Failbot needed

I've seen a brilliant comic on Noobz. Please check it out, really worth it.

Now comes the suggestion! Update KevMar wrote it. Great job!

Someone could write the "noobdetector" from the comic. I mean an addon that scans global, trade and guild channels and marks immature or stupid behavior. Then it could write the noobness count to the social page or the chat window when I shift-click a name like
[XXXXX] lvl 78 tauren warrior Dalaran 74% Noob

The 74% is orange because it's high warning not to group with him. The % would be equated from "noob statements"/"all statements". So if someone talks for 2 pages and has 2 "lol"-s, he has 0.2% noobness, while 2 "lol"-s in one line would be like 80%.

The things the addon should seek:

• "lol": obvious
• "XDDDDD" "SDDDD" ":DDD" and other idiotic variants of the smily
• l33t: I refuse to explain this
  
• "plx", "peeps", "m8s", "duds" and other unquestionable evidences of age below 13
  
• "Megan Fox": Once, 5-10 years from now, when you'll have a job and an own flat, girls will stop laughing when you ask them out. Some will respectfully decline, some will say yes. They won't be film actresses, but they will be blood and flesh women. Until then, keep your ideas to yourself and WASH YOUR HAND before touching the mouse.
  
• "boost" in any variation except "selling boosts for 100+ gold"
• "help me": this should be on whisper to friends and not to some general channel
• "I'm stoned/high/wasted": it's good to know that you come to perform challenging group activity with me in highly intoxicated state
• "I PWN": congratulations for it. I don't want to disturb your highly rewarding activity of killing lvl 20 players with group invites or such. Ever.
• "I'm ungeared for this": then don't be here punk!

Someone could also write a BG failbot that spams something like: "X failed by leaving Lumber Mill while less than 2 defenders left", "Y failed by entering PvP combat in the middle of nowhere", "Z failed by attacking an enemy player while enemy demolisher was in his range", "W failed by not mounting demolisher as gunner", "AA failed by running for the flag while the group had less than 3 towers", "BB failed by riding by Stoneheart Bunker", "CC failed by ganking on enemy GY instead of attacking the flag carrier".


PS: when read Graylo's blog being 2 years old, I've checked mine and my first post was done one year ago yesterday. It was an RP post about my long-long abandoned paladin. It's strange when I think of doing this for a year. The blog changed a lot, RP abandoned, much more M&S bashing philosophies and such. Like it or not, it seems it's here to stay.

Morons of the week, part 2

Brian met Suna who claims that Brian has no effect on him and also that he will undercut him 5x a day. Well, if he undercuts that means he accepted Brian's prices, and that's an effect without doubt. BTW why do I seek logic in a standard M&S whisper? Bonus track by Jimihendrix on /2!



Beesu also had his fair share of helpful education. BTW have you noticed that people use my site as a punishment for M&S. I'm totally flattered.


Spiralup, Malganis-US was kind enough to explain to this (quite impolite) M&S the main point of undercutting seriously. Let's all hope the teaching holds. Don't bet money on it though.


Cheri of Garrosh-US was informed that she doesn't let the creation of "profet" and was seriously threatened by Lanaice:



Ninjaturtlen of Stormscale learned the hard way that if you occupy a peaceful country, you won't get invited to any decent guild, even if you named your pets so intuitively:



A similar applicant somehow sneaked into Drdovetalk's guild. He asked about some loot and the officer told him to check in wowhead. The rest definitely deserved a screenshot:



Azshura of Bloodhoof EU wrote a very nice letter about the satisfaction when you finally have haters. Remember, envy and hate are the most honest display of respect for your achievements (though not for your person), since it lacks the "butkissing for later help" element: "While not a hardcore goblin myself, I picked up enough tricks to satisfy more than all my wow monetary needs (via alchemy, JC and tailoring), so thanks for that. Yesterday I felt like I've been promoted to rank1 goblin apprentice, when I recieved my 1st hate /w! It was funny and I was happy as a little girl. I know you have a collection of sorts, so maybe it will be of some use to you. The protagonist being pissed off with me for undercutting him by 50g on spellthreads (incidentally, I was getting 40g pure profit per 1 and sold about 20 that night - most of them bought by the very protagonist in question, who looks like ran out of cash or desire to keep buying them after awhile). Anyway, it was fun.". No doubt that making 40x20=800G on a single moron is fun:


Smithsonian, US-Darkspear Realm sent me a picture exceeding the 800pt width giving me 20 minutes extra work to photoshop his picture to fit into blogspot.com standard, but still did it since our little moron has a "very good" reason to ask Smithsonian to abandon his profitable market for some weeks:


Jesse has a good one. Not only he got whispered but also his alt got a letter to join into the cartel against his main.



This one told Runah of Khaz'goroth US how to sell glyphs, obviously using insults and foul language:

Baro is playing on Arathor, my old server with large Hungarian population. Let us all hope that the game masters cannot speak Hungarian. BTW this post is really good so got here as an exception. As a general rule, if you blank the name of the M&S, you won't get here:

Translation: "lvl80 UD rogue for sale with full toc10, toc25, u25 PvE gear + furious-deadly PvP gear. In an actively raiding guild, has chopper and 3000gold on the account, professions and repus on full, if you're interested /w me."


This one is simply sad. Pert paid 20G for signitures to make his guildbank. However, as the most primitive socials use to, one guy couldn't understand that "business deal" does not mean "eternal friendship" nor "obligation to buy your overpriced white dress":

Morons of the week

Let's start the collection of this week with a weird one. I don't really understand why should Uzuri of Haomarush give up making money from glyphs. It seems even Greeves doesn't know it, he attached no explanation to his request:


Congratulations to Doghealer for his 2360 wow-heroes score. That means a nice collection of ilvl213-226 gear, gemmed and enchanted. However we cannot approve his request to find a similarly geared tank for a lousy 5-man. After all Ulduar 10 can be main tanked with 1650 score, so I'm not surprised that Albert found it strange:



Imourati screenshotted Adartina who is not M&S just making fun of morons who want [epic] for a 5-man, in a very stylish way. Feel free to do the same in trade chat:



Brundo of Daggerspine US notified Cellea about my site, so there is hope that she will see her masterpiece in public. BTW I've never heard of a hate mail being called hate mail:



Advo Kat choose a strange method to break into the glyph market, he posted for only 1-2G profit, in order to drive out the competition, with the intention to increase prices later. Poor Hugemill is about to learn that speculating goods that can be mass-produced profitably is not a good idea:


The next day he was kind enough to explain opportunity cost to Fleshcutter. Tomorrow I'll try to explain Schrödinger-equation to my neighbor's cat. That will have similar success I'm afraid.



My long term commenter, Wooly found what can be easily called an "arch-M&S", a "greatfather of all idiots making us rich in AH":



Nick sent a pretty good picture, but it still doesn't get here, because he blurred the name of the M&S. Such politeness would not amuse Sara who explicitly told us "Yes, yes, show them no mercy! Give no pause to your attacks!"

Nor will I pause. This is just the half of the morons I got this week, tomorrow there will be another batch. Stay tuned!

Business report

My raiding activity had its toll on my budget. 5K/week is 75K since may 8, and I also spent 40K on the blue ulduar, so I ended up with 110K G last week. This is not something that should stay.

So I fired up my glyph business again 10 days ago. OK, my absence elevated the prices a bit, so maybe the next weeks won't be so shiny, but still, 20K G income is not too bad.

I craft so many glphs that I needed a third alt. I'm still heavily undercutting any possible competitors and post only once in every 2 days, no AH camping for me. I'm crafting every glyphs I can sell for more than 6G and 1 ink costs somewhere around 2G.

I'm sometimes lucky and can buy ink from the AH, when not, I have to mill herbs. Luckily herbs are cheap. I use the snowfall ink byproducts to craft offhand items, they sell with 100-150G profit.

So, despite all "inscription is dead" QQ, I can still make very decent profit with little playtime. (I mean active, it also needs 1-2 hours of AFK time for retrieving unsold and listing new glyphs)

Cross-server LFG

Blizzard introduces cross-server LFG, providing new challenges and chances to goblin-minded people.

What is the main pro of this change: more bodies to choose from. There is practically not an hour of the day when you can find 5 people wanting to run the same dungeon as you. Most probably there is also not an hour of the afternoon-evening when you can't find a group to OS25, Naxx25, ToC10, Ulduar10. That's good.

What is the main disadvantage of this change? We goblins act on our interests. I've never acted as a jerk in a PuG, since there is no point. If someone did his job, I ignored his comments. If he didn't do his job, I kicked or left the group regardless of him being nice or jerk.

On the other hand social people are regulated by social factors (miracle), and these factors weaken dramatically by anonymity. They want to be loved and accepted. While this keep them with the herd in a wrong way (as stopping them from even attempting anything unusually great), it also keep them in the line in the good way (as stopping them from being total jerks). Most of them doesn't ninja, doesn't openly go AFK or start pulling bosses naked yelling "lol pwned you all", simply because they fear bad publicity.

Add the total anonymity of being on different server (meaning you can't spam /trade "X is a ninja"), and total asshattery will follow.

OK, this is a no-QQ blog, so what are our options? There are 2, keeping out of PuGs or controlling them.

Keeping out of PuGs means joining a decent guild. If you have a guild tag but you need to PuG the content you want to run, you are not in a decent guild and should quit. Of course I'm not talking about quitting a hard mode guild since you can't run 5-mans with them for your alt. I'm talking about that you have to PuG the top of the content you can reach. As I already suggested, go and find a decent guild. Use gold to buy yourself a chance to prove yourself. If you failed that chance, study, practice, try again.

Now here comes the other chance. Controlling PuG has a benefit of playing whenever you want, instead of in the set raid times. It is the only option to get PvE pieces for PvP-ers as they focus on PvP, therefore cannot/don't want to raid seriously.

The advice comes partially from Captain Obvious: be the key member of the PuG. Most players play DPS, simply because that's the easiest. Also, most good tanks/healers have raiding guilds, therefore can easily find groups in their guilds, even further decreasing the PuG-available tanks/healers.

If you are the tank/healer, you make the call. They need you, you don't need them, as there are 7 zillion replacements available on LFG. So if your class has a tank/healer spec, dual talent is your friend. Get some gear to this spec, learn its usage and start your own groups. If you are the leader, you can quickly /kick the useless and the jerk, and also can master loot, preventing ninjas taking everything.

So if you don't have a tank/healer spec yet, get one, and get used to it before Cataclysm comes.

Brick wall

Pugnacious priest wrote: "Apparently to be a hardcore raider I am supposed to enjoy hitting said head against the brick wall. I disagree. I think there is a massive difference between productive attempts and attempts for the sake of it, and I think too many attempts are Die. Run Back, Die, Run back ect I want more dialog with the raiders as to why we died. What we did right, what we did wrong but too much dialog increases the chances of another dc, another afk, another slow person running back after a buff. Maybe we just aren’t hardcore enough."

Many intelligent, educated raider asked it before. I also tried to discuss what went wrong in my previous guilds, turning me into a "disturber of the peace" and a "complete jerk", despite I tried to analyze the situation as constructively as I could. Why can't we just talk about the mistakes?

I hated the "attempts of the shake of it", trying one more time although I'm 100% sure that we'll wipe again and I can't do anything about it. I can't interrupt for the rogue, I can't kite for the hunter and I know that they will mess it up again. Why bother?

The answer for both lies in being social. Remember, the goal of the social person is to be loved, accepted and respected, not killing the boss or win or achieve anything. All their actions in the real or any simulated world are motivated by their ape-minded need of the above.

Be also noted that "being social" is not yes or no. It's a scale between the "freindly heplfull guld LF peeps /w for inv :DDD" class beings and the true goblin (which I'm not but trying to be). While raiders are way above the average, they still have enough social tendencies to make the most obvious solution (analyze, discuss, point out errors, fix them) impossible.

Among true goblins if someone says "you're doing it wrong" and you find it true you'd say "thanks for you help", because that what he done, helped you fix your problem. For a social person on the other hand any kind of criticism means the very opposite of the social goal. If you say "you missed an interrupt", he doesn't hear that. He couldn't care less about "interrupt". He hears "I'm not amused by you", "You are not good enough", "I don't respect you". He won't even think of interrupting. All he will think about is "how to defend my reputation, my self-esteem against this attack?".

He will lie. He will claim it was lag. He will claim that someone else missed up. He will try to derail the conversation by ad hominem attacking you "you just say that because I outdamaged you". He will make it impossible to discuss the "interrupt thing", because it is dangerous for his "esteem", the magical quantity he wants to keep high because he believes it will make other people love, accept and respect him.

So talking openly about the problem causes nothing but drama. What can you do? Surprisingly: bang your head at the wall by quickly trying again. How would this conspiciously pointless thing work? If the person is 100% social, it does not work, however we can assume that in a raiding guild that killed anything above a plainstrider this is not the case. Since he was not called out on his fault, his "esteem-defending" mechanisms are not activated. He has a brain and he is able to use it if his ape-subroutines are inactive. There is a chance in every try that he realize his mistake. Since he is afraid that his error will be revailed he will try harder. If he cannot fix it, his failure will stress him stronger than it annoys you. So if he cannot fix his mistake, he will soon be so frustrated that he gives up and either drop attendance or leave the guild, solving the problem. So in one sentence: "the point of banging your head against the wall is that your head is harder than the error-makers, so his will crack first. You just have to hold out until it happens".

Since social thoughts are ape-subroutines, they are all vulnerable to ape-solutions. If the guild leader or an officer calls out the mistake, our little ape feels he was confronted by the alpha-ape, and should surrender (or the alpha ape attacks him). So he will have no other option than fixing his mistake. That's why highly disciplined guilds are so successful. However it has a trap. If the officer called out the wrong person, exactly due to discipline, the blamed person will apologize for the mistake he have not done and the mistake will obviously not be fixed. Also if the officer made the error, he will blame others and no one will disagree, quickly demotivating the raid. So the discipline only works if the officers are highly professional. If the officers are no better than the others, the whole thing goes down, that's why highly disciplined guilds are so rare.

Failbot is a wonderful thing because it calls out people on their mistake and it's not a person itself. Since claiming "failbot just said that because he just an asshole and hates me" is pointless, he has no means to defend his esteem, so he is forced to fix the mistake.

So in general you have one thing left: banging 25 heads into the wall and pray every time that the head of the failer will crack before yours. In the meantime you can wish that there would be no social thinking and you could solve the same problem in 10 seconds instead of 10 tries: "X, you missed the interrupt", "Oops, yes, I was too busy DPS-ing and forgot that that's my job, thanks for reminding".

BTW there is a reason that on the top of any activity you find lot of "elitist jerks". What the socials consider "jerk" behavior is exactly the most effective helping behavior: pointing out mistakes and giving good advice how to fix them. Other goblins take this as a help. Socials take it as "that jerk asshole attacked me, made fun of me, humiliated me".

Now I could write a paragraph how much I hate the socials for forcing me into sub-optimal solutions like banging my head into the wall, but there would be no point, right?

Note: please don't comment "in my guild we always discuss mistakes constructively". Congratulations to have enough people who are not so social to consider a constructive comment a hateful attack. 99% of the guilds does not have this luxury.

Cataclysm of guilds

Elnia welcomes the guild changes as some great thing for socials. I am sure that this is not the case.

You can read the mentioned changes here. I'm sure the details are under development, but the main frame is already visible:

• players get points for their guilds while playing
• guilds can use this points to get "talents", that have effect to the players, like +7% money from monster loot
• guilds can buy consumables and reagents from the points
• guilds can buy heirloom items and recipes that are bound to the guild, player loses them upon gquitting.

At first let's get the "finally the goblins of AH can't make advantage on us" thing out of the way. The "guild vendors sell frost lotus" doesn't change anything. Just because it's sold by a guild vendor, it's not free. You still have to farm it, just in a different way, by farming points for the guild bank. So you still have the same options to get your stuff like before: you farm it, or you buy it from the AH.

If the reward affect one player (like a heirloom item), then being in a guild or not is not important, as 2x more players mean 2x more heirloom but also 2x more people who want heirloom. This case you only need to have a guild tag that can be gained by joining the guild of your lvl1 banker.

It seems Blizz made a very smart move with the leveling system to prevent selection of guildmates according to the system and not social reasons. Only the top 20 player will affect points, but it's also additive, so the guilds are not motivated to hoard players or gkick non-farming friends.

Now let's get to the anti-social point that will make Ghostcrawler learn the hard way "be careful what you wish for": "we don't want people to bounce around from guild to guild". Because this is the point where drama-fest is coming!

Leaving a guild is easy and cost-less. If you don't like it, you just /gquit at 2:00 AM. No hard feelings, no drama. Now imagine that leaving the guild will cost you gear pieces, recipes, achievements and bonuses that you have farmed for (partially, but people overestimate their contribution). Ghostcrawler will get exactly what he wanted: people won't /gquit silently. They will fight until the last bullet. They will start the "he said she said" game to make their "competitor" leave. They will whisper into officer ears to /gkick the other guy. Drama without end.

If now someone is /gkicked, he dusts himself up and apply another guild. Now he will get his gear, recipes and bonuses removed. It's not something you just let go right? Every single /gkick will be another bitter thread for Guildwatch, either in a hope that the "victim" can convince the guild that it wasn't right and get him back, or just to get some revenge for the harm he suffered. Remember, there is not a punk in the Universe who would accept any responsibility on his part (otherwise he wouldn't be a punk at all).

The only kind of guild what survives these new restrainst are exactly the anti-social professional guilds. Attendance rules determine activity, donation rules determine who has to farm how much points for the guild, strict and written and previously accepted rules determine who get gkicked. Everything according to protocol, social chit-chat is frowned upon as they have the potential of starting "he said, she said".


WoW became so social friendly exactly because of the parallel-single-player design. The other player couldn't hurt your gaming experience, so you had no reason to exclude anyone who is not a jerk. People could come and go, drama was minimal. As soon as player decisions affect your gameplay, drama is guaranteed.

However there is a trick that Blizzard can pull: make all guilds equal! With properly tailored formulas you can create a system where it doesn't matter what the members do. Socials have the tendency of overestimating their groups. "Our guild has reached lvl20, we are awesome!" (every other guild reached it too, roughly the same time, but who cares?) So players could painlessly keep switching as previously.


I already found a way how a goblin can make money from this guild system: "rent a heirloom!" For 100G/day your alt is invited to the guild XXX and given 8 pieces of heirloom what you can use for quick leveling up. We also have -20% repair cost and +10% loot bonus talented, so you'll have these bonuses during leveling. /w me for inv.

Another goblin way: our guild is the No1 raiding guild on the server we have the highest guild achievements and access to the wonderful [Screenblocking flying whale], the coolest mount ever. For 500G/week you can ride this beauty and everyone can see your achievement! For 1 hour a week you can wield the legendary heirloom [Awesome polearm of PWNAGE]. (of course your rank will be "M&S", you cannot raid or even talk on /gchat, but who cares if you can ride a [Screenblocking flying whale])