Realm: Mistblade The Ninjalooting Policy on Mistblade

[Aithne]

What IS ninjalooting?

Ninjalooting is malicious behavior regarding loot rolls, such as active, repeated griefing or the breaking of pre-existing, documented loot agreements between players.

What ISN'T ninjalooting?

Needing on offspec/"worse than what you already have" gear in RHC is not, in itself, ninjalooting, because you cannot instantly assume malice and there is no pre-existing loot agreements between players in that environment (they are seeing each other for the first time). People can require various, at first glance seemingly non-optimal pieces for their offspec, alternative gearsets for different types of encounters, or even Challenge Modes. People may also just mislick, and, if asked kindly, may even be willing to work with you and trade you the item if they see that it would be a much more massive improvement for you than it is for them for whatever purpose they want it.

But I have a mainspec and it is their offspec!

People can queue using multiple specs for RHC, none of which has to be their "main" spec that they use for raiding. People also do not necessarily have a main spec, or one main spec only, as certain guilds' rosters can require select players to maintain two sets of viable gear. The fact of the matter is, "mainspec is more important than offpsec" is not a pre-existing agreement between players in a randomly queued environment, as the system itself does not know about your mainspec, only the ones you queued as, the other players participating have no way to see your mainspec without using external tools, and since mainspecs can change, we as staff do not even see what people's current main role is in the non-entrylevel content they are running. Because of this we consider all specs a player might have to be equally high priority in the entry-level, almost trivially easy gearing-up content that is RHC.

But what about the Loot Specialization setting?

Loot Specialization is a setting in the client which only the player themself can see. It is not broadcasted to any of the other players, and the client allows changing it at will. It is meant to make filtering personal loot in raid environments possible so that worldbosses, LFR and bonus rolls do not give undesirable items to that player. Using a mechanic that is meant to be a benefit in high-end content (and built up in the client like one) as a restriction instead in the lowest levels is not only a bad decision from a game design standpoint (the same mechanic cannot be a burden and a reward at the same time, that just feels bad), it is also not feasible from a development standpoint, as the unrestricted variant of Loot Specialization can be switched freely even between pulls, and any restrictions we place on it harm its use as an endgame loot filtering feature and result in unnecessary player dissatisfaction.

So any idiot warrior can need on my healer gear?

No. RHC, and, in fact, any high-level RDF has automatic trolling-prevention on (almost) all items that drop, making Need rolls impossible for classes that cannot use the item (and soulbinding BoE gear that they can). These restrictions are active in any RDF runs in TBC content and above, and are based on clientside data that is viewable on sites such as the Tauri DB website or even Wowhead on the item page. In Need Before Greed environments, if you class is on that list, you can Need, otherwise, the button is greyed out for you. (Keep in mind that this restriction does not apply in Vanilla dungeons, which is Blizzlike). Since clientside data may be imperfect, there are some items which can be Needed on by inappropriate classes - instead of spamming support tickets about a problem they cannot help with, please report such items on the bugtracker. These issues are quite easily fixable, but we need to learn about them to know that they exist in the first place since we didn't make the clientside data, Blizz did. For the exact same purposes as we are using them.

I was trolled! Surely you can give me back my item.

It is not your item. The item belongs to whoever won it. Also, no, it is not a simple task to redistribute items, and in low-stakes environments such as RHC, we advise players to take the loss and run another dungeon, as they are quite a "cheap" activity. Most players who claim "trolling" also fail to provide substantial proof of malice, and we do not act on cropped-to-uselessness screenshots of some person whispering you a profanity without any broader context.

So what IS malice and how do I prove it?

Malicious behavior has to be repeated, unprovoked, and clearly intentionally harmful. This means that for us to consider someone an RHC griefer, there has to be a documented chain of behavior that is unprovoked, un-cooperative and cannot be dealt with using the regular self-policing tools available to people. Someone retaliating against you when you attack them for taking "your" item is not unprovoked malice, and someone Needing on multiple items that you can also use is not, by default, considered un-cooperative. We also do not take action in cases where we deem it is possible to solve the problem using either player-to-player diplomacy ("talking it out") or votekicks. We do, however, punish people if it can be proven that they repeatedly grief their RHC groups. Still, always be kind, polite and ASK FIRST if you would like to use an item someone else won. You might be surprised, but kindness often goes a long way in the two hours that stuff is tradeable. If all else fails, the proof of malicious behavior has to be high-quality, unedited (this includes UNCROPPED), preferably chat-timestamped screenshots of the entire context of the roll, sent to us via an ingame ticket or e-mail.

What about raids?

We avoid policing most kinds of guild activity on the basis that people in guilds, presumably, want to play together and want to help each other achieve better gear so that they can kill more bosses together. Non-guild raids ("PUGs") are subject to perhaps the most difficult and complex loot etiquette/rules, but it is primarily the responsibility of the Raid Leader (and, often, the Master Looter) to uphold them, either by setting up an appropriate loot method for the group or disclosing the decisions that the Master Looter will take based on the people who roll/otherwise apply for the item. Them forgetting to set the loot method, or some player failing to disclose to everyone that they are not present as their "mainspec" for the decisionmaking process is not inherently malicious and can be dealt with easily. Cases where the Raid Leader has advertised clean, agreeable loot distribution methods and after a period of upholding them, they intentionally deviate from those rules for someone's benefit are the ones we would consider malicious and a "breaking of pre-existing agreements". If you feel like you can prove such a case, please reach out to us via tickets or e-mail and provide high-quality, uncropped, chat-timestamped screenshots of the incidents and we will try to determine the best course of action to take.