The most disgusting nerf ever

The PuG update: if you have 10 people interested in raid, bring the player, not the class to Atramedes:

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I could open with "I told you a year ago!". But I'm not in the mood on cheering on my ingenuity. This nerf simply lacks the previous subtlety and throw directly into our faces: go and boost morons and slackers. While bad ones always profit more from the nerf than good ones (as the difference between wipe and 1 hour kill is larger than between 1 hour kill and 45 mins kill), all previous nerfs affected everyone. The altrun of a HC guild also got the ICC buff. A casual raider could also get fast badges in WotLK heroics.

Now, they placed a 15% buff to DPS, HPS and HP pool. That's a flat 32% (1.15*1.15) buff to heroic running people. But not for everyone. I won't get any nerf. My HCs (if I would still run HCs) will be exactly as long as before. The HCs of a casual who plays with his friends won't get any easier. Only the LFD-using M&S gets the nerf. To get it, we would have to abandon guild groups and boost M&S in the LFD.

Ghostcrawler wrote "in general, Heroic dungeons are of appropriate difficulty for organized groups, but just brutal on Dungeon Finder groups. ". He isn't talking about Method and Paragon guildruns. The organized groups of casual guilds were successful. I haven't seen wipes outside of autorunning into 3 packs when I ran HCs, despite some of our guildies were fresh 85s who tricked the LFD with high level useless reputation gear. I've been with tank who dinged that day and had 3 blues, rest green. Heroics are not hard for casuals, now it's accepted officially (as most guilds are by definition casual). Heroics are ony too hard for plain M&S.

Ghostcrawler here acknowledges the huge difference between casuals and M&S. Someone with sub-optimal spec, not farmed gear and some missing enchants here and there, but ready to listen to reason can complete a heroic with a few wipes. It's only the "gogogogog" M&S who can't do it.

And now they and only they get a 32% flat buff. What will be the next step? "Fair trade" buff? (if you form your raid on /trade without inspecting anyone, you get 15% DPS, HPS and HP buff)

In light of this obvious proof, I repeat what I wrote: the key to a successful MMO is "boosting", making good players carry bad ones without them noticing that they are being carried. What Blizzard sells is not content or "fun", but the illusion of respect and false self-respect to morons and slackers.


PS: people still don't seem to get why should we care if LFD fodder gets buff, it doesn't make our situation any worse. It does. Forming guild group have time overhead for tanks and healers as the guilds are not overabundant in DD. So a guild tank/healer must choose between waiting 10-20 mins for a guild group to form or join LFD instantly. If the LFD team with 32% buff is less than 10-20 mins slower than the guild group, the goblinish choice is LFD. With numbers: guild group takes 40 mins. Average group forming takes 15 mins. So the break-even point is (40+15)*1.32 = 73 mins. So if the average LFD before the buff could do the instance in 1:13, the rational choice is to go with them after the buff.

I can still say it's not the case for my guild. However if there is a mediocre guild that just 20% better than the LFD fodder, then their tanks go to LFD and consequently their DD have no other choice. By this mediocre guild dissolving in LFD, they increase its average quality. As the average quality increases, the LFD run time gets shorter, so better and better guild tanks and healers reach the break-even point and go LFD. Sooner or later it reaches your guild.


PS2: to people who don't understand why it's 32% buff (1.15*1.15). As they "fixed" Ozoruk and flat nerfed Corborus, there aren't any more oneshot mechanics in heroics. We wipe when the healer runs out of mana. By increasing HPS by 15% they give 15% more time (as he shall cast 15% less for the same healing). Also our DPS increases by 15%. We win when our_DPS * time = monster_HP. Since we got both DPS and time buffed by 15%, the win condition is 1.15*1.15 closer. Also, if we ignore wipe as an option and see only "run speed" as criteria, the higher HP+HPS allows pulling 15% more monsters and AoE them down. The AoE_DPS = DPS_on_one * number_of_monsters. Both got 15% buff.

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Speaking of morons and slackers:

In secrecy lies sociality

The Pug update: the ninja-raid problem was settled, yesterday we raided together, forming one raid. Valiona oneshotted as she should be.

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Some people don't understand why I was so disturbed that someone organized a raid secretly, why was my instant reaction is "he is a disruptive troll" and why was I quick to hotfix the rules, making sure that it can never-ever happen again. Other people merely considered him "clever" or "loophole-abuser" but clearly as a technical nuisance instead of a theoretical threat to The PuG. Simply they believe that he might cheated but only to bend a zero-sum situation to his side: 10 people could raid, he made sure that he is one of them. While his actions might harmed some, any alternative action would have harmed some as only 10 can go to a 10-men raid.

As I wrote "common sense" is not a good guidance as it is merely the blind following of the social subroutines planted in your brain. You must be able to properly prove even the "obvious". It took some time while I could formulate why I consider secrecy a serious threat. It is similar, but not the same as the reason why any democratic country consider freedom of press and public jury sessions necessary for the upkeep of democracy. These allow the people to learn about the actions of the government and the juries, therefore allowing them to do something if they don't like what they see.

So in first iteration we could say that secrecy allows the raid organizer to do injustice and get away with it as no one figures it out, while if he acts openly, people can stand up against his injustice. This is wrong at two points: at first, "injustice" is largely a social construct just like "common sense". Many consider gold bid "unjust" and /roll just. Secondly and more importantly, the raid leaders are not democratically elected (besides raiders voting with their feet). So, unlike in the case of a democratic country, the people can do nothing when they find "injustice" just whine. So why bother?

The answer is that I don't believe in "evil" just in "stupid". No one wakes up one day and say "let's harm someone". People harm each other when one of them wrongfully believe that the other is "evil" or when believes that the easiest and sustainable way of getting resources is taking from the other. I don't think that anyone, even infamous political figures would have performed violence if they were properly aware of the facts. I also believe that the main reason people are unaware of the (otherwise obvious) facts is that the primitive social subroutines offer them bad answers to such questions (like different people are evil or if he doesn't like me, he is plotting against me...).

Secrecy leaves the person alone with his own social nonsense, letting them take over him. Openness on the other hand allow other people to warn him about his own social nonsense. While he is still not forced to change his mind, other opinions are offered, and unless he is a moron, he will listen to reason.

For example my "gut reaction" to the ninja raid was "he is plotting to destroy the guild, he is a hater from the blog". It was obviously fueled by the social subroutines: "competitors are evil" and "sudden changes are dangerous" and maybe even "if his raid fares better than mine, I may never be able to lead raids". When I shared this "revelation" about him with others, they instantly told that this person was in the guild long-long ago and did a lot to make it work. Unless hacked, it's unlikely that he turned into a troll. Also they told that he did not explicitly broke the letter of the rules, he merely used the loophole that I was unaware of invisible events on the guild calendar, or I would have banned them by the start. They also told that "malicious intent" is not a scientific term and even if we all agree that he acted maliciously it is still just social nonsense. The only thing matters is that he did not break the written rules.

These people have no power over me, I don't need their vote to /gkick anyone. But they still stopped me gkicking the raid-ninja simply by showing that it would contradict the ideas I speak about and would fit only into the very social schemes that I want to defeat (in myself too). So I did the logical thing and fixed the loophole in the rules and let him finish his raid unharmed. Valiona handled the rest.

The reason why no raid leader can exclude anyone without openly rejecting him is to disallow him to decide using social nonsense. Even formulating his reason helps him to battle his subroutines, but the feedback of the excluded person and others are even more valuable. It allows him to outgrow the social nonsense in his head.

Simple example: X is subconsciously sexist, exclude girls. If he does it secretly he fully believes that he excluded simply bad players. On the other hand if he exclude a girl openly, he must formulate his problems like "you have low DPS". However this claim can be defeated by linking recounts and the testimonies of other people seen her doing good. If evidence is provided that Y does better than Z, X must include her or he contradicts himself who stated that the problem is low DPS. Even if he doesn't reach the psychologically correct conclusion "I wanted Y out because she is a girl" and defends his schemes by "I made a honest mistake, mixing her up with W who really suck", he now raids with a girl, seeing her good performance first hand. If he reaches just to "all girls suck except Y" he already made a step to get away from sexism.

The social nonsense is inside everyone. The light of publicity helps fighting it off by calling the logical brains of other people into the battle.

Ninja raid

The weirdest thing happened Wednesday in the guild. The farm raid was scheduled with lot of people signing up. When I came online, I found that someone created a raid. Later it was revealed that he created a personal event in the calendar, inviting many people (not me of course) and then spammed LFM. Many people later stated that they thought he is just inviting for the farm raid, while I was offline. He also singed up on the official raid just to be sure.

People just wanted to raid and joined, they couldn't care less the background. The guild does not have the manpower for 2x10 yet. The result: my raid killed Halfus and did some tries at Valiona between 19:30 (we had to wait until more people came online) and 20:50, when people had to leave and no replacements were available. His raid killed Halfus and wiped on Valiona between 18:55 and 22:40. No need to say that we use to one-two shot Halfus, Valiona, Magmaw, Omnitron and kill or seriously try on the fifth on Wednesday in 3 hours. But yesterday there were no replacements to rotate people who fit to that boss.

I hope that those who did not leave his raid after they figured out what's going on, learned the hard way that such thing does not pay. The organization of raids, the replacements are done for maximum effectiveness. If you are doing good, you kill bosses fast. If you do not fit to some of the bosses, it's better to be outside doing something else (something fun maybe? or something "productive"?) instead of wiping pointlessly because your DPS is low or the encounter is designed for more melee or ranged or feral druids with multi-million rip. Cataclysm is "bring the role, not the player".

Of course anyone can make raids in The PuG using the calendar properly, making guild events. Then we would have one raid. I don't mind if someone else leads it, I gladly just heal. Strike that, I don't even mind if I'm not in it, everyone who read Undergeared must know that I'm the least of a gear freak. I want progression, gear is just a tool and I can't care less if I wear it or someone else in the raid. If he would have organized his raid openly, I would most probably just signed up for it.

It's pointless to ponder over his motivation. While my obvious guess was that he is just a disruptive troll to be kicked (how many guilds would tolerate if someone would secretly organizing a raid during official times, inviting everyone but the guildmaster and some officers?!) but people proved that what he did is "clever use of guild mechanics" that shall be hotfixed instead of punished. Note: I don't think now he meant to be disruptive. He just thought he can do better than me, not noticing that not "my skills" kill bosses, but the player rotations, which he obviously given up when he formed a fixed raid.

So little fix to the rules: you shall make all raids fully public guild events. Fully public events allow people to plan. No one shall worry that there is a secret raid where he is not invited. Raid leaders can still not invite anyone, but must do it openly and expected to give a proper reason. I always do, if I'm unable to (because I have to choose between good players), I ask them to /roll.

Alternatively, you can join and organize /trade pugs without using any guild resource (calendar, guild chat). Note: using /casual was always forbidden for serious things as it would force people to read the chit-chat to not miss out on serious stuff.

You can make spontaneous raids for Argoloth, old bosses or even "is anyone here who missed the raids and not killed Halfus?". Theoretically you can make "hey I'm bored, let's kill Cho'gall" raid too, but that's just stupid and anyone with an ounce of brain will wait for an organized raid. Oh wait, if you can find 9 people who have nothing better to do than pointlessly wipe, be my guest.

While this part is obviously abusable (I wouldn't be surprised at all if at 18:50 today someone would "spontaneously" make a raid), I hope 3 hours were enough for Valiona to explain even the most stubborn people that joining such raids is a bad idea. Current tier raids needs preparation, consumables and selecting the roster. I guess this part was exactly that made people stay in the ninja-raid: they felt safe from being replaced. Again: what is better? Being replaced from Valiona (because you are a tank) and being invited back to Omnitron 20 minutes later or wiping on Valiona for 3 hours?

Unfortunately one of the members of the ninja-raid couldn't handle the situation, got himself kicked and to the hall of shame too.


PS: and what about the "usurper"? I hope he learned his lesson from Valiona too. When the cake can be significantly enlarged, it's better to cooperate to have part of the big cake, than competing over a single slice. When he started to make progression raids for Chimeron, I set a good example by not doing the same target, going Conclave and Ascended Council instead, exactly to let him reap the rewards of his work. I hope that from now on, he'll show the same respect. Not because he understands the word (from his reactions, he is like I was 10 years ago, an angry anti-social who thought he can have the World alone, simply by being "smart"), but because he is able to understand that competition over unlimited bosses with the limited resources is stupid.

PS2: There is one positive outcome of this. We can have 2 raids or a 25-raid for Halfus and maybe even to Omnitron. Next week I will try to sort out 2 raids for them before merging to do the rest of the farmbosses. Until then: people beware of the possibility of ninja-raids see who does the invites, ask who will lead this raid before you'd blindly jump into a pointless wipefest instead of an easy farmraid.

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To clarify it, here is some Q&A about forming raids:

• Am I able to make my own raids: absolutely yes
• Do I have to set up a calendar event for it: no
• Why do we have calendar then? Because our casual nature means that people are online randomly. A raid needs some time for 10 people. If you just come up with the idea to raid in some random time, you won't find people to do so. The people shall make time for their raiding, and it's only possible if they know when there is raiding event.
• Why do I have to make the raid publicly visible if I'm not intending to invite certain people? Because it makes planning possible for everyone. If X knows he won't be invited, he can make other plans, in-game or out of game. Getting in a raid is not a right and everyone accepted it. However making bad surprises (as opposed to a clear and upfront rejection) to people is not the interest of anyone.
  
• The rules say "There are raid times every day from 19:00-23:30 server time with two 10 mins breaks around 20:30 and 22:00." Why? Why can't I raid 16:00? Again, it is because people must make themselves ready. All applicants accepted these times, so there is a good chance that they can make themselves available if they want to. Making current tier raids in random times would mean that people have to log in random times or miss out on their chance. You are expected to make current tier raids in these times. Also, you are expected to wait until the start time even if you are full at 18:50. I won't tolerate a "no-life race" where people want to get spots by getting online earlier and earlier until we start raiding at the morning.
• The rules say "I (and only I) can give amnesty from this general rule in rare situations". What is it about. It's about helping out a larger group of people in rare and extreme situations like "ISP strike in France, no French players could play until Sunday and they want to kill farmbosses". As I said, it's an "amnesty" and not a "right". You shall raid outside the declared raid times. This rule will may be lifted when we have enough people to be able to fill a raid any time. Again, the rule is to protect people from being forced to come online in "weird" times or lose their chance to raid. Everyone saw the raid times in the rules and accepted them. Let's use these while we have 1-2 raids only.
  
• What if more people want to raid than there are spots? Then the raid leader can decide. His decision must be public and explained, so the rejected person can make his own decisions: improve to reach the standards of that raid leader or do other plans.
  
• Can I organize a raid when someone else does? Yes, people will choose.
  
• Is it smart to do so? If the raids have similar targets, generally no. A lose-lose standoff can happen when neither raid is functional. Cataclysm raids are hard, and the casual nature of the guild makes it's very unlikely that both of you can fill the raids with good people. Most probably you have to fill it with not-ready people, then wipe for hours. You shall use double-booking as a last resort if you find the raid leading of the other person unacceptable.
  
• What is the "smart" way to do then? There are lot of empty spots in the calendar. If you respect other people's raid, they will respect yours. You can also discuss, make agreements, especially if your time schedule is different. Like X has a raid from 19:00-20:30, and then he ends it and (with mostly the same people) Y makes his own raid, continuing from the break. Also, you shall include other possible raid leaders to your raid, as they can help you make the raid smooth by giving tips, suggestions, helping to find mistakes.
• Shall I organize a different kind of raid in the same time? Yes as there is different target audience, even if there are people who would prefer both. People should be able to choose between a progression, a farmraid, and an AQ40 nostalgia raid.
• Wouldn't it be great if we could have 2-3 raids at the same time? Yes it would. But we usually don't have enough raid ready members online for that. If we find enough online even for double-Halfus and then merge, we can split the raid then.
  
• Why do people go to Argoloth in random times? Because it's so easy that it doesn't need preparation. You can easily do it with a trade pug. So do it as you please.
  

The truth and mistakes in Tobold's WoW

Tobold wrote a provocative post about players soloing dungeons and raids with NPCs. He believes that "One day you will need to realize that you are part of a shrinking minority that actually wants player interaction in a multiplayer game.".

There are several truths in his vision. No doubt that WoW won the MMO market by being the less inter-player dependent game. I can't lose wealth or skills due to players (either ganking enemies, or retarded teammates). I can level max without interacting with any players. The AH is fully impersonal, I don't notice if I'm trading with a bot, a guildy or the most obnoxious idiot on the server. LFG assign people randomly.

On the other hand there are single player games and none of them is near the success off WoW. Most single-player games have achievements and online scoreboards so one can compare his performance to others, so these games can be considered massively single-player online games. None of them are near WoW in playerbase, strike that, they don't even have subscriptions. They are sold as a box (or online), and that's all. Players are not even expected to play for years.

It's safe to say that I'm one of the most anti-social players you can encounter. Yet, I play this multi-player game longer than any single-players. What I like in WoW? Mostly it's being a controlled human-interaction simulation. I can try out business or organizational ideas without risking real money or organizations. Others might try different ways of making friends or motivating people.

Little lions don't play "for fun". They are practicing hunting. People similarly play to learn. The games can teach us something that schools cannot: exactly the human-human interactions, that we need in our real life. When a boss dies, it feels larger than killing a pixel thing. We won not by pressing buttons, but by organizing/finding a proper team. We successfully performed this real task, while killing the same boss in a solo-video game with 9 bots (whose code was downloaded from bottingjerks.com anyway) has no real world relevance.

We need and want to practice human interactions. The controlled, simplified and structured game world is a perfect place. I doubt if Tobold's WoW would survive a year, despite everyone would praise it in the first months.

If we want human interactions, why does WoW become successful despite being more single-player than the competitors? Enter morons and slackers. These are the people we don't want to interact. There is nothing to learn by interacting them, and no goals can be achieved together with them.

We don't hate LFD. We hate the fire-dancing idiot we have to boost in it. We don't hate grouping while questing. Most topguild members leveled in fixed groups. I quest only with my girlfriend, finding solo questing boring and repetitious. We hate questing with M&S who go AFK, who are on autofollow, who damage less than a pet. We don't hate talking to others. Even I talk to others in /w over various topics. We hate to talk to "lol XD thatz fun" idiots.

Here the MMO developer is between a rock and a hard place. The morons and slackers are no less of a paying customer than us. By making the game hard enough to make sure that everyone over lvl 20 is a competent player, you have a game with 100K very happy subscribers and no money to add content. Letting M&S in and forcing others to interact with them is a disaster.

Blizzard solved it perfectly: they allow us to solo the content where the M&S is the most common: leveling. They allow to semi-solo the next tier: 5-mans. I can organize a group or just enter LFD and there is a significant chance of getting enough non-M&S to succeed. The hardest content is exclusively player-player interaction based, and we like it this way. Of course we have the organizational cost of keeping our groups clean from M&S but once it's successful, we are good to go.

Also, Blizzard gave us lot of tools to identify M&S. The Armory and the addon-enabled inspection feature allow us to see who is an ungemmed retard at first glance.

Finally, Blizzard gave mounts, pets, achievements and other "fun" features for the M&S to keep them busy, subscribed and quarantined. They are paying to upkeep our game but they are out of our sight. Unless we choose to be in a failguild where "helping friends" is common.

LFM World first aspirant guilds

The Pug update:2 tank, 3 healers, placing us to the #15060 position on Wowprogress, reaching it without voice chat, attendance rules, DKP or any other HC stuff. Permanently recruiting by the way, just read the rules!

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No, I'm not out of my mind to try to convince Method, Paragon, Ensidia or For the Horde to join our guild. Not even to transfer to our server. However I have an offer that can provide them (or other serious competitor) what they want, the precious World First kills.

The idea came when I read this Hungarian interview with a Hungarian member of Method, Tntmaxy. Let me translate the important part: "If I remember correctly, the first raid invite was in early afternoon on Tuesday, and our first kill happened at 16:35, Omnotron Defense System, which was a world first bosskill. We had a 30 hours session without stop. I think we had bad tactics at start, I'd prefer 1-2 more hours farming 5-mans for some gear, since our progress stopped after the first boss in lack of hear. We were practically in full greens, with 1-2 333/346 blues".

Let me make a little list what starter gear could be crafted for a restoration shaman: (obviously you can wowhead for other classes)

• Elementium Stormshield (359 epic shield), 1 orb, 3 truegolds, 3 hardened elementium.
  
• Stormleather stash (359 epic belt), 2 orbs, 50 volatiles, 3 pristine hide, 10 blackened dragonscale
• Twilight scale chestguard (359 epic chest), 3 orbs, 50 volatiles, 3 pristine hide, 15 backened dragonscale
• Tattoed eyeball (346 blue relic), 12 inferno ink, 40 volatiles
• Chimera's eye: jewelcrafters with 500 skill can use it to make self-only gems with 67 stats (27 higher than blue quality gems), the recipe needs 2 tokens, so the raider can get it on the second day, and instantly gain 3 self-gems, and readily more whenever he replaces his gear.
  
• 339 PvP items: they have resilience, but definitely better than ilvl 310 greens, and have lot of stamina, helping surviving avoidable damage on the first tries. They don't need orbs, just vendor mats.
• Enchantment scrolls, blue quality gems, flasks, food, feasts and such consumables.

Now such stuff is readily available in the AH for modest prices. However in the first days the AH was practically empty, since casuals were on low level, did not access materials, raiders wanted to raid as soon as possible, so used the materials they farmed for their own tradeskills. No one sold such items, because the very few who were able to made it was rather leveling/gearing, or crafted for himself.

Here comes The PuG, a guild with lot of AH-goblins. We are not HC raiders who would never consider spending precious time to craft for gold, or even worse farm for gold. On the other hand we are neither M&S who have nothing to offer. So, all a topguild need is one guild businessman (they can recruit one, or someone's girl/boyfriend can take the job). This businessman transfers chars with lot of gold and items to us, and sell it here to make gold. A topguild can easily farm BoE epics in masses, along with maelstorm crystals. So the businessman can make millions of gold selling these. Then, simply on the realm forums he places his orders before expansions and content patches, declaring what items he wants and how much he pays for them on the first, second, third day (WTB Chimera's eye, 3K on dec 7, 2K 8-10, 1K 11-15 after). When the patch arrives, he is online on Agamaggan standing in Stormwind, making the trades. When the coffers are full with goodies, he transfers home, distributing them among the raiders.

Seeing the realm forum orders, we can design the crafting paths, make farming contracts and so on, so on the first day the guild businessman can return with several items, and on the second-third day he could transfer lots, practically allowing all the raiders of the top guild to have 2-3 346 blues, 1-2 epics (if chaos orbs were not bugged) and PvP blues to every other slot, top consumables, lot of gems, chimera's eyes, enchants (except maelstrom) on Dec 9. That would definitely make difference.

In the comments he told me that the crafted and farmed everything for themselves via alts, spending their own time. Also, despite they were mostly JC-s, they couldn't instantly use the self-gem as they must craft gems for the guild. This is a huge waste of time I believe, as all these stuff can be made by external contractors for mutual benefit.

Please note that making contracts is essential, as crafting top level items are very expensive at start, and there is no demand for these items outside the bleeding edge raiding. So no one in his right mind would spend his time (= money) on crafting blue quality gems on day 1 (material cost was about 800G) unless he has a contract telling him that X will buy from him Y quantity for Z profit.

While the next content patch will be lvl 85, so consumables will be OK, but I'm sure there will be lot of craftables. Please look at this link. It is the Crusader Orb recipe list. They became available when ToC came out. While the recipes and the orbs were coming from the raid itself, there are many rare materials listed next to them, which were not readily available in the AH. The cloths and the titansteel had CD so they couldn't be farmed. I'm sure that 4.1 will have such craftables that allow cooperation.

Obviously, crafting will be much less interesting as every topguild will be in full HC-gear, and even if the new craftables will be higher ilvl, the difference will be much smaller than "leveling green vs 346 blue". However the next expansion will bring another gear reset. I'm sure that at 5.0 the World first guild will be the one with the best contracts with AH-goblins in and out of server.