Why be "awesome"?

Commenters on our realm first achievement have rightfully asked two questions: why bother at all to get a pointless "bragging right", and how is it different from personal "achievements" like explorer or what a long...? They are correct to recognize that an a-social person would not bother doing a realm first feat (getting to lvl 25 would happen anyway without effort just by normal playing in 2 weeks).

The answer for the first question is not derived from asociality itself. It's coming from my personal choice to not only live asocially but spread these ideas too. I'm fully aware of the contradiction between living it and talking about it, but everyone must make some unnatural efforts if he want to spread his things to the public. For example the meteorologists I know are not wearing 3-parts suit or full make up + designer dress when actually analyzing the data, but they make this show when they make the weather forecast in the TV.

I originally assumed that simply being more successful than the socials (measured in boss progress, gear/effort ratio, gold) is enough to turn them. They will notice: "look these guys are doing better than us, let's do as them". They obviously didn't. The reason for it lies in the "awesome" or "kinda cool lol" concept. They recognize some random crap as "status symbols" and consider earning them more valuable than actually useful stuff (both in WoW and IRL).

The whole "no-lifer" concept is coming from this: while the "no-lifers" are obviously more progressed then them, they demean and pity them since the "no-lifers" have no "fun", friends and sex. While it's not true, their beliefs in these are enough to keep them stay "fun ppl". In real life their nonsense can be stopped by the hard reality (the no-lifer has food and home, they starve on the street), but in a forgiving game they can carry on with their nonsense forever without punishment.

However there is a loophole in this system: the arbitrary crap they recognize as "status symbol" really bothers them. They really respect those "cool ppl" who get these and want to be like them. That's why they farm for "epixxlol". So, if I look up what nonsense is "awesome" this month and get it before them, I'll be more "awesome" than them and this gets to them. It force them to think up a solution.

Forcing them to think about their stupid way of living is not asocial. It's "long term investment into the mankind" at best and "altruistic" at worst. I can not expect anyone to do it. I choose to do it and by doing so I deviated from asociality. That's why I asked no one to help me get realm first. I paid them to do so.


The second answer is trickier. If I want to be "awesome" to make them listen to me, why do I despise personal achievements and mounts despite they are clearly "awesome" in their eyes? Because I'm just a guy in the crowd. If I would have all the mounts and the titles, they would never even notice me. There are too many people on whatever colored drake already, if I would spend all day blocking a mailbox with the most "awesome" drake even those who would bump into me would only remember "som cool duud" without recognizing me. When they read something from me, they will not remember that I was the "cool duud", they would say "I saw som cool duud on awsom drake and read some jerk nerdraging lol".

Even if I somehow force them to recognize my "awesomeness" by directly linking the "awesome" item or title, they could dismiss me as being an exception or even a cheater (gold-buyer, account-buyer).

Finally even if I somehow force them to accept me to be really "awesome" I achieved nothing besides them feeling bad. They can't be me. "Gevlon is better than me and there is nothing I can do about it" is not what I want them to think. I want them to think "Gevlon is currently better than me because he use better ideas than me and I should adapt his ideas", but it's way too complicated for them. Remember, they don't live by conscious ideas, they just do what "feels right", meaning "what fits to the culture that the peers around them have". They don't make choices so they can't choose to live differently.

On the other hand a group is more visible. There are only 10-15 real guilds on the ally side, not counting bank guilds and "me and by bro and a friend from class" guilds. Since socials like groups anyway, they will notice and remember the guild names. Special, interesting or outrageous things we do won't go unnoticed and will be linked to the guild name.

One guy can be exception, but a full guild? It's much harder to dismiss a guild made of hundredths of people than a single guy. Also, there is much less self-esteem defending scheme attached. A social will do every logical fallacy he can, to avoid the "X is better than me" conclusion. Accepting that "X guild is better than mine because we have some other guys who kinda fail" is easier.

Also, while one can't change himself to be me, can easily change his group title to "The PuG". Being awesome is just a /w away!


Of course one can ask what's the point in luring socials into the guild who will do nothing else but walking around like peacocks with their "awesome" guild tag and lion? Simple: they must keep the guild rules for 12 weeks to get exalted with the guild for the "awesome lion". Remember, they do what peers do and also solve cognitive dissonances by changing their beliefs and not their behavior. Pretending to be asocial for 12 weeks changes them to something that is surely not asocial yet, but close enough to make them able to start thinking.

And what if they can't behave? The asocial ideas are very robust against M&S intrusion. As no one gets boosted and "helped", if someone turns out to be a useless M&S, he is kicked without anyone having more loss than suffering his last action (that earns him the /gkick). So it's not like "we geared up, boosted his alt, gave him herbs and he even ninjaed the bank".


For the above reasons I'm determined to collect more "awesomeness". Check Saturday's extra post. Obviously I don't expect anyone to help me in this. For a simple member the guild is still what it always was, an asocial sanctuary in the sea of lolling below-healer worgenlols (not kidding, that's the new arthasdklol). They don't have to do anything unless they want to earn some gold I offer. They do whatever they want within the rules.

Finally a goblinish remark: collecting guild achievements are much easier than personal ones. You don't have to grind alone, most of the stuff happens on its own, the rest can be gained by the people who are most fit for the task (self-selected by accepting the gold offered).

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If you try to defend TB, just lost ICG, WV is under attack and enemies are arriving Slag, you

1. Rush to slag
2. Try to stop the reinforcements coming from ICG
3. Reinforce WV
4. Surprise them at ICG
5. Like these 5 hordies below, attack a siege moving on the road, away from Slag to the middle of nowhere

If you choose #5, you are welcomed on the morons of the week.

The worst day of Siamat

Yes, the a-social guild reached the realm first in guild activity and cooperation. We have beaten our competition by a mile, the other guilds on the server are still not lvl 25. How could helpful good people who are loyal to their guild be defeated by a bunch of selfish goblins who are unable to do sacrifices and effort for the "common good"?

The answer is gold:

Sacristy 15470 Oshscript 15089 Glotan 12835 Synara 12344 Nightgerbil 12341 . Mayu 7543 Bonefactor 6767 Lowza 6080 Uranax 6076 Tidia 5876 Teriss 5664 Martiunus 4249 Aureth 3929 Massacan 3921 Ermak 3750 Torpid 3509 Yrene 3460 Cyren 3371 Tsain 3349 Adrenilyn 3330 Neophyte 3164 Caidai 3143

Scaz 2947 Gottin 2929 Quasar 2916 Misericorde 2886 . Lívia 2862 Blut 2856 Isperia 2786 Gothîe 2784 Polikmak 2753 Tsila 2735 Sarlatán 2730 Nivluas 2696 Febring 2644 Sevinor 2624 Stabsahlot 2520 Jinchu 2505 Vildh 2456 Dagni 2334 Víerna 2258 Zangief 2129 Fifthlive 1909 Callandor 1844

Wilza 1795 Peco 1757 Suiji 1625 Ekkl 1520 Suhailah 1170 Scipi 1094 Kortner 971 Aronax 953 Hartog 901 Samsen 883 Qohelet 790 Medit 788 Wilia 748 Fifth 735 Negiys 712 Rhugala 683 Michimi 606 Shawood 600 Baitra 582 Guntina 496 Yuuno 435 Everyone else: 3298

This is the salary list of the members and mercenaries. The method was simple: every 500 guild XP you earn worth 1 gold. Since armory tracks "lifetime guild XP" it was easy to calculate who earned what. This list contains characters and alts are not combined, so it's not players toplist.

I paid 225K gold, more than the old goldcap for this feat. This is the "simple" way of goblinish motivation. You get what you pay for and if you pay well, you always find people who work for you and make your dreams come true. In the "heplfull friendly" guilds the members had little personal motivation to get XP for the guild. They may did some to not be called leeches but stopped there. Why go further than the next guy? Here the performance had direct connection to personal payment.

This even works if the person has 0 connection to the guild. Several names on the list, including #2 Oshscript are not guild members. They are mercenaries who were recruited on /trade for this day. They will get paid and removed. That was the deal.

The other thing I wanted to show is what gold is really for. People use to ask "why make gold, you can't spend it". Actually you can, I could buy sandstone drakes for 5 characters from this money, allowing them to block postboxes in SW, making myself a complete idiot. Of course you can't spend such gold on yourself in a way that makes sense. But you can fund really great feats. In WoW it's limited of course, but in the real world from cancer research to space flight or even political changes there are so many ways to make real difference if you can afford them.

I still have 400K + 100K loan to the guild bank left. So I can fund more great things (as far as things in WoW go). I'm thinking about toplists. Socials love toplists. I will prove that even their social aims are easier to get with goblinism (details in Saturday's extra post). Just like the realm first 25. Wouldn't they want a realm first, to be first on those lions (which I will never buy of course)? To link the feat of strength on /trade as "argument for their awesomeness"? Well, they can't! Because I took it from them, and not with more love, friendship or loyalty. With cold hard cash.


And what about Siamat? If you look at the list, half of the XP were gained by the top 12 characters. Including alts the top 10 players got half of the XP. Most realm first guilds are HC raiding guilds running 5-8 fixed dungeon groups farming HCs all day. We practically had 2 such groups. On peak hours more people were online than ever, we could run our first BH25 and a BH10, there were times when 5 groups were in the dungeons. Many people wanted to contribute and went out a bit from their way to get guild XP. But still we had 10 really active people. How could we beat bigger, more HC guilds with only 2 groups?

By spamming Lost City of Tol'vir normal. A HC boss gives 46500 guild XP, and a really good group can finish it in half an hour. If you have average players online, it takes more. If someone is tired and makes a mistake, it's a wipe. HCs have lockout so you must go random, getting places like the bugged ToT (no guild XP from bosses after Lady Nazjar), Vortex with only 3 bosses but lot of trash or Stonecore and Grim Batol that wipe even good players if they want to skip packs.

On the other hand a normal lvl 85 instance (Tol'vir, Halls of Origination, Grim Batol) boss gives 31000 guild XP and you need to do a huge mistake to wipe there. Tol'vir is the best because it has very little trash and can be completed in 10 minutes by a really good group but even a group with some 82-84 people can do it in 15. On average we could do 4 runs/hour including breaks, replacements, summons, "brb inventory is full", providing 31K*4*4 = 500K GXP/hour/person. When someone had Siamat-allergy, the group went to HoO normal, which is a bit slower (430K GXP/hour/person) but just as sure.

I never had it. Even after the 40th Simaticide, it felt like playing. Tol'vir is really beautiful instance. Have you noticed that there is evening, night, dusk, dawn and daylight in the instance, according to the time? This is how the temple of Siamat looks like when the Sun goes down in the desert:Since it was normal, I just Alt-Z out, kept RT-CH-CH-CH rotation on the tank and watched the instance, putting interface back only on mispulls and bosses.


If you want to see goblinism in work, providing the members raids, PvP groups without ever having to suffer beggars and lolkids, join! After reading the rules of course.

Our sister

Blog update: don't miss tomorrow's post. Very closely WoW-related and directly gold-related post incoming!


I checked out older Daily Blink comics and found the "Our sister" an WoW-version of Cosmopolitan magazine, which is targeting young and single women. The sections of the magazine are "hair ideas", "makeup tips", "fashion" and "relationship advice".

Of course it's not the only magazine that does it, there are dozens of clones in several languages. In my young years I was a busy reader, because I believed it holds women's secrets, stuff that can be used to understand their thinking. Well, all I found is nonsense with photos that could go to Playboy too and lot of advertisements of terribly overpriced useless crap.

But the weirdest part wasn't the simply useless gossip about "celebrities". It was the "relationship advice" part. The advices seemed totally wrong, but to be sure I asked several guys and they all agreed that they wouldn't even think of dating with a "cosmo-girl" besides for fast one-night-stands.

OK several magazines give silly or useless tips, but these cosmo-like magazines seem to give pinpointed bad advices. Their suggestions were all very effective in one thing: making even medium-term relationships impossible, however creating lot of one-night-stands. For long I believed that "relationship" is just a politically correct term for "sex", and simply discarded the magazine as "women's Playboy", something that targets people who want easy sex.

The surprise came when I found this magazine at a "decent" woman's flat. I was a bit upset that she reads such shit and dismissed her original "I read it for interesting the articles" the same way as a woman would dismiss a man claiming the same for Playboy. It took some time until she convinced me that she, and many of her friends really believe that this magazine help them find what they really want: successful long-term relationships. She was honestly shocked when I asked her to accompany me to a geeky Counter-strike party where I asked clanmates to read the relationship-part of the last issue and tell her what they think about a woman who acts this way: "bitch" and "whore" were the common comments.

I became really interested in this business paradox: there is a magazine that is obviously financially successful, despite being totally useless, strike that, harmful. Took some months (and lot of money to get old magazines) to figure out the key point in the strategy: most women believe that sex is connected to love, while every men (and some women) know better.

1. The magazine promises relationship to the customers so they give it a shot
2. The magazine delivers sex to the customers
   
3. The customer is amazed by the quick success and gets faith in the magazine
   
4. The "relationship" breaks, as the guy never even thought of it as a relationship
5. The customer believes that the later failure happened because she wasn't good enough cosmo-girl
6. She tries harder by following more advices, and buying the advertised goods
7. GOTO 2

Please note that the advices must be bad, as if the customer would get a successful long-term relationship, she would no longer need advices and no longer have disposable income to buy the advertised crap.


I forgot the damn magazine long ago, and was pretty upset when I found the Daily Blink version. It shows that this magazine is well-known in the WoW community (no point making a joke on something no one understands). I hoped that at least geeks know better. Of course it was a stupid hope, after all big part of the "community" can't even outdamage the tank. So, take a good goblinish advice: if something wants to sell you overpriced crap, it's not your friend. This magazine has no other good use than making fire. Its paper is not soft enough to be used in toilets. And its contents make it very-very bad for reading.


PS to feminists who would comment "women has the same right for easy sex as men": of course. But the magazine is not subtitled as "for young sex-hungry singles-for-life". Also, before you comment "you imply that a woman who lives that way is indecent": I do, but I use the same standards to men.

353

Patch 4.1 re-introduces Zul-Aman and Zul-Gurub as 5-man heroics, providing ilvl 353 gear. What is the point? I asked for long. I mean the relevant raids provide 359. It would make sense to provide 359 items when Firelands is out to let new players gear up without raiding old content. It would even make sense to provide 359 now to "casuals" who "don't have time" to raid.

But no, Blizzard give people 353 gear. For long I thought they are making a mistake. Then I remembered the old saying "Blizzard makes billions, not mistakes". The 353 gear is just perfect.

The key to understand is that only serious raiders can fail. "ppl who play 4 fun" never-ever fail. They simply don't have gear. The reason why they can't do Magmaw is definitely lack of gear, since while they have 4 valor epics and 346 in the other slots, they clearly need 2 more months of farming to get the last valor piece. Without pre-raid BiS gear they obviously have no chance at a raid boss, no one can blame their "skillz" or their (lack of) enchants and gems.

However sooner or later they will have full valor gear and at that point they cannot "gain strength" so they will lose interest. If Blizzard would nerf raid bosses, it would make them busy for a couple of weeks until they get new shinies but when they farmed the "lootship 4.0" and hit the unnerfed bosses, they leave anyway. They can't nerf all bosses since it would mean that the raiders complete everything and leave.

The genius of 353 is that it give the "casuals" what they want: "gear progression" (like the term would have any meaning), while keeping them undergeared! This way they keep playing to gear up (on 10 alts), they are motivated by the raid epics and they are not frustrated by not killing Magmaw. After all until they have 353 in every slot + valor to every available, they clearly lack the gear to kill him, so no point even trying. "dakrgnomkillaz lf more peeps for all kinda fun and help membrs gear up we gonna start raiding soon".

With 353 Blizzard turned the gear-fetish of the M&S against them. They recognized that the M&S can be kept content and busy as long as there is a carrot hung front of them. They stop playing if they can't believe in reaching the carrot or if they reached it.

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Being the writer of the Greedy Goblin provides some security against obvious moron intrusion. But sometimes "some" is not enough: By the way he first tried to buy me out. My fallback is 45G, his is 100. The crafting price is around 15G. The letter tells that the buyout action did not go well.

Also, the PuG hall of shame is updated!

This picture reminded me of the Morons of the Day series. Not many moron pictures are displayed nowadays because you don't send enough! Stop slacking, send me the specimens!

Nepotism vs goblinism

The Pug update:3 healers, reached P2 when 4th add was out but before 4th ooze cast (add despawns if P2 arrives). We went with 3 hunters (as usual) so worshippers were in freezing trap instantly. The boss was pulled to a corner so P2 adds were in a pile, could be AoE-d. Everyone were alive and below 75 corruption on kill.

If you want such bosses, we are permanently recruiting, just read the rules!

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The daily blink comics reminded me of nepotism. The word nepotism is coming from "nephew" (in latin nepos), and means promoting and rewarding relatives and friends instead of people with merit.

The mentioned comic is a joke version of guild finder and has two options "GM's girlfriend is in the raid" and "GM's girlfriend is the same class and spec as you", obviously referring to the common issue that the GM's friends, especially the girlfriend is carried by the raid and has priority on loot.

Nepotism is something that I couldn't understand in general. I never felt any connection towards relatives just because they are relatives. But let's get to the mentioned point that is so cliche that it is satirized in a comic: girlfriend in raid. My girlfriend plays in the guild and raids too. She is usually damage #1 or #2. She gets loot just as everyone else: gold bid (and I bid against her for tier shoulder yesterday). She is rotated out if there is competition for raid spot.

The point is not "look how ethical I am"! Ethical would mean that for moral reasons I do against my personal preference. However - and that is the point - this treatment is obvious to me and I never thought of doing otherwise. I mean I have to think hard to understand why others favor their girlfriends in getting a raid spot or loot.

The answer that any social person would say: "you love your girlfriend and don't want to hurt her feelings". The answer is wrong and social at three points. No it's not "love" per se. Let's just skip this part by defining "love" as "valuing and wanting to continue the relationship with someone".

The first social part is "skipping her from raid or giving loot to other would hurt her feelings". I skip raids myself and it doesn't hurt my feelings. If someone else will raid in my place this week, what do I lose? Content? The boss is the same as previous and next week. There are two reasons why someone would feel bad for being benched for a boss: feeling excluded from a group (of friends) or loot. Now what is "loot" good for? To raid more. It's redundant. However for a social, loot is status symbol. There are even toplists for highest ilvl people, like it matters. Their bosskills matter. Their loot is just a tool. Not for socials! They want loot for itself, just like they want totally useless mounts and pets. So if you are a-social, you won't feel bad for being rotated out.

But the second is more important: "you don't want to hurt her feelings". To continue the relationship I shall preserve her well-being and not irrational feelings. Who is helping you more? A drug-dealer or a dentist? The first definitely give you better feelings. If my girlfriend is irrationally hurt for not getting a free ride to free loot, am I doing her a good service by giving her these? I think helping her understand that there is no free lunch and teach her to get her own loot is much better for her. If someone you love is making something stupid, you should stop him/her despite not being supportive definitely will hurt his/her feelings. The stupid thing would cause real damage.

The third is related to "helping" itself. Could I love her if she would suck in an activity that she spend so much effort on? Do I want to be connected to someone who can't even learn a damn video game despite trying (not playing at all is a completely different issue). The answer is obviously no. If I can't tolerate M&S in a 1-hour dungeon run, why would I tolerate one in my real life for years?! It comes down to the core social idea: "valuing people just because they are people (with feelings), and not for merit". I value people after their actions. I expect my girlfriend to be successful and effective in things she does with effort.


Being social guarantees nepotism, while being a-social makes you naturally immune to it.

Oh wait, the above reasoning says nothing about nepotism, as socials feel the same way about everyone. Why do they support relatives then and not random strangers? Simple: they spent much time with them and now they are connected. It has nothing to do with being blood relatives, that's why they carry "friends" who are not relatives. It should be called "friendism".