BoE Drops Decide Who Gets the Gold
A bind-on-equip drop is the only piece of loot in a normal run that is still money when it hits the bags. This is what that property is worth, how the roll that decides it works, and what the other 4 players in the group give up when one of them wins.
Where a BoE turns into money
A bind-on-equip item drops like any other piece of gear, but it stays tradeable until somebody puts it on. That single property is what makes it money rather than equipment: it can be mailed to another character, listed on the auction house, handed to a guild bank or sold in trade chat, and the buyer receives it unused. Bind-on-pickup gear does none of that. Most of what a levelling group kills leaves vendor trash and soulbound drops behind, so the BoE is the exception that actually pays, and it pays whoever ends up holding it.
What it pays is settled somewhere else entirely. A BoE is worth what a buyer will give for it, which means it competes with crafted stock under the same supply and demand as everything else on the shelf. The mechanics of that sale are worth knowing before the item is posted, since how the auction house matches a listing decides whether the item clears at the asking price or sits, and the deposit charged on a posting is paid whether it sells or comes back.
Not every BoE belongs on the shelf. A green item in an unwanted slot is often worth more broken down than sold, which puts it in front of an enchanter rather than a bidder, and what shards from green drops sell for is the floor that decision is measured against. Below that sits a harder floor still, because the fixed price a vendor pays never moves with the market and is the one number nobody has to wait for.
Need, Greed and the roll that settles it
Under group loot, an item above the quality threshold opens a roll window for everyone in the party. Need is meant for players who can use the item on the character standing there; Greed is open to anybody, and the disenchant option, where it exists, routes the item to an enchanter in the group instead of to a bag. Need beats Greed outright, so the choice is not between 2 equal rolls. It is between claiming the item as gear and taking a share of the chance that it becomes gold.
That is exactly why BoE drops start arguments and bind-on-pickup drops mostly do not. A BoP item is useful to the people who can wear it and worthless to everyone else, so the roll sorts itself out. A BoE is wearable by one player and sellable by all 5, which means every person in the group has a defensible claim on it. Nothing in the loot interface distinguishes between a player who wants to equip an item and a player who wants to list it an hour later.
We have not seen a published breakdown of which loot options Forever ships with, which quality threshold triggers a roll, or whether master loot is available in 5-player content at all. Until that is confirmed, the sensible assumption is the Classic default, and the loot settings a party can choose are worth checking in the group window rather than assumed from an older realm.
What one roll costs the other 4 players
The cost is easier to see if the item is treated as a payment for the run rather than as a lucky extra. 5 players spent the same evening clearing the same pulls, paid the same repair bill and drank the same flasks and water. One roll hands the entire value of that drop to 1 of them. Nobody is cheated by that, because it is the rule everybody agreed to by entering the dungeon, but it is still a payout rule, and a group that never talks about it has chosen a rule by accident.
The alternative is to sell the item afterwards and split the proceeds, which groups have always arranged by hand. It is slower, it needs one person to be trusted with the listing, and it only works if the item sells. With gold-for-loot bidding off the table in this line, there is no sanctioned system doing that arithmetic inside the raid or party frame, and the ban on gold-for-loot runs is the reason the split has to be arranged in chat instead.
Guild runs often solve it in a third way: the drop goes to the bank, gets sold or handed to whoever needs it next, and nobody rolls at all. That works while the guild is supplying the group in the other direction too, and a guild bank absorbing drops is a different arrangement from 5 strangers splitting a sale.
Setting the rule before the first pull
One line in party chat before the first pull removes most of the trouble. The usual options are short enough to say out loud:
- roll as the interface sets it, Need for anyone who can equip the item
- Greed only on BoE items, whoever wins sells it and keeps the gold
- sell afterwards and split the proceeds between everyone who finished the run
- disenchant anything green and split the shards or the shard money
None of these is more honest than the others. What matters is that the rule is stated before the item appears, because every version of this conversation held after a drop sounds like an argument about that specific item rather than about policy.
The size of the prize should also be kept in proportion. BoE income is irregular by nature: it arrives on a schedule nobody controls, and a plan built on it is a plan built on variance. Steady income from the same hours comes from the clear itself, and what a full dungeon clear returns is the part of the evening that pays every time. Whether those hours are better spent with a party at all is a separate question, and farming alone against farming in a group answers it differently depending on the route.
Questions
Is rolling Need on a BoE item you can wear unfair?
It is permitted by the interface and it is how the rule is written, so it is not cheating. It is still a decision the rest of the group pays for, because the item was the only part of the run that could have been converted into gold for everyone. If that outcome would annoy anybody, the group should agree on a BoE rule before the first pull rather than after the drop.
Should a green BoE be sold or disenchanted?
It depends on the slot and on what the enchanting market is paying for the materials it breaks into. An item in a slot few players are shopping for often clears faster as shards than as gear, while anything with a stat combination that a levelling character wants tends to be worth more intact. Check both sides before deciding, since the vendor price is the floor under either choice.
Can a BoE still be traded after somebody equips it?
No. The item binds to that character at the moment it is equipped, and from then on it cannot be mailed, listed or traded. That is the whole reason the roll matters: the value is in the untouched item, and the first person to put it on converts it from an asset into personal gear.
Do we know what loot options Forever uses in 5-player content?
Not in detail. We have not seen a confirmed description of the loot modes available at launch, the quality threshold that opens a roll, or whether master loot can be enabled in a party. The guidance above assumes the familiar Classic behaviour and should be checked against the group window in the client rather than treated as settled.
Sources
- Blizzard's official World of Warcraft site, for the client's loot and trading rules as they are published — World of Warcraft official site.
- Blizzard customer support, where item binding and trade restrictions are documented — Blizzard Support.