Tag Archives: loot

Great feature – Loot Spec Selection

Aside

One aspect introduced recently in World of Warcraft was the option to select your preferred spec for Loot. By golly! It is great. If you are a hybrid class and not doing this then you should really should give it some thought. My Tank set has been improved by this feature more than once already.
2-Loot-specialisation-choice
It is one of the best quality of life type improvements I think have been made ever.

Loot Bragging from a while ago

Aside

I love and hate the loot system, and have days where it seems to be raining epics, and then weeks where I get nothing useful. I was going to pop another rant about how much it could be “fixed”, but instead here are a few screenshots of where I’ve made out OK.
2-Loot-bragging

Yeah you read that right. One shot the bosses and 3 bits of gear. Now granted a few I can’t use or already have, but three in one run is still lopsided in a great way.

3-Loot-bragging

And then who doesn’t like getting 50,000 valor points. I’d prefer 7x more Secrets of the Empire, but hey – have to keep running on that treadmill.

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Shallow needs for loot

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Whine. Every time I use a coin and miss on a reward I feel like I’ve wasted a coin. When I don’t get loot in LFR I get the feeling too. Yes, we should not get gear every kill, and yes I know I’m on a treadmill.3x-LFR-Legs-ShittyLootSystem
Still the system needs to ramp up on rewards, perhaps so that I don’t get another of the same reward. eg. getting a third set of 502 PvE legs from LFR was frustrating.

A week later I got a 522 Leg item from Nalak too. Pants!

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Arrrg loot in LFR and the Useless Ordinary Legendary Gem

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This post is brought to you by the word: Random.

I was going to whine about loot in LFR, as a run through Terrace and the first part of Heart of Fear saw nothing. But then I got lucky in the second part of Heart of Fear LFR, and got the Gloves token which I’ve now had drop 4x times. Arrrrg. No weapons, side grades, other drops for ages. Oh, working as intended? Random rewards are fun. /sarcastic

On an actual positive note I have now handed in and completed the first stage of Wrathion’s quest-line for the “Ordinary Legendary Gem“. Now the slow grind up to 6000 Valor points has started, and we’ll see how far behind the curve I am. I doubt patch 5.2 is 6-7 weeks away given the news and press flying around.

I love the fact that the Legendary quest line is a pain in the arse and bloody difficult for a casual player. Blizzard got this right. it should be driving those players crazy, and should not be something that we feel is deserved; earn it. I get a good quest line and the promise of more great stuff to come.

Not that the “Ordinary Legendary Gem” is actually useful as it requires a Sha Touched Weapon to be slotted into, which is also RANDOMLY DROPPED. So the Ordinary Legendary Gem” is actually a “Useless Ordinary Legendary Gem“. I’ve decided to treat the gem like getting the Left Binding in Molten Core. Now begins the stupidly long path of getting the other random thing to drop.

My Death Knight could really use a Sha Touched weapon for Tanking. Really, really, handy. Random and hard for LFR upgrades is poor, random and hard in a Legendary quest is perfect. Its like the two are the same now. Just saying.

wrathion

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Time for Tokens to die

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Years ago the wow community were rousing about the token system was ok, but fundamentally flawed. The mini-game we play after the boss dies is another treadmill-merry-go-round where gear drops which is useless. As a design principle wow’s reward for effort is based upon re-trying the kills each week until you get lucky. Today I’m bloody mad about this as its been far too long that we’ve been suffering this. Rant incoming.

In our guild forums I wrote this class tokens:

On the token (issue) I think we’re screwed for two reasons: we need to take what we can in terms of characters who are able to join and raid above their match on the token, and we can’t get people to switch characters just to suit the bloody token system each major content patch. It is a bullshit scenario to be in, but I can’t think of a solution that does not have the regular raiders re-rolling each patch.

The token system was an ok idea to allow a boss to drop loot which would not be fraught with drama, as only a few classes could use it. Less people = less drama right? Wrong.

We have in guild now is one character with a token to himself, and half the raid split on each of the other two. Ah shit, gear drama. And I don’t mean people being bitches about loot, I mean that we see Tokens getting cycled for gold/de as we’ve had too many of one type and miles from enough of others. The drama is that our progression is slowed due to shitty luck. A boss dies but the drop is totally pointless.

Also with 4-5 players on each 2 tokens it takes huge amounts of time to gear those 9 players. It is not just 9 kills job done, because we have alt sets, and subs who join from time to time to help with the roster, which makes the distribution ever worse.

Just bring more people to suit the tokens? The server populations are shrinking and this is a totally non-viable response.

Bring the player not the class? Nope. Bring a balance of classes for the tokens. Oh and the tokens change each major content patch. Arrrg.

Reroll? Good god, have you seen how unfriendly the alts are? Forget that as viable for everyone except those with huge amounts of time to play.

The outcome is our raid group just has to suck it up, and keep grinding.

Honestly I am so sick of the loot rewards or issues around loot getting in the way of actually having fun with my raid team in World of Warcraft.

Fark this, I’m soon going to play something else. If Blizzard need a reason why I’ve moved to month-on month payments now, and will shortly consider reading a book instead of logging in they can start with this. Fark it. Destroy it all.

(p.s. what about suggestions for alternatives? Nope, I’ve done that for years suggesting ways that progressive “coins” or currency could be acquired each kill. Do a search on Gear on the blog… they’ll be a few.)

A few more Blue comments, Bag Space, and random linkage

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Those Blue posters really do put up with a heck of a lot of splatter and vitriol from the community. Thankfully the mess is easy to find and enjoy. This time Bag Space is something I’ve got some thoughts on at the end, which the Blues seem to think cannot be solved by adding space.

  • Apparently post trolling for “survey feedback” on Dailies is not productive. Fair.
  • No AHs in the Pandaria zones. Consistent with other expansions. Fair, and the OP phrased it well enough to sound like a request too. +1.
  • WoW custom Monopoly has been released. I don’t get it, but can accept it. Fair.
  • A DPS comparison with Blue, via Noxic. Hmm. Not what I’m seeing.
  • I am not the only one (surprise!) that dislikes the Loot-Need rolls in 5 mans, but it is working as intended. That makes it just more evidence that the folks I hate who proceed to take everything are doing nothing “wrong” and everything selfishly. They have great gear though. Again here.
  • Blue confirmed that bigger bags won’t help the issue of no space in the long term. Ahem. That does not mean that larger bags, or better stacking of items in stacks larger than 20 (for most buff food for example) won’t significantly help. I think there is a bit of snarkin the Blue’s response where they offer that bigger bags is such a good suggestion. How about:
    • Make all things that stack to 20 now go up to 100 instead (or maybe 99 if you must). Food, ingredients, crystals, herbs, ore, mats for enchants, cloth, etc. All of it. We’ll have heaps more bag space, with no change in the size of the variable in the DB which stored the stack count.
    • Give me an item (yes it will use a bag slot) that allows me to DE. Sell it as a special Rep item from the Consortium as an Exalted special. That way we can DE as we go too.
    • Make lesser charms stack to 900+.
    • The the quest items for Dailies that I do not have auto-disappear when the Daily is dropped or complete (Duh).

Angry about outdated loot rules

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Angry. More Hallows Eve runs than I can shake a stick at, and I have more to do. I want that bloody rare helm. I want a Strength Ring. And I want to defenestrate the greedy bastards in Warcraft.

It is hardly 2005 when the behaviour of the community might have not been totally predictable.

Change the bloody rolls in Randoms, so that they mean what (I think) they should mean:

  • Main Role: valid for the role you joined in.
  • Alt Role: valid if you can use it.
  • Transmog: because you like pretty things.
  • Gold: because you are going to vendor it anyway, just give the character the cash.
  • Disenchant: because you’d like the mats.

Main gets priority, then Alt Role, then the other three are all at the same level. The use of the word Role will be a direct lever for teaching the idiots that they should not try to queue as one role and roll for loot for others.

OK, I understand that it might be too much to have 5 options in some runs, and that might confuse some of the soft brained screen-lickers, but to hell with them. Then take out transmog, that’s a shitty reason to roll against somebody and Alt would do in a push. It will likely only be 3-4 options, and if the game designers cannot find a way to impart that design graphically to communicate the level of consideration then they should not be designing interfaces for a living.

I submit, I submit. No more. I’ll do as you do. Need it is.

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I’m very sick of players rolling need on gear in randoms when they should not. It happens all the time in random runs, but especially on the last boss’s loot. A player rolls need then quits group. Too long we’ve seen suggested options to rank up a /roll by a huge number based upon spec, to curb the greedy selfish players.

I’m sick of missing on loot due to rolling “properly”. The game does not enforce a system that makes sense to the roles we use to enter a random, so I feel like a man trying to hold back the tide.

You win you greedy bastards. I submit. I’ll do as you do and roll Need on everything from now on. Why should I be the only player following some sense of decorum and sanity?

Need it is. Always.

To hell with you all.

The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot

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I think they’re taking the piss out of us MOO types, but that might be ok as it looks entertaining and I liked the satire in the video.

The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot

In Mighty Quest For Epic Loot, your goal is to defeat as many castles as possible and to protect yours from being successfully assaulted. Go on an adventure to loot bigger and well-defended castles to get the resources you need to build your own lair with a unique combination of creatures and traps in order to prevent other players’ heroes from beating it. And there might be some special castles much harder for you to take on…

Game is taking registration for Beta now.

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Tears over Tier Tokens

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Wintergrasp Offensive

Death Knights waiting for a token not shared with bloody Mages or Druids.

Because of a Guild Officer’s meeting I was pondering the loot tables, gear distribution systems, and the associated mods that raiders use. Of course the loot reward system was discussed, and we once again chatted about all sorts of options. Silly ones, great ones, in an ideal world, and also very much in the world we have to play in. That might make it sound like I didn’t want to chatter about it; not so. In fact we’re pondering all sorts of useful stuff for the teams, and considering carefully what the game will feel like in WoW version 5.1+. The question that came to my mind outside of those discussion was:

What if the tier tokens were made universal for all classes?

I suggest removing them, and making them just “shoulder token” or “helm token” with no class restriction. And here is why:

  • Essentially most raiding guilds have loot policies and systems to handle gear distribution. Therefore the token is adding a layer of restriction which is actually inhibiting the guild’s progression, because it limits options.
  • Some groups have actually implemented separate bid lists or systems specifically fro tier gear, due to the importance it has on the character and raid. Well no change there one way or the other, only that the skew of classes in your raid group will be affected by the random token that drops. i.e. Good luck being a geared Shaman if you rarely see that token drop.
  • Random LFR runs now have no loot need/greed anymore. You either get look or you do not. The token is moot now in LFR.
  • The tokens have the positive change of allowing a character rewarded with one a choice on what particular item they choose from the vendor. This is a huge positive as it means that classes can pick the best gear. Druids for example can pick any of their types of gear fro one token. No change as either an advantage or disadvantage here.
  • The tokens helped when you didn’t want to compete against everyone in the raid for loot, which gave an illusory feeling of hope. But once again that is a mechanic which raiders can handle. It still comes down to which Token dropped, and then who you roll against. So essentially is a two step random process (which token, then roll against other classes) better than a one step random process (what was your loot roll)?
  • The tokens at times were useless due to not having enough of a class range, or they could not benefit the raid the most. Huge problem, just ask anyone doing Wintergrasp, et al.
  • The only situation where these have some limited value as implemented now is for pug runs which are not in the LFR system, and that is only because they keep the illusion of two random events alive. That is a thin line.

So there it is. I can’t see a reason to keep them anymore.

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LFR Loot System

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The new loot system gives an approx 15% chance to each participant to get loot. The “community” is happy, delighted, excited, angry, whingy, upset, and everything else.

Zarhym – The new system won’t have a record of your loot history or check your inventory. In your example, Bob might win the same item off of the boss every week (assuming he’s running as the same spec each time).

The only thing the system looks at is 1) if you are eligible for loot (have you killed this guy already this week?), and 2) what your current spec is.

It does not favour your current gear. It looks at the roll to see if you win something, and then gives a random item based upon your spec. This means that folks might have a slightly higher chance to get anything because you are not competing against the need/greed rolls of others; and the system cannot be gamed. Previously the system could be spun to try to get a specific item to a toon, or share an item between characters in the LFR.

It is as positive as it is negative, and it is designed to get rid of the selfish drama of need/greed. It introduces a new set of drama, as people get items they already have, or do not want.

Overall I think this is better because the asshats can’t spike my rolls.

Spectral Tiger loot cardThat one perfect item was a snowball’s chance in hell anyway – so what really changed except dumb luck not being influenced by other players? Nothing. LFR remains a once a week random small chance to get a better item, and a source of Valor/Justice points, and I’m fine with that.

My suggestion would be to alter the drop so that I am less likely to get an item I already have in bags, equipped, or banked. This favours removing unneeded gear, and means that each run will be more rewarding. I guess too that too many people have such a wide variety of wishlists when it comes to loot (for main, offspec, transmog, vendor) that anything except a basic approach will crate a whinge fest. Checking this at time of award is potentially a hassle which is perhaps why such an obvious tweak was not done.It will however be an irritation to people looking for two of the same weapon for dual wield or for dual specs.

The new system looks to be a quick and dirty solution to loot distribution in random groups, and I am confident that over time a better set of tweaks will be added; later rather than sooner.

(Ps. I’ve written heaps on gear, and a fair amount on new rules that would be handy).

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drop rate probability – mobs2kill

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Probability and Measure As there are so many rare items in MMO games, and the probability of getting them varies, but is generally 1% I started wondering how many kills are needed to get an almost certain chance of getting an item.

With a 1% drop rate it might seem on the surface (when I disengage my brain) that killing the creature 100 items will get you the item. Not so, and the math is somewhat tricksy.

WowWiki: An item has a 1% droprate from a specific mob, which means that, on average, one will drop for every 100 kills. This does not mean that it’s guaranteed to drop by the time you’ve killed 100 mobs — it’s an average.

Thankfully somebody has already created a tool which does just that – mobs2kill. What I like about this little webtool is that you can input the drop rate, and what certainty you wish to achieve, and mobs2kill will tell you approx how many attempts are needed. So when considering that some Legendary items require 2 items to drop, each with a 1% drop rate, it makes sense why these things are exceedingly rare.

So to have an almost certain (99%) chance of a 1% drop item that you are farming, you need to kill the mob 459 (ahem 458.21) times. Wow. That said, if you’re happier with 50% overall chance, then you’re only up for 69 kills. For that one item.

And the probability of having the item after 100 kills for a 1% drop rate is a touch higher than 63%. Unsurprisingly the overall odds of having the item get better with each attempt, despite the individual instances of the chance staying at 1%. Farm. Farm. Farm.

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Whine about Bindings of the Windseeker

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As part of the ongoing addiction to repetition – I’ve been farming for the Bindings of the Windseeker, which are the rare drop parts of Thunderfury. Actually I’ve been farming it ever since a mate was, and I went along to make the fight go easier. After seeing that I could smash the bosses solo, I decided that it was time, and since then it has been a very long time in farming. This post is a dummy spit to share the frustration of a small drop rate item. /spit.

Baron Geddon seems to know when my DK enters Molten Core and he throws away anything useful, especially the Binding. I even checked recently that I was killing the correct boss, as it seemed impossible to still be missing the drop. Not impossible, just unlucky. One day I’ll have Thunderfury, one day.

It would be great to experience the lore of the Thunderfury creation. I still have a sense of satisfaction from having the original Hand of Rag legendary, and while greedy – Thunderfury is another of the iconic in-game weapons. Continue reading →

The new 5 mans in patch 4.3 are very reasonable

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I’ve now played each of the new 5 mans in patch 4.3 a few times and they are very reasonable; however the player base and loot mechanics are still problematic.

From a pace and visual style the new instances is excellent. The tasks needed are obvious enough that you get the idea quickly, the mechanics are not difficult to follow, but they need to be addressed properly (interrupts, fire on ground, proximity, special kill orders feature strongly). All in all, good stuff. Worth waiting for, and certainly feature rich in terms of game lore that the characters get to participate in.

However the two same aspects of running randoms remain frustrating, and they are related. Morons and rude mongrels still populate the queues just as frequently as average players. Great players are still rare. I’m an average player overall, and I have a sixth sense in detecting when somebody is a mongrel, which of the handful of runs so far I’ve seen a typical spread of douche-bags. Continue reading →

+100 Need rolls in Raid Finder

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The Raid Finder will give Need rolls a +100 modifier if your Role in the instance matches the item. This is excellent. In fact, put that in the LFG system too please.

How do they tell what is a Tank item vs a Dps item?

Well they’d either classify each item which would take ages or they have an algorithm (a previous post about exactly that type of algorithm in April). Its like they’re reading the blog.

Help! I’m frustrated by Mains and Alts

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There is some background drama in my guild at the moment, which centers on the topic of rewarding Alts vs Mains in progression raiding: Should there be a penalty for switching mains, what about regular alts, and how do you handle loot in these scenarios?

Without naming folks I’d like to get some feedback from people who read this blog (as you’re clearly an intelligent bunch of high spec people).

I’m pretty open about having a more relaxed attitude toward my personal progress, but I take the policies of the guild very seriously. Heck, I’m the GM I should take it bloody seriously. I think a guild needs guidelines to protect against the people who would abuse the system, and sometimes that causes some angst to the players who would never dream of being selfish.

I said this in 2008: Often the feel of a discussion about progression can hurt feelings, or call out those with strongly held beliefs.

Yep, it sometimes sucks, but its the way of things. We have laws for the same reasons. A guild needs to protect the many, through consistency. I’ve seen more than enough dickheads in guilds in the past, and thankfully they are now all ex-guildies. The set we have now in Insidious are pretty solid people.

What is happening now is that we have a few raiders who wish to switch to different roles or different characters within the raid team. It raises potential drama as until now we’ve never created a policy that stipulated how that occurred or what the affect was.

A player joins a team, and selects a role (meaning a Class and Spec choice) in a team and should stick to it. Sometimes that role might be a Tank, Dps, Healer, whatever. There are also times when the player needs to switch spec for some reason. All good, that is normal. The actual reason for the change is basically irrelevant to me.

This so so that the team can learn to be cohesive, progress well, and be rewarded. Gear and entertainment are essentially why people are Raiding, so the team should do everything to make that happen.

But what happens when a member wishes to switch either character or spec?

I don’t mean for a fight, or even for a single run, I mean what happens when the Druid Tank wishes to become a Death Knight Tank (eg. a change of Character with the same role)? If that is allowed, is that new DK also OK to grab Plate Dps gear before the Warrior Tank? What about all the leather Agi gear, trinkets, and other items that druid has taken which is “lost” to the rest of the team.

Or when a main Dps decides they wish to Heal? What do you do when that really nice Staff drops and two healers both want it – one has been waiting as healer for months, and the other started healing last week.

After many years playing my gut tells me that switching mains causes drama and disruption within the team. The affect might be small, but it is there. It could also be large, messy, dramatic, and a total pain in the arse.

What happens when the player has to play the old-main because the raid can’t fit the new main selection, or they need the old role because now they need to recruit? Do they gear gear as a main or alt?

I believe that there should be a period where the player is de-prioritised for loot. In affect I think that any character that the player brings to the raid should be treated as an Alt for loot distribution while the team adjusts.

This is so:

  • The switch over to a new Main is discouraged. The carrot is the new character or role, the stick is that they have to give something up too.
  • The other raiders are not competing straight away for loot against the new Main.
  • If the player decides they don’t like the new role after all and change again, they have not taken gear away from another player.
  • If the player has to play the old role, they do not take loot which they won’t use in the long term either.
  • other players can know and see directly what is a Main vs an Alt.
  • when the raid leader decides, the interim penalty period is dropped and the person is now a Main.
  • That period might be a day or a year depending on all sorts of things like gear ilevel, participation, attitude, competing roles, flexibility, competency, etc. I suggested the period be flexible so that we have choice.

The counterpoint view to this is that people should be able to switch characters and roles as they wish at any time, and they everyone can be trusted. I’ve been told that there is actually no problem here at all. Having a policy is not needed, and that it is insulting to some people within the team as it seems I don’t trust my raiders. Thus this post was born.

And that counterpoint is partially right. I don’t trust that we won’t have drama, and therefore I want a policy. Make it a rule that applies equally, and there can be no favorites.

To me the idea of no rule is just chaos, and serves people who have many alts more than it serves focused players. I think it will lead to wasted loot and drama very quickly.

I see the new Main as being almost the same as a new player joining the team. There is a time where you’re not sure how everything will share out, so having some protection in place for the people who have been consistent is important.

What are your thoughts?

Please post, comment, etc as I’d really like to know if I’m off my rocker on this issue.

the loot system is farked

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In another post’s comment, I wrote that “the loot system is farked in wow“. It really got me thinking that such a negative statement could gather up how I feel about PvE raid rewards in World of Warcraft. It is worrying. Not only for PvE raiders, but for the fact that other games will look to WoW and copy the reward system as a fundamental. In this case Blizzard has it fundamentally wrong.

I promise that this will be one of the last posts about loot, gearing, and the cycles involved for a while. Just one last rant to get off my chest.

a skinner box

A skinner box session in progress. I think the bird is DPS...?

The system is based upon grinding for gear, in a most inefficient manner. When you kill a boss a random sub-set of items is presented as awards and the team get to decide who gets what. I like the fact that we get to decide how we divvy up the booty, but there is no consideration to who participated, or what is needed in the team. And that is just broken.

We have entire systems (ilevels, gear points, reforging, enhancements and enchantments, etc) to classify gear, and improve the gear we have, but no way to reward repeat raiding effort to gain specific items. These items are often needed to move forward efficiently.

You might think that I am forgetting that you get widget-points for killing a boss (who cares what they are called – widget points is fine), which can be use to purchase items? I’m not. That is a good system, which is logical, and places the control back with the player to participate in the gearing choices. Widget points are well loved as a system, the real contention is how fast you acquire them, not if the system is useful.

I’m raising the idea (yet again) that we need the game to facilitate improvement through effort in a better manner for boss loot.

Examples of the issues:

  • There is no point dropping Priest specific gear if we don’t have on in the raid. It is useless.
  • There is no point dropping an item that cannot be used by anyone in the raid at all, like Spell plate with no Paladins.
  • No prohibition on rolling for items which are irrelevant for a spec as a “Need” item.

Oh, but am I forgetting that it will get converted to a shard, and shards have value? No. An item being “sharded” in early content is a total waste, as the team really need upgrades to progress, and it late content you have so many that they are almost irrelevant. Shards only have high value and high use in the middle of the game, when you have gear worth using the shard on, but also don’t have 90% of your raid geared.

It is all really illogical.

But then is it really illogical to everyone? The drop randomness keeps a percentage of the players raiding each week. They can do nothing except raid to clear, and hope an item drops. This means they keep at it, and keep playing longer. It is not a stretch to suspect that if the loot system was improved then we could see more players switching to alts, or switching to other games.

Perhaps it is only illogical to keep doing it.

Well then you might ask what can be done. Well if you go digging through this blog you’ll find all manner of suggestions. In the wider wow community you’ll see more, and if you look as far as outside the wow community (gasp), there are plenty of good examples of other ways to handle rewards and loot. Far too many to bother with a summary here, but a few driving principals apply:

  • Minimise the amount of wasted loot
  • Balance loot amongst the classes and specs present
  • Guide loot distribution using the assigned role
  • Minimise the impact of greedy players

However here are a few I prepared earlier: Better gear rewards from runs, and Algorithm for need vs greed by role.

The opportunity to change this in the current 4.2 game is not a reality. It is probably too large a change to be made except by change in major version like the next expansion, but it could be made.

May your dice roll high, and you always see your loot. TyphoonAndrew

Gear list from Patch 4.1

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Here is a simple sorted list of the gear that has been added in Patch 4.1. Or a list of only the items that drop from ZA and ZG without all the other items.

As you’ll see there are some great rewards from the new ZG and ZA instances, some ok stuff added for Archaeology, and some nice Bind to Account gear for Tanks. Be warned too that wowhead’s search also allows some fnucky items to be found so doublecheck before ranting about the upgrade.