The USS Quad Damage

The problem with WoW endgame raiding.

World of Warcraft when launched was game that’d you’d primarily solo and temporarily group with other players for short durations to accomplish a specific goal. If someone didn’t live upto their end of the bargain the damage was minimal. Sure you missed out of smites hammer but hey you can always run it again.

From that game sprung up World of Warcrafts legal system defined by Blizzard. They enforced trades via the trade window, auctions via the auction house, enchants and lockpicking until it was built into the trade window and the crafting of items when you trade someone the materials required for something. The idea being that complex legal contracts are not enforced as there was no requirement with in the context of the game.

However a few things changed since launch. No longer are you only required to enter into temporary agreements with a few other players for clearing dungeons. Your required to enter into longer term arangments with many people to clear raid instances. Guilds which used to just be a chat channel for either your friends or people around your level as a global LFG channel are now complex organisms with rules governing how players are supposed to act with the payment of loot and WoW’s legal system hasn’t caught up and infact supports those who do socially unacceptable acts. People making off with a guilds bank contents, taking pretigious items from bosses they want but aren’t entitled too under the rules layed down by their guild and then leaving. This is also helped by paid server transfers, name changes and the soul bound items thwarting any sort of player lead attempt to fill in the major gaps ignored by Blizzard.

The problems will continue to exist until either Blizzard redesigns how end game content works with much smaller dungeons or less demands on gear. Alternatively they could simply begin to enforce the rules put forward by guilds to govern their members instead of simply leaving it upto the good will of those whom legally (within the game) own the resources and are under no obligation to share.

The increased focus on heroic badge rewards is a start as all players in a group are rewarded for completing a dungeon. Personally I’d like to see it and quest rewards for downing bosses be the major way people get loot. Bosses should then only drop a few different standard items or even a single item which can be turned into several different items such as the heart of hakkar. The focus being shifted away from who gets the loot after a boss dies and the whole DKP mess that preceeds and follows it to just fucking killing the boss because everyone gets or moves closer to getting loot.