I'd like to take a quick break from my normal technical posts, and discuss the loot systems I'm familiar with in World of Warcraft.
Most guilds on my server use a system referred to as DKP (dragon kill points). The basic idea is that you receive points for each boss that is killed while you are present. The actual points awarded seem to vary slightly from guild to guild. Once an item drops that you want, you can spend your points on that item.
The catch here is the members with more points take priority. In other words, if you are only able to attend raids one night a week, members that attend more often will always take priority. This tends to make sense, since those members play more often and can contribute to greater degree. Better loot for regular attenders usually benefits the guild as whole, since other members will be affected by the increased contribution.
The problem with this approach is that often times, real life is the limiting factor those members that cannot attend raids regularly. It feels "unfair" to them to have to wait until everyone else has their gear first. In effect, by rewarding the members that can attend more frequently, casual attendees feel punished for not attending more often. What if there was another way?
My guild doesn't use DKP. Instead, we use a loot ladder system. Within our system, there are actually two ladders; one for general loot and one specific to a player class. The way it works is that players are arranged on the ladder, and when a player is interested in loot, priority is given based on their position on the ladder. When a member acquires a new piece of loot, they are moved to the bottom of the ladder while the remaining attendees are moved up to the next position (absent members maintain their current position). This means that even if you only raid once in a while, you can still move up the ladder, and depending on circumstances, have the chance to loot the first drop of an item. This has actually happened several times during our raids, and helps even the loot distribution out. Several of our members have even commented that our loot system is the reason they were drawn to our guild in the first place, and sometimes, it's the reason players have remained members of our guild.
The benefits of the ladder system is that rewards players who can't play as frequently, while rewarding players who attend raids more often, since regular attenders can move up on the ladder several times within a week.
What do you think? I would also be interested to hear from someone that uses DKP and prefers it to our system.