When the freight train comes

Iiene of Kul Tiras wrote in a comment to my post about screwing with the self-proclaimed alchemist king: "When a freight train is coming through.. The smart move is to get out of the way. What was he supposed to do? He probably figured out at "I transferred servers" and "Ghostboci" that you had huge piles of stuff to sell. i would have. Anyone with any sense would have. You had 740 freaking lotuses! How the hell is anyone going to compete with that kind of product being dumped in their market? 740 lotuses means 1480 flasks... at 23 gold each that's 34K in gross sales."

I hate to attack commenters who come here often (lying), but I'm so fed up with this "I'm just a small guy what could I do" bullshit as I can be.

Let's ignore the fact that he had no idea who I was. I sold him arctic furs after my post making fun of him hit the air. After all he did not have to know my name, he could see me as a "freight train" just by looking at my sales on the AH.


His ultimate error was to ignore that 2320 flasks arrived to the server "from thin air" and these flasks will drive the prices down one way or another. While I was selling flasks, people kept farming lotuses on the server, but couldn't sell them as I didn't buy them. If he bought them and stockpiled them, now he sits on 7-900 extra lotuses. If he ever want to get rid of them, he'll have to drop prices to increase demand. If he keeps his old prices, he will sell the same amount as he did in the old times, so the stockpile of lotuses (700*45 = 31.5K) will sit in his bank eternally.

Now let's get back to the point: what on Earth could he do against the "freight train?". Well, he could do exactly what every smart people without proper capital can do: sell his time. Having the stockpiles is one thing. Selling them is another. To sell them, I had to research the prices (including day-of-the-week effects), list them on the AH, and pick the gold or the expired auctions from the mailbox.

To sell frost lotuses as flasks, on the top of the above, I had to buy lichbloom and some other herbs, find elixir-spec alchemist, buy vials, trade all the stuff to him, wait until he crafts, pay him, trade back, send to the seller alt.

I had 720 lotuses. Just to wait for crafting is 720*2/60 = 24 minutes. I gained 720*2*1.25 = 1800 flasks. On the top of that I had 520 flasks transferred. That's 2320 flasks to sell. You have to sell them as singles (as poor M&S only buy one at a time). I overlisted a little (didn't know market), so I got 25% of the stuff back. It means I had to open 2320 sales and 580 expires from the mailbox. Every AH page is an extra minute. I had 2-3 pages at a time, and I couldn't go semi-AFK like with glyphs because I had to see what sold and what did not. That means 58 minutes sitting by the mailbox.

Time, time, time, on the top of the overpriced lichblooms (I did not know farmer and dried the AH in 2 days, increasing lichbloom prices to 2G from 1) and the payment to my girlfriend for the crafting and also her time (= work fees I had to pay).

Assuming he was a professional flasks seller, he had a streamlined industry. He was an elixir spec alchemist, he had macros, he knew the market prices, he had contracts with lichbloom farmers, and so on. He could do it much faster.

He could offer me his services. I sold the flasks for 30G -1.5G AH cut. If he would offer to buy them all for 25G and also the lotuses for 45G (lichbloom and other herbs + 12G, crafter fee +5G, elixir procs /1.25, altogether 25G/flask), I would accept his offer. If I hesitated he could easily drive the prices down to 27-28G where I could no longer say no. Notice that I couldn't fight him, as my supplies will end one day. There is no point selling them for 20G for a week, just to win and can't sell more because my bank is empty.

Assuming that with a streamlined industry he could handle one flasks in 10 seconds and he could sell for 30G, that's 3.5G/10 secs (30*0.95-25), 1260G/hour income. Not 5K/hour, but still not 250G/hour daily quest shit.

There is no such thing as "I can't do anything, I must step aside". There is only "time for finding new ways".

The sad thing for him is that now he keeps selling his flasks at 34G but random sellers undercut him in the 27-30G region. These random sellers emerged from the lotuses that were farmed and unsold. They used to sell (mostly to him) their lotuses, now, with that option closed, ask a friend to craft flasks and sell them at any price. After all, they farmed the herbs, so it's free...

Note: 2320*28.5= 66.1K That was my income from selling flasks. Obviously the other 129K came from something else. However the fast selling of flasks caused by him allowed me to reach cap so soon.

Mistakes were made (but not by me)

There is a book Mistakes were made (but not by me). It's is about self justification and I learned a lot from it.

This book is especially hard to write a review because it's not written in an academic "thesis-experiments-conclusion" way. It's full of stories. I've chosen a scientific experiment to introduce the book:

Elliot Aronson (one of the authors of the book) and his colleague Judson Mills recruited female students (in 1959!) to a discussion group on "psychology of sex". They lied of course, the students were test subjects. They all listened to the same tape recording where a quite boring discussion is made on sex of birds and other irrelevant topics. It's also made in a poor manner, the speakers did not finish thoughts or held long pauses. No one could find this nonsense useful. The students were cut into two groups. Before they could get in the "program", they had to do a task. One group had to read up loudly sex-related articles from a dictionary. Not to hard. The other group had tho read up loudly explicit parts of a porn book. Imagine young women reading porn to several male professors in 1959. How embarrassing it could be? After listening to the tape they were asked if they want to join the group. The "read from dictionary" group told it was boring and useless and don't want to join. On the other hand the "porn book" group found the group very interesting. Why? Because the alternative was "I made a complete fool of myself for a lousy tape lecture", and they did not want this. They rather lied to themselves.

There are many experiments and also true stories (like the hilarious one about a doomsday cult) in the book, read it!

The reason behind this nonsense is self-justification, an ape-subroutine that wants to make you believe that you were right, when you were not (sometimes obviously not). The point is that "being right" is necessary to hold the position of "competent, honorable, good person". The person under the effect lies to himself to avoid noticing that he was wrong, therefore he is incompetent or naive.

...

After the above paragraph I sit front of the computer for 10-20 minutes, knowing that a quasi-quote and a 3 sentence-summary is anything but a decent review. I learned a lot from the book and want to share with you but it seems I can't.

In desperation of lack of thoughts I searched for reviews on the net and found an interview with the author. He says (italics by me): "it feels uncomfortable whenever we hold two ideas or beliefs that conflict with each other and especially if the major idea is about who we are. If I think that I'm a smart, competent, moral person and I do something stupid, it creates dissonance and I try to convince myself that it was actually the smartest thing I could have done. And as a matter of fact, it was not a bad decision at all. And nobody could have done it better. And it really isn't so bad. And besides, nobody noticed anyway. And that reduces the dissonance and helps us sleep well at night."

Then it hit me: All I learned from the book is like "oh so that's why they do it". I can't really write about it because I've never experienced it. That's another bliss of being anti-social. I never feel remorse or bad about myself, these are points 5 and 2 from the 20 points list of enjoying life fully :-).

However to ask if I'm immune to the effects of this, let's see Dr. Aronson's another example: "people languishing in prison for major crimes like rape or murder. DNA evidence turns up that shows - for example, that a person who was convicted of rape and has been spending the past 20 years in prison, DNA evidence shows up that he couldn't have committed the crime. And yet, more often than not, prosecuting attorneys will not want to reopen the case. And it's easy to conclude that these people are simply evil. What I think has happened is they've convinced themselves that they couldn't possibly have made a mistake. If I'm the prosecutor and I convicted this guy and I sent him to prison, I think I'm a smart and moral person. Therefore, it would be horrendous for me to believe that somebody has been languishing in prison for 20 years because I made a blunder. Therefore, I convince myself that regardless of what the DNA evidence shows, that's the guy that did it and I'll keep him in prison for another 20 years."

The question is that if I were the prosecutor would I reopen the case? The answer is obviously no (point 8). Not because I think I'm a smart and moral person. Not because it would be horrendous for me to believe that an innocent rots in jail because of my incompetence. Simply because I would lose my job or at least lose my chance for promotion if people would find it out. "My promotion" > "Innocent guy being sodomized by 100kg tattooed gangsters for 20 more years". I guess this is point 7 from the mentioned list.

OK, so socials don't fix their mistakes because it would hurt their feelings to notice the mistakes, and anti-socials don't fix them because they couldn't care less about them. So how can we get mistakes fixed?

It's the economy stupid!

If I gamble with my own money, it's me who suffer the consequences of my mistakes. It no longer matters if I admit or fix them, since no one else is harmed by my mistakes. I'm motivated to fix them. I mean if I would be a prosecutor and would be paid after how low is the crime rate of my district (as opposed to what is the opinion about me of the people who matter), I would be motivated to not put innocents to jail, simply because the real criminal would then run free and keep on making crimes ruining my income.

Theoretically this could be also achieved by strict regulation. If evidence-holding prosecutors and other corrupt officials would be hanged like in China, I wouldn't do it. But it needs much more investigation and law-enforcement people. And anyway, people are much more motivated to work for a reward than avoiding a punishment. And smart people always find ways to avoid punishment "creative" ways.

In an economy-driven society people who are capable to overcome their mistakes become rich and those who prefer their positive self-image over the truth would make their mistakes again and become poor. Oh wait...

Too bad that most people avoid business like the bubonic plague and want safe jobs where everything can be blamed to the boss. "Oh, did I sign $20M subprime loan contracts in the last 5 years? The boss told me to increase loaning! Yes the economy has collapsed because of this. Yes... mistakes were made but not by me"

Moron of the week

No, this is not the collection of random morons. This is one particular specimen. He is a perfect example why all the writers of angry/"educating" letters are morons, even if the recipient of the letter is not much smarter, like mindlessly posting all glyphs at 5G, even in lack of competition.

After I've transferred to Arathor, I started selling my stockpiles. Big part of these stockpiles are flasks and frost lotuses (main material of flasks). Soon I got a letter:

While it's not primitively written, not littered by "lol" and "plz", it is a standard M&S letter. The very point of the letter is to control the price of a product that can be mass-produced with minimal entry cost. It's like writing a polite letter about the flat Earth.

I told him that I am not an alchemist myself, I have stockpiles from a server transfer. Actually it was true. Back then I did not have any plans, and if I don't have particular reason to lie, I use to tell the truth.

My first move was the standard anti-monopolist protocol: I offered him to sell him my stockpiles for 3-4G less than his monopolist price. I told him that I bought the flasks on the other server for these prices. It's a blatant lie, since I bought them for 20-22G. He will take these or fight.

Well, he found a third way:

I assume if you are also a pro AH trader, you are already smiling on inevitable fate of the poor loser. The guy, in his desperate attempt to control the market gave it all to me! He defeated all the campers and now willingly step aside. I mean how can one be this stupid? Of course I instantly canceled my frost lotus auctions. I have much better use to these things. I started buying lichbloom and paid my GF to respec elixir spec. This was a pretty expensive move since I had to pay her the opportunity cost of the earthsiege diamond procs after 50 transmutes/day, until I'm done with alchemy. Yet I did not risk to spam /trade for an alchemist in fear that my beloved M&S notices it.
After processing more than 500 lotuses I can verify that elixir spec alchemist get 2.5 flasks from every frost lotus instead of 2 on average. That means I got 250 extra flasks from the GF's respec (around 7K G)

After a week my little monopolist started to get impatient, but a couple of more lies cleared my way for some more days:

On Thursday he was pretty upset already, especially since I made a little mistake. He wanted to buy some arctic fur from me. I did not notice that he actually wants me to return his "favor" by selling the furs deeply below market price. So I offered him at 5% discount below market. I should have told I have none:

You might have guessed the point of my letter. To keep playing the idiot who don't want to fight, just have to sell his stockpiles. I don't want a price war with him as I will run out of flasks (or to be more accurate: frost lotuses) and not planning to stay on the flask market. Why fight for something I don't want to keep? So I do as he told me. Of course the same does not apply to my alt!

And the result of running free on the flask market for two weeks without fight just because someone didn't get the basic concept of competition:


Moral of the week: you can't get to agreement with the competition. If he sends your letter the Morons of the week, it's the better outcome for you. The worse is that he smiles at you, accepts your offer and stabs you in the back, like all goblins would do.

Morons of the week 2

At first: NO MORE RESILIENT PARCHMENT PICTURES PLEASE!!!

Yerishan sent a chatlog created by the great addon Automated Goblin Therapist. Of course only the addon makes sense, the moron (by definition) does not:
10/3 12:56:30.625 Beaveronn has invited you to join a group.
10/3 12:56:54.437 To Beaveronn: can't group, doing ah stuff
10/3 12:57:02.015 Beaveronn whispers: plz
10/3 12:57:08.250 To Beaveronn: OK... "plz". Tell me more.
10/3 12:57:22.062 Beaveronn whispers: i have question for item
10/3 12:57:28.359 To Beaveronn: I'm not sure I understand you fully.
10/3 12:57:34.546 Beaveronn whispers: w8
10/3 12:57:40.359 To Beaveronn: OK... "w8". Tell me more.
10/3 12:58:03.687 Beaveronn whispers: i nid epic item.
10/3 12:58:08.562 To Beaveronn: Come, come, elucidate your thoughts.
10/3 12:58:13.625 Beaveronn whispers: in goin to ah.
10/3 12:58:20.578 To Beaveronn: Can you elaborate on that?
10/3 12:58:42.484 Beaveronn whispers: ?
10/3 12:58:48.703 To Beaveronn: OK... "?". Tell me more.
10/3 12:58:53.515 Beaveronn whispers: i tell you what i nid*
10/3 12:58:56.703 To Beaveronn: Oh... what i nid*?
10/3 12:59:24.265 Beaveronn whispers: dow you want help to train
10/3 12:59:32.828 To Beaveronn: You're not really talking about me, are you?
10/3 12:59:39.468 Beaveronn whispers: ill help you
10/3 12:59:40.843 To Beaveronn: Oh... ?
10/3 12:59:53.625 Beaveronn whispers: you want help
10/3 13:00:00.875 To Beaveronn: We were discussing you, not me.
10/3 13:00:21.437 Beaveronn whispers: you want yes or no
10/3 13:00:28.953 To Beaveronn: You're not really talking about me, are you?
10/3 13:00:43.453 Beaveronn whispers: in talk about you
10/3 13:00:45.000 To Beaveronn: Oh... ?
10/3 13:01:22.562 Beaveronn whispers: you want help to train you
10/3 13:01:29.140 To Beaveronn: You're not really talking about me, are you?
10/3 13:01:46.578 Beaveronn whispers: im talk about you want help
10/3 13:01:49.218 To Beaveronn: Oh... want help?
10/3 13:01:55.828 Beaveronn whispers: you
10/3 13:01:58.796 Beaveronn has invited you to join a group.
10/3 13:02:01.250 To Beaveronn: We were discussing you, not me.
10/3 13:02:17.953 Beaveronn whispers: you want yes or no
10/3 13:02:20.437 Beaveronn: Level 42 Undead Warrior - The Barrens
10/3 13:02:20.437 1 player total
10/3 13:02:25.296 To Beaveronn: You're not really talking about me, are you?
10/3 13:02:44.906 Beaveronn whispers: ???
10/3 13:02:49.328 To Beaveronn: OK... "???". Tell me more.
10/3 13:02:50.625 You are now AFK: Away from Keyboard
10/3 13:03:11.796 Beaveronn whispers: YOU WNAT HELP TO TRY YOUR SELF
10/3 13:03:39.015 To Beaveronn: try what, Define what
10/3 13:04:09.812 Beaveronn whispers: you are lvl 1 wou want help to be lvl 10
10/3 13:04:21.515 To Beaveronn: Perhaps you would like to be lvl 1 wou want help to be lvl 10?
10/3 13:04:48.015 Beaveronn whispers: you are lvl 1 dow you wnat to be lvl 10?
10/3 13:04:57.609 To Beaveronn: Do you sometimes wish you were lvl 1 dow me wnat to be lvl 10?
10/3 13:05:16.765 Beaveronn whispers: dow you know french
10/3 13:05:25.656 To Beaveronn: You're not really talking about me, are you?
10/3 13:05:49.562 Beaveronn whispers: dow you wnat help to be lvl 10
10/3 13:05:53.750 To Beaveronn: Oh... wnat help to be lvl 10?
10/3 13:06:43.390 Beaveronn whispers: you ...you wnat to be lvl 10
10/3 13:06:49.921 To Beaveronn: We were discussing you, not me.

Morons of the week

They just can't stop whining (by Breevok).

The end of the American and European dream

As the title shows, it's not about WoW. It's about the real world economy and it's greatest depression, and it's a long-long wall of text. Don't worry, tomorrow I'll be back with morons of the week, like nothing has happened.

The crisis is not over. It's not fixed. It's not even started to be fixed.

What happened is that the patient got supportive therapy. The doctors have no idea what's wrong so they keep it on machines hoping it will heal on its own. It won't. I guess that the batteries of the machines that keep it alive will deplete in 2010 Q4 - 2011 Q1.

The crisis is not financial. Not bankers messed things up. Well they did messed lot of things up, but even if they wouldn't, it would still be a mess. Maybe with different symptoms but no less serious.

The problem is systemic. The idea behind the current system is no longer valid and new foundations must be found to end the crisis.

The American dream is "if you work hard you will succeed". Only laziness stands between you and success. This was the idea of the free market, this was the idea of democracy, this was the idea that elevated a pitiful colony into the strongest country of the world.

The European dream is that you are not alone in your quest to reach the stars. Those who are already there, throw some stardust to you (taxed from them, given to you as education, health care, unemployed support). When you finally reach the stars you return the favor.

The proponents of the American way always attacked the European as "welfare". They claimed that it won't work since many people will take the help from the successful, but won't use it to become successful but simply waste it. The European system is vulnerable to slackers.

They are completely right, but blind to the fact that the same exists in the USA. The only difference is that the slackers of USA gets their money as "prison upkeep costs". That's why in the middle of the last century both systems worked fine. The average Americans and (western) Europeans were equally rich. In the USA the income differences were larger, but it's a variation and not "good" or "bad". Both systems flourished.

Slackers are not the problem why both systems will crumble in 1-2 years. Slackers are rare. Despite American claims, most Europeans were not welfare leeches in the 1950-1980 period. Being a leech was always a shame. No European girl dreamed of getting married to a guy who lives in a 20m² flat given by the local authority. Despite European claims most Americans were not starving on the streets or sat in prison. In both continents most people were working in a decent job, paid their bills, had a healthy home and educated their children. There were exceptions, there were drunken welfare leeches in Europe and there were evicted families in America, but they were a small minority in the sea of happy middle class people.

The European system is outliving the American by 2-3 years not because it's better. It's outliving it exactly because of its flaw. Because there is welfare. Welfare is the system that holds the front end of the European system together. It is the machine that keeps the patient alive together with loans from China.

The American way was abandoned for the European in the last decades. At first by the bankers who started to "distribute the risks" in "structured financial products". The problem is not the way they did it. Distributing the risk is the very core of the European dream: the "lucky" and successful support the "unlucky" and the not-yet-successful.

The American way was abandoned by the US government with the bank saving fund, where the taxpayers (the successful people with money) "helped" the troubled banks (who were unsuccessful in making business).

Yet the American dream did not die in the last decades. I can even give you a date when it died: 11/26/1976.

On this they the next huge company was formed. It was the "next" in the sense that there were many other companies, that reached multi-billions of dollars after a start in a garage. Yet it was very different from the previous ones. The ones followed it were like it and not like the previous.

The American dream says, you could have been Andrew Carnegie or Henry Ford if you tried hard enough. You could collect your starting money as telegraph operator or machinist and build your business. Of course it is not exactly true, I'm sure Ford had something that 99.999% of the machinist did not. However it's unimportant as the point of a system is not to become billionare. It's to become a middle class man with decent income and you definitely could reach it as a machinist. The chance that anyone could be the next Ford was always a lie, but the reason for it remained obscure.

On 11/26/76 Bill Gates formed Microsoft, followed by several companies in the IT and biotech sector. Anyone could not only not be Bill Gates. Anyone can not even believe he could be without extraordinary scientific skills. It's obvious that one can grind the keyboard forever and not come up with the next world-changing software or the cure for cancer. While the observer saw nothing but hard work and "luck" at Ford, at Gates the "skill" factor is obvious.

Of course the point is not becoming billionare. The point is the decent life. While "luck" was a major factor for Ford, with hard work and no "luck" you could be a properly paid machinist in Ford's company. With only hard work you can only be a janitor in Microsoft.

In the ending decades of the last century the machines and computers reached the grade of development that they can do practically all non-creative work. Million-tons/year product industrial companies are handled by half dozen men, who are mostly sleeping as their job is to intervene in the case of emergency. The normal operation is completely run by computers. With 4-500 horsepower tractors a single farmer can grow food for thousands of men. A crew of a dozen can lead the largest transport ships across the sea.

This automatization shows no end. We can see room cleaning robots, combat robots, dog-walking robots on IT business conventions and they will be in our homes (and armies) in 10-20 years. They are already dominating the agriculture and heavy industry, pushing the vast majority of the population to the services area.

The economical cost of a human work is the opportunity cost of getting a machine that could do the same. That cost was $2-300/hour (if a machine was available at all) in the first half of the XX. century, $10-20/hour in the second half, in the $1-3/hour region now, and will reach $0.1-0.5/hour in a decade.

The loans did not became subprime overnight. Actually it's not the banks getting irresponsible. They are giving the same loans as 30 years ago. The difference is back then the same guy could repay them. Back then everyone could repay his loan if he was not a slacker.

Today to be able to pay your loans and bills you need to be not a slacker and not a moron. If you are not skilled, unable to do creative work, no matter how hard you grind, you'll be poor and powerless in the XXI. century (granted, still less poor than those who don't work at all).

The Chinese found the solution. It's a captain obvious class one: if your work worth $1/hour, you get $1/hour.

However this solution will not be implemented in the USA or Europe until other options are (or rather seem to be) available. The unskilled people will not accept $1/hour and will vote for welfare. That's why the American dream has died to the European. The short term outcome of the crisis is that welfare goes rampart.

Yet the problem of welfare remains. In Europe a single working person support 2.5-3.5 strangers, and with the layoffs the ratio is getting worse as we speak. The core of the European dream is getting help when needed and give when capable. Sharing the risks between equals. Getting the same on the long run as given. When it becomes obvious to the European worker that he just gives and gives with no hope to get anything back from the "less fortunate", this system will collapse the same way.

My guess is that the working people of the US and Europe and also the loaners from China give up hope that they will ever see the fruits of their actions in 2 years. They will not give more loan and cut back on taxed working. When it happens the GDP will drop 10-20% in that quarter. And slowly leak further 1-5%-s in the following quarters, until the governments are not forced to give up on welfare. What will happen when the vast hordes of M&S will no longer get their "well deserved" money? Well... I hope you liked the scourge event before WotLK.

I did.


PS: I'm not claiming that all blue-collar jobs are moronic. For example the plumbing of every house is different, so I doubt that any machine can take the job of the plumber who fix your leaking bathroom or create customized furniture. However people in repetitive, "grinding" jobs are out of luck.


PS2 for trolls: just because the Chinese implemented the "$1/hour for a $1/hour job", it doesn't mean they do other things right. I obviously don't support planned economy. The "wages must cover the expenses" can be implemented in free market systems. Just there must be a political will to handle the disgruntled M&S. China has it, as they break down every protest. Of course there can be democratic ways to handle the M&S (like the government doesn't act on its own, just gives homeowners help to defend their rightfully owned homes/shops from pillaging M&S, and homeowners can act only when the M&S try to illegally enter)

Can there be casual raiding?

The casual-HC issue is well-known to all MMOs. The very difference between the two is traditionally play time. In FPS or RTS games there are "good" and "bad" players and no one bothers to make definitions on play time.

The reason for that is simple. At the start of an FPS round everyone are equal in all aspects except skill. My shotgun is just as strong as the guys who is playing this game 6 hours/day since beta. All his advantages are in his reflexes, knowing the map and the "optimal shot rotation".

Games, even the most complicated ones are not rocket science. Someone can master a game in a couple of days to reach the 90% of "all that can be known". The remaining 10% are map-specific tricks (like shoot a grenade above the red house right next to the chimney and it will fall to a point where noobs like to camp) or mathematical theory-crafting needed to be faster by seconds than your opponent. This means that your power (= skill) is much more affected by your effort to learn these tricks than time spent playing the game. The "three months hard work in the lab can save you 2 hours reading in the library" is completely true in these cases.

However in MMOs your character is persistent, so everything you gather remain yours for the next round. Since there is no failure penalty, the worse case scenario in a playing session is that you gained nothing. Spending time playing, no matter how badly you do it, can not cause your character to become weaker.

Also, since raiding encounters are scripted, spending time learning them has an always-positive outcome. The monsters don't adapt, won't get smarter between battles, so every try brings you closer to the kill.

While it's still true that skill is much more important by both gear and boss-specific knowledge, these are not negligable factor either. The guy who just dinged lvl 80 with his main after 1 month playing, read EJ and has an enchanted blue gear still has higher DPS than the guy who plays since beta and dinged in January but haven't read EJ and has a collection of ilvl213-226 unenchanted gear with PvP and offspec pieces.

But the guy who read EJ and gems, enchants properly and playing 3hrs/day since January is significantly stronger.

To make a raid accessible to weaker players, it must have weaker enemies. However it has a fundamental problem. The raid that is challenging but doable to a player who raids once a week is also doable for bad HC players (socials). They have much more time to practice and much better gear to compensate for their mistakes. They also spend much more time online and mostly by socializing (surprise), so they will be much deeper in guild politics.

Also, exactly because they spend more time online more raid times are available for them. I mean if I want to raid once a week, on Friday evenings, I can raid with 1/7-th of the people who want to raid once a week. The other 6/7-th want to raid other days. However all socials can attend to my raid. So if I could organize a "casual raiding guild raiding once a week", most of my applicants would be not casuals but socials (mostly M&S), destroying my guild.

Good players will soon be fed up by the stupidity of the socials. While everyone make mistakes in raid, only M&S do the annoying ones like coming without consumables, in yellow-broken gear, going AFK or "DC" in the middle of something, making drama or littering the chat with "Megan Fox is so hot lol" class statements. The good players will either manage to get time for a more "serious" raiding guild or simply quit raiding.

One of my plans were to organize a 1 raid/week guild, but I've abandoned this idea because of the problems above. I'm in a special position because of this blog. I have thousands of random visitors and almost 3K subscribers. So it's possible that I could make a 1 raid/week guild, simply because I would have enough server transfers. However the experiment would have no value for the blog as only other highly visited blog's owners could use it. If an average person would start such a guild, failure would be guaranteed.

Being HC is not necessary to reach the skill/gear level where you can do the content. Blue Ulduar proved it without doubt. Being HC is necessary to reach the skill/gear level that the socials cannot reach even with 24/7 playing. Unless you've reached that level, your guild will be littered with M&S, frustrating your good members to the point of gquit.

I can imagine only one design trick to make casual raiding possible: limited time lockouts, like Algalon's. You can raid only 3 hours every week on a raid ID. It would have three positive effect:

• The good HC players would not disappear for you. They couldn't raid more either, so they can only join your guild (or a better, but still casual guild)
• The M&S cannot outplay the casuals. If you cannot get past Twin Valkyres, they won't be able to organize a PuG to continue, getting more experience and maybe enough good players to boost them.
• The "I don't play enough for this" (while he's online 40 hours/week), would be rejected by all. There would be no other explanation for different character power than different skill. The myth of the "casual" would be destroyed.