Ooh, Backspace, you've hit on a sociological issue I've been pondering over for some time...

Being someone's "friend" means waaaayyyy different things to different people. Standards run from incredibly high (I'd trust you to put a loaded gun to my head after I banged your girlfriend) to incredibly low (We're in the same 400-person chem lecture and I asked you a question once).

Additionally, as RealID has brought to light, people place different priorities on whether "MMO" or "RPG" matters more to their game experience, and in general whether online relationships hold any significance to them.

These two things aside, it is entirely possible for someone who's your "best online friend" to end the relationship over a single issue of loot drama. Conversely, it is also entirely possible for the "guildie who you'd camp over and over if you could pvp your own faction" to pass you a piece of loot without lording it over you.


Even past that, I think it would be unreasonable to expect someone to never ever get upset over loot no matter what. In my personal experience, when I was just learning to raid, a fellow mage took me under his wing and showed me good glyphs, specs, rotations, etc and made sure I understood what I needed to do for every boss fight. He overgeared me initially, but even as I caught up and started to pass him, he'd still try to get loot passed to me for being diligent. Everyone has a limit, though, and one day it was just one drop too many for him. Initially I argued with him because I won the roll and to be frank I wasn't used to not getting what I wanted in raids. (Fortunately for my humanity, it didn't take long for me to realize what was going on and I ticketed the loot to him).


tl;dr People have different standards for friendship and expectations from WoW, and just by human nature there's always going to be a few isolated incidents of drama over the long run, even from a drama-free group