Loot drama has risen its stinky head again. Apologies for using the front page to hog the discussion.

I don’t raid any more, so it’s not my decision, but I ended up running the DKP system when we first started raiding as a guild, and seriously, sitting there after a raid and assigning points to people gets old really fast.

Loot point systems are unfair and complex by their very nature. Say you break it down to one point per boss or one point per hour - what happens for a first downing of a boss or an hour of hanging around waiting for people, what happens when you fail to down a boss for three tries or have to leave after 45 minutes? What about farming runs, when someone can pick up boss points like sweets, contrasted against progress runs?

Essentially loot points are a way of quantifying how much you “deserve” an item. Sadly, the complexity of this concept means if it is quantifiable at all, this is probably only achievable by God. It is certainly not something we mere mortals can handle with any accuracy. Sure, we can devise a rough system - but then other variables present themselves: quitting a raid, substituting, downing a new boss, playing with an alt, and innumerable other factors, and you find yourself in the decidedly shaky position of having to quantify some new, vague concept and somehow work out how many of your original points it equates too.

1 Love plus 3 Fucks minus 7 Grazed Knees = 4 Good Songs and A Burger.

You’re attaching an arbitrary value to a vague concept then building a system around the result. What’s more, your solution must be agreed upon by everyone. Then you take the whole wobbly structure and hand it over to some poor sucker to administer it, in conjunction with the raid leader who must sit down, exhausted, after each raid - and they don’t usually end on a high - and type out who was there, who won what, who spent what DKP points and how much what they bought was worth. They you have to hope the guy who gets the text file adjusts the tables in time for the next raid. It is, in short, a right ballache, and if I’ve learned anything about The Bruces in the last 18 months it’s that enthusiasm for administrative procedures is very short lived.

So DKP is a flawed concept, doomed to failure - and the unfairness which it brings about is somebody’s fault instead of the fault of the game and its randomness, and that leads to bitterness. Just work it out like gentlemen. Master Loot, then the relevant people roll - and if anyone has a problem they can raise it at that stage. If you want an item enough, have the bravery to say so - and if you don’t pipe up and instead let some new guy walk off with it, who cares, you gain a few karma points with the universe by being selfless.

“Who deserves what” is a vague concept, and it requires a vague system. Numbers look simple but where human interaction is concerned, they are one-sided mask. Like patient targets in hospitals or crime statistics, the picture you see is badly skewed because life is a lot more complex than the figures suggest, and somewhere under that fascia of justice, someone’s getting bumfucked because the numbers do not - cannot, by their very definition - add up.

There is no better way to solve a problem than to sit down and discuss it. To dream of DKP is to admit you consider mature discussion to be an inadequate method of solving loot drama, and that, whichever way you look at it, means this is not the guild you’re looking for.

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Hi guys! It’s Barry here, with my World of Warcraft blog. I hope you can “bee” bothered to read it!!!

Today I began a new man in World of Warcraft, called a “tauren.” I know what you’re thinking: “Why did you do that when Barrythebee was already level 16?” Well, there’s just one reason: Mulgore. It’s beautiful, so full of trees and grasses and hopefully flowers, and these taurens are allowed to play there from the very start. So I deleted my warrior and made a new one.

But Mulgore is a very big place. Although I am going to give it a pre-emptive 8/10 for flowers (8/10) it could take a very long time to find them without help. So I decided to try and make some friends. I scanned the list of who was around, and immediately spotted someone called Pawnzor. Bzzz - I know! With a name like that, he just had to be clued up.

That didn’t go as well as I had hoped. Pawnzor had some schoolwork to do so he had to leave suddenly. There was no choice but to try again, so I talked to a man named Meatinjector. I was hoping he could “inject” some “meat” into my flower-seeking quest.

Sadly he wasn’t quite as talkative as I had expected. I guess he didn’t know where I could find some flowers and was too shy to admit it! But a good bee doesn’t back down when the going gets tough, so I redoubled my efforts. This time I decided to ask a man called Edgez.

What a result! Edgez was really helpful, and he told me lots of promising things. It turns out there’s actually a thing in the World of Warcraft called a “herbalist,” and it’s all about collecting flowers! I simply couldn’t have been happier, so I thanked Edgez and continued on my way with a new sense of purpose.

I’ll keep you up to date with how I get on! “Bee bee” for now!

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It’s no good, I can’t lie to you any more. Darling, I love you, and I always will, but I’ve been sleeping with your mother!

Don’t panic!
I’m aware that rival MMOs give rise to a whole world of bile and derision from a player in the grips of WoW. I have been there, hating and insulting Phantasy Star Online, Warhammer, Conan and god knows what else, my only authority being my sheer and all-encompassing love of the one true game.

I’m not saying I’ve seen the light. I love WoW, and I can’t see a time where I won’t log on to play it, but for me the game has always been about three things - levelling, gear grinding and battlegrounds. It takes a certain level of blinkered determination for me to be able to face the first two; the latter, however, is purest fun.

And while every player always knows that some time in the future their level and equipment will be rendered obsolete by an expansion, it’s much nicer to ignore that and focus on the present. But the announcement of The Wrach of the Lich King and its Level 80 cap means I can fool myself no more. The knowledge that all my progress will be invalidated - knowledge shoved in my face where I can’t ignore it - has sucked out all my enthusiasm for the WoW grind. And all that leaves me with is battlegrounds.

A great man
It was a great man who said: “The purpose of goals is not simply to attain them. Rather, their existence give meaning to the journey.” That great man was me. I said it just now. Booya!

I love the Brucey premades like a redneck loves his sister - repeatedly, up the bum - but the only goal there is sheer, unadulterated fun. There’s a lot to be said for that, but like any MMO player I’m also a big fan of the grand overarching scheme. The goal and the grind. And I’ve found one, after Redstripe lured me into a new trial MMO account like a toddler into a bear trap, like he did with WoW 20 months ago. I’m not saying he’s a bad influence.

Redstripe is a bad influence
He really is.

Get to the point
World of Warcraft would mean nothing to me without The Bruces. You are the best thing about the internet, better than youtube, facebook, google and wikipedia, better than instant access to an incomprehensible amount of hardcore pornography.

Actually…
You are the second best thing about the internet. But that’s pretty impressive. So as I sit here, unable to stop myself from launching headlong into another MMO, there is only one way to prevent myself from becoming more distant from this site and this guild. And that’s to expand it. Plenty of people have been thinking about Warhammer, for one thing, so it’s about time this site stopped pretending we’ll all be playing WoW, and only WoW, forever.

I’m in love with EVE Online
I’m not saying you should play it. I’m not saying you should abandon WoW. I’m just throwing the name out there. Because fuck me backwards over a full sized pool table, this game is awe-inspiring. It won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but I think I’m going to be there for the long haul, so if you fancy trying something a bit more complicated than WoW, in space, you’ll have a couple of familiar faces in there when you do. I’ve also added EVE to our forums.

That’s better
I’ve confessed, and now I feel cleansed. Now the only thing I need to worry about is that dead girl.

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