Comparative advantage

Tobold reminded me of this economic law. It's an interesting topic to write about, mostly because it says that every people on the World (no matter how weak he is) has a place under the Sun as worker (and not as welfare leech).

Imagine 2 players, one is a lvl 10-something, the other is a max level. For simplification both are miners and low level BS, leveling it. Their goldmaking options are doing (daily) quests and mining. They need gold for various reasons and copper ores to level BS.

The max level guy can get 300G/hour doing dailies. The lowbie can make 1G/hour doing quests. The max level guy can farm 5 stacks of copper ore an hour, while the lowbie can farm only 2 since he has no mount and monsters aggro on him. The max level guy is better in everything, so he is better of ignoring the lowbie right?

Wrong! Their goldmaking ratio is 1:300 while their copper making ratio is 2:5. Unless the two ratios are equal, there is place for trade. If they both farm 1 hour copper and 1 hour gold:

• Lowbie: 2 stacks of ore, 1 G
• Top lvl: 5 stacks of ore, 300G
• All together: 7 stacks of ore, 301G
  

If the lowbie farm ore 2 hours, while the top level guy farms 0.8 hours ore, 1.2 hours gold and they exchange 2 stacks of ore for 60G:

• Lowbie: 2 stacks of ore, 60G
• Top lvl: 6 stacks of ore, 300G
• All together: 8 stacks of ore, 360G

They are both better off with trade than without! The trick is that the weaker guy should focus on the task he sucks less in. Of course they don't have to make agreements in a well-oiled economy, as the AH and the market price will handle the situation. There is a price for the ore. Let's say it's 2G/ore. Then they have to think: what is better? 1G or 2*20*2=80G? Obviously the latter, so the lowbie is better off farming ores and selling them for gold. What is better? 300G or 5*20*2 = 200G? The former, so the top level is better off farming gold and buying ores.

Whoa! The invisible hand gives income to even the weakest, everyone are happy, right? If people would be rational, than they would be. However they are social. The lowbie is not happy that due to the existence of the top level he makes 80G instead of 1. He is envious because he makes 80G and the other guy makes 300. So due to inequity-aversion the weak refuses to work, despite he will suffer more due to the lack of cooperation. Luckily in WoW a lowbie can level to top pretty easily. In real world, he remains a poor and bitter M&S demanding welfare and babbling about the injustice of the World.

The Fall of Naxxramas

Geshtalt, a paladin in The PuG organized a Naxx10 run for Tuesday, directly for new members like himself. While I obviously needed nothing there, I wanted to see how it goes. And it went flawlessly, despite 4 people were recruited from trade.

A nasty storm came and at the end of the second wing, right before Loatheb I had a power outage. But it definitely did not stop this crew and cleared all Naxx.

Well clearing Naxx is not a big feat, right? Why do I post about it? Because it's definitely more interesting than farming heroics. Gesthalt gained 3 ilvl200 epics to tanks spec and a DPS trinket on the run, on the top of a dozens of triump badges and about 150 achievement points. The participants definitely had more fun than killing Keristrassa 3 more times.

However "interesting" or "fun" are not objective criteria. People prefer Keristrassa-farming over Naxx because of two reasons: it's much easier (Heigan can still wipe a raid) and because in social guilds and /trade pugs you need gearscore, and Naxx doesn't give more. Let me explain it. Gesthalt have 4160 gearscore. This makes him the "lol noob" in the eyes of /trade pug leaders and "you, like we all need more gear" in the eyes of social guilds. Replacing his former leveling blue helmet into the T7 bought him no further to raiding, so it is complete waste of time if you are in a social guild. Unless it's ilvl 245 at least, it's worthless since it does not give enough GS. So people only farm badges in 5-mans, as the gear (even the 232) is "lol low GS".

However in ThePuG, I would gladly take him to an ICC raid as tank (not to hardmode or Sindy/LK but to 10/12 anytime). Not because I'm nice and friendly but because the gems, enchants and the performance I saw in Naxx proves he can tank BQL, Putri and the abomination worms. In ThePuG replacing your leveling gear to a gemmed-enchanted T7 gets you an ICC spot. Naxx give lot more ilvl 200 epics than normal 5-mans.

And when said low gear or lack of achievements are not a problem as long as you can do your job I meant that way: Check the 4700GS Kortner, who was present in the mentioned Naxx. He did not even have Storming the citadel.
By the way I'm missing from the list since I don't see my own achievement spammed, and Jinchu because he was a replacement after Marrowgar was killed. Oh, and we also 2 shotted Blood Princes HM, placing us to the #24561 position among guilds, out of 61400 guilds. That's better than 61% of the guilds and there are many players who are not in a guild or his guild does not raid, so the base is much bigger. I would dare to guess we are in the top 20% already, despite the guild is just 1.5 months old.

Of course we are permanently recruiting, if you'd like to raid where no one wants you to boost retards, obey attendance rules or farm 5.5K GS before you get an inv, to ToC normal, join! (Of course, only if you can live by the rules).

Blood elf porn

On Monday Tobold posted a poll to know what his readers like the most. He got 52 comments at the point when I'm writing this. Somehow (I can't imagine how) 37 (75%) of the commenters demanded blood elf porn (or discussed why people demand it).

This is a landslide victory for the topic, so unless Tobold openly disrespect his readers, and ignore their almost unanimous choice, his site from now on will be a rich source of blood elf adult material.

Or maybe not. At first, 52 commenters are around 1% of his readerbase (guessed from mine and subscriber numbers), so it's a vocal minority at best, and definitely not the will of the masses. It is the same like the official WoW forums. When 5 topics with 10+ pages demand something (usually to nerf paladins), it looks like an urgent situation, but it's not.

Secondly the poll was obviously trolled. People just for the sake of fun went there and commented some obvious nonsense. It cost them nothing. They did not have to put their money where their mouth is, the comment did not cost them more than 1 min of their time, they did not have to back their decision with their reputation and so on. So they could not care less about the whole poll and gave some silly idea.

While blood elf porn was obvious trolling, the same could have happen with more "legitimate" answers. How about someone posts on a Darkfall forum to rally Darkfall-fans to go comment on Tobold's blog "write more about Darkfall". A developer of a new MMO can create 30 aliases with 1 hour work to ask for a review on his own game. Someone who doesn't like Tobold, can post several times to make Tobold focus on a topic what is the least interesting, just to harm his blog.

Opinions of random people are useless. Asking for them is social to it's very end: "do you like my blog"? And for that question there is a much better metric than asking opinions: check the visitor numbers, as visitors have to put their time (=money) where their mouth is.

Why have comment section at all if the opinions of people is worthless? Because they can give more than that. They can give data and analysis (logical conclusions). Both are easy to verify, hard to find/create. So by giving them an opportunity to give these to me, I become more rich (information = money). So by having comment section, you can get lot of value. Subjective opinion is just trash. Of course I'm not telling to delete all of these, simply because you alienate the commenters. People love to share their opinion, telling them "I can't care less" can make them no longer comment their data/analysis. So reading their opinion is a price you pay for getting their valuable content.

What is the distinction between "legitimate opinion" and "mindless trolling" then? Actually not the worth of the opinion itself. It's the approximated future contribution. "I liked this post because I have similar feelings while raiding" is just as wortless as "lol this suxx u fail and hav a blog cos its the only thing u can do". If I'd be sure that I'll never see these people again, I'd delete both. However there is a chance that they will come back and post further content. There is hope that the next post of the former guy will be useful for me. There is no hope that the second will ever posts anything of value. So I delete his comment as alienating him will not harm me.

As a bottom line, while subjective opinions are worthless on their own, we shall tolerate them to keep the author, because he might post something of value later. But asking for opinions is just silly.

Clarification:

• Data: something directly observable like "shamans have wind shear".
• Analysis: logical conclusions based on data, sometimes directly observable but (assuming the data is verified) they can be verified simply by checking the logic like "shamans can interrupt LDW frostbolt (as it is interruptible and shamans have interrupt)
• Opinion: something without data and logic or without referencing the data and the logic like "shamans are OP" (pointless emotional opinion) or "the best hunter spec is MM" (true, but unverifiable as lack references)
  

4 bags

Tailoring is my long time favorite for making gold. The weekly income is lower than with inscription or JC, but the G/hour is unmatched. No, I'm not talking about netherweave bags. That's a nasty grind, you buy lot of cloth for 4-5G, craft bolt of cloth, then buy thread and craft the bag just to sell for 8-9G. No thanks.

You can also sell spellthreads, but every living body are doing so. Frostweave bags sell below material price as it's used for leveling the profession.

However they removed CD for crafting special cloths: spellweave, moonshroud, ebonweave. They can be used for crafting epic items and special bags: abyssal, emerald, mysterious and glacial (this has 7 days CD)

They sell for 2-300G. Their material cost is 100-150G and they sell well. I always have 1-1 listed and surprisingly I have little competition. However you shall sell the cloths too, to people who are smart enough to get materials and find crafter or want the epic items.

The trick is that you get the cloths way before material price. You can specialize in one of the cloths so you get 2 for every cast, halving the material costs (imbued frostweave and 2 eternal somethings). You mass-craft several stacks of cloths and re-specialize. Changing spec costs 170G, so if you crafted 80 cloths, the specialization costs 2G/cloth. 2G is much-much less than half of the price of the cloth. The most expensive is spellweave, because eternal fire is about 25G, so a cloth for an unspecialized tailor costs 60G, but only 30 for a specialized. Of course if frozen orb is cheaper, you shall buy that and visit Frozo.

The 4 bags are also great to max out your tailoring while making money. That makes tailoring a very effective moneymaking profession to newly leveled characters changing their gathering professions to crafting:

1. At slvl 350 you can start making bolt of frostweave cloth. You'll need a lot, so craft several stacks of bolts, bringing you to slvl 375, grey.
2. Frostwoven belt brings you 380 until yellow
3. Frostwoven boots become yellow at 385
4. Frostwoven cowl yellow at 390 but you should go up to 395 (maybe 1-2 non-skillup)
5. Duskweave belt up to 400
6. Lot of bolt of imbued frostweave greys out at 405
7. Duskweave wristwraps until 410
8. Duskweave gloves until 415
9. At 415 you can learn the 3 speciality cloths. Specialize in one and mass-craft at least 4 stacks of cloths. If you are low on money, do it with the cheapest: ebonweave. Money saved: 40*(10+6*2)-170=710.
   
10. Respecialize to the other cloth and craft another 4 stacks (preferred moonshroud). Money saved: 40*(10+20*1)-170=1830G
    
11. Respecialize and craft a few of the last one (preferred spellweave). This process will bring you to slvl 435.
12. Craft 3-4 some abyssal bags and 3-4 Emerald bags, getting above 440
13. Craft 3-4 mysterious bags getting above 445
14. Craft your first Glacial bag
15. List a few of all cloths and bags
16. Collect gold
    

Of course there is more in tailoring, but that's a cataclysm-speculating and I'm no longer posting speculation tricks.

Fall of the social king

It is done. The PuG, the no-attendance, no-vent, no-DKP, no-social chit-chat guild has completed the normal mode WotLK content.

Of course it does not make us a topguild. But it places us above the friendly social guilds.
It does not fully prove the magic skill. But it's going that way.

This little list disproves the claim that the guild just attract pro people reading the blog. Only one person is missing from this list (besides me since I don't see my own achievement on the guild chat). So 9 out of 10 killed LK the first time. Also, Zangief did not get the achievement for ICC. He is missing 5 bosses, having lot of 232 and 245 items. It did not stop us taking him, nor it stopped him from doing his job. We mean the "no achie and gearscore" invitation rule.

If you have not yet killed the LK with your "friends", he, Halion and all the others like ToGC, Ulduar-drake, Undying, Sarth+3 are just a transfer/reroll away. Join The PuG!

Note to "trade chat pugs kill LK lol" trolls.

PS: the last evildoing of the LK was dropping the same mace twice, both sold for minbid.

PS2: Tobold wants to post about blood elf porn (he already posted a link!!!), just needs a little push! Comment "u need 2 post belf porn lol" on his poll to prove that asking random people what to write on your own blog is a very bad idea.