This is getting out of hand, world chat is dominated by blue/green tanks reserving every single item from dungeons, not to mention if you want to get orbs from strat live - no go.
Classic community is complete and utter garbage compared to majority of legit good private vanilla projects.
/discuss
The irony in your name…
On topic: Reserving loot in dungeons is one of the few ways I can pay for my repair bills, item enchants and still have a long way until I get my epic mount.
On private servers there were more content, which made it easier for prot warriors to make money.
It’s one thing to reserve the first orb when you need nothing from the instance as a way of making some extra gold.
It’s another thing for an undergeared tank thinking it’s ok to need on all orbs, all greens and all blues while doing runs for gear.
The answer to stuff like this is always simple. Make your own group, and dont join groups where you do not agree with the loot rules.
We don’t reserve items, we don’t join groups that reserve items, and prefer guild runs anyway - they’re more fun and there is no loot arguments.
This why I stop pug since i’m full Pre-Raid BiS.
Why I would go carry some tank with my max damage when they can’t keep aggro, when they want orbs / green items / blue items / dark runes / rich thorium vein in DM:E ? Why I would waste my time with that to carry theses guys ?
I prefer to help my guildies and we share loot with equality. Only guys that do no damage with poor gear and slow tank farming accept to enter into theses groups. The good guys with maximum damage and good min-maxing will never waste their times into theses groups.
is it a retail thing reserving items - never up to Mists (when i quit) have I seen or even heard of this
No it isn’t. In retail every player has their own loot table, so it doesn’t matter 
But a lot of the “hardcore” vanilla players, like to call people retail noobs when they don’t understand the game themselves.
Haven’t met a single guy in retail ever reserving an item so thats a big NO x)
Agreed, this is why in my groups nothing is reserved! Everything is up for roll! F’ck reservations!