Ninja looters are some of the most despised players in World of Warcraft. A ninja looter doesn’t just work against the opposing Warcraft faction—ninja looters are quite willing to swindle and sabotage members of their own faction to get ahead. Ninjas are also referred to as pirates.
“Ninjaing” refers to the practice of grabbing loot at the expense of other players. This can include ganking a rival faction player who’s fighting a monster, killing the player and then killing the already weakened monster to get the loot. It can also involve waiting for a member of the ninja’s own faction to die fighting an enemy, at which point the ninja slips in and kills the already injured monster.
Often fishing nodes, herbs and mining nodes are surrounded by monsters players have to defeat before they can harvest the nodes. Ninja looters try to slip in and harvest the node while the other player is going the grunt work of clearing the area of monsters. This is hardly fair play, but pales next to the trickery ninjas use in World of Warcraft instances.
Ninjas in World of Warcraft Instances
Ninja looters really hit their lowest in instances. A group may have to run an instance several times for everyone to loot the gear they want. Ninjas, apparently, are too important to waste their time in this way—they want their loot now.
Ninja looters capitalize on weaknesses in instance loot systems. For instance, they may wait until the rest of the party has passed or rolled greed on an item using the Need before Greed system, at which point the ninja rolls Need, effectively removing any chance of the item going to anyone else.
One of the nastiest tricks in the ninja looter arsenal is to form a pickup group for an instance with the ninja as leader. He sets the loot distribution system to Need before Greed and passes on all of the minor loot. He acts the role of the team leader through the instance until he gets to the monster that drops what he wants. Just as the monster dies he changes the loot system to Master Looter, giving himself complete control over loot distribution. He then harvests the loot and exits the game or uses his hearthstone to escape.
Professional gold farmers often use this trick. They act the part of the group leader until the first boss in the instance is defeated, then they grab the loot and hearth out of the instance. They then add the previous group members to their ignore list, get another group together and pull the same trick on their new victims.
Consequences of Ninja Looting
A ninja looter will earn a very bad reputation amongst other players very quickly. Guilds are quick to throw out looters (who only disrupt guild instance runs). Players who have been burned by ninja looters are quite willing to spread the word to other players, either in-game or through World of Warcraft forums. A ninja looter inevitably finds himself on multiple blacklists as his name and exploits become well-known.
Eventually, ninja looters find it very difficult to create groups for instances, whether they’re just greedy players or gold farmers. At this point the looter pays to have his character transferred to another server, or takes advantage of Blizzards new character recustomization feature to reinvent his character. Ultimately ninjas get nothing that decent looting etiquette wouldn’t eventually get a player anyway, only without the friendship and respect that comes from playing fairly.
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