Your article and the image you posted echos an experience that I just had last night...

In VoA25, I rolled a 97 on the Grand War Mammoth, but it was passed to a player who rolled a 69. After the rolls were submitted, the raid leader announced "loot rules" where "69 was an automatic win." And, of course, the winner was his guildmate.

It would be difficult to fix the current loot system without disrupting the design within the game that keeps us coming back for more. The anticipation we feel for obtaining random loot is greater than working towards an observed goal--it's a principle in psychology that can be explained away via our current knowledge of how the neurotransmitter dopamine impacts our affinity for "risk-taking" behaviors. That is why the dice system in loot distribution is so powerful, and Blizzard knows this.

Just think about the rush you get when you 1) down a boss and see that your loot dropped and 2) you roll on the item. The two variables compound on one another, and even though it seems like it should make us uncomfortable, the rush we feel is somehow reinforcing.

If you think this is crap, just ask someone who has gone sky-diving. I mean, how in the world can jumping out of a plane be reinforcing?

Anyway, I'm totally digressing. The main question should be this: "How do we limit the roll of Ninjas in the distribution of loot while maintaining Blizzard's system of reinforcement build into the game?"

That's a tough one...

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