We knew this change was going to be controversial, and we totally understand that e.g. cloth can be an upgrade for a Balance druid or leather can be an upgrade for a shaman.

Looting to some extent is always going to have a heavily social component. There's only so much we can do (or should do) to try and "solve" that problem for players. On the other hand, the new LFG system also removes some of the social checks and balances (not that those are huge to begin with) by potentially grouping you with folks you may never see again. On my server, perennial ninjas and jerks earn a reputation. That's going to be harder when you're talking about a battle group. Overall we expect players to just pug a lot more often, because the new system really is that good. So overall the drama over who gets the healing shoulders might arise more often. :(

Ultimately, our logic went like this: If a Holy paladin loses a great non-plate upgrade to another player, one out of five players might feel bad. If a Holy paladin rolls Need on every type of armor that drops, then four out of five players might have a bad experience. The jerk potential seemed worse than the lost-an-upgrade potential as far as whether or not players buy into using the new dungeon tool.

You can still Greed a potential upgrade item. You can still talk to your group and explain that X is an awesome item for you and would they mind passing on it or even trading it? (You can trade BoP items for a short period of time following the same rules that apply today.)

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Q u o t e:
Is there any chance Greed could be given a priority over DE?

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I think that works if you run with a group who all agree on what all the rules mean. In a true pug situation I think nothing would get disenchanted because people wold roll Greed for fear that they would be the only one not to Greed.

But I would definitely encourage you to still try and work out your policy even in a pug. There is a ton of baggage that has been built up about loot etiquette over the years. One of the things that has amazed me working on the dungeon feature is how differently various realms (or even parts or the world) handle loot. And of course many people are amazed to find not everyone does things their way / the right way. :)

Like any big new feature I'm sure we will need to tweak things over time once we see how people really use it. Often it's the unexpected reaction that turns out to be the biggest issue.

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Q u o t e:
When the armor class doesn't match your class, just change the Need button into a Need* button, that gets lower priority than the former. How hard is development these days?

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Development is easy. Explaining complex rules to a broad audience is hard. I've played a lot of games that were clearly supposed to be aimed at hardcore gamers who don't mind complexity. WoW isn't one of those games.

Many forum posters dramatically, dramatically underestimate how sophisticated they are in their WoW comprehension compared to the average player.

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Q u o t e:
When will you all understand? This change only effects CROSS SERVER PUGs

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Yes. I'm not sure if everyone realizes that. Need Before Greed is forced when you add random players to a 5-player group. You can use whatever loot system you choose when you use /invite to form the group.

To try and improve the pug experience (at least pugs formed through the tool) we wanted to try and minimize jerkish behavior, and that includes not giving the leader a whole lot of power. I'm not talking about a player who thinks it's funny to pull the entire instance and wipe you. I'm talking about players who legitimately want to run the dungeon but have very non-conventional ideas about leadership or loot distribution. We are trying to impose a little bit of convention on these groups so that everyone has a better pug experience.

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Q u o t e:
From what I can tell, how "Need before Greed" works is being changed everywhere.

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Need before Greed is changed everywhere. From our research, very few groups use this loot system. (I'm sure some do, and you don't need to post to tell us that it's your favorite loot system.) Most groups use some variant of Group Loot (the current default) or Master Looter. If you use Group Loot, you can still Need on anything you want. You just can't use Group Loot on a pug formed with the Dungeon tool.

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Q u o t e:
Well, this may seem like basics to a lot of people, but I think part of the confusion/concerns is that the default "Group Loot" includes aspects of "Need before Greed" rolling on higher level items. I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who don't know that they are two different loot systems, and assume that the default loot system is "Need before Greed" since the Need/Greed/Pass option is what pops up whenever you stumble across a higher level item.

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I agree. A lot of people think they use Need before Greed but are really just needing or greeding through Group Loot. It is perhaps an overly jargon-laden system with subtle differences.