How EPGP works

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This is a guest post by Valen who has graciously offered to clarify the EPGP loot system and the process behind the usage.

Hello! I am Valen, Guild Leader of Temerity, an efficiency-focused progression guild on the Windrunner server. I also happen to be helping maintain EPGP while its author, Disht of EU-Sunstrider, takes a well-deserved break. My hope is to provide an introduction to EPGP and demonstrate why many people believe it to be a superior loot system.

What is EPGP?

The EPGP loot system, nicknamed “dkp reloaded,” is a mature, established loot system that has been in active use by many guilds for a number of years. Sometimes known for being somewhat “mathy,” EPGP tries to provide a fair, transparent, configurable, deterministic, and reasonable loot distribution system. EPGP is somewhat more complicated than most loot systems, but thanks to addons that simplify calculations and management, both the master looter and all members of a guild will find EPGP to be a fluid and effective loot system.

The word “fair” is somewhat ambiguous when it comes to handling loot, and is highly subjective. Can loot systems be fair to every member of a guild, and to the guild itself? Probably not, but when people think about fair loot systems, often words like “unbiased” are used, with sentiments of objective, even distribution. EPGP provides such features.

Many familiar loot systems, such as DKP and its variants, use a single point pool, whereas EPGP uses two. Those two kinds of points in EPGP are in the name — EP and GP. EP, which stands for Effort Points, encapsulates the contributions of a raider to the raid (primarily attendance). GP, which stands for Gear Points, encapsulates the loot a raider has received from the raid.

How does it work?

Dividing a raider’s EP by their GP determines a raider’s Priority. When a piece of loot drops, the player who is interested in it with the highest Priority gets the loot along with the Gear Points the loot is valued at — there is no randomness or rolling in EPGP. This therefore increases the player’s GP, which lowers their priority once the division takes place, putting them below many other players (depending, of course, on the other players’ EP and GP values).

Left unchecked, EP, which grows as raids are attended, and GP, which grows as loot is received, would increase unbounded since neither are reduced inherently in the loot process. Instead of spending points, both simply accumulate. To prevent infinite growth, EPGP uses the concept of decay — at the start of every raid, or every raid week, or any other interval, everyone’s EP and GP are reduced by a fixed percentage. This results in EP climbing quickly at first, but then eventually sloping off towards a natural cap. GP, on the other hand, tends towards zero as it accumulates only when loot is rewarded rather than every raid.

The above is intentionally vague and lacking in specific numbers. This is one of the areas where EPGP is configurable to meet a given guild’s needs, but also where it tends to intimidate users.

  • How much EP does a raider get?
  • What earns EP?
  • How much GP does a piece of loot cost?

The latter question is the easiest to answer; by default, every piece of loot has a fixed cost across all guilds and servers, based on the slot it is used in and the item’s level (aka, ilvl). Deep inside the game, there are formulas used to determine how much of a each stat such as Haste Rating or Intelligence a piece of gear has; this formula is based on the ilvl and slot, so, for instance, an ilvl 359 two handed sword has more strength than an ilvl 359 one handed sword or ilvl 359 ring. EPGP uses this formulation to derive a price for each piece of loot, normalizing around a chest piece with an arbitrary cost of 1,000 GP. Weapons cost more than 1,000 GP since they have a bigger impact than a new chest, whereas rings, carrying smaller item budget, cost less.

EP is more fluid; typically guilds award EP based on attendance, both who is present at the beginning of raid and who is present throughout its duration. Even players on the bench receive EP and thereby loot opportunities when next they are in raid.

EPGP in action

Each guild decides themselves how much EP to award and what to award for, so rather than a complicated explanation, I will use a concrete example and explain how my guild uses it.

Fifteen minutes before raid starts, a decay of 7% occurs. Then an on-time bonus of 1,250 EP is awarded to each member in the raid. Every fifteen minutes thereafter until the end of raid, 300 EP is awarded to anyone in the raid and on standby. Finally, at the end of raid, another 1,250 EP bonus is awarded. The net result is a typical, 3.5 hour night of raiding results in 7,000 EP.Some guilds opt to also award EP when bosses die (with different amounts of EP depending on the farm status of the boss) but we choose to not award the kills themselves.

The values chosen are largely arbitrary; we settled on a 7% decay as it is a decent rate to prevent hoarding as well as to encourage taking loot (since GP will decay at a decent rate). We chose 7,000 EP per raid because it has the mathematical property that, a player with perfect attendance across an infinite number of raids, would cap out at 100,000 EP — the point where a 7% decay equals the EP awarded for the evening (7% of 100,000 is 7,000, of course).

We also choose to award a small, fixed weekly amount of EP for consumables — specifically, raw herbs and fish. This was a new experiment for us as early Cataclysm consumables were extremely expensive until supply grew and guild perks kicked in, this helped us supply flasks and feasts — a significant competitive advantage.

The EPGP system itself is managed via the EPGP addon. Earlier I mentioned that EPGP is transparent; this means, thanks to the addon, any player can see any other player’s standing and priority from within the game. In fact, this addon keeps all EPGP state in-game rather than on an external website. Therefore, it is never a surprise when someone receives loot as any player can, at any time, see other players’ EP, GP, and Priority. Likewise, the addon places the GP cost to every item in its tooltip, so you know the exact price an item would cost by simply mousing over it.

In addition to the EPGP addon itself, there is a third party addon named EPGP Lootmaster. This addon handles the loot process itself, providing very simple push-button distribution and vastly reducing the time it takes to handle the many drops off of the typical 25 man heroic boss. I highly recommend using both addons together for a tremendously smooth and simplified loot process.

Hopefully this has provided a relatively math-free explanation of EPGP. I’ve personally used it for over four years, and while certainly imperfect, it is an excellent combination of transparency, fairness, and efficiency that is suitable for guilds at all levels of progression. Once the initial setup is done, there is very little maintenance and the distribution of loot itself is very quick — important attributes for efficient raiding!

Further resources

EPGP’s website, mailing list, and bug forum
The addon itself
The Lootmaster Addon

Guest Post: Is that it for the story of Warcraft?

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This is a guest post by former WoW blogger Honorshammer on the state of the game and his theories on why the player base has decreased. Interesting read and another take on yet the state of the game.

Blizzard’s recent conference call for investors had the blogosphere churning about the announcement that WoW lost about 5% of its player base and it back to pre-Cataclysm levels. Everyone is giving their opinion to explain why this is happening. Unsurprisingly, most everyone is taking something they don’t like about the game (too hard/too easy/too hardcore/too casual) and pointing at that and saying “see, i was right all along. People are leaving because of x.” I’m moderately guilty of this myself to some degree, and I will acknowledge that up front.

But I think the player base is too diverse for there to be one factor that has flipped a switch and led to the decline. There are likely a myriad of factors, and in this post I want to touch on one I don’t see getting much play in this discussion, the possibility that the story of WoW has simply been played out.

I was introduced to the Warcraft universe through Blizzard’s excellent Real Time Strategy games like Warcraft III: Riegn of Chaos and Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. It was my enjoyment of those games that gave rise to my initial interest in World of Warcraft.

In those games Blizzard’s developers introduced some incredible characters. Jania Proudmoore, Kael’thalas Sunrider, Lady Vashj, Sylvanas, Illidan, and of course, the big guy himself, Arthas became fan favorites.

During Vanilla, WoW was still fresh and there was the sheer joy of exploring a new world. We met Jania in Dustwallow Marsh, and Sylvanas in the Undercity. The other major lore characters were still on the horizon, calling us to become powerful enough for their notice.

From the very beginning in Burning Crusade, we were taunted by Illidian’s “You are not PREPARED!” The developer’s made it very clear were on the path to fight him. First though, we fought Kael’Thalas in Tempest Keep (and Magister’s Terrace), and Lady Vashj met her end in Serpent Shrine Caverns. Finally, in what was originally the last raid of Burning Crusade, we got our payoff and fought Illidan himself. Part of my motivation for the guild hopping of my BC days was my desire to see these character’s story arcs to their conclusion. It was like I had started a book in Warcraft III, and now I wanted to finish it. Not doing so would have been like listening to a song that didn’t resolve.

Wrath made no bones about its primary nemesis. This was it. The path was laid out to the Frozen Throne. We would face Arthas himself. From the moment you got off the boat in either Howling Fjord or Borean Tundrea, Arthas was there, taunting you, urging you on to a final confrontation with him. For this player, Arthas was the penultimate antagonist. Ever since we witnessed the amazing cut scene of Arthas running King Terenas through with Frostmourne, we wanted a piece of him. My anger was ignited when in his blind passion for vengeance he took up Frostmourne killing my beloved Muradin in the processes. Through the levels and expansions, one thing had remained, the quest to confront Arthas.

By the end of Wrath, my avatar stood over Arthas’ lifeless body. The character who adorned the cover of box for Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos (Human edition), Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, and World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King was dead. His arc ended. And with his arc ended, the developers had finished the arc of every major villain from the Warcraft III games. The story was told.

What would propel us into Cataclysm would have to be new villains. World of Warcraft was now going to have to have to stand on its own story, and not simply finish the story begun in Warcraft III. I believe for a portion of the player base, World of Warcraft did a poor job of communicating its ongoing story. Our characters needed more motivation than we have been given. We need more than ‘he’s got duh perps, yo” to raid week after week in search of the next villain. We never got the connection to Deathwing that we had felt with Illidan, or Arthas. Arthas called to you from two expansions away. Deathwing whispers can barely be heard the very expansion we will confront him. Too much of the story was obfuscated outside of the game in comics, wikis, and novels. Our characters set out to defeat Deathwing more out of duty than raw passion.

So once the new zones have been seen, and the new dungeons run through a couple of times, we, as players, came back to the question of our motivation. Before, the answer had been to stay on the course to Illidan, or to Kael’thalas, or Arthas. Now the answer now was to prepare for Deathwing. For whatever reason, some players found that answer left them unmoved.

I can only speak for myself. I am still actively playing World of Warcraft, and I have no plans to quit, though I am playing far more casually than I did previously. Before killing Arthas, leaving would have felt like leaving something unfinished, like putting down a good book only halfway through. But now, the book feels read, and leaving a natural progression when the next good book is published.

I, Shaman: Speculation of the future of resto

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With all the changes to healing between the expansion’s release and subsequent patches, restoration shaman have kind of gone in a bit of a circle almost. We started out the expansion with the inclusion of a few new spells that really set the tone. Healing Rain was an absolute power-house addition to our healing, and Spiritwalker’s Grace along with Unleash Elements gave us some additional healing versatility.

Not too long after Cataclysm’s release, shaman healing started falling behind some of the other healers not from lack of trying but for lack of throughput and cooldowns. We have a diverse toolkit to use, but there just wasn’t enough juice in the batteries. The developers at Blizzard ramped up our healing in an attempt to bring us up to par with other healers, and gave us a brand new cooldown to use. It just so happened to be a spell that we’ve been pining over for almost three years. As of patch 4.1 our healing has gone up exponentially and we can keep pace with the other healers pretty well, and we have enough tools an abilities to cover the main healing roles.

But now it’s time to look to the future. One of the big things about Cataclysm was that there would be a great homogenization where all healers could cover all of the roles in a raid or group. This is mostly true at this point. I can tank heal pretty damn well now, and have been for the last several weeks, and can switch between that and raid healing at the drop of a hat without losing pace. Paladins can pile on some massive raid healing and still nuke heal a single target. I think, though, that we’ve reached almost full circle and while we can cover all the roles necessary I think we all still have a specialty. Lets look at shaman and the toolkit we have.

Healing Rain is a massive AoE healing spell with an area of effect large enough to encompass two priest or druid healing circles. It is affected by mastery at each tick, so it can be used for lower health targets to great effect, and each healing tick has a chance to proc Earthliving. Chain Heal has had its coefficient buffed, and overall throughput increased. It was changed to include the additional target from the glyph as a base part of the spell, bringing our total targets up to 4. Riptide, with glyph, can be rolled across multiple targets when applied every cooldown, and Healing Stream Totem also got a bit of a boost and Spirit Link Totem is a clutch cooldown that can bring a raid from the brink of death to flat-out victory.  Shaman still thrive pretty hardily in the barren lands of AoE healing, it’s the point I think we excel the most at overall. This isn’t bad, it’s good to have a specialty, but we’ve done maybe a 310 turn. I won’t say 360 because we aren’t in that awful spot we were before, but we’re close enough to our old niche that we can still claim it, and we get the tools to be able to hang with the single target healers as well. I think though, that it was an intentional move to put us in the niche to give us that specialty and I think that it will become important in the next tier of raiding.

Tier 12 promises to ramp up the AoE damage. This is based purely on speculation of the content as well as some of the items that have been data-mined for set bonuses. As Vixsin pointed out in comments to my last post, is that every 4pc focuses on providing additional splash healing. This is a pretty good indicator as to what we’ll be dealing with, considering the set bonuses are usually tooled towards boosting your healing for the current content. So from set bonuses, and from the general fact we’ll be in the elmental plane of fire, we can expect a lot of raid wide damage and healing. This is something shaman normally can capitalize on by using all our tools. I think that T12 raiding content could be a shaman break out tier, where due to just the nature of our healing, you will see some ridiculous healing done. Basically I think we’ll make a strong showing in the next tier of content based on our cooldown, our healing spells and our ability to just be general healing bad-asses. After that, on the road to Deathwing, who knows what we’ll look like. But for right now I think we’re poised for greatness in the next tier.

Guest Post: How to Choose Your Officers

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Today we have a guest post by Sam from Top Rosters about Officer selection.

Starting a new guild is always tough. One of the major headaches is normally selecting your officers and so in this article I will try and discuss the various options that you have.

Viktory has already written about the various setups found in most guilds, i.e. guild master – class leaders – bank officer etc, but I want to cover the “who” part of the equation.

“Who” do you choose to be an officer and what role do you put them in?

In most cases if you are starting a guild you will have a couple of friends who are joining it with you. In a lot of cases they will be given officer positions immediately simply because they are there are the creation. Sometimes this works out well, but in my experience it is best to let the guild settle down for a couple of weeks while everyone gets to know each other before handing out responsibilities.

So you have a new guild with a new roster and you are looking to start raiding within a week. You need some officers. First off decide what structure of guild hierarchy you are going to use. I will not cover that here but check out Viktory’s post on it. In most guilds there is the guild master, a raid leader, class/role leaders, a recruitment officer and a bank/website officer.

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The raid leader position is definitely the most crucial and the one that can have the most dramatic impact on the guild’s progression. We have all experienced good and bad raid leaders and so here is my opinion on what makes a good’un:

  • They need to be vocal. Fairly self explanatory – you don’t want a timid raid leader.
  • They need to be keen on researching the latest strategies – they will normally be the ones deciding which tactics you use for each boss.
  • They need be a great organiser – they will be forming the raids and need to get class composition correct (less important these days with the changes to buffs.)
  • They need to have good “people skills” – players that get sidelined for raids will come to them for answers.
  • They need to be authoritative during raids – if they tell someone to do it they need to do it.

Some guilds run with more than one person leading the raid but personally I have always found one to work better.

Class/role leaders are usually easier to find. The best starting point is recount (or whatever meter you use.) The top rogue will usually be the best rogue. Now of course there is a lot more to being a class leader than topping the meters. They also need to be able to:

  • Ascertain when a class member is performing sub-par and then have the gumption (odd word) to go and talk to them about it.
  • They need to be up to speed on their class – (perhaps ask potential class leaders which class relevant blogs they read)
  • They need to be inspecting their class members and advising them on necessary changes – be that gems, enchants, reforging etc. This should be the individual players responsibility, even in a casual guild, but you would be amazed how many players in raiding guilds are not optimised correctly and need a gentle nudge form their class leader.
  • Just like the raid leader, they need to have “people skills.” They need to be able to sideline a class member for a raid and let them know why. They need to be able to confer with the raid leader if he/she needs to know class specific details for a fight.
  • They need to be the most active members in the guild (attendance-wise.)
  • They will normally need to have the time to read through any class applications that get past the recruitment officer.

So you have picked your core team of class leaders and raid leader. Most guilds now opt for a recruitment officer. This is the poor sod who has to sift through the mountains of unreadable applications every week. Look for someone who is:

  • Patient – you do not want someone who will ragequit two weeks in after reading the 9th application from someone who does not have any professions.
  • Has good attention to detail – they will need to scan each application with a fine tooth comb and be able to ask the right questions.
  • Literate – you need someone who has great written English skills to reply to the applicants.

Sometimes you will want to pick a banking officer. Many guilds do not even bother with one and the guild leader simply does it. However if you do decide that you need one then they need to be:

  • Trustworthy – pretty obvious but ideally you do not want a ninja as your banker.
  • Organised – they need to keep track of what is going where and who is using it.
  • They need to be able to advise the guild master on cash flow and whether it could use a boost via BOE epic sales, boosting randoms through BWD etc.

Sometimes you will have a website officer but in general it is not necessary. Basically whoever creates the website deals with any problems that crop up with it!

So in essence choose your team based on those qualities and ‘you’ll be laughing.’ If you take my advice, try one week of raiding with yourself as raid leader and then decide on who should fill each role at the end of that week. You will have a better idea of who is suited to which role.

Thanks for reading and if you liked it feel free to visit us over at Top Rosters or follow on twitter @toprosters if that is your ‘thang. We are currently looking for a few class columnists so if interested please send us an email: mail@toprosters.com. Thanks for the opportunity Matt and keep up the great work here at WOM!