I’ve had looting on the brain lately for several reasons. For starters, I spent some time working with my son earlier this year helping him on the Guild Wars 2 mastery track that grants auto-looting. And since I just rolled a few new LOTRO characters, I had to go through and make sure that “always auto-loot” was checked for each of them in turn. Adding to all that is the City of Heroes stream that MJ, Chris, and I ran; we played through some mission content that dropped shiny enhancements (as well as three orangies that secured my newbie’s fortune for 20 or 30 levels). I could even add SWG Legends to the mix, as I’ve been out with my droids harvesting meat for me.
I love each of these games, but they all handle loot and looting differently. Let’s talk about which one – of any MMO, not just these – has the best looting systems. Is autolooting ideal? Or autolooting through pets or skills later in the game? Do you want to click a corpse to loot? Do you need to see a corpse inventory gump or drag the items over one by one? How about clicking an icon on the ground where loot has spewed out in a shower? Do you like the systems where loot dumps to a floating icon you can click later? Should loot just go away and become money so you don’t need to sell it? Or maybe you should never see it at all? Do you need the whole thing to be visual, or do you just want to minimize clicking and thinking about the stuff you’re looting? What’s the best looting system in an MMO?
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
