Unwritten rules

I'm in a foul mood. I'm angry at a guild mate for breaking an unwritten rule, he probably (or lets say hopefully) wasn't even aware of. The rule is question is "do not roll NEED on an item which is better for another class, unless nobody of that class wants it". On Raslebol's 137th UBRS raid finally the Draconian Deflector dropped, and no other warrior needed it. And then that shaman decides that this is a nice shield for him, rolls NEED, and snatches it away from me.

There is a certain justification for this unwritten rule. If everybody rolls need for all items he could possibly use, it is quite likely that the shaman will end up with the draconian deflector, which with its +10 defence bonus is ideal for warriors; and then next time a shield with for example an intelligence bonus drops, the warrior wins it, making both parties worse off than if everybody had only rolled for the stuff that was for his class. In a recent raid my priest didn't roll on a dreadmist robe, which was much better than what he had, but is considered more of a warlock item. And then there is the eternal fight between hunters rolling for melee weapons (the "that is a hunter weapon" running joke), and melee fighters rolling for ranged weapons.

Problem with unwritten rules is that often they are not known to everybody, or they are known and not accepted. Everquest first had an unwritten rule of "don't killsteal", then that rule was written down in the "play nice policies" of SOE, and still killstealing was such a problem that modern games have some anti-killstealing device hardcoded. Technically killstealing isn't possible in World of Warcraft, the first person to damage a monster gets the xp and loot, but there *still* are complaints. Yesterday for example I wanted to try killing Scarlet Spellbinders in the plaguelands for a chance to find the crusader enchantment. I found the tower where they reside, but other mobs are guarding the entrance. And while I fight the mobs at the entrance, two other guys rush past me and killsteal all the spellbinders. Not nice, but technically allowed. And how often did you kill the monster next to a chest, just to have somebody else empty it?

Of course some people try to invent new unwritten rules in their favor. For example on my server we will have the opening of the Ahn'Qiraj gate world event, and the big guilds are spamming the server forums with messages telling everybody else to stay away. They say "if you haven't contributed a lot to the war effort, and if you aren't in a level 60 raid which actually can fight the battle, you have no right to be at the event." It is well known that lots of people present during the event will cause at the very least some unbearable lag, but more likely even several server crashes. I can see how the big guilds would want to have the event for themselves, but that isn't going to happen. Nobody is going to accept *that* unwritten rule.