Loot Generation

[Lissa]

Exploiting it based on the timestamp is not possible. The timestamp is not most likely not looped; it'd be impossible to get the same number twice in a row. Besides, it's just a seed for the RNG. The same timestamp won't produce the same result twice in a row, so even if you could get the same timestamp twice, you wouldn't get anything out of it.

Aside from that, you can't control how long it takes before you enter an instance. Lag will ensure that. You need to control it down to the milisecond, or however exact the timestamp is.

Blizzard is extremely careful with regards to loot; they learned their lesson in Diablo.

For instance, in EQ, someone produced a program which was capable of intercepting the loot information, displaying the mob's loot before it dropped. This isn't possible in WoW, as Blizzard keeps tight reins on how you can access that information.

That's not necessarily true. It depends on how much information the time stamp is taking into account. If the time stamp is only using hour, minute, second to create the seed, then the same seed will occur every day at the exact same time will give you the exact same loot (this has been proven in the past with other games like Diablo). Now, if Blizzard was smarter and included not only hour, minute, and second, but also day, month, and year, it would be impossible. So saying that getting the same timestamp twice requires more to go into than just the hour, minute, and second because if it's only hour, minute, and second, you can repeat it every single day, 365 days a year.