The community of World of Warcraft is upset about the loot system. Group looting or personal loot? Which is better?

In World of Warcraft, few things are as important as acquiring loot. It’s no wonder that this is a hot topic of discussion among fans. Especially in competition with “randoms”, i.e., players you don’t know, loot can be very frustrating when everyone can roll for it. Thus, the demand is: Personal loot in LFR must return. A view that apparently receives great support.

What is the problem with group looting? Group looting is the “classic” way of distributing loot, as it has worked since the Vanilla days. This means that all players can see the loot after defeating a boss and then choose how they wish to roll for it. With need (I want to equip this), with greed (I want to sell this), or for transmog (I want this as a template).

The problem here is that many people choose need, even if they don’t actually need the item. There can be several reasons for this:

• Need is weighted more heavily than transmog. A need roll always wins over those who roll for transmog.
• The loot is still tradable after receiving it. So if friends go on an adventure together, all friends simply roll “need” to give it to the friend who actually needs it. This gives a group effectively multiple rolls.

Well-equipped characters, who usually participate in normal or heroic raids, often visit the raid on LFR difficulty just to get new transmog templates. This often leads to situations where an extremely well-equipped character rolls need on loot that is actually much worse than what they already have.

This leads to frustration, as the following Reddit thread shows:

This is how the community discusses it: In the WoW subreddit, the topic is brought up from time to time. A new post with nearly 2,000 upvotes has brought many arguments for and against this type of looting. In it, Brilliant-Elk-6831 complains that he rarely gets loot in LFR. Often something is “rolled away” from him, often by characters who don’t really need that loot – or by friend groups who roll for an item together to then give it to someone.

While the post gets a lot of support, there are also numerous comments disagreeing and pointing out why personal loot wouldn’t be better, as zztopar explains:

I have to correct you, because it is more likely that you get gear if you can roll for it compared to personal loot. Because contrary to what many commentators here believe, not everyone in the raid rolls need on everything. I know this because I regularly pass when I don’t need something in LFR – and I’m sure others do the same.

If something drops, and 7/10 players roll on it, then you have a 1:7 chance to win the item. If it is simply randomly given to one of the 10 people, then the chance would be 1:10. To me, it sounds like people want to shoot themselves in the foot by changing the loot system because they don’t like the feeling of seeing someone else win when rolling.

More cynically put by Defiant_Initiative92:

Group looting exists only because people complained about personal loot. Now it’s the people who liked personal loot who are complaining about group looting. These two systems are not equivalent and will always be weighed against each other. The only solution is a new, different system of gearing that annoys both sides at the same time.

Why did Blizzard change it at all? A few expansions ago, there was “personal loot” in LFR. This meant that when defeating a boss, it was simply rolled internally who would receive loot – those characters would then receive the item directly into their inventory. There was no visible rolling, and no one had to select “need” or “greed”.

However, there was the problem that some felt they were “never” getting anything, while other characters got multiple items in a row. By reintroducing group looting, more interaction with potential loot was supposed to be possible, so that everyone could see: Yes, something actually dropped that I could have received.

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There seems to be no perfect solution to the loot problem, even if mechanics like the weekly treasure chest already contribute to ensuring that you at least get something guaranteed. Both personal loot and group looting have pros and cons – and maybe Blizzard needs a completely new solution to eliminate the weaknesses of both systems.
The wrong loot system is also particularly annoying, especially with the 5 Classic weapons with the craziest effects.

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