There's an easy fix for this just make loot tradable for everyone with a range( like 5-15) level an option when making a raid. When you join the raid you get A HUGE warning for this (and you can't change it during the raid) and if you refuse you can't join.Problem solved.
I feel removing ML also removed a lot of NEGATIVE pressure from the interactions between players, even if some vestiges like guild-enforced trading of tradeable PL remain.However, in this entire discussion, most people seem to focus on if things should stay, or change back to what they were, rather that trying to think up a POSITIVE reinforcements and bad luck protection.Here's my take.1) Keep PL only as is (PLEASE read on and bear with me).2) Repurpose the useless toast "you got THIS loot item!" to include a button to REFUSE loot. Then, per RL setting, this is either ML'd by the RL, or shows as a "roll" for the raid.3) Introduce vendor and a currency. Any loot from a given raid can be sold to relevant vendor for the currency, and currency spent as the players see fit.4) Make REFUSING loot award 10-15-20% MORE currency than just taking the item to the vendor and vendoring it. THIS creates POSITIVE reinforcement to actually refuse loot you genuinely don't need, rather than keeping it or vendoring it yourself.5) provide relevant uses for the currency: for example, pay to have a drastically increased chance for your drops in a given week to be for a selected slot (at the expense on drastically reduced chance for any other loot, meaning guaranteed no loot on bosses that don't have drops for that slot).6) ensure difficulty level separation on amount of currency gains (say, 10 in normal, 100-150 heroic, 1000 mythic), and offer item upgrades with an offset. Have that normal ring you think is BIS, but it's HC version won't drop? No worries, 4 heroic items refused or vendored, and you can buy an upgrade to your beloved ring. Sure, it's a month of clearing, and you have to get (and then vendor or refuse) drops, but in the worst case, you'll get there.7) a bit of the currency could also be added to raw boss kills for players who have X kills, or beginning with certain ILVL, to encourage players with long-standing farm status or those outgearing a difficulty, to help others and keep running - again, on a personal level.Problem solved.System like that would actively promote and reward - in the long run - being fair with loot, but retain PL's protection from social pressure.
Man, I'm surprised WoWhead posted such a salty rant as "news", even an editorialI haven't seen the raw numbers like Ion did when he made this call, but I'd be willing to bet that for every competent, well-managed guild of adults raiding and distributing loot reasonably, there are 100 bad guilds where people are treating each other like crap.I've been in multiple guilds run by my good friends who just could not mentally handle the game theory aspect of loot. They'd heavily penalize "new" or "trial" players for 6+ months. They'd hand out a few choice pieces to someone early on and then keep giving that person more and more loot because they're topping the charts (thanks to all the loot). They'd screw someone on loot for months, then give them one nice item, then go back to screwing them for months because it felt intuitively like that person had gotten a fair shake.It was ALWAYS EXTREMELY demoralizing to basically everybody in the group, because any time someone failed to get an item, it'd feel more and more like that person was getting screwed (whether they really were in a mathematical sense or not)The only time I've seen Master Looter work well was when it was a pure EPGP system with no extra bonuses or penalties applied.Since OP's full time job is raiding WoW, it's definitely conceivable that his raid teams are less like groups of players and more like single well-oiled machines, and in that sort of scenario it makes perfect sense to have a traditional Loot Tyrant system.Loot is meaningless to world-first guilds, best-in-slot pieces are like potions or flasks to them, and they just want to equip their groups as efficiently as possible.I'd be willing to bet hard cash that 90% of the raging posters in this comment section are (relatively speaking) losers who think they're top raiders, but in fact are months behind and just want to be able to hoard precious loot. It's clear from the fact that people are mad about coveted items going to "trials" or to people who only care about themselves that most of the commenters here are NOT top raiders. News flash: If your "top raiding guild" is months behind with Personal Loot, you'd still be months behind without it.
Ignoring, for the purposes of discussion, the malicious segment of the casual community who use this issue as a bludgeon to "own the raiders", this conversation rarely goes anywhere because there's a vocal portion of the raiding community that simply does not play this game to progress through content as a team. Their reward isn't the boss kill, their reward isn't server or world ranking, their reward isn't the overall improvement of their guild or roster—their reward is loot. They want the number next to their name when they open the character panel to go up. Any structures that slow or obstruct their ability to make that number go up are preventing them from achieving their goal.There's a reason many of these players complain about access to loot during trial phases—it's because they are frequently IN a trial phase. Identifying and avoiding or swiftly removing raiders who share this mentality is one of the keys to building a strong, progression-oriented team. This is the dilemma: players whose sole purpose for raiding is to obtain the best loot must join a competitive mythic roster to acquire said loot, but mythic guilds have a vested interest in weeding these players out.There is no doubt that the removal of master looter has made it more difficult for mythic progression teams to efficiently distribute loot in a manner that speeds up their progression. In what might be a stroke of irony, depending on Blizzard's intentions behind the change, it has disproportionately affected mid-tier CE guilds that either can't or don't want to participate in the kind of ridiculously time-consuming personal loot split run schemes that Dratnos is talking about in this article, while actually benefiting those who can. These mid-tier guilds—the world #500 guild I run included—are often tight-knit and serious enough to desire group progress more than individual success, but are nonetheless unwilling to attempt that kind of massive undertaking to gear up. This (among many other factors) widens the gap between these guilds and those at the top.Bring back guild-only Master Looter. Remove the convoluted insanity that is the current trading rules. Limit it to Mythic only, if you must. The current system needs to change.
Mythic Raiding is the only type of content that should have an ML option or lifting of the iLvl trade restriction. Leave all other content as-is.You also have to remember, it financially behooves Blizzard to limit the rate of the acquisition of new gear. It takes your raid longer to gear up? Good! Keep subbing.
Personal loot is NOT the problem. The problem is the item level restriction for trading loot.Just remove the item restriction for trading loot. And Master loot shall never come back