Loot Generation

[Zippyy]

Now, if Blizzard was smarter and included not only hour, minute, and second, but also day, month, and year, it would be impossible.

I think it's very likely that they use a very high precision timestamp. Seconds are not good enough. Two instances could easily be started by two different groups in the same second.

As Jarulf said it probably is at least as precise as microseconds. To get a fairly random number you can take only the most precise digits from the timestamp. They change so fast that from a human perspective it seems like the number is comlpetely different from one instant to the next.

There can be collisions, but at slices of time that tiny, they are horrendously improbable. They would also be impossible to predict or exploit.

Using a full timestamp would prevent collisions. I guess it depends on how the logic decides on loot given a seed.

20080201204000000001 and 20080201204000000002 would need to "generate" completely different loot tables.

Just random musings.:)