Loot (video games)

In video games, loot is the collection of items picked up by the player character that increase their power or level up their abilities, such as currency, spells, equipment and weapons.

[5] In Diablo, equippable items were either white (normal), blue (magic) or gold (unique), and Diablo II expanded on this with either grey (inferior), white (common), blue (magic), yellow (rare), orange (unique) or green (set).

Blizzard Entertainment later re-used the system for the 2004 game World of Warcraft, where items were either grey (poor), white (common), green (uncommon), blue (rare), purple (epic) or orange (legendary).

Following World of Warcraft's popularity, most loot-driven games have since based their own system off this same color-coding hierarchy,[6] (e.g. Titan Quest, Borderlands, Overwatch, Torchlight, Destiny, and Fortnite).

The system has garnered a great deal of controversy for being too similar to gambling, along with giving players a means to circumvent normal progression through additional monetary transactions.