Why is personal loot a thing?
Simple, because Blizzard wants players to be unable to be pressured into giving away their BiS items whenever they loot them.
Is personal loot a good solution without any issues?
Haha, no.
Are there better solutions for this problem?
Maybe, I don’t know. I can’t think of any.
Was the problem really that big so that they needed to implement an entirely new system with its own issues?
In WoD? Yes. In Legion? No.
Should Blizzard go back and allow guild master loot for full guild groups?
Imo, yes.
If you’ve played during WoD, you most likely met the “XYZ locked” groups in group finder. Allowing players to disable persoloot in non guild groups was terrible.
“But you could simply decide not to join those raids.”
Agreed. That used to be the best solution, but given how a majority of raids did in fact lock either Archimonde trinkets, or other BiS items, it’s understandable that it bothered people.
In Legion it got changed to enforced persoloot with only guild groups (18/20) being able to turn it into “Guild Master Loot”, which solved nearly every issue people have had with the system, except for the rare “I’m a trial and I don’t get any loot” complaint, which, to be honest I still find difficult to believe.
Ever since BFA we’re stuck with enforced persoloot which most people who play in guilds dislike and everybody who doesn’t play in guilds occasionally dislikes, but mostly doesn’t care about.
In the end, the answer to your question “Why is it the way it is?” is simply: Because the devs decided it was the best way to fix mostly imaginary issues.
I personally hate having to trade away my BiS items, which was the reason persoloot was implemented in the first place, however given the fact that it only checks itemlevel, sadly it doesn’t solve that issue at all. My first 226 ring was the Darkvein ring, which I did not need whatsoever, so I had to trade away the Artificer Ring twice, before getting it for myself.
Great system, really.
My first 233 trinket was the SLG trinket, it’s alright, but I genuinely wanted the Dreadfire Vessel, which I had to trade away once and have not yet looted.
You really solved those issues there, kudos to the dev team!
At the same time, I hate looting items I don’t need, because for some imaginary reasons there’s no main stat on rings, but can’t trade them, even though they’re just straight up worse for me, because their itemlevel is higher.
I genuinely dislike persoloot, mostly because it takes away the players freedom of choice.
But sadly the current game director believes it’s the best system that was ever implemented, so we’ll be stuck with it until that job posting gets opened again.
I will always advocate for Guild Master Loot to be implemented back into the game.
