what is the deal with drops!?

Oh yes, they are definitely still there. And they are definitely harder to obtain. Those that do obtain such a classy, fabulous item, will sell it (if they intend to sell it) for outrageous prices because the items are a lot more uncommon. Sure, you say they will be a lot more appreciated. As much as I can agree with this, it will also make them more valuable.

I thought a max dmg Storm Bow is going out for outrageous prices these days, and it will only become worse.

Yesterday i found a max damage firey dragon sword with lots of very nice stats. Definitely the best sword i have ever found.
In the same area i also found several gold and purple max shields, which was nice.

They don't always drop, but be patient, play the game for enjoyment and sooner or later you will get something nice.

As for the drop...no drop...drop...no drop...

It happens to me everytime i hunt. Usually the first two mobs i kill drop nothing. Occasionally after that...at most 1 in 10 will drop nothing.

EDIT - As for selling my items i get...nope. I don't sell them. If i need them i will use them, if i don't need them, i give them away for free.
Just like the shadow shield i gave away yesterday and the two purple max shields i gave to the younger players who i was helping on altheas ashes.

I even gave an eternal shield to a guy in riverside a few days back...its just a piece of graphics on your screen at the end of the day

Geez, impatent people should go play FPS.
Im sure this game wasnt designed to be a farming fest.
I think the economy was mucked up in the early stages of the game, money and xp comes far to easy.
If you get everything within the first few weeks of playing...wheres the fun in that?

I agree 100%! The early days of release, things were too easy to find, XP too easy to gain. Hopefully making things a bit more difficult to find will do these two things:

1) Chase the "farmers" out of the game---they only play for the items they can find and, after awhile really, what's the point? Frankly I find the challenge of the game is playing -without- uberitems. While they're nice to have, it's much more challenging to play using less-than-perfect equipment and testing your skill.

2) Leave better things for those of us who just play and get a huge charge out of finding something neat -because- we were playing for fun and not because we were actively -looking- for something to drop.

I'm not better than anyone because I fall into the #2 category. I just never really pay that much attention to drops. I can't tell you how many times I've picked up my stuff on a mission without even looking at it and, on arrival at the end of the mission, have looked at it finally and been stunned by yellows and/or purples scattered amongst the other stuff.

One quick thing here. I have also noticed this same trend and think I may have found a way to get around it. My lvl 20 I use to explore and find goodies was having the same problem. Well one day it all changed! I have 3 unfinished quests in my quest log now and as long as I have had them in there I get drops from every mob I kill solo or otherwise. I think maybe this distinguishes my account from say a botters account becuase of the active quest. A bot has no quests so their account will appear differently in an instanced area than mine. I have tested this with my other 2 lvl 20's and it seems to hold true. That way I can explore the map and still get some nice shiny stuff to help my lower level guildies. I invite others to test this theory.

also ive noticed, more and more gold drops are giving majors runes, i always got a superior rune from gold armours, now i get majors, crap ones at that

An economy based on scarcity will rise the prices skyhigh. The only ones who have advantage of that are the Ebay sellers. When players have the feeling they can find everything they need in the game there wont be anyone foolish enough to buy on ebay. Also low prices would stop farming to sell on ebay. Its sad that making real money has such an impact on a game, but the solution is obvious: Give players the feeling that they really get better, even if they play for only 1 hour in the weekends. Hence, more and better droppings (and especially from bosses I would say).

Maybe something AN could do would be to make the upgrades more available. Rather than having a fully operational item drop, make the upgrades more available so that players can custom create their own uberitems based on what's important to them. This might also take some of the starch out of the Ebayer's undies as well.

That is a very good idea. It would be nice to see staff wraps, sword hilts, bow strings & so on drop.

Slightly OT... but I would like to see a place where someone can purchase/sell said items in game. Similar to the Rune Trader & Dye Trader.

What would be nice is that, at least for a specified amount of time (say 5-10 minutes), the things OTHERS are selling to the merchants are available for purchase by other players.

But I think that more frequent upgrade items would go a long way to alleviate the problem and would give players a chance to REALLY customize their stuff.

I spent an hour the other night depopulating Wizard's Folly of bears twice (once on the way to showing someone Foible's Fair and once on the way out) and not a single pelt dropped. We weren't killing anything else...

I hate bear pelts. When I needed I found none, when I got one every bear dropped 1

IME somehow all drops across the board have been totally screwed. I go out solo anywhere, kill 10 of anything, and 9 of them drop nothing.

If rare drops sropped alot like you want.. they wouldnt be rare... then everyone would have them.. and you couldnt sell them at all.

I think its just frustration, even if you dont realize it. I was feeling the same way until i realized that the rare weapons that sell for alot wouldnt be worth it if they were things that dropped all the time.

I made about 30k over the weekend just from running to chests and selling the items i found to the merchant. I did run across some decent weapons which i put in storage, which i could probably get around 1k each for them.

The money is out there, you just have to be willing to be patient enough to get it.

But even so, I still thought monsters were supposed to always drop something, I went to kill some griffons and out of 4 only 1 droped something. It did seem odd.

I did the Iron mines quest today. Next I went from Thunderhead to Marhan's grotto. All the time there only were some white items and gold dropped...

I did the Iron Mines mission today too out of boredom. Was hoping for some good drops. So the first thing we killed was an pinesoul, and it dropped a purple max dmg sword for me. Then later on the mursaat dropped a gold salvage item for me (only rare in the whole mission). Both turned out to be crap when IDed. Oh well, for a few minutes my hopes were restored. Guess I will have to wait another week or so before I get the urge to play the game again.

2 simple solutions, the first would be to have the balthazar faction people actually give out the item being unlocked. The second would be to implement a weapon fitting trader, similar to the rune trader.

I'm curious how those who are saying this loot nerf is no big deal can solve this little paradox for me:

With farming being nerfed, good and rare item prices are going through the roof. But how is the typical player supposed to afford these rare and good items, when they have no money because loot has been nerfed? All this update does is penalize the average player and REWARD the very people it was supposed to be punishing, because now those people can sit back with all their gold max damage weapons that they've been hoarding and sell them for ridiculous prices and make EVEN MORE money. Meanwhile, the rest of us are sitting in Lion's Arch watching these chaos axes go for 400,000 and wondering wtf went wrong. This loot system is plain retarded and with as many people that are rightly complaining about it, I can only hope ArenaNet does something about it soon.

"But how is the typical player supposed to afford these rare and good items"

Half of this "rare and good" items are simply overpriced crap. 400k chaos axe? Pff, it's not better than normal max damage one. But oooh, it's shiny, surely that is worth 400k.
Hell, if I knew they're so expensive, I'd be already rich, after all, I found 2 yesterday

The one I saw going for 400k, and it's in the Sell forum for you to see as well, was a perfect Chaos Axe. +15% damage when health is over 50%, vampiric haft for 3 hp steal, etc. If you want the best weapon for pvp, you won't be paying 400k--I just used that to show how far things are going in that direction.