3.51. Uncoiling the Snake

"Oh the sleepless nights",
A thread in the DoD officer forums that draws
attention to a flaw in the guild's loot system

If I Had No Loot

The officer forums erupted; it was Sir Klocker. "Oh the sleepless nights" bore the title of the thread. Once again, a misunderstanding had left people with hurt feelings, mixed messages, and ultimately they were confused about the acquisition of gear. Was I upset or not? Was he supposed to bid on Band of the Traitor King or not? Most importantly, why wasn't "use your best judgement" and "lead by example" enough of a guide? I took great pains to tie up any loose ends that could be misinterpreted by both the moral and the malicious, yet confusion lingered. Sir Klocker wasn't an isolated incident; more and more guildies found themselves confused by the seemingly straightforward system I laid out upon our arrival in Northrend. Ambiguity persisted because of a specific game mechanic I hadn't considered for.

It's hard to give deep consideration to what effect a particular game mechanic will have on a guild's loot system...

...when the mechanic doesn't exist yet.

---

Not so long ago, the problem was completely different. Raids were chock full of stingy Scrooge McDucks sitting on astronomical piles of DKP, preparing for an item that might never drop. The raid wasn't getting any stronger as a result. Valuable upgrades were being tossed to the side or dusted. These marginal upgrades (often called sidegrades) weren't as luscious as some of those big name pieces. Misguided arguments driven by personal lust and greed made those incredibly magnificent weapons and shields drive my raid's intent. Raiding for loot rather than progression itself caused the self-absorbed to rise to surface, and Blain wiped those off with a single stroke. Those who remained got a new lesson: better gear may augment your stats, but isn't the reason why you fail.

That's completely on you, buddy.

So the raiders learned the hard lesson about their failings, a slow, painful process of introspection and eventual epiphany. By exploring strategy, discussing mechanics, sharing new addons they'd discovered...they all gained new insight, and their reason to raid grew crystal clear. At last, they no longer blamed loot for their failures. If I noticed them falling back into their old ways, I repeated my rule of thumb: Plan to never see the item you want -- make the best use of the upgrades available to you. And to stymie the loot paradox from coiling back upon itself, Blain stopped it dead in its tracks by setting a definitive cutoff point. Once we'd killed Boss X a few times, we were moving on to more treacherous territory...whether players had Askhandi or not. Players didn't have time to bitch and whine about missing upgrades, because before they opened their mouths, we were already retiring MC for BWL, BWL for AQ40, and AQ40 for Naxxramas. Without a channel to complain about lacking gear, they remained focused on progression which produced (surprise, surprise): lots and lots of boss kills.

...along with a hefty amount of loot, besides.

That was a raiding era of a different day. Blain had long since retired from raid leadership. Several followed in his footsteps, ultimately leading us to Omaric and Bretthew. The druid and the paladin were no less passionate about progression and excitement of killing bosses in raids. They just felt we had more to do before we rushed into the biggest challenges. Why bash our heads against an insanely difficult heroic Anub'arak when tier 10 was a mere few weeks away? With an encroaching iLevel of 264 from the 25-Man version of Icecrown, they rationalized that our time was better spent continuing to plug holes in the gear gaps for many of our non-Elite folk.

But when those aforementioned lesser-geared folks didn't get an opportunity to loot, a gaping hole in my rules manifested. The snake was looking for its tail.

Main vs. Off

Dual Specialization became an everyday luxury that brought with it problems of its own. Though during the raiding era of TBC and earlier it was much more difficult to find a player with multiple able bodied characters that were raid-ready, handling the distribution of loot was as simple as adding a new character to the DKP pool. Hip deep in Wrath content, loot distribution became a tad more muddied, especially with my Elite 1st round bidding rules looped into the mix.

By now, most players in the roster held a deep seated motivation to loot anything and everything for upgrades along the path to victory. These motivations stemmed from the new order set forth by Blain many moons ago. The new variable in the mix was the off-spec. Now carrying a second talent set (which was often deployed mid-raid), players had a need to build an entirely new set of gear. Realizing this, but without giving the off-spec a great deal of attention, the officers and I defaulted to telling players "stick to the 5 DKP minimum bid" when scooping up items for the off-spec. It was important to keep the already complex loot rules from spiraling out of control. By encouraging players to bid on (or near) the minimum, off-spec looting should have kept their gearing strategy from standing in the way of someone's main spec.

That was the theory, at least.

The first of us to notice the flaw in practice were ones with small amounts of DKP; I fell into this bucket. Players who took my mantra to its extreme would shoot their entire load on items that didn't necessarily warrant such a high investment. Shrewd players (particularly tanks) were in a superb bidding spot: there was usually never more than one or two other players in the raid bidding against them. They hit the books and did the research ahead of the raid. They knew who they were going up against for specific items, they reviewed the DKP website which cataloged every player's earnings, and measured their bids thoughtfully and conservatively.

I was not one of these players.

Even with the knowledge I'd only be going up against one or two other tanks, I continued to bid high on items I most assuredly felt I would never see again, and my DKP pool emptied out quickly. It was at that point I began to see key pieces for my tanking set going to players that weren't tanks. This infuriated me, but what could I do? My DKP bidding pool was expunged, hovering slightly below the minimum 5 DKP bid. So when these items were issued out to players who weren't planning to use them, I directed my passive aggressive anger toward them, rather than acknowledge the flaw in the guild's rules.

...which is why Sir Klocker, and many others like him, remained confused about our system.

"Stormrage (he's a pony again)"
Artwork by 0Riane0

Brony! Broni! Broné!

With the advent of alts taking filler spots in the main 25-Man progression raid, the problem only worsened. Descendants of Draenor soon had a new generation of Lyticvirus-style players: folks nerdy enough to level up multiple alts and bring them to raids. I was fine with this. New alts, coupled with dual specializations, granted my raid rotations an unheralded level of flexibility. On nights of dire need, to be able to point to a player at random and tell them, "bench the caster and bring me your tank" was like a dream come true for a casual/hardcore raiding guild leader. I could, at last, bend and flow with the tides of the roster lineup changes -- it was a feature exponentially more valuable than any option to extend a raid lock Blizzard tossed my way. But with the alts filling spots in progression, the snake continued to search for its tail and my problems only compounded.

Any guildy that wished to provide alternate services quickly rose to prominence. One such player was my newest assignment to lead the Alt-25, Mangetsu. Fresh from his recent promotion to Avatar, Mangetsu's warlock weaved fel energies like a tapestry, ripping bosses in half with insane DPS. When it came time to flip over to the Alt-25, Mangetsu carried out his leadership duties via his death knight Amalgam. So when the night rolled around that Bretthew texted me that he had an emergency computer hardware problem, I looked to option Amalgam as a replacment. It would work -- we were bursting with new ranged DPS, many of whom wished for upgrades in Ulduar, and Mangetsu was already top-of-the-line in hybrid tier 8 & 9. It was the most logical choice, and Mang happily flipped to Amalgam, helping tank our way through the nightly clear in yet another stress-free evening of raid work.

That is, until we sliced open Ignis the Furnace Master's gut and Heart of Iron poured out.

Luck had not been on our side with this tanking trinket in the past. The first time it dropped, Omaric was able to pick it up...only to switch to Ikey months later, leaving it to collect dust on his former main. The only other time it graced our presence was that diabolical week in August '09, the one that left me stranded in Williston, North Dakota while Bretthew and Omaric attended BlizzCon. All three of us missed our shot, and it went to the paladin Shimerice, who almost exclusively played holy. In her hands, the Heart of Iron would most likely never see the light of day.

As Neps finished taking bids for it, many of us felt like we knew it would go to Omaric. He had been waiting patiently since June to reacquire the trinket for Ikey bear. The bids wrapped up and Neps announced the winner: Amalgam, Mangetsu's alt. Omaric had always bid far more conservatively than I, knowing he only needed to go up against Bretthew for such items. On this particular evening, the possibility of losing Heart of Iron to an alt hadn't even crossed his mind.

That gamble was to his detriment.

Mangetsu was humble and thankful for the win, none the wiser to Omaric's loss, much like Sir Klocker had been when "stealing away" a tanking ring from me. But these were the rules! My rules! They allowed for this behavior and even encouraged it! It was a perfectly acceptable bid, fully within the regulations of our flawed loot system. The snake had indeed been uncoiled and the result was a looting mentality which was now far too broad. The rule that applied to mains was shortsighted when applied to alts.

The trinket was sent over to Amalgam, and players quietly shared their disgust with me behind the curtains of whispered tells. Bheer summed it up succinctly in a crushing whisper; my heart sank as I read it, because it confirmed my failure to solve this issue in our new loot rules:

"If you had implemented main spec vs. off spec bidding, this never would've happened."

---

As the night tapered off, I caught a glimpse of Blain logging in; he had been back for several weeks now. His face appeared for the first time in many months during our completion of Firefighter culminating in a shower of Ironbound proto-drakes. It was good to have my old friend back in action as I expected his time away from the game had re-energized him. We could use that energy in Icecrown Citadel, now mere weeks away. I shot him a playful tell,

"I thought you were supposed to be getting a life? The outdoors are highly overrated."

There was no response. He either wasn't amused or something had his attention. I popped open the guild roster, scrolled to his name and examined his location in the world. He was in an arena...unsurprisingly. In WoW terminology, it was the same as having a giant "OCCUPIED - DO NOT DISTURB" hanging around the player's neck. I steered the Time Lost Proto-Drake across Icecrown in search of the last few rares left for Frostbitten, and after a few minutes, a response finally arrived. As was his nature, he did away with the small talk and got straight to the point:

"Why aren't we working on the heroic Tournament achievements?"

I sighed. He wasn't going to like my answer.

3.50. The Loot Paradox

Engraving depicting a dragon eating its tail from
"De Lapide Philisophico"
Lucas Jennis (1625)

Blaming the Hammer

When I rebooted DoD's guild rules at the start of Wrath, I spent a considerable amount of time slaving over the fine details of our new loot distribution method. The goal? Abolish any opportunity for misinterpretation. Prevent random impulsive events from tarnishing the name of otherwise good players. Protect them from the disdain of their fellow raider, and the animosity that builds when scorecards give way to opinion. Pound into their skulls the message that your personal looting ideology should reflect one that furthers the overall strength of the raid team as a whole, caring for your fellow raider as passionately as you would yourself. The mistakes of the past would no longer be tolerated.

Before we knew just what the hell we were doing, our incentive was in the wrong place. Our perceptions of the things that mattered lay slightly askew from true north. All too often in Vanilla and TBC, players chose to sit on their pools of dragon kill points as if it were money, waiting to spend it on "that one big drop". As we climbed our way up the maze of rooms that is Blackwing Lair, the common sentiment was all-too familiar. Why waste my precious points on Herald of Woe when we will be looting Ashkandi any day now? In this era of ignorance, loot was the reward of our efforts; it was the fiery glow in our hands that we carried into Alterac Valley, striking the Alliance down with great vengeance. It's easy to make that mistake when every cue buried in the game nomenclature identifies loot as such. When the language is prevalent enough to ensure "loot" is synonymous with "reward", your brain then begins to form logic statements in reverse. Well, if loot is the reward, then my DKP must be money, right? Just like in real life? Only the truly hardcore raiders in the days of yore knew the truth. Loot isn't the reward; it isn't really the reason why we climbed Blackrock Mountain to defeat a giant black dragon blanketing us in dark flame. It took the arrival of Blain for us to unlearn those biased ways of thinking.

Why do we raid? For the fun of it, the thrill of the hunt. The excitement when the boss crashes dead and screams fill Ventrilo. For the competition, for the adrenaline accelerating our heart rate as we close in on the kill, knowing another raid is racing against the clock to beat us. Just as the carpenter crafts fine architecture to demonstrate his ability, raids kill bosses for guild pride and camaraderie, and for the lasting journey which remains a tumultuous series of hills and valleys traversed, as we reflect back on those days spent deep in dungeons. Too many fair-weather players forget this, or place upon those memories little value in the grand scheme to need on each and every item that pops up on their screen. At one time, World of Warcraft was, at its heart, a social experience first...and a machine that churns out loot second. Slowly, Blain helped us unlearn those backward ways of thinking. We raid despite loot, not because of it. Loot is merely a tool in the process, like the addon, or a little something called elbow grease -- good old fashioned hard work and practice. Thankfully, we got the lesson early.

So why did we continue to behave like children?

Loot ignorance once again floated to the surface. It was the scapegoat for every person's bad play. "We're not progressing because we lack the gear" was the most common excuse heard. So, if the handiwork of a master carpenter buckles and collapses in a cloud of sawdust, do you blame the hammer? Or the shoddy skills of the carpenter who pounded the nails in? Only a fool would dare blame an inanimate object when the living, breathing, thinking person wielding it is ultimately responsible, so why are players so quick to blame loot when they fail?

Long after a player understands the true meaning behind why they raid, they will continue to blame loot when they fail...because of The Loot Paradox.

The Vicious Cycle

The Loot Paradox,
a never-ending vicious cycle that plagues raid teams
masking the true intention of why they raid

The problem with changing players' perceptions of loot as a tool rather than a reward is that it is a never-ending vicious cycle, an ouroboros coiling until it eats itself, and has no finite beginning or end. It repeats in cycles ad infinitum, and occurs in four stages:

1. Raiders rush into new content, foaming at the mouth, and eventually start to fail on new obstacles for a variety of reasons: These can be (but are not limited to): new and unorthodox boss mechanics, strange bugs that linger in the game code, encounters tuned too tightly (overtuned), players lacking in skill, or a combination of any of these things. As frustration mounts, they struggle for answers, and their judgement is clouded. This starts to prevent them from remembering why they even raid in the first place.

2. As tempers flare, players look to place blame on something justifying their failure. Among the myriad of options, attentions can often be turned towards their lack of gear as a palpable, definitive excuse. This clouds their judgement as to why they set foot in a raid each week, shifting the focus to the acquisition of gear. It is at this point that players feel they raid because of loot. In their eyes, loot is a reward for their incessant suffering at the hands of repeated boss wipes.

3. As raiders weather this storm by continuing to practice, possibly even refining their UI and addons, eventually they reach an epiphany: that they are making progress without loot. With heightened motivation and optimism, these raiders dig their heels back, and their reasons to raid begins to shift away from loot and toward boss defeat.

4. Riding on a new high of knowledge and understanding (sometimes exacerbated by one or more boss kills), pride-filled raiders turn their attention toward improve the skill at which they approach the game. They may utilize any number of options to broaden their tools: increased schedule and practice on the boss, research (videos, strategy guides, etc.), addons, and most importantly, augmenting their character's stats through upgrades, to push out more DPS, more HPS, or more survivability. It is at this point that players know why they raid: to progress. In their eyes, loot is a tool to help them accomplish that goal.

While improving their skill, raiders enjoy great success for a time, until they reach the next stage of content that causes them to fail on new obstacles...and we loop back to #1.

As you can see, this cycle of failing, blaming, reaching an epiphany, and improving one's skill is a constant struggle. When players reach the epiphany that they progress as a result of their increased skill, they leap head first into improving their skill even further, in any way possible. It isn't long before players realize one of those tools is to bring more health, more heals, or more damage to the raid. The player will inevitably turn their attention to the most logical way to augment their stats: Gear. Gear, now as a means to the end, can conveniently act as a scapegoat when new obstacles arrive; it is that very tool that the player lacks in order to accomplish their goal. And in turn, devolves back into the "reason why we raid", allowing players to justify their failures and blame the most identifiable piece of the equation. The cycle begins anew.

As a guild leader, my best chance at success was to be intimately aware of the loot paradox and its constant effect on the guild. By encouraging players to loot, which in turn, grew the strength of the raid team, they could -- at any moment -- fall victim to placing the blame on their subsequent lack of loot. I needed to uncoil the snake, and I wasn't always successful at this. Particularly when Blizzard introduced a concept I hadn't planned for.

A warrior changes between specs using the
new Dual Talent Specialization feature of patch 3.1

A Spec For Any Occasion

It had been rumored and discussed during Wrath's development, but never saw the light of the day throughout beta. I assumed it had been swept under the rug for the time being. But, as with many things Blizzard, work had quietly continued on this particular feature, making its debut at the launch of patch 3.1. Dual talent specialization was something players had been clamoring for since as far back as Vanilla. For the first time in the game, players had the ability to carry with them a second talent specialization, able to activate at a moment's notice. Since so many more talent specs were viable in raids, this feature made practical sense, allowing players to flip-flop between particular roles if situation was warranted. With a simple click of a button, a holy paladin became a protection paladin, a discipline priest morphed into a shadow priest, and a feral druid was now a boomkin -- right before your eyes. With two specs at our command, raiding options blossomed. In the days of The Burning Crusade, having a player like Lyticvirus at our disposal was a rare luxury; a player with enough dedication to have two completely separate toons geared for entirely different roles. It granted us a level of flexibility not found in most players. Now...potentially anyone in the roster could provide this same flexibility. Provided, of course, that the player knew the role well enough, and had the gear to supplement that second spec.

Dual specialization was a godsend for my casual/hardcore raiding guild. It seemed that on nearly every raid weekend, there was an occasion to request a particular player flip to an alternate spec. This got to be so commonplace with certain players that I would often rotate them in as one role, yet be unsure until the first boss pull what final role they would ultimately play. More often than not, it wasn't what they were rotated in for. It was a loosey-goosey way to run our rotations, but it worked. Weekend after weekend, we ran without fail, on-time, and I never had an excuse to cancel a raid due to missing people. Besides, we were accomplishing the goals we set out to achieve at the start of Wrath. The Raiders knew no differently and were simply glad to get their foot in the door, get an occasional rotation, and see some high-end 25-Man content. And the Elites knew better than to question our methods; they were privy to why I had to adjust the roster the way I did and accepted it as a fact of life. This life of dual specialization became so pervasive that I failed to pick up on a missing component of my loot system -- an evil buried in the earth now bursting its dead claws up through the dirt to grab me by the ankles and pull me down.