Loot drama made up 75% of FFXI endgame too, prior to the adjustments that came about with Abyssea. (Things are a lot better now.)
We came up with elaborate lists and used FFDKP to keep things in order. One Xarcabard, I was third in line for Duelist Chapeau. Two dropped. #1 and #2 in line had not shown up that run, and they knew it'd be another month before we did Xarc again. So #3 (me) and #4 both got our hats.
Even though that was well within the established rules, there was a lot of unhappiness when they heard that two hats dropped on the run they couldn't make. (With nine Dynamis zones and the ability to only go twice a week, doing a full rotation meant a four week wait in between zones, which kind of sucked but that's SE's fault. That, and it was three hour long run for most zones so.... yeah. Twice a week was probably a good idea.)
That's not even touching on the people who ninja lotted and subsequently had to be kicked out from the linkshell.
