What changed to make actually getting loot such a rare feat?
It's widely believed that there is a cap for every item or resource in the world. Not only that's logical, the theory also can be considered proven after implementation of upgrades. First Improved/Hyperchanged/etc weapon amps, to perform an upgrade one needed to break A10x amps into a100 parts, essentially destroying the original items. The A10x amps promptly appeared in loot in amounts not seen for years. Then the story repeated itself with other items, recently with guns and armor parts.
In the early days of the game lots of items we now consider super-rare were so common they were tt food, especially because there was no storage or auction in those days. You can hear stories of tt'ing Shadow parts and such. Check out
this story for an insight. As the userbase did grow, so did the demand, and the useless items of yesterday started to find their owners, leaving the lootpool forever.
In my early days of 2006-07 the so called "uber" items were already uber-rare and uber-expensive, but the loot still was full of items. Most loots above average size, several times during any hunting run, did look like this:
Of course all that is junk even by today's standards, but certainly was more pleasant for eyes than shrapnel. After a hunt though all those items did go straight into a tt, only to be looted by someone else and tt'ed again, and again.
But not everything was tt'ed, year after year the items did vanish in storages and abandoned accounts, so eventually even the most useless stuff became rare. I myself have hundreds of looted shogun/kobold/etc parts in deeply nested containers. Why? No idea, just keep them, neither feeling like tt'ing nor bothering with selling, unless I hear that someone is looking for something specific or it's Christmas and I feel like Santa
. I'm sure lots of people will tell the same story, also about much higher level stuff.
Nowadays people have learned to hold onto the most useless stuff, because you never know what might suddenly get a markup after next VU. Even if I'd tt'ed all my junk, it would eventually have settled in someone's else storage. And that's why we can't have nice things in loot