Business report before Cataclysm

I know that Cataclysm is here, it was activated in Europe 7 hours before this post was aired. Yet I cannot tell any Cataclysm experience yet, simply because I'm either asleep or just woke up and started playing. So here is my last prepared posts, my business report before Cataclysm.

I'm playing with one char only (+bankalts) with inscription and tailoring professions. The character was created on February 24, 2010 for the ganking project on Maghteridon-EU and was transferred to Agamaggan-EU for The PuG. I'm planning to play this char only from now. I leveled as miner/scribe, selling glyphs for 7G threshold/20G fallback and mining nods while questing. After transferring to Agamaggan and getting more PvE focus, I dropped mining and leveled tailoring.

Before 4.0.1 my income sources were glyphs and top bags like 32 slot herbalism, enchanting ones and the 22 slot general bags. I was also selling moonshroud, ebonweave, spellweave, produced with specialty that I swiched after stocking up. I also sold random stuff I bumped into casually. Before 4.0.1 I had 68K cash, 10K inks (about 50K G back then), 3K prepared glyphs (30K G) and also 20 box of netherweave cloth (2K) and 5 boxes of imbued frostweave cloth (12K).

The glyph harvest was the pinnacle of my goldmaking. Between 4.0.1 and Cataclysm I collected 183K gold selling glyphs for 25G threshold, 45G fallback. I also spent 45K gold on buying new herbs, trying to keep my ink stocks high with limited success, I have 1400 Ink of the seas and 600 other inks, some kinds are dangerously low. So the grand total is:
I'm planning to keep listing glyphs twice a day via alts and craft glyphs once-twice a week, but not planning to buy herbs and mill, unless I have downtime. Currently I do not expect huge glyph demand after Cataclysm as there are no slvl450+ glyphs (besides Colossus Smash), so everyone could buy his glyphs already, except for new worgens.

My No1 Cataclysm goldmaking plan is selling bags. I've stockpiled 10K bolt of netherweave cloth and 2K bolt of imbued frostweave to craft 16 and 20 slot bags. I already crafted lot of bags and placed them at a dedicated alt who will list them twice a day. I'm also planning to craft more, as they can be AFK-crafted while eating, doing errands or blog business.

I'm not planning to level either inscription or tailoring fanatically as I believe the cost of materials will be too high, and they are better used by selling them to wannabe real firsts. I believe I'll reach slvl 500 in a week or more. While some items (inscription relics, offhands, crafted PvP cloth) can have serious demand, I'm uncertain about the supply, especially sitting in a goblinish guild.

Since I'll strictly level with my girlfriend, some downtime is possible when she can't/don't want to play, as quests are phased and railed, so if I play alone, we can't play together later. In these times I'll level professions, start Archeology, craft, examine the market and do blog stuff.

I sent all my gold to my main, so all alts start with an empty purse, making it easy to keep track of their incomes. Tomorrow I'll report my first day business results, with maybe some PuG info.

Current state of The PuG

As you most probably know, by posting the guild rules, on June 17 2010 I announced my new and final project The PuG. It is a guild based on completely asocial and business ideas:

• Social chit-chat is forbidden
• Asking for free boost, free crafting, cheap mats and other forms of "selfless help" are forbidden
• Gear is distributed with gold bid
• Anyone can form and join any raids

Despite the late start and lot of re-rollers, we did 8/12 ICC10 HM, 9/12 ICC25, RS10 on first week. Raiding has seriously decreased after 4.0.1 as the new talents de-valued any kind of achievements and gear was no longer needed. The "boosters gold" system works as a charm, allowing new members fast gearing up while motivating more geared members to join.

The PuG has and always had a busy LFM activity for low level and heroic dungeons, saving our members from having to play with arthasdklol, suffering his chat while carrying his 800 DPS butt. During leveling and later gearing this activity will be very much used. We could also fill lower level raids like Ulduar drake run and such.

We have a pretty good tank-healer-DPS ratio, actually we often lacked DPS in raids, because the rules keep the mostly DPS-playing M&S out. Tanking and healing are immersive and entertaining activities, and many player would happily do it. I don't think there are too few tanks and healers among good players. The statistics are screwed by the swarm of M&S who can only fill the zero-responsibility DPS role so they do that. Keeping them out solves the problem naturally. Also, "wherz my hil lol" and "gogogogog" are unknown to our guild, making it a pleasant place for tanks and healers, allowing us to continue to recruit DPS, unlike the "social raiding guilds" that are permanently full on these roles.

The no-chit-chat rule keep any kind of racist, sexist or homophobic filth out of the official chats, making the guild a pretty good place for female players. This is an unforeseen positive event, I did not expect so many females in the guild, but happy to see them.

Currently we have 149 players (since alts are not allowed, 1 player = 1 character), everyone logged in the last month (as 1 month inactives are kicked), only 11 of them have not logged in 20 days, and 24 between 10-20 days. Most of the members are active every day, despite the pre-expansion blues. In the last week about 20 players joined or re-joined. There are usually 15-20 players online in prime times without any planned events and 5-10 off-times. Such activity and size guarantees fast guild leveling. The median achievement point count is 1800, meaning that most players here don't really focus on fluff and/or new characters rolled exactly for this guild.

Our presence have stabilized the previously pretty starved economy of the server. Now the auction count is around 10K instead of 4-5 and every field are covered. You can buy anything and everything. The same obviously applies to selling, lot of our members are swimming in gold, making the gold-bid raids very profitable (usually 1.5+K pot).

Our focus after 4.0.1 was Wintergrasp and we look forward to Tol Barad and rated battlegrounds. Wintergrasp on our server used to be horde dominion with 20% alliance victories. We elevated it to 25-30 while playing casually, to 40% when we used the addon WGClean to discipline M&S. After the 1:1 ratio was introduced and our members provide 1/3-1/2 of the alliance team, our win rate elevated to 70%. We expect similar results in Tol Barad.

As a personal note: for the first time in my WoW carrier I feel home and in a place where I don't have to either wear the mask of a "freindly heplfull peep" and constantly be disgusted by lolling M&S or raid according to the management's schedule. I can access any content I want without restrictions and find group to do such activities. I play when I want, the way I want.


PS: I hesitated to write this to a summary post, because it is "original research" but it's so important (if true) that it must be mentioned. I noticed that in prime times we don't only win Wintergrasp, we obliterate the horde, despite this time our members give a smaller percentage of the alliance and we have several catapult-lollers. There are hordies who gained reputation for being good PvP-ers, and they are absent from peak hour battles and when I chatted them, they told they were not allowed to enter. The early afternoon battles are more balanced. In total off-hours the horde often wins. I was curious so I went to bed early in the weekend and "participated" in the battles around 5 AM. Except I did not get in (for some reason in off-hours there are more alliance in the server, despite huge horde population on peak hours). The alliance was represented by utter morons who lost terribly. I never got in the battle when the alliance side had less players, the same was reported by other guildies. Then I checked the achievements of the ones who got in and they all had very few WG wins. It is possible that the WG (and Tol Barad) the queue is not random, but favors the less frequent players "to give everyone a chance". It means that in peak hours the experienced players of the more populated side can't get in as the "queue" favors the new players and the M&S, providing devastating victories to the less populated side.

PS2: Goblinish tip for wannabe realm first lvl 85s! If you are on a PvP server, pay huge bounty to players to gank opposing side high level players. Today spam /trade: looking for gankers, who help me level, paying 10K G for 2 hours fun job, whisper me at 11:30 PM. Then organize them to 2 groups and send them out to Hyjal and Vashij'ir to gank those who would level fast.

Cataclysm blogging plan

This post is for fellow bloggers and myself. When the Cataclysm will arrive, we will play WoW. Which means less time for other stuff like blogging. However we like blogging and/or have a purpose with it. Blogging is unlike many hobbies, you can't just do it for some weeks than forget it completely for a month like you can do with DVD movies or playing Civ V. Blogging is not just writing texts for a folder in our computer. You write to a target audience and you receive feedback in form of analytics data, comments, posts of other bloggers. If you just go silent, they leave and may never come back.

To keep them it is important to keep on blogging during periods when you have other issues. When you go to vacation, having a batch of canned posts work. But now, when Cataclysm comes, readers also have less time and less likely to care about your thoughts of female-male ratio of horde leaders or the imperfectness of the zero-sum DKP loot system. They want recent Cataclysm content that helps them in their adventure. Of course it does not mean that you have to change into MMO Champion, or simply post official patch notes. The readers have chosen your blog for your main focus. So make a plan that keeps you posting relevant information.

My plan is:

• Monday morning: Current state of The PuG and WotLK experiences
• Tuesday morning: Current state of my business and a recap of the 4.0.x adventures. I can't post Cata info as I have not yet played Cata when the post goes live. I also discuss my Cataclysm investment plans.
  
• After that: every day (maybe even Sat-Sun) business posts, The PuG related info.
  

Make a plan and announce it, helping you keeping to it. There will be lot of new things trying to distract you. If you really can't keep blogging, announce that. If you set a date of return, the readers have better chance to believe you and expect your return than if you just go silent.

Who will feed the rated BGs?

Pugnacious priest made me think. Did Blizzard plan the rated BG system properly? The FAQ says that you get conquest points when you win. So you don't get rewarded for losing. Giving out rewards for losing is a simple way to keep the system running: people sign up just to lose. Please note that this was the situation for Arenas too: you could gain arena points by simply having 10 matches played. When you answered a "LF partner for 10 matches" you knew you are not going to win, but for 30 mins play you'll get 2-300 arena points.

I'm fully aware that a ladder system gives 50% wins to everyone on the long run. Some will win half of their matches at 300 rating while others will do the same on 3000. The question is: will the system has a long run? Will there be enough players for the ladder to form? Let me explain: when the system starts, everyone has the same matchmaking rating (MMR). If team X belongs to the lowest 10% (someone has to), then they have 10% chance to get matched against another lowest 10% team. So they have 5% chance to win, resulting in loss after loss. In the long run, it's not a problem. By losing, their MMR decreases, while those who defeat them get their MMR elevated, decreasing the chance of being matched again. When everyone reaches their proper MMR, team X will be only matched against similar low-10% teams, getting 50% wins.

I did not see this a problem until the post of Pugnacious Priest. She wrote about demoralizing defeats as a strategy. To win by wiping the enemy to make them go AFK or "let's lose fast". The first weeks can have the same effect. What if team X won't play 100 matches until their MMR lowers properly? What if they quit after losing 10 in a row? Then those teams that had a chance against them lose on the opportunity to win, getting a stronger team next match. They will leave too. This cycle of leaving stops only at teams that PvP seriously and ready to lose as lot claiming "we must work hard and get lot of experience before we deserve a victory". However this will mean that even the weakest teams in rated BGs will be pretty good. So when a new team joins the rated BG system, they get obliterated, quiting.

What the rated BG system lacks (and arena system had) is a reliable bottom-feeder. When you started arenas as a newbie, you were not only tempted by the "arena points for 10 loss", but you were matched against "LF partner for 10 matches" teams. No matter how hard you sucked, you were not obliterated as you were facing non-cooperating "teams" who queued up expecting 10 losses. If you were a bit better than them, like having a real team, having some gear, gems, enchants, knowing the basics of your class, you could get to the 1200-1500 rating range. You never had the feeling of "I'm just fodder here" as no matter how bad you played today, you couldn't get below the "LF partner for 10 matches" guys.

What could Blizzard do to prevent a total disaster of the rated BG system:

1. Approximate MMR: instead of giving everyone the same MMR at start, they could guess one from past arena ratings, BG/WG time spent, highest resilience reached, whatever that correlates with PvP success. This way the lowest 10% guys would be facing with at least lowest 30% guys, providing them enough victories to stay until the system reaches equilibrium.
   
2. Give reward for losing. Any form of reward that make someone queue up despite expecting a defeat would work. This can be temporary, like giving M conquest points for just fighting in rated BG in its first month.
   
3. Allow players to queue up alone, auto-forming random raids. This would at least fix the organizing problem. The loser team don't quit, 1 or 2 players quit, forcing the others to wait for 5-10 minutes, spamming /trade again. Since many people want "l33t epixx" the majority of the "teams" would be random pugs, so a random pug would win 40-45% of their matches (as in 80-90% of the cases would be facing another random pug).
   

The second and third solution would also be very motivating to new teams. I mean if you form a real team (you know one that has stuff like ... healers), your first matches will be a parade bashing "LFM for 10 fast matches" or randomly formed teams until you reach your dedicated MMR.

I hope Blizzard has #1 implemented or some other statistical tool to place people to their proper place fast, or this great feature (that I'm personally expecting a lot) will go down. However it is possible that Blizzard expects this "faliure" and wish for it. I mean creating the rated BG system is not a huge development work. The BGs themselves, the queue system and the MMR calculator are programed already for different purposes so with a little copy&paste they give a toy to a 1-10% HC playerbase (120K-1200K players), so they are happy and also don't roflstomp any more random players with their premades.

Market can't solve everything alone

Korenwolf has an interesting comment on Monday. He claimed that the guy whose gear was criticized on a boost raid should have told "No problem, I'll take my gold to a raid group which is willing to boost me". He believes that "The power is with the boostees, they're the ones bringing the gold to the raid."

This is not always true. It is true if drops will be sharded in his absence. This case he is putting 300G/item to the pot. However if the items are wanted by other people the situation is not that simple. Let's say that in his absence an item is sold for 300G minbid. In his presence, the same guy wins the item, but have to bid 1000G for it. This case 700G more gets to the pot, giving 70-70G extra profit to all the other 8 guys. However the original guy loses 630G.

So, there are 8 guys who have 70G reason to support him and one guy who has 630G reason to make him leave. If there was a vote, he would be voted to stay inside. Oh wait there was a vote! Every member voted with his feet by joining a guild that has these rules. That's why the guild exists. However right there, right then there were 8 guys with little motivation to support him, and one guy with large motivation to make him leave.

This is a common market problem: while the action is good for the whole, the gain is so little that the people don't care, while the few negatively affected do. Here comes the necessity for rules and enforcing agencies, to stop things that are bad for lot of people just a little. If my car is emitting too much CO and NOx, no person in the county are poisoned enough to personally sue me. On the other hand not fixing my car saves me $500, so I won't. But the National Traffic Agency forces me to get my car checked every second year and takes its license plate if it has bad emissions, making me to fix it.

The perfect example is the 2008 depression: whenever a banker repacked a bunch of crap papers and insured them and repacked the insurance too and sold it to several investment funds, he made lot of money, while harming no single individual. He increased the risk of everyone by a tiny little bit. You know how that story ended, right?
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A moron just presented himself, out of the blue: