When a new content patch is on the horizon, I like to go through my policies and see what needs to be updated – typically with regards to loot. I continue to do this for Cold Comfort even though the guild is in stasis at the moment. It’s a good exercise, and it helps build up a history with which to demonstrate my ideas on policy transparency.
For patch 3.3, I wanted to update the policies to remove old instances and set a policy for dealing with new items that would drop in Icecrown Citadel. In doing so, I realized that I had never drawn up a policy for distribution of the non-gear items that drop in Trial of the Crusader.
I’ve heard many people complain about how their guild deals with things like Trophy of the Crusade. Certainly the way that Blizzard set up the various grades of tier 9 armor didn’t help much, but most policies I heard about seemed to split one of two ways:
- make them purchasable in the exact same way as gear, with anyone who is interested bidding on them
- distribute them via some loot council system (even if the main loot system is DKP-like) when a member reaches some threshold (such as having the other materials required for turnin)
The way that you obtained tier 9.25 and 9.5 armor made either approach painful. In the first case, people would try to grab the trophy early to ensure that they controlled when they were able to upgrade their gear. In some cases, this let them skip the 9.10 tier entierly. The second technique led to the opposite behaviour – if you didn’t know exactly when you were going to get your trophy, you might hold off buying your 9.10 set so that you weren’t emblem-starved when you did receive the token.
Crusader Orbs were also tricky, as they were used in 36 recipes to make gear on par with Normal 25 / Heroic 10 drops, but the items crafted were bind on equip. Imagine that a Blacksmith tank has just purchased four orbs to craft Saronite Swordbreakers for themselves. While waiting to do the last Titansteel transmute they need, Armguards of the Shieldmaiden drop. The items are roughly equivalent (depending on the mix of stats you have on the rest of your gear).
Should the member be able to give the orbs back and get their DKP back? If the items were given via loot council rather than purchased, does the member now owe the orbs to the bank because they would not have received the orbs if they’d already been wearing the dropped item? What if they’d already crafted the item – are they now at the back of the line for orbs, even though they just wasted them?
Primordial Saronite, the new “orb” of Icecrown Citadel adds yet another variable. While it’s used for half as many recipes, it is also used in large quantities to progress through the quest to form the legendary weapon Shadowmourne. While you can purchase the Saronite for 23 Emblems of Frost, doing so would take weeks of pouring all your emblems into the task, and prevent you from purchasing any other EoF rewards in the process.
Even Blizzard doesn’t really have guidance for how Primordial Saronite “should” be distributed, acknowledging that it’s a problem of social dynamics (more) My Plan...


When starting a new raiding guild, you’re eventually going to hit that chasm between the 10 and 25 person roster sizes. Staying above 13 and below 22 active raiding members for too long can be dangerous – you can’t offer everyone a spot every raid, you can’t run two 10 person teams, and you can’t do 25 person raids without bringing in a few PUGs. If you don’t push through quickly enough, you risk losing members and being forever stuck as a 10 person guild.

WoW is in a double-lull right now. Not only is it summertime, with all the attendance issues that this time of year brings, but we’re at the point where juicy information about the next content patch is being dangled in front of us.
