Master Looting Concerns - Solved

In the last day there has been two verified cases of Blizzard interfering in loot decisions made by a Master Looter.

In both cases, people were asked to roll on an item which was then given to a person who did not win the roll. Both cases had reasoning that was not discussed in game but was instead discussed on Discord.

Blizzard has said the following on loot distribution:

No one thus far has been able to provide me with a post or policy that indicates Blizzard will intervene in loot decisions, yet they’ve made plenty of posts implying that it’s up to the community to deal with “Loot Ninjas”.

No troll here. Just an observation. Blizzard generally doesn’t like it when new threads are opened about closed threads, they’ve punished it in the past.

Act like you or any guild you’ve been in has never had a hypothetical roll for an item. Or passed on a piece of gear in discord and it go somewhere else. Thats all it would take for you to get banned and the items removed.

Sure, people do mock rolls…after the item has been awarded. At least that has been my experience. We are all looking back with hindsight now, and I if you wanted to do a mock roll i would suggest doing it after the item is in the inventory of its intended player.

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I’m not making a thread to complain about a solved and closed case. I’m bringing up that solved and closed case because it’s necessary in order to make the point I’m making.

Blizzard as of yesterday appears to be getting involved in Master Loot cases when they previously stated they would not be getting involved and that it was up to the community to handle “Loot Ninjas” on their own.

I used to think your posts were valuable.

I don’t post for your approval. I say what I think without trying to appeal to anyone in particular. In this case I was simply making an observation that these kind of posts tend to not go well but good luck on it!

Exactly.

We have items drop and people roll and then determine they don’t want the item. Eye of Sulfuras is a good example of someone changing their mind after being told that it’s going to cost them 5,000 gold to make the hammer.

Could that person then open a ticket and get our Master Looter suspended if they felt like it? Blizzard should not be intervening in Master Looter decisions.

Master Looter, it says it right in the name.

And that’s where the grey area is though, and being that different people perceive the value differently, the policy should always be the dictating factor.

Yes, thank you for nothing, please move on and report the thread if you think it’s violating rules.

I don’t disagree. It would be nice to have it written in black-and-white unambiguously. However, i think Blizzard left things ambiguous on purpose just so these kind of threads trying to rule-lawyer everything to death don’t exist.

In the end, the only policy that actually matters is that Blizzard can do what ever they want for any reason they want.

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I’ve moved this discussion from the WoW Classic General Discussion forum to the Customer Support forum so that I could engage with it.

This is not new, no. The post you have been linking to throughout this discussion was made in April 2019. It’s not stickied and is not the most up to date information. You can find that in the stickied topic called “WoW Classic Customer Support and You

Specifically the section outlining Scams and Loot Disputes.

It’s less about intervening in Master Looting decisions and more about enforcing our policies against scamming. So, in cases where we can see looting agreements that were not maintained or when we can see that there was a clear intent to mislead or deviate from the agreement we may opt to intervene.

It’s also important to note - we still maintain that your reputation in the community is important and that users who frequently abuse the trust of their fellow players may find themselves unable to group up in the future. That is in addition to any penalties that may be levied by the Game Master team for scamming.

As always -

  • Run with people you trust.
  • Communicate your intent and establish clear rules in-game.
  • Play nice. Play fair!

Should anyone wish to appeal an account action, that can be done by submitting a ticket on our support website. A Game Master will review the case to ensure accuracy of the investigation and action.

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Thank you very much for making this more clear.

It seems like this policy means every Master Looter must clearly state that they may deviate from pre-established loot rules in some cases or risk being punished.

E.g. Someone goes AFK before a boss and wins a loot roll, the Master Looter then ignores that players roll and gives the item to someone else. If that Master Looter didn’t make that apparent to all members of the raid, they run the risk of being punished?

I made this thread because I had never seen this happen since Classic started, until yesterday. In the last 24 hours I’ve seen two confirmed cases but it was apparently a coincidence. I didn’t realize it was an already existing policy.

Also just to point out… Loot rules and discussions made outside of the game (like in Discord) can’t be seen by Blizzard, they can only go by what is done in their game.

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I really hate going down the hypothetical hole because it can get really messy with a bunch of different variables. In the situation you describe, if a member of the group has been AFK then you may want to have the RL remove them from the group with an explanation before the ML takes rolls for loot.

There are several ways to go about it, but it comes back to being clear in communicating what should be expected when players are rolling on loot.

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The scamming policy has been in place since Vanilla. It hasn’t changed with Classic.

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Thank you for the clarification and your time.

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Going back to this - I will say that a lot of time gets spent on investigating these reports. It’s not a simple “report master looter and get them in trouble.” We spend the time going over everything we can get our hands on from our game logs.

We want the Master Looter to be able to have the control they’re intended to have by the development team but we also want to make sure we’re helping to protect players from those who would abuse that position/responsibility.

I hope that makes sense… We’re not out to get Master Looters. We just want everyone to have a good time while they play.

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I differentiated between scamming and a Master Looter deciding someone didn’t deserve loot, due to many reasons that may come up during a raid.

Anyhow, I’ll be linking the policy that Kalviery dug up for me to my guild. We should probably have our Master Looter make a macro with a clear description of our loot rules and the possibility that things may change mid-run.

It makes sense but you’re obviously aware that (from what I can tell at least) most communication happens in Discord. Virtually everyone has it and PUGs (when we have them) are also invited to our Discord. There’s a lot of context that a GM can’t see because of this.

Thanks for your time Kalviery, I disagree with the policy but the reason I made the post is because I didn’t know that it was one to begin with. All I had were the posts from Kaivax which seemed to imply (to me) that the only repercussions for stuff like this were social/community ones.

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Yea, definitely aware :slight_smile: It’s a great community building program.

:pray: Thank you! This is all we try to convey when these discussions come up. Take a little extra time to set expectations and hopefully avoid misunderstandings.

I hope you and your group continue to have smooth runs going forward!

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Yes and there is nothing that Blizzard can do about deals made outside of their game. Things like Discord are indeed great tools used by players, but Blizzard doesn’t have access to anything said or done in them. It is up to players to make sure that anything important like loot rules are made in game as well.

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