DeeKayPee

It takes 25 people to kill a boss that drops 2-6 pieces of loot.

For as long as there have been more players then drops, some system has been necessary to distribute said drops, in such a way that...

Those whom got loot, got it for a reason.
Everyone else, can agree to that reason.

Major Systems include

Loot Council: A group awards items based of number tangibles (attendance, meters) and intangibles (attitude, overall contribution). Everyone else agrees that this group does so in a fair manor.
Pros - Only system that involves intangibles. Virtually no bookkeeping.
Cons - Requires extremely trustworthy council. Vulnerable to corruption, and drama.

Random: For short term groups. Items are awarded based on randomly generated numbers. Everyone feels they have an equal shot at items which are appropriate for them.
Pros - Quick and easy. Fair for PuGed content.
Cons - Ignores contribution entirely.

DKP: Points are awarded for contributing (some combination of showing up, killing bosses, and spending time), and spent on items. Everyone gets points, even if they don't get items.
Pros - Typically incorruptible. Direct link between contributing, and item acquisition.
Cons - Lots of bookkeeping.

LOKI uses DKP. It was in place when I joined, but I choose to keep it because; a) There is no drama in its execution, and b) There is a direct link between how much a player contributes, and what loot they get.

We have had a few moments (two, ever?) where DKP rules were not clear, and something had to be put in place. These were the closest to "loot drama" we've ever gotten. Its its day to day operation, we haven't had any issues.

And as for contribution - well, that's the point of this post.

In BC, we awarded DKP as follows...

5 for showing up ontime.
3 per hour, in or out of the raid.
10 per boss kill.
5 or 10 bonus DKP for first kills.

The problem being, that once we were killing 5+ bosses a night, farm content became highly desired for its high DKP return, while progression content didn't have that boost. Now, most of our raiders still came for progression. I did my best to ID people that skipped out on progression nights. Some I approached directly (and told them to either show, or leave), but some I could never quite prove, and had to just keep a close watch on. In either case, those that contributed to progression content were naturally identified by role officers, and brought to choice content.

Our tangible measure of contribution didn't align with our goals. We were progression focused, but DKP was geared towards farming.

This time around, we're looking to try an hourly system. Pyroshen recently commented that only hourly based DKP would lead to raiders whom are unmotivated to clear content in a timely fashion. I don't mean to pick on him, but here are my thoughts regarding this...

I was first against hourly-only. At one point in Hyjal, when we were still learning Archimonde, there was very little interest in being in for the first three bosses. I was concerned that not having boss kill DKP would make it hard to convince people to come to content that they did not need loot from.

As I looked more and more at Naxx, and saw the sheer number of bosses, a few things crossed my mind...

1) With per boss bonuses, Naxx would be a farm fest for DKP with medium to large values for bosses. Even worse then BT.
2) Bookkeeping for that many bosses/items would be a full time job for the person doing it, even with mods - so small values for bosses didn't seem worth the trouble.
3) There are enough drops of all sorts that it would be a long time till everyone got everything they wanted in a wing (we aren't swapping players in the middle of wings).

So I'm looking to do hourly, in the hopes that items themselves will be the added edge for pushing people to log on and kill. I will be talking with my officers about how we make sure people get fairly distributed raid time, though - as this new system won't show who was actually in the raid, as opposed to on standby.

Based on how well this goes, I may change it up in future tiers of content - but I'm fairly committed to this system for T7 (Naxx, OS, EoE). If anything has to get hotfixed, I'd imagine it would be values for min bid and max offspec bid.