Cliques will form

Undergeared update: Frostheim of Warcraft hunter's union made an interview about us.

One of the most common problem that The PuG will suffer - according to critics - is forming of cliques. Since the raid leader is free to invite anyone to his raid, there is nothing to stop him from always inviting the same 10 people. These people practically disappear for "pugging" and the others either quit the guild as they can't get into the clique, or form their own clique and the guild will be nothing more than a bunch of closed cliques, formally functioning but completely against the set goals.

This was the one problem I was afraid of. I mean if I'm the raid leader, it's my personal interest to invite the best people available. The "leftover" people can form a "second best" raid. The best raid will down more bosses so will get more gear getting further from the second best raid. The only solution is that I artificially randomize my invites, making sure everyone gets a chance, like all good socialist would.

However the problem solved itself with Ruby Sanctum firstkill (world 3856, and we couldn't log in on Wednesday) . There was 18 lvl 80 online and I was a bit scared how can I form the group without either setting the foundation of an "elite clique" or excluding good players, making them rightfully angry and wiping because of the lack of them. Well, I could barely fill up the raid. We cleared the trash and the minibosses and did tries with only 2 healers, because the others did not come. One of our tanks have not been in ICC before RS (now he tanked LK pretty well). Some of those who did not come considered themselves undergeared, others were busy doing something. I assume there were some who did not want to wipe on a new boss and went VoA instead.

The word "clique" only has a meaning if it's exclusive-excluding. "Clique" is a group that does not invite you. For such non-invitation it is needed to have lot of people wanting the very same thing. However it's never the case. That's the reason why HC guilds need attendance rules at the first place: to force the members to go to a raid where/when they don't want to.

The plans of the player can be placed somewhere in the following list:

1. does not want to play at all (RL issue, bored with the game)
   
2. wants something random and light (daily HC, BG, AH)
3. wants an easy farm raid
4. wants a progression raid on a new boss/hard mode

Of course these are just milestones, there are all shades of gray between them like "let's make some tries on HM LDW, but if we wipe more than 6, just go normal". The guild stratification is based on the idea that players differ on this list, there are casuals around #2, there are "social raiding guilds" at #3 and there are HC guilds around #4.

While there are some truth in it, it ignores the fact that players change both on the long run (starts as casual but gets sucked into raiding, raids 6/7 but gets enough and want to scale back), and also on a daily basis (has a bad day and wants some easy fun, all set for some big score, has RL issues and doesn't want to play). These changes make attendance rules necessary. The guy who is usually #4, is forced to be #4 every raid day. Without this rule they would deviate from their "clique", destroying it.

In a "social raiding" guild, cliques are also escapes from the guild's restrictive rules. In such a guild the 25 man raid is usually boosting M&S in 6/12. The best 10 players form a "clique" to do 10 man LK tries where they are not forced to boost. It's their escape. The "clique", if defined as "group of friends" is the only legitimate escape for a social from the M&S. You can't say "I won't play with you because you are bad", this is "mean" and "not helpful". On the other hand you can say: "I'd like to hang out with my best of friends and you happen to be none of them". You obviously don't need such escape in The PuG.

There are no cliques in The PuG and theoretically cannot form. So you can join safely to the other 130 players. After reading the rules of course, because we still mean them.

Best selling glyphs

Since I exposed his dirty business, Markco is busy to somehow prove me wrong. He put obvious effort into his last attempt, which contains:

• good tricks that work, but not related to the pricing strategy, so a deep undercutter who uses it, will still beat the camper using it (best seller glyphs, post without cancel)
• outright lying about my method to make his competitive (claiming that I sell every glyphs for 5G, what I don't, currently I'm selling with 7G threshold, 20G fallback)
• reiterating the rock-paper-scissors relation of the three pricing methods and stating the obvious, that monopolist beats deep undercutter, not mentioning the risks and costs.
• random trolling about my person

For today, let's see the only part that what works in his post and should be adapted, the two tricks. The first is not selling all glyphs, only the best sellers. The point is simple: people don't buy all kind of glyphs and some glyphs cannot be sold due to being mass-produced by people leveling inscription. If you list such glyph, QA3 will search for it, post it, search for it, cancel it, you pick it up from the mailbox. For nothing. Even if it's below the threshold and you don't post it at all, QA3 will still search for it every posting cycle. It would be best to get rid of it. The tool to do it is beancounter:
Since I'm on Agamaggan, I post glyph of rake twice a day. That's about 40 cycles. Scanning it is about a second, posting and canceling 0.5, picking up is 1 more sec. So I spent 160 seconds of my life managing this glyph for 22*0.95-4=17G profit. That's 380G/hour, barely more than daily quest income. So glpyh of rake is not a best seller.

To filter out the bad sellers, pull every glyph in your bag to the item slot in the beancounter interface (where glyph of rake sits on this picture). If you see few sells, or if you see some but for minimal price, move them to another alt. Collect only the best sellers to one alt.

To save time, the not-good sellers should never be canceled-reposted. Just post them when they expire. They may sell, and just by being there stop campers from listing their stuff at 100G and selling two in a month, keeping them on the glpyh market. Don't forget to check beancounter about once a month, you might see some glyphs starting selling. I'd strongly discourage ignoring the bad sellers. If I just post glyph of rake once in two days, never cancel just let expire, my time investment will be 2.5*20=50 secs, making that 17G profit 1200G/hour.


The other good trick in the post is posting without canceling. Imagine that you post for 20G, the camper posts for 19.9999. You cancel your glyph and post it for 18.9999 with 1G undercut. In the cycle you have a scan for cancels, the actual cancels, picking out the glyphs from the mailbox and the posting. However if you just post, your old glyph (for 20G) is still in the AH, and the new ones too. If the camper undercuts you again, you just post more. It's not only saving cancel time, but also make the life of the monopolists harder. If he wants to force a price reset, he must buy up not just your most recent glyphs, but the old ones too.

One thing to keep in mind is you need much higher stockpile. I post twice a day, so if I don't cancel, and got undercut all occasions, I can have 4 batch of glyphs in the AH before the last one expires (48 hours). So if I post them by twos, I must fill my stocks to 10/type. The other thing to keep in mind is to run a cancel before you'd craft or you can end up more than 20 glyphs and they will take 2 slots.


A few words about the rock-paper-scissors: While I obviously don't sell for 5G, deep undercutting demands limiting your price. If I have a fallback price of 20, someone can buy me out and repost for 50G. He made 30G profit, I made 16 (4G is the ink price). In that case he won more than I did. However if there are 2 campers around, then one of them will sell the glyph for 50G, the other sells nothing. If we assume that they are equally good, it's 50-50% who sells. So in half of the cases the guy who bought me out got 30G profit, in half of the cases he gets 16G loss (not 20, since he has the glyph that would cost 4G to craft). The average profit is 7G. Ouch. If there are 3 campers, he has 1/3 chance for 30G profit and 2/3 chance for 16G loss. -0.66G profit. Even if we assume I was selling for my min price, 7G:

• 1 camper: 43G profit
• 2 campers: 1/2 chance for 43G profit, 1/2 chance for 3G loss: 20G profit on average
  
• 3 campers: 1/3 chance for 43G profit, 2/3 chance for 3G loss: 12.3G profit on average
• 4 campers: 1/4 chance for 43G profit, 3/4 chance for 3G loss: 8.5G profit on average
• 5 campers: 1/4 chance for 43G profit, 4/5 chance for 3G loss: 6.2G profit on average

One must ask: what is better? 3G profit for logging in twice a day in my own scheduled time spending 15-15 mins there AFK or 6-12G profit for camping the AH all day. There is a reason why monopolist strategy is called "monopolist": it works only if you are the only serious player in the AH.

But there is a better reason why you should never buy a glyph for resale (unless it's below ink price of course). To have the mentioned profit, the glyph must sell. The reason for no sale can be undercut or simply low demand. Most people already have their glyphs and the summer decreases player activity. Imagine that you have monopoly (no other campers), but only 3 glyphs are bought by users a day of a type. I post 2, 2 times a day. So you must buy 4. You paid 80G for it, and get 150G income instead of 200. Also, when I'm collecting mail and crafting, I notice that my glyphs are sold. I will assume that players are buying it and increase my craft/post quota. If I sell 2 x 3 a day, you have to spend 120G to buy me out, but you still just have 150G income, 30G profit/day while I have 16*6 = 96G. I guess you can figure out the next step: believing that users buying my stuff, I increase my crafting even more, selling 2 x 4, that would cost you 160G to buy out. Of course on a high population server the numbers are higher, but the problem is the same. As deep undercutter I'm happy to work for the price I set. So if you buy me out, I'm happy and encouraged to work more, crafting and selling more, finally reaching the point where you can't buy out the legions of glyphs I'm pouring into the AH (cluelessly believing they are sold to users).

Read the post of Gnome of Zurich about the topic too.

PS: I did not comment on Markco's blog, some troll did that.

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The PuG update: We are in second remorseless winter, with several people who seen LK the first time. If you want to be there when he goes down, join!

Experience kills bosses

This form of naysaying is more advanced than the "u need 5.8K gs to do naxx lol". It claims that gear is merely a signal for "experience". "Experience" is not the same as "skill". "Skill" is something you have or have not. Experience is something that no one has at the start and gather with time. The basic idea is the same: "no one is responsible for his results, they are subjects to things out of our control". This is "play time" in an MMO. The social myth says time makes you successful player, not effort or brain.

These people use to claim "you just kill bosses in blues because you have killed them lot of times with your mains". For them, we send these lovely postcard:
We started with 9 people (damn soccer championship), and just when the 10th man arrived other had to leave. Half an hour later he could return and finally we could raid normally. Yet we killed 2 bosses in Ruby Sanctum, the latest raid instance, on the first week. It took 11 tries, but Baltharus the Warborn, the slayer of "LFM RS 5.8K+ or no inv" pugs was (were?) on the ground. It needed lot of thinking. Their DPS is equal to Festergut with 2 inhale. There are 2 of them and they are going to live for 2 mins, so don't even dream of cooldowns. Finally I sent every living body with healer offspec to heal and killed him with 2 tanks, 5 healers, 3 DPS. The other dragon was 2-shotted.

Again: in the first week, without more than 1 kill experience for everyone, in the most unnerfed state of the most recent raid instance, Undergeared, the 3300GS blue-only guild killed 2 bosses from 4. And we had only half raid time, since we were 9-manning the first half. We lacked warrior or warlock for +HP (and stance-dance for the third boss).

Next week: Halion will hit the ground. Soon the naysayers will have no ground left. The "experience" is a myth. It's true that your skill increases over time. However the time needed is not 7 raids a week for months. It's only a few wipes long, barely more than an hour. Everyone has the time to kill bosses and everyone has the gear. People just lack skill, or the ability to leave their M&S "friends".

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The PuG update: after I went to sleep, the others continued ICC. So there are other raid leaders, unlike in normal guilds the raids are not in the hands of a few choosen. You can also be raid leader! Join!

We all make mistakes right?

After I mentioned the "300G to pot" penalty to those who wipe us with stupid a mistake, heated discussion started. Most people called it completely wrong to fine people for mistakes as we "all make mistakes".

I guess the "we all make mistakes" is one of the major points in the socialist philosophy, that is based on the core idea that one is not responsible for his own actions and the "heplfull ppl" shall save him from its consequences. Like all socialist nonsense, it has a true core: we indeed all make mistakes. However these mistakes differ in severity and frequency.

As there is no free lunch, also there is no mistake without penalty. We can only decide who pays the penalty. For example if a raid wipes, the time of the try + runin is lost, along with consumables and repair costs. Someone must pay it. The socialist answer is to pay it equally. The guy who froze 5 others at Sindy lost just as much time and paid just as much repair cost as the other one who did everything fine. So on average you pay as much for mistakes as much mistakes the average groupmember makes. This system rewards those who make mistakes more than the average and penalize those who make less. It's no surprise, it's a running theme among socialists systems.

Since paying penalty for mistakes (-50 DKP) is rare even among HC guilds, I guess this system is not just supported by mistake-making M&S. It's also supported by good people who way overestimate their mistake rate (it's common among good performers to focus on their own mistakes) and also among people who want to be positively judged by peers. The idea of being penalized front of peers in unbearable for them, even if it's much less frequent than it is for an average guy.


To see it why it works in The PuG (people are keep signing up and keep being active despite the chance of being penalized) we must see both the implementation and the different mindset of the players:

• Only qualitative mistakes are penalized. You freeze people in Sindy P3 or do not, you kite the ooze to the ooze tank or do not, you got cleaved by Marrowgar or do not. The mistake is obviously done. On the other hand "bit low DPS" or "got few stacks of this or that" are not.
  
• Only personal mistakes are penalized. Only you can run to the zombies in LK P1, but many people can dispel. If you danced in the middle of the raid with plague, you pay penalty. If one dies among the zombies, the dispel meter is posted and all dispel-capable people are asked to focus on dispel instead of other jobs. If always the same guy is at bottom, he will be replaced but not penalized. The point is that you can penalize what someone can but did not do (because of slacking, negligence or bad priorities). If someone can't, no penalty can fix that. He must be replaced. He can come when he practiced. It applies also to "permanently low DPS".
  
• Mistakes are only penalized when they matter. The penalty is compensation to the others for the damage you caused and not something arbitrary. So the raid must wipe because of the mistake.
  
• Mistakes are only penalized when they stand out from the average performance. If half the raid did something stupid (typical while learning a new boss), it's no point to penalize. The reason is that the damage is the same. The innocent guy don't have 5x higher repair cost just because 5 people failed. On the other hand administering 5x 60G takes too much time.

The most important thing is to recognize is if you don't penalize mistakes officially, it will be done unofficially. People are not happy to suffer losses because of others. In social guilds they are forced and they leave. In HC guilds one of the main reasons for high attendance requirement is to have a group where no one make mistakes. The cost is of course being forced to play and excluding possible good players.

Penalizing the mistakes officially is one of the key features that allow The PuG to accept new players. The experienced ones have no reason to reject playing with new ones as they either perform well, or will pay compensation. While you can claim that it's unwelcoming to new players, it's not, since after they don't make stupid mistake, they get bosskills easier as the others can carry them a bit, can make up for a bit of low performance.

I almost forgot the "different mindset" part. Since the social behavior is banned in The PuG, people are not focused on their "reputation" or "good peer opinion". So 300G penalty is 300G for them and not "300G + publicly humiliated front of peers who will think I'm a n00b".

I forgot to mention (considered it obvious) but a commenter emphasized it, so I write it down: paying the 300G makes the error "forgiven", it will no longer be mentioned or serve as a basis of later decisions. It removes the fear that if you mess up something today, you won't be invited "as n00b" two months later. Every raid starts with a blank page. It even applies to replaced players. I always assume that they practiced/read up after removed and now they are ready for the task. If not, well, I can fine/replace them again. No one is permanently replaced. You get chances again and again, exactly because if you fail, you only harm yourself by paying and by being saved to an ID and replaced.

If you like how The PuG is organized, join! We are 120, Sindy and Halion down. Note: declaring the 300G is the right of the raid leader. And your right is to not raid with an unjust leader.

"We are still rolling" fallacy

It's a kind of sunk cost fallacy, but not the same. I fell for it in the unlucky Ulduar run. You have a plan, a goal. Mine were clearing U25 including several hardmodes including firefighter. We invited the people at 18:30. We were 7. Ouch. 7 is far from 25. Yet the people started coming from trade chat, one every 1-2 minutes. With this ratio we could fill the raid by 19:20. 50 minutes idling in Dalaran, inspecting people, handling "lol im imba" people with empty/terrible gems and enchants. But, as I told, every 1-2 minutes we found an acceptable.

We went in. The RL talked to the wrong NPC, no FL+towers. Mistakes happen. We could leave and reform the raid as not saved, but hey, we already killed the trash. FL down, go to Ignis. People with terrible DPS, some died in fire patches. Do they have any chance to do firefighter? But hey, we killed a boss! Razorscale similar, go to XT. Heartbraker lost due to low DPS, but he died, and no one left, we are still rolling, right? Someone pulled trash and 2/3 raid died. Is it OK to ninjapull and almost wipe to old content trash? Of course not, but hey, we are still rolling! We didn't even attempt Steelbraker, the Assembly of iron is down in normal mode with 8 alive. But they are down, we are still rolling!

You see the running theme here: "we are still rolling". It is accepting (and continuing on having) unacceptably low positive results just because "giving up" is bad. The "quitter", the "guy who gives up" is a bad social mark. People respect the guy who keeps on going.

Did we still roll? Yes we did. We hit no brick wall. Every guild that did Ulduar hard modes did it first in normals. People need practice. Every boss we kill increase the overall knowledge of the people about Ulduar, increasing the chance of success next time. We did progress towards our goal!

The problem is that with that speed we'll do firefighter later than Sindy HM. The speed of our progression was very slow. Yet the fact that we are getting achievements (both as silly spam as in the real sense), kept us moving forward. If I wrote a sentimental post about it, we could even come out with positive reflections as "the guys who did not give up and finally succeeded". Except it would be a damn lie. We would be "the guys who spent 2 months in Ulduar when ICC has 25%". Our progress rate was damn low and we should have abandoned it. The "sry g2g" retards were smarter than us.

The big difference between "sunk cost" and "still rolling" fallacies is that the latter case the project itself is not lost, the current way is lost. You can find a new, more effective way. For example U25 can be done if we wait until enough lowbies grow up. They will be "undergeared" (still better geared than anyone was when I did hard modes with Windwalkers), but they won't be attracted to void zones like flies to a dungheap. Or we can run 10 man first, and plan every 25 man fight using the trade chat trash simply as power multiplier: "And you 10 always stack on the diamond and do what he does, you 3 spam heal on the raid".

You must analyze not just the success chance of the project, but its speed also. It's often worth to abandon and start over. Don't let the peer pressure make you "the guy who don't give up". The "stupid kiddie leaver" who "DC"-ed after the first Ayu wipe was doing something happy when we were 8-manning Hodir.

Time is money friend!


PS: the local M&S keep on giving us good laugh: