Quote Originally Posted by Fursphere
I would support this theroy. It seems that I'm getting way more green drops in my quad group than a did solo. However, is this beacuse:

a) The above theory is correct, and groups just tend to get more loot
b) I'm just killing way faster so it feels like more
c) There are much fewer people in Azeroth post-BC, so the competition for drops is much lower
Actually, I think they buffed the drop rate for items in 2.3 when they re-evaluated a lot of old green items. On my 54 Mage AoE grinding (alone) the pirates in Tanaris, I got two Wirt's Third Legs, two Assault Bands, a Witchblade (I think that's what it's called) and numerous (read: 45 or 50) greens. I killed approximately 650 of them. This is combined with all the cloth and money.

EDIT:

@Boom: I know that the reason they generate loot at spawn of an instance ties in to the RAIDID numbering system. When that system was first introduced, there were numerous people doing tests to determine if they could predict loot patterns based on the number. My guess would be that the system uses the RAIDID in a rand() fashion in categorized loot tables. I say categorized because of Badge and token drops: you want to guarantee at least one T4 token, but the TYPE of that token may be random.

However, no such RAIDID system exists visibly to players for mobs outside instance or even for normal 5-mans. I imagine that there is a simpler version instituted for instances, but this system is rather difficult to implement in outworld mobs.

On top of this, add in the fact that spawning mobs with loot would add a fair amount of overhead considering the raw number of mobs available to be killed at any moment across an entire realm. My guess would actually be a roll-based system that draws a distinction based on creature type (i.e.: Humanoids drop cloth, beasts do not) and generates loot from a table of drops. The table generates less overhead in the long run.