My past experience is that the more you raid, the more you like DKP because the system favors you. That’s a self-serving rationale.
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?
