The argument that raiding guilds will go farm lower tier zones just to gear up alts on a regular basis just doesn't hold water . . pulling 18 people around for 5 hours of raiding just to gear up a couple of twinks will not happen often because guilds won't abide it for long. Raiding is something that's time consuming and difficult: guilds do it because they want to get something out of it for their mains. I can almost guaruntee that as soon as a guild starts consistently raiding content below them to gear up several alts, then that guild will see poorer raid attendance progressing to stagnation. Unfortunately, the current system, as it stands, forces guilds to bottom feed (and by bottom feed I mean raid in zones they're well overgeared for) if they want to gear up alts and/or mains.
Since most guilds like to raid at the edge of their capabilities, there is often not room for an alt or two to come along for loot, particularly with the 18 cap rules where you're looking at specific class setups for raids. Unfortunately, as I mentioned before, this enforces bottom feeding. In addition, since guilds can not consistently bottom feed without losing guild interest, the system as it stands also enforces the use of bots, since it's more difficult to gear up alts that could be DC'd instead of using the current giuld-bot, who is already geared for the level.
There are, of course, challenges that arise from allowing free looting of rotting corpses. Raid stalking, for one, tended to contribute greatly to the deflation of the economy: Why would you pay for XXX item when every 30 minutes there's an /ooc Very Difficult Tmap Item XXX rotting in EBL, first come first serve! In addition, it is ridiculous to see level 40 characters running around with nDHK Throne Room loot. Some people contend that the 'alt' players don't deserve the loot they're getting, they didn't fight to get it, etc.
It's not an easy problem to solve. I, personally, would like to see out of group/raid looting allowed again. Several changes would limit the problems inherent in free raid looting:
1) Slap on a level req. cap to loot (something like within 10 levels, or even for some zones, level 65 required to loot) to prevent the problem of twinking lowbies with raid gear.
2) Slap on a lev. req. to wear: while recommended levels worked great with droppable gear for the economy, req. levels will effectively restrict raid items to raid level toons. It may be impossible, but putting an AA requirement might also be a good idea.
3) Make raid loot sellable to a vendor that can't sell it back to the populace (Like Eldrich and Ancient spell scrolls). Since what is defined as "raid loot" tends to change over the course of time as people gain levels and mudflation takes its course, this is a fair and economical way of rewarding that the people who raid and have outgrown their gear. This will also ensure that nothing will "rot" and/or be left for raid stalkers.
Just a few ideas to help solve the problems inherent with the system as raid-loot-only and the problems inherent with free-reign-looting.
Allie