05-06-2008, 01:34 PM
Quote:Cameron Sorden comes up with a very nice article summarizing some of the issues involved with Guild Hopping. Why folks do it, what should be done about it. Should anything be done about it. There are some...unique suggestions (Any items acquired in a raid are removed from your toon on deguilding and putting it (or the gold equivalent, I imagine) in the Guild Bank. It's an interesting read, to be sure.
That leaves way too much power in the hands of the guild master. I am not sure if it has occured to the author of the article that was quoted in that article that some people who leave their guilds actually contributed to guild progress, rather then received a free ride.
The way you can combat that, is typically a trial period. Let recruits get last dibs on anything that drops, for the first month they are in the guild. That way, the guild doesn't lose anything if they happen to leave after their second epic.
What if they leave three months in? Well, if you kept them around for three months, then they were either contributing to progression, or they were bad, but you really really needed the class they were playing.
Either way, without them, you wouldn't have been raiding.
At one point, when working on SSC/TK my guild was short a few players... So it merged with a different guild. Some of the new people were causing problems to no end. A few weeks later, they collectively /ragegquit in the middle of a raid, after their rogue was called out on raiding with a 400 dps shadowstep spec.
When they left, we lost a week's worth of loot, a pretty good healer, several mediocre DPS, and a whole lot of baggage. Did we need the gear they took? Yes.
Did it set us back a week in progression? No.
At this point, tier 5 can be cleared in a Kara and badge-geared raid. Good players are far more important then who has what gear, with the possible exception of the main tank (Who has to be geared, and good).
As for the article that you linked, the author skirts around, mentioning, but not focusing on a key aspect of WoW raids.
Loot isn't fair. The sooner people realise that, the less drama it will cause.
In my guild, we have a DKP system. There are three types of bids: 100% of item value, 50% of item value, and 25% of item value.
Speaking of fairness, in my guild, there are typically 4 hunters, an enhancement shaman, 3 rogues, and 2 feral druids competing for leather/mail upgrades.
In the meantime, we only have 1 prot warrior, who sometimes competes with our 1 prot paladin. Regardless of their DKP standing, any non-set item they want, they receieve as soon as it drops. They realise that, and while they could theoretically bid 25% on everything, they bid 100%, and very rarely, 50% (Doing otherwise would be an attack against the integrity of the system, and our GM (The prot warrior) has zero tolerance for it.
In the meantime, the rogues, hunters, shaman, and fury warrior fight over their loot tables. Viciously. Well, not so much the rogues, who aren't bidding on anything, as they are awaiting their Warglaives (which, if they keep at it, will probably be free rolled out among the melees). :rolleyes:
(And DKP isn't the source of drama... A good system prevents it. My guild has tried doing free rolls, loot council, and DKP, and there have not been any issues since we've switched to the latter - even though we started over twice times on different servers.)