Classes of loot

[Mister Matt]

In WoW there was like common, uncommon, rare, epic, and legendary. Are you guys going to have something like this?

[CJ_Wallace]

Yes we will vary in the degree of items within the game. Although our items are going to be useable and enhanced to tailor the players gamestyle.

[isobar]

I so wish a MMO would borrow some ideas from diablo, and make every item (besides uniques) spawn with random stats. Just because it makes item hunting somuch more exciting. Every item has the possibility to be uber, or has the chance to suck.

[Ziegler]

I wont go so far as to say random stats on the gera....but randomized loot for sure. Never let the same peice spawn in the same place. It keeps the farmers off balance.

I think they might be going for a no loot approach as well, you'll find varying degrees of resources to turn in for gear to be made. I am definately interestedin hearing more about this with the economics of supply and demand.

[Moloch]

In early 06 an ex-Dev said that the KW loot system would make the majority of gear retain value throughout the levelling curve. Damon has mentioned the concept if armour that 'grows' with the toon, again retaining its value. The KW loot system has the potential to be interesting and innovative - hopefully it'll be coherent as well, rewarding raids, solo-ing, PvP and PvE.

Regardless, loot is a critical part of the game reward system. Unless you design loot out of the game through a Shadowbane vendor-like system. This levels the playing field but at the cost of the 'stickiness' of finding ever-better loot that was the heart of D2LOD and EQ.

In WoW atm, some of the legendary items are nowhere near as good as Naxx loot (OeD anyone?). Additionally, when the XPac is released and the level cap is raised, the loot tables in the Outlands will be interesting. Will Blizz be rendering all pre-XPac purples obsolete? Why bother with the pre-XPac dungeons when all you do is get a level 70 AoE toon to twink you through to mid-60s and then raid instances for loot that matters.

A critical sub-system design consideration is the party loot rules for PUGs to limit ninja-ing of utems.