Is mathematics bad?

There is a thread in the official forum that drove lot of attention, including Ghostcrawler's.

It says that Elitist Jerks (and other similar forums) are bad since they provide a "good" spec/rotation, "forcing" everyone to do it, taking the "fun" out of the game.

He claims that the reason why people should choose specs should be "I don't know, I just like it".

Ghostcrawler points out that for most people the larger DPS could be gained by gemming and enchanting properly and following basic game rules like "melee from behind" than from adapting the EJ-talent. While it's true it's also irrelevant from the main point that made this post "Essential".

The original poster also claims that bad players feel entitled to look down on other bad players because of their "noob" spec, despite the fact that they are both attacking from front in the middle of a big patch of fire, and their overall damage done is equally low.

The opinion of Worldofdiscourse is also completely true, and irrelevant: what makes WoW sucks is the lack of options. The DPS just stand there, performing his rotation. EJ is just byproduct of this bad design. If there would be more situations, there could be more viable specs. (Like boss is interruptible, has 50% resistance to interrupts, but there is a talent that increases interrupt hit chance by 5x10%, or boss activates elemental shield forcing all casters use a different school, so a hybrid mage could always have medium damage, a full fire could only lolDPS on fire shield)

The debate on the forum about "EJ discourage experimentation" is simply stupid. No harm could be done if you spec to some nonsense to practice with the dummies or test it in a horrible PuG where you can be DPS No1 with autoattack.


The point is: you cannot escape mathematics! There is nothing in the world that could not be described by scientific rules having mathematic formulas. Of course there are things that we don't understand yet to have exact formulas.

The post is an outcry of a social person to be accepted, loved and not judged for being the way he is. The simple idea that "in the game you are valued after your performance" is inacceptable for him.

He blames EJ for bringing mathematics to the "many players incapable of understanding, or if left to their own devices, wouldn't have even had any interest in [theorycrafting]". He believes that if people would be unable to know who suck, they would not care about his 1600SP and love him. While the team would suck, they would take the suck as an inevitable bad luck and stand together instead of blaming each other (him).


He is probably right. Without public forums those who have no mathematical/science degree would not be able to decide which spec is better (except for some obvious choices, like speccing into Improved Voidwalker and having an imp).

However while social people care about human relations and feelings, the real world exists with all its consequences. Yes, in the game we could all suck together in brotherhood, but in real life ignoring the facts for human relations/emotions can literally be lethal ("you need no seatbelts since I can drive").

And on the top of that: even in the game you could not escape the consequences of your ignorance. Just because your guild could not know the right specs/gearing without EJ, someone (most probably the guys with math/science degree) would know it. These guys would down end bosses while you and your guild would suck on the first trashpack. They would have the shiny epics, fly on mighty dragons while you would be walking on the ground in your greens. And you would have no clue how to be better!

He wrote "within a less hardcore player community in which ignorance would have, almost certainly, been bliss.". What's essential for success in all worlds: "ignorance is never-ever a bliss". Yes, knowing that you suck hurts your emotions but help you to fix your real problem.

There is a way to artificially create ignorance: use lot of alcohol or drugs! However I seriously doubt if it's the way to achieve anything.

What does that do with game economy? Well, Blizzard can and will nerf the bosses for the "blissed" people. But they cannot nerf the other guy in the AH for you. If you ignore accounting, analyzing supply and demand, further patch data and just buy and sell "what you feel like", you'll end up grinding elementals quickly. Business is driven by fairly simple mathematics. Ignore them and go down!

PS: every time when I deeply undercut someone he asks "why don't you match prices with us, why are you ruining the economy?". I don't bother to answer "because my price is mat price+50G, so I make 50G profit on every sell and I sell a lot". I don't answer because if he can't add up material prices, too bad (and too good for his competitors like me).

Stupid regulation

There are regulations to stop unwanted activities like stealing. And there are regulations to stop unwanted people. Too bad that the latter never work. As for many fields of life, WoW provided a perfect example again.

There is a rule that stops you from transferring more than 20000G. Does it makes any sense? Does transferring my money is somehow wrong?

Of course not. The rule was made to harm goldsellers, not gold-transfer itself. It would be so easy to get rid of goldsellers: ban 100K goldbuyers from the game and no one will ever buys gold again. Since they mass-banned AV botters, the cave-defending activity decreased to it's small fraction. However Blizzard does not want to lose 100K subscribers. At the case of botters, they had no choice. The botters made AV unplayable, risking losing all players who wanted to play it.

So instead of banning the buyers, destroying demand, Blizzard implemented several "features" to make the life of goldsellers harder. The "report spam" function forces them to run more lvl1 orcs from Valley of trials to Orgrimmar. The gold-transfer limit stops them from farming gold on high-price servers and transfer them to low-price servers.

What's wrong with it? At first let's see standard goldseller activity: the goldseller farms grindable items with bots or lowly payed overseas farmers. They try to be out of sight to avoid being reported. For example on my old server someone farms Azure whelpling. (I cannot be sure if he is a goldseller, he can also be a simple idiot who have nothing else to do than grind zillions of Azshara dragonkin.)

The farmer sells his items on the AH, then sell the gathered gold for real money.

Notice that the farmer harms his own business. By creating more items, he generate supply for items, therefore decreasing prices. So the farmer gets less and less gold for equal amount of farming.

Theoretically farming on high-price servers and transfering the gold to low-price servers would increase profit, and that's why Blizzard banned it. What's wrong with that:

People are more likely to buy gold on low-price servers as grinding is less profitable there (and they are too dumb to use better money-making actions). On high-price servers people can make money easily so they don't buy gold. So goldsellers are forced to operate on low-price servers.

As high-price servers are abandoned by farmers, the item supply decrease, so prices go higher.
By farming more on low-price servers, item supply increase so prices go lower.

If people (non-farmers) decide to transfer from a high-price to a low-price server (as I do now), they are forced to buy stuff on the high-price server (driving prices higher) and sell them on the low-price server (driving prices lower).

If someone transfers the opposite way, the rule has no effect as the smart player would buy items for all his money and transfer with 0 gold for maximum profit anyway. For example someone could double his money easily by transferring from my new server to my old by buying ilvl213+ epics on the old server and sells them on the new one.

So the "20000G transfer limit" (plus allowing the goldfarmers to exist) increases prices on high-price server and decreases prices on low-price servers. Great job Blizzard!

Moral of the story: regulations must always ban a bad activity. Never support a rule just because it might harm bad people! It will harm others too. Support a rule instead that harm the activity that makes the bad people bad!

In the case of WoW goldselling: ban 100K goldbuyers and cancel the gold-transfer limit.

Born to be wild

Several commenters suggested, but I already planned how to transfer most of my money: by crafting mechano-hogs and transferring them.

Hogs need 1500G worth of materials and 12500G worth of vendor-materials. The latter cost the same on all servers.

I'm almost done with the buying spree. In a day I can make the transfer.

Consumer-producer paradigm

There is a series of posts on Death Knight Spree about consumer-producer paradigm.

I did not even read it until an e-mail asked for opinion. The reason for ignoring it was its introducing post, offering:
- find a better guild
- become a better player
- recruit and befriend better players
- eliminate certain pointless and boring activities
- (game designers only) design a better game

Good advice: if you want intelligent people to even consider your idea don't advertise it with offering world peace and free beer. They will consider it a scam and ignore it. Obviously if you are a telemarketer trying to sell your stuff to housewives you should advertise it with world peace and free beer, plus an extra toaster if she buys two.

Back to the topic: he says that besides "kill 10 wolves" and other single-player content, we need other players to produce content. "Producers make player-enhanced content happen. They start groups, form guilds, lead raids, invite other to battleground pre-mades." The "producers" create these content, while the "consumers" just attend to it. The producers collect and summon the consumers to the PuG instance. The "They are reasonably well-geared for the instance and competent players so even if the others suck they can probably get them through." line already rise some alarms, but let's carry on.

"Producers are very careful to let everyone know if they afk. They assume the group is depending on them. Consumers aren't bothered about going afk. They assume the group can cope regardless of whether they do anything to help or not." We already know that "consumer" stands for M&S, but let's still read on, to catch how the system is wrong. Important to note that you noticing a bad system does not mean that others notice it too. So it worth to prove it, even if it's so obvious to you that it's wrong.

"It's ok to have some consumers. You do however require a minimum number of producers. ... If you don't have enough producers investigate the following: do you have unrecognised producers? ie people who are comfortable helping out but simply have not yet been asked to" "helping out" is crucial here. There are not even an illusion of symbiotic relations anymore. "Helping out" is the code-word of parasitizm.

In his following article he does not only reveals his completely mistaken idea, but also gives some background on himself, allowing us to find out how can an otherwise intelligent person come up with such nonsense. "With CPP what I'm trying for is a paradigm that is win-win. Both roles are positive. Each role help the other role. It's not fun to be a chief without indians." So the "consumers" provide the "producers" feel good in return for leeching on them. This is the perfect example of social parasitism.

Now let's see where his life experiences go wrong: he is a librarian of a public library, a producer. His job is: "I might have to help a homeless person figure out how to google a charity he wants to contact, to find a copy of a Horrid Henry dvd for a seven year old, and then to help someone whose roof is leaking find emergency help as well as an idea of where to start legal process for damages." He handles his consumers as: "I don't shout at them, I don't deduct fifty dkp, I don't make them sit through long boring explanations, I don't in fact behave anything at all like a traditional WoW raid leader." And he sees his mission as "You are, if a producer, trying to produce a service you are proud of, if a consumer you hope to be educated, entertained and empowered."

Beautiful isn't it? Well, it is! It is just incomplete. After all, there is no free lunch. The library needs heating, electricity, maintenance, and above all: staff. He himself is a payed employee to do his fulfilling job of educating, entertaining and empowering.

Who pays him? NOT his "consumers", but the taxpayers of his country. For him the basic law of economics: "you pay for creating the goods you consume / you get paid for the product you produce" are not existing.

He does not see his "consumers" as "leeches" since they don't leech on him. They leech on the taxpayers. Would he work in the library if he would not be paid? I think not. Well, news here: no one is paid to organize raids. No one is paid to summon you to a meeting stone. No one is paid to carry you in an instance. We play in our free time.

Costumers in the real world pay for the services they enjoy. This payment is the reward of the producers, not the "feeling of empowerment". I will be a customer of a topguild, for 5000G/week.

Someone who does not contribute to group content and does not pay for it either is not a customer, but a leech! Someone who produce content and gives it to the M&S is a social who will eventually burn out, as he finally (slowly but still) realizes that he just gives, gives, gives while the M&S just takes, takes, takes.

Socials, games and grades

I've just read a scientific article that says: Facebook using college students have worse grades than non-users. Not surprisingly they claim they don't study less.

Surprisingly, despite the huge efforts to denounce computer games, no evidence was found that games cause bad grades. I assume games take much more time than Facebook, but that's only my guess (I don't even use Facebook or anything like that and have no idea how could anyone spend more than 10 mins/day there without being killed by boredom).

So we have a time-consuming activity that does not decrease grades and a less time consuming that does. Strange isn't it? Want something stranger? Students who do part-time work next to collage don't have worse grades than average, although work is not only time-consuming but also makes you tired and suck all your energy (I assume part time jobs available to students are not too creative).

I don't think it has anything to do with time. Unless you spend unhealthy time with your leisure activity, it shall not affect your work/study. After all we are not robots and unable to grind anything for 16 hours a day.

I think the results are caused by being social. The (more) social people value human relations like friendship and love over real things like study and work. While they spend no less time next to their textbooks, they simply don't care. After all "a² + b² = c²" or "U = R*I" are so meaningless and irrelevant compared to "what Irene will say when she sees my new hairstyle" or "making good impression on Mary on our first date".

I would love to see a study that compares the grades of WoW players who spend approximately equal time playing. The first group do PvE/PvP, the second group just chat, or "hang out with some friends". I have a guess which group would have better grades. Even better: compare the income of 30+ years old WoW PvE/PvP-ers to 30+ years old "my real life schedule does not let me get out of the fire" people.

There are lot of studies going around about games. I hope this idea gets to one of the researchers.

PS: some clarification. I don't claim that using Facebook makes you dumb. I claim that people who chooses to use Facebook intensively are "very socials" and don't care about real world things that much. Removing Facebook would only hide the symptom, not the reason.

Hard transfer

The buying spree to decrease my gold amount below 20K for the transfer is not easy. The main problem is simple: the prices in the new server are significantly lower than on the old one. So if I would blindly buy up ebonweave, abyss crystals and epics, and sell them, I'd end up with 50K loss.

The secondary problem is that my buying itself changes the prices significantly. Luckily most people are simply dumb. While the listed items are in a close range of the new price, dumbs arrive and without checking the prices, list their stuff for the old price. Of course these underpriced items goes to the lucky one who finds them. So I'm mostly camping the AH.

I bought lot of eternal belt buckles and insane amount of greater cosmic essences. I also filled a bag with enchanted vellums. Luckily these scrolls stack by 5. I have 8 bags full (5 to go), and only half of the money spent. But worry not. Nothing can stop a goblinish druid.

Buying spree

While I was busy buying stuff for my main for the transfer, I saw a LF1M healer Sarth+1. Since I haven't been in a raid in a long time, I thought it's a good opportunity to shake off the rust. Well, after an hour of "practicing", I decided to go back buying.

The main problem is the following: You have 5 bag slots. The bank have 7 and the bank itself counts as one. Two bags hold my resist gear and necessary items. One is my inscription bag, full of inks. I'll need it to restart my glyph business and on the top of that, it's "Made by [girlfriend]". So I have 10 bag slots left. I have to put 200000G into these, that's 20K/bag, or 1K/slot.

Epic items worth more than 1K. Too bad that the new server is much more progressed than my current. So the epic prices are half of my old server's. There are Ulduar BoE-s on sale for less than 10K. Even a Phaelia's vestment was on sale for 8.5K! So there goes the plan for transferring epics.

So the first priority was to increase bag space. At first I bought an Inscribed loot of Kirin Tor, as it is on my finger and not in the bag. Then I bought 3 glacial bags. I made something really stupid here, learn from it! I had most of the materials as I have two high level tailors. I bought some more materials, found a crafter who would make them for 100G tip. What I didn't do is checking the AH. There were just 3 bags in there for 650G. The material prices were 800-850G. I don't know who is the moron who sells the bags below mat price, but I know who was the moron who did not checked the product before crafting: me.

My GF crafted a Mammoth mining bag what I filled with Eternal Earths. While they sell higher on the new server than on the old one, even if we count with 10G price, that's just 200G/slot, 6400G/bag. I'm falling behind here.

I bought several Book of glyph masteries, 500G each. They stack as 10 so I could place 5K G in a slot! Too bad that this is the fastest deflating item in the game.

GF crafted Icescale leg armor. They sell for 300G+ and stack as 20. That's 6K/slot.

I crafted two stacks of bolt of imbued frostweave, 400G/slot.

Bought several exotic pets like dragon whelplings. 1-2K/slot.

I've already filled 3 bags and spent only 25K! But fear not. As a druid - a true nature's child - can solve every problems.

PS: according to my first scans, the glyph business will be 2-3x bigger than my old server. Average glyph prices around 30G. That's going to change!