I’ve noticed a few people on my feeds lately, frothing about Frozen Orb ninjas. The whole thing is actually really interesting to me.

Previously, servers were islands, in their own bubbles, with their own particular loot rules that were shaped over time.

I’ve seen some weird ones. Like “pass on everything that drops and then just /roll” – which I find bizarre, considering blizzard’s UI has a built-in rolling function and there’s no wasted time re-rolling and then physically picking up your loot. I’ve managed to get myself into some heated arguments about this, with people getting REALLY nasty at me about it, because they genuinely believed it was the fairest system. I really, REALLY don’t get how it’s a good idea to pass and re-roll on every little green that drops in a group – it strikes me as a huge waste of time, rather than using the built-in tool. The buttons are right there! But hey, to each their own. There really is no point arguing about it.

The point is – over time, servers will develop their own loot systems, with their own quirks. Although to outsiders these systems may seem bizarre, it works well enough for them. Much like Australia invented the platypus, yeah? An animal that looks like someone cut and pasted a bunch of other animals together into some weird amalgamation that surely can’t work – but it seems to do alright for itself. I’m certainly not going to argue with one, at any rate.


LFD and bursting the server loot bubble

When the LFD system came in, I noticed some people Needing on Frozen Orbs. On my server, Greed was the norm, so at first I was annoyed at these “ninjas”, being greedy and taking the orbs when the rest of us were Greeding. But, as it kept happening, I realised that they weren’t stealing from me – they were just used to rolling Need on their server. It was the normal system for them. A quick look at the web and WoW forums confirmed my suspicions – it was a fairly widespread phenomenon. So I started rolling Need, too, so that I wouldn’t miss out. No biggie.

It wasn’t what I was used to, but if I wanted orbs, I had to adapt my idea of how loot is handled in groups. I could either continue to roll Greed (and almost always lose), or adapt and start rolling Need with the others.

If I want orbs, I am basically forced into adapting to rolling Need.


Evolution of cross-server, intra-battlegroup loot systems

Now, maybe it’s just me, because I’ve always been interested in evolution. But I think it’s pretty cool to think about how these different loot systems settled in – and why they’re causing problems at the moment.

I suspect that gradually most battle groups probably settled into either Need OR Greed as the norm. Not every server/group settled into Need – I think there are a number of them out there that still use Greed.

Basically, either everyone on the server/battlegroup stuck with their system of Greeding, or more and more people started to Need until eventually the Greeders were weeded out by natural selection. That is, “If everyone keeps Needing, I’m going to roll Need from now on, too!” .. until gradually everyone on the battlegroup becomes a Needer, because it becomes pointless to roll Greed anymore.


The evolution of ninjas


Over time, if there are enough Needers around, then the battlegroup will eventually tend towards being predominantly Needers. Particularly, of course, if everyone is interested in the orbs (I’ll go over this later). Whereas if most people don’t care about the orbs, they might just hit Greed as an “I don’t really care” button.

If orbs are desirable, more and more people will become Needers, and the Greeders will either be forced to roll Need to compete, or simply accept the fact that they can never win with a Greed roll, and give up rolling Greed. The Greeders must adapt and become Needers if they want to compete for orbs.

So, on battlegroups where Needing is prevalent (or gathering momentum), Greeders will be in decline; and, eventually, will likely become extinct.

However, pockets of Greeders will continue to exist on battlegroups that remained isolated and never adopted the system of Needing the orbs.


Orbs: from vendor fodder to coveted item overnight

Now, previously, orbs were all but useless to many people. I know that many were just being vendored, because the AH price was so low that it wasn’t even worth selling them. So I suspect that the only people still Needing were those who A) still needed them for professions, or B) didn’t particularly need them, but were clinging to the principle of the matter – that they deserved the 5g vendor price as much as anyone else in the group.

To be honest, I started passing on them because I didn’t need them, and I figured maybe someone else did. I just didn’t care about them.

But in the near future, you’ll be able to use orbs to buy lotuses and eternals (and a new flying carpet recipe wheee!). Prices jumped from 5g to 30g literally overnight. Suddenly everyone wants orbs – because they’ll be worth a lot more than 5g in the patch. Whether it’s because you want cheap flasks for raiding, or you want to make a buck selling cheap flasks for raiding, or you need eternals for crafting (etc) – almost everyone “needs” the orbs now. And that “need” cropped up literally overnight. BAM.

So all of these sudden orb ninjas are probably just people who have read about the changes, and have decided they had better stop passing/greeding on orbs, because they are now quite desirable.

As a result, I think what we are seeing is a sudden, massive shift towards Needing orbs by default.



Needing will probably be the norm

There’s really no point in getting upset about it – unless you come from a battlegroup where everyone continues to simply Greed (and I think this will be rarer and rarer as time goes on), you’re going to come up against people who Need. They’re not necessarily trying to ninja from you; it may be that they have always used Needing as the default way to deal with orbs; or, like many people, they realise that orbs are now useful and they want their fair share of them.

I genuinely believe that a TINY minority of those Need rolls are people who are actually actively trying to maliciously ninja the orbs.

My advice: roll to match the highest roll in the group. If someone rolls Need, you can roll need too. If everyone is rolling Greed, you should probably do the same to be courteous.

Of course, if you’re first to roll, and you roll Greed, then you could lose out if someone rolls Need later – which is precisely the reason why many people just roll Need to be “safe”. For most people, it’s simply the path of least resistance; everyone roll Need and nobody can “ninja”. To them, it’s second nature. Or the Needer in your group may be someone who is tired of missing out “doing the right thing” and Greeding, and has given up to become a Needer from now on.

In a world full of Needers – if you stick to Greeding, you won’t be able to compete for orbs. Will you give up and die out, or will you adapt?

And so the wheel turns…


(oh man I’m such a nerd, I’m laughing at myself right now..)



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