest offiziell kein Politiker, der seine Ruhe haben will, positiv darüber debattiert. Komisch ist auch das Frau Wegner, obwohl sie die vor reaktionären Kräften schützende Stasi wieder haben will, es ganz schön blöd findet das Die Linke vom Verfassungsschutz beobachtet wird. Also ist Die Linke mit ihrer Hau drauf-Methode keine reaktionäre Kraft? Tante Wegner hat's gesagt.

Und was haben wir gelernt? Wer in der Politik lange bestehen will muss es leider jedem Popel recht machen. Wir werden dich vermissen Christel.

In Niedersachsen gibt es einen Landtag. Dort tagen Abgeordnete der CDU, der SPD, der FDP und der Grünen und der Linken. Christel Wegner gehört dazu. Sie ist Rentnerin. Sie kam als DKP-Mitglied über die Landesliste der Linken in den Landtag. Alte, verknöcherte Stasi-Greisinnen und -Greise sitzen vorm Monitor und schauen sich das Video von Christel Wegner an. Es besteht keine Gefahr, dass sie schwanger werden.

Ansonsten aber gibt es keinen großen Unterschied zwischen meiner emotionalen Reaktion auf Christel Wegner und Flocke. Ich rufe: "Ach wie niedlich, ach wie süß!"

Christel Wegner sagt, die Linke sei für Reformen, die DKP aber für die Revolution. Wenn erst einmal der Umbau der Gesellschaft erreicht und die Kapitalisten enteignet seien, dann brauche man wieder ein Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, um die Umwälzung zu schützen.

Ach wie niedlich, ach wie süß!

Flocke wälzt sich herum auf ihrem Eisbärfell, grummelt, schnarcht und furzt.

Ach wie niedlich, ach wie süß!

Sind sie nicht goldig, die Beiden. Ich könnte stundenlang zugucken und zuhören.

Es es nicht herrlich, in einem freien Lande zu leben, in dem jeder frei entscheiden kann, ob er am Wahlsonntag lieber zur Urne geht oder in den Zoo?

Christel Wegner
„Frau Wegner hat sich für ein demokratisches Parlament disqualifiziert. Es war richtig und wichtig, dass die Linkspartei schnell reagiert hat und Frau Wegner dazu gedrängt hat, das Mandat nicht anzunehmen“, sagte der Berliner Parteinforscher Oskar Niedermeyer zu FOCUS Online. Der Fall habe das Potenzial zu einem großen Imageschaden, vor allem im Westen.

ZUM THEMA
Stasi-Eklat: Druck auf Wegner wächst

Auch wenn die Partei Frau Wegner nun vom Mandat abzieht: Sie hat ihre Wahrheit nur zu früh geäussert.Wie die LINKE gedenkt,einmal ihre erworbene Macht abzusichern,dazu hat die übereilige Christel die Katze schon einmal aus dem Sack gelassen. Darüber sollten sich die Wähler dieser Partei immer auch im klaren sein. Nicht das es hinterher wieder heisst: Wir haben von nichts gewusst.

references:
christel, das opfer
Linken-Fraktion schließt Wegner aus
Witze des Tages
post-SED und westdeutsche Heisssporne