I came across an interesting situation last week, so to protect the innocent names are going to be left out. I joined a 25-man Vault as I was still in need of off some Deadly leggings in the off chance that they drop. I learned that the raid leader had the intent to master loot any gear that drops to anyone he wanted to, regardless of who actually won the roll. The person in question even went so far as to leave the guild to prevent negative publicity for the guild.
And I made my feelings known on Vent which prompted an interesting discussion. And people were more than willing to share their viewpoints of the situation. I stated that given our current recruiting situation causing bad blood among the general population wasn’t exactly in our best interest, not to mention treating other people like that is wrong anyways.
The counter-point was that with all the shenanigans this person has pulled, the next day recruiting from the Guild recruitment channel or even Trade chat, no one remembers anything he does. And that given the sheer number of guilds on Illidan with guild turnover among most guilds at what seems to be an all-time high, bad publicity may be the best publicity when it comes time to do Uldar. And of course “Vault is srs bzness” was tossed in at least once.
One person made themselves feel better about the whole Vault situation by stating there had to be a clause stated in raid ahead of time that said “If you suck, you don’t get loot” as a justification.
Obvious points made by me and a few others included things like:
- Just because we made up a majority of the raid, are we really in a position to distribute loot based off performance?
- Not all players are created equal, and just because they appeared to suck on our meters doesn’t mean they weren’t trying their best.
Some other interesting scenarios were laid out as well in later conversation. For example, 2 Rogues are in 25-man Vault. One Rogue, about to break 2200 with their Arena teams, pulled great DPS while the second Rogue barely breaking 1300 ratings did very mediocre-borderline-terrible DPS. Two Rogue gloves drop. PvE and PvP. The PvP Rogue who did great DPS won the roll for Valorous while the other Rogue won the roll for the Deadly gloves. Despite all manner of convincing from the Rogue with good DPS and high Arena ratings, the Rogue who won the PvP gloves doesn’t want to trade.
One person in this conversation stated they would just loot the Deadly gloves to the PvP Rogue and give Valorous to the second one regardless. Would you switch the gloves or distribute them properly?
Here is another situation brought up, and as far-fetched as it may be, it makes you think. Pretend you are going to be getting a near world first Kil’jaeden kill back when it was new content. For whatever reason you have a PuG Hunter who ended up dying 6% into the fight or so. Lo and behold, Thori’dal drops and you are forced to roll against the dead Hunter and he wins the roll. The Master Looter whispers you and says “Do you just want me to give you the bow?” What do you respond with?
Sure it’s far-fetched, but perhaps that scenario would be your breaking point.
One person shared a great story, which unfortunately is true. This person convinced their mother to play World of Warcraft. She ended up playing a Death Knight instead of another class and leveled it to 80. They were happy their mom was playing and enjoying her time in the game. She got into her first 25-man Vault, showed up and did her best to DPS as far as her understandings of DK mechanics would let her.
Valorous DK gloves drop and she won the roll. However the raid leader decided she sucked and gave the gloves to someone else. She was devastated. She didn’t grasp why she didn’t get the gloves although she won the roll for them. Could you be the person who ninja’d from some one’s mother? A mom who is trying to embrace online games and see what her children love about them so much?
There are situations where I think it is so astronomical that anyone would become a ninja-looter. For example, you’re running 25-man PuG Naxxramas and as your just about to finish Kel’thuzad on your Ret Pally/Hunter/DK/Warrior/etc you get a call from Bill Gates offering you $1 million for your account if you have a Betrayer of Humanity by tonight. And of course, as you check the body, there it is. Who wouldn’t take the Betrayer of Humanity for a million dollars? I am sure you could make it up to anyone you ninja’d from with 10 grand or so.
Sure, a lot of these are hypothetical scenarios. And most people rather treat the people on the other side of the characters as the people they are. Some have fewer moral restrictions when dealing with people they don’t know. So you have to wonder, how extreme would the situation be until you voluntarily took an item from someone else even though they won it? How much time has to be invested in an online world before something has real-world value and it actually makes you a thief?
Thoughts, opinions, breaking-point scenarios. Post ‘em!
EDIT: I forgot to share this story.
When I was playing my Warrior, my guild decided to raise my reputation with the Thorium Brotherhood for crafting items. I dropped Mining and picked up Leatherworking. Our guild’s first 2 Ragnaros kills yielded two Eyes of Sulfuras. And much to my dismay, the first one went to oe of our Paladins, Bubblez. Now Bubblez is an awesome guy (he commented on the blog recently) but I won’t lie that part of me was quite upset that we were giving our first Hand of Ragnaros to a Paladin before Retribution even had hints of being viable.
The time came where we were ready to craft the first Sulfuron Hammer. And yours truly had to make it for Bubblez. I remember crafting it, and having it sitting in my bag, right next to my own Eye of Sulfuras. And despite the promptings of a lot of people, I couldn’t being myself to right-click the Eye to create my own Hand of Rag and rob someone else, especially a guildie, of their Hand of Ragnaros.
I’ve been “ninja’d”. It’s annoying for a moment. Then I move on. I don’t ever see a moment I could be convinced to ninja myself. The arguments of “mass volumes of real world money” are specious at best. It’s not going to happen.
Folks need to put gear into perspective. It’s easy enough to say it’s a means to end. It really isn’t. It’s easy enough to say your were “devastated” by losing a roll to someone “unqualified”. You weren’t. Not really. It had no impact on your life beyond the computer, it didn’t affect your ability to put food on the table or pay your bills or care for your family. Save the big words for real life where it can matter. It’s easy to say it represents a time investment that can be quantified. No it can’t. You’d be investing the time on something else in the game if that didn’t exist, you WILL be investing your time on something else immediately after gaining said item.
Gear is the carrot-on-a-stick we pay Bliz to wave in front of us to keep us paying for the NEXT carrot-on-a-stick Bliz will wave in front us. Sure it’s fun to get that drop we’ve been after for a while. I love it when that happens. But it should NEVER be enough to cause personal anguish to you or to anyone else.
From what I’ve seen in various MMOs, ninja’ing never pays off. You will see people get an item and even if people understand the reason for somebody doing it, they will never really trust them completely ever again. In MMO’s your reputation is all you have really, gear will always become outdated but a ruined rep can never really be repaired.
Another brief story to mention that happened to me. The week before Wrath came out, I was in a pug Hyjal as an off-tank (I’m a paladin). The main tank was the one that set up the raid and got things rolling. We come to T6 gloves dropping and a warrior token drops. About 4 or 5 people roll for it, the raid leader did NOT roll and already had T6 tanking gloves equipped.
Someone in vent says “WAIT! whoever won that, I’ll pay you 3000g!”
The raid leader doesn’t award anything, we’re waiting for a few minutes, then he rolls and happens to be the top roll. He then loots the token over to the person who said they’d pay. He defends himself by saying things like “wrath is coming out in 5 days, relax everyone what does it matter?” and “I won the roll, I have the right to do whatever I want with it” and “I’m normally dps and I don’t have the dps gloves yet, so that was a main spec roll even though I have the tank gloves already”.
There are A LOT of angry words in raid chat and a few in vent. People leave the raid.
Things calm down a little, and about 5 minutes after the incident a friend/guild member of the raid leader joins vent and he proceeds to brag about how he just made 3000g.
I left at this point and I refuse to raid with that person again.
The loot didn’t matter, but the attitude does.
here is a scenario:
3 shamans in voa 25 raid (1 x healer, 1 x elemental dps and 1 enhance DPS)
The enhance dps and the healer already have T7.5 gloves for their spec.
so the healing t7.5 gloves drop, the enhance dps shaman rolls and wins (for off spec)
surely that’s not ninja’ing as the healer already has the gloves?
@Turmoil I wouldn’t think so. Since in most cases the healing Shaman would have no objection to someone else getting the gloves.
Pretty recently during a pug Naxx 25 I was accidentally looted a tanking cloak instead of the healing piece that had dropped (restoration druid). The PUG leader ML’d the healing piece to me as well and asked me if I would ask a GM to give the person who rightfully won the cloak his item, and I didn’t hesitate in filling out that ticket, even though I often times respec during the week to feral and that cloak would’ve helped tanking-wise.
Sometimes it’s about reputation, sometimes it’s about integrity. Either way, it’s one of those personal decisions that you have to live with, no matter how insignificant it may seem.
Not everything can be measured in meters. Heals are the most obvious. So one healer healed more, but maybe another prevented more damage with shields, or stopped to b-rezed, died and came back, who knows. DPS to an extent as well. Maybe they popped out to spot heal for a sec, or are support DPS, or were cc’d for much of the fight Maybe a tank lagged…. If the loot rules are free roll, and I am not being offered real life money, I see no reason to ninja. If the player really is terrible, welfare epics are not going to hide it, and the item will drop again. Good players can go on.
We’ll all this is going to become extremely enjoying when Dual-Spec is released. I think heroics will have to be ran in Master Loot all the time. You are looking at people considering their main spec two specs, and lets say off spec the 3rd spec. For a Warrior this would be DPS/TANK Off: PVP. Myself as a warrior (mostly party leader) will be running with this as a rule for looting, once dual-spec is out that is.
My final thoughts is that group loot should always be the way to go, especially when Dual-Spec comes out. Need what you need, and thats it. Regardless of activity/performance/skill. And if you are pugging into your guild raid, then you obviously need to make some type of rule before he even joins.
For the moment, lets forego the very unlikely scenario of Bill Gates offering outrageous sums of money for your account if you have a specific item on it.
Everyones problem and solution here revolves around a central theme…PuGs.
Solution~DON’T PUG
Or if you MUST PuG, state loot rules up front. This gives anyone who has issue with them the opportunity to…leave. Raiding in WoW isnt a requirement. If you leading a PuG, you would not let your members dictate boss strategies to you! Why would you let them dictate loot rules to you?
Loot rules are very subjective. Many guilds use loot systems which reward active raiders more favorably than less active ones. My guild uses /roll. If an item drops, and it is an upgrade for you, and you can use it, roll on it. Main spec > Off spec > RP > shard. For the most part, everyone in my guild will forego a marginal or linear upgrade in favor of someone for whom the upgrade is substantial. If the people in your guild are more focused on thier own personal progression over the well-being of the team, you need to find better people.
And for those times when a genuine mistake in loot distribution is made (and yes, they do happen), petitioning a GM and being respectful to him will often times result in the award being fixed.
hah, if you PuG 25 mans you should expect there to be 2-3 ninjas in every run. This is why guilds exist. Otherwise everyone would just create a full spread of toons and level their profs to max and forget about guilding.