Greedy Goblin

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

LF10M VoA25

After winning WG, with some guildmembers we wanted to go to VoA25. It was Saturday early afternoon, it was clear that there are not enough people for 2 raids. And someone already started organizing one on /trade. He was vocal in WG with the infamous "lets all group up and build a train" strategy and it was pretty hard to win against his stupidity. Well, two things were clear: we don't want to be in his raid, and even if we did, he wouldn't take us after calling him moron several times.

So I invited the 5 guild members who wanted to come. He already had at least 10 people in his raid, including tanks (one was himself) while we had none. Then I pulled my stunt: "LF10M VoA25, DPS, 1-2 healers and maybe a tank. Some people joined. If any have asked why are we 5 when we are looking for 10, I answered that 10 guys from the guild are in a pre-made and will come soon. Then for every 2 people who came I decreased the LFnM number by 1. After we had 15 real members, I switched to "LF5M VoA 25, we are going soon, leave the other raid". Got some @#$! whispers from the other RL and his friends. In a minute we got 5 more members including a tank, went in to clear trash, leaving one guy out to keep spamming for more. Before the boss we were full.


If you haven't figured it out, this post is about marketing or with other words: lies. Lie about the quality of your product or company to fool the socials to choose yours instead of the competition. The point is that the socials feel bad about confrontation so they don't call you out unless they are 100% sure that you are lying. If there is an explanation, even if not a probable one, they just shut up. My lie was pretty weak. They could simply ask for the names of the late-coming guys, and whisper them. However if I'm telling the truth, and I am a fellow social, I would be offended and kick them. They did not want to risk that, so they simply fell for the trick. A-socials have no problem questioning me but they have problem bothering with other people. While they gladly catch your lie/mistake about gemming, they won't ask other people to verify your opinion as talking to people is not their favorite activity.

Also, openly considering out-group options is a major offense among socials. There are countless drama on the internet about the "officer finds member applying to other guild" scheme. So the rational move: "I'm in a bigger raid, whisper me when you are actually moving with 20+ people and I switch" is disrespectful for both groups as I openly state that I'm deciding based on size and not group-qualities. While a /trade raid is not a "group of friends" even to socials, but they unconsciously behave like that, just look at the rage against "leavers".

So the business advice today: feel free to lie about social information like group size, people's opinions and such non-measurable quantities if it serve your interest. You won't get caught. However if you lie about something measurable (like your own achievement or GS), you are going down if you meet with an a-social.
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Nightgerbil found us Chaox (another wonderful name) the raid leader of a 25-man trade pug that disbanded after 3/12! Most of the raid, including him had no clue about strategies and managed to wipe 5 times on the first 3 bosses. One of the reasons for this wonderful performance:

25 comments:

Larísa said...

I'm probably a bit picky, but to be honest with you I don't think it's OK to lie. Not even about a trvial thing like a VoA. The fact that it's unlikely that you'll be caught doesn't affect that at all. The problem with lying - apart from whatever moral aspects you might put on it - is that it's so easy to mess up things and forget what you've told to different persons. I explained this to my kids when they were younger and I tell you now, with the risk of sounding like a terribly boring and conservative old lady.

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure which is the worst name out of nightgerbil and chaox :)

Do you invite people with rubbish names to your PUG guild?

Anonymous said...

Why would someone bother calling you out on lying unless they were offended by being lied to? If your raid was filling up quicker, the logical thing is to stay silent and reap the benefits. If the lying gambit didn't pay off in forming a raid, you'd likely get on a lot of ignore lists and get called out when forming later raids.

Aethryl said...

I consider myself a social player but I still take massive amounts of pleasure trolling and taunting the players who lie about their GS/experience/etc. etc. in trade if they are obvious enough that I catch them.

Grim said...

25 retards can easily do VoA - there is no need at all to waste time being all clever (as in - lying in internet about what would take unreasonable effort to check; yes, asking for names and whispering is unreasonable because generally people don't bother to lie about a VoA group) and striking up competition just because your ego doesn't allow you to get your frost marks in a group assembled by a crappy leader (assembled, not led - VoA groups don't need leaders).

As for the MotD:
Caring about buffs in a normal mode pug... well maybe after 5 wipes it starts to make sense. Otherwise I generally don't even notice the buffs that are not my responsibility to place. In my HM group they will be there; in a random pug they are not necessary. You will lose more time sorting them out among 25 people than you will lose on unbuffed dps.
Unless you wipe by a really small margin, it wasn't because of missing buffs.

As for the name "Chaox", what's wrong with it? That it kind of looks like chaos? Seriously, how peeved are you getting about names when Chaox gets the same treatment as Pewpewlol and Rofldots?

Thernil said...

Hrllo gevlon , i used to do this all the time back in vanilla and bc , but surprisingly i had forgot all about it in wotlk. but yea its a good trick,

KhasDylar said...

Nice trick, I did something similar a couple of months ago. Many people were spamming /trade "LFG xyz for weekly". I like to play mostly as DPS, so finding a group is harder and I didn't wanted to switch to tanking. I was spamming /trade too with "LFG weekly" messages, but after two or three I've got bored and switched to "LFM weekly". I said nothing else, not even how many people I want and on what specs. In 10 seconds I've got at least 3-4 whispers, asking if there's a spot for them. I invited the first one, who was at first stunned, that we are only two. The group got formed very quick (in 10mins or so), I had to switch to tanking although.

About the moron(s): actually the whole group here was a moron. Why? Those who are not morons, shouldn't even bother to go with such a group, if they go, makes them morons, even if only "temporarly". Another morons were here the paladins, 'cause neither of them had the nuts to organise Blessings. If there were 4 pallies, this could be very easy. There's an addon called PallyPower, which does this in a handy way, but even these days I see many-many fellow paladins without it - and yes, they almost always give incorrect Blessings, even if told which they should... You can't help people, who have no brain.

Ygg said...

I think that if you have no clue about strategies the last thing you need cluttering raid chat is spam about pala buffs or even pala buffs themselves; much more important would be a consequent discussion about --- strategies

Riptor said...

I have a macro for exactly these situations. i.e i'm in a pug (for whatever reason... mostly pure boredom) and something better comes up.
"Sorry guys, my kitchen is on fire, my cat just had kittens that are also on fire and my Internet connection got lost somwhere along the way.... I got to go"
Funny thing: If there are two guys leaving at the same time, I get way more hate for my macro than the other guy for his usual "ah.. screw this" /quit

I think I'll never get socials... Couple of weeks ago I had a discussion with one of the better healers in our twink/pug icc run. She stated that she'd rather keep the klick to move-slacker Heal because quote "she's such a nice Person..." than replace her with a capable Player.... it just doesn't make sense...

Jonh Doe said...

very nice post ....

little lies .... big profitability ...

greedy spirit inside :)

WeekendWarrior said...

It’s interesting the type of person one can become when interacting with “strangers” verses associates. For example, behavior in your guild versus behavior in pugs/trade. So here we see the example of telling a lie to stangers in order to accomplish a short term goal. So for anyone who feels uncomfortable with doing this because of internal guilt of telling a lie or a fear of being caught, this is how it is done:

- If you are afraid of being caught in a lie and embarrassed because you were caught, make sure it is something difficult to verify. Don’t lie about your gearscore because it is too easy to verify. The harder to verify the lie the more likely someone will just accept it without question.
- Now if you are uncomfortable with telling a lie because you have some moral conscious or some other flaw in your character you are going to need to “rationalize your behavior”. This part is really easier than it sounds. How is this done you say? Well now, first of all remind yourself that this is just a game, and that no one takes this seriously after all. And if they do then well they should know better. Next, remember that these people aren’t in your guild, they are just folks in pugs or trade and just don’t know any better. They are not your peers. And if they do get upset with you, they won’t remember you in a week anyway.

See, this rationalization stuff isn’t so hard. It’s kind of fun actually. Now you guys go out there and give this a try. If you start to feel bad about your actions, remember to rationalize some more. That will make that bad feeling go away. Remember this is just a game.

Weekend Warrior

Duskstorm said...

Back when I was actually looking to get into ICC/RS pugs, I'd lie about my GearScore. I started lying right when Blizzard started throttling equipment checks. I realized that it had become cumbersome to actually check an individuals' GearScore.

Few people would call me on it, and if they did, it would likely be after Marrowgar, when I could link recount proving that I'm one of the top DPS of the group.

Markco said...

Marketing is not about lieing, it's about solving people's problems. If you choose to lie about the 'details' as you put it then your final product will not deliver on your promises and people will simply take a refund.

I'm sure in this case quite a few people left your group the moment they saw that you needed far more members than you were advertising for.

A lieing marketer is a fool who simply wants to grab a section of the internet pie without a thought for future growth.

Next time you ask for more members people will recall that you lied last time and will opt to join a different group that they know will be starting right away instead of waiting for yours to fill up.

For a simpler mind it is ALL about lieing and sadly that is the stereotype mareketers like myself have to live with. In other more educated communities (not saying the wow community is a bunch of dunces but it's primarily comprised of less experienced individuals) marketing is understood to be a way of producing goods and services people need and want to pay for.

On a side note, your lieing marketing campaign against me has been most amusing and terribly unsuccessful because it's just too easy to fact check your claims.

Squishalot said...

Actually, Arjaay and the paladins in the raid are the morons. 4 paladins will provide BoM, BoW, BoS and BoK, providing that they take two seconds to coordinate (or less BoS, if one isn't a tank). Arjaay is a moron for saying that 'BoM would be nice on everyone', since casters won't care about it.

And I agree with Grim - VoA25 isn't really lie-worthy, unless your server is that empty. Advertising in Dalaran should have been sufficient.

Unknown said...

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

attribution Benjamin Disraeli or Charles Dilke.

Marko may have a point. If Gevlon gets a reputation for attempting to fill voa 25 on the basis of misquoting exact numbers, then he may find it harder to fill voa 25's in future. Thus lying will led to failure in the medium to longer term.

However, since (a) Gevlon covered his tracks with the use of "guild members coming", and (b) the raid was successful. It seems likely that his ruse will continue to be successful, and Marko's conclusion is flawed.

Whether it will work on your server therefore depends on (a) the server population size, (b) the size of your guild (bigger ones will get away with it more), and (c) perhaps the most important, whether you can successfully "herd cats" i.e. down the boss with the gathered raid.“History will be kind to me for I intend to write it” quote = Winston Churchill.

Anonymous said...

At least on my server people do call out on your gearscore if you have lied. I have seen people kicked for lying about the gearscore as well as fake achivements. Then again I have been accused of having a really low gearscore in an ICC 10man pug. Luckily I was not kicked immediately and people were able to point out that the number shown by his gearscore mod was not correct at all.

nightgerbil said...

@ Khasdylar, it was a tuesday some of my guildies needed emblems so I went with them as I was unsaved. We had 4 palis in the raid, 2 of which did their job and kept kings and sanctuary up on us all raid. Why he wouldnt give might instead of sanct and why the other two just ignored us is by the by, cos the priests didnt buff nor did the druids. The group eventually achieved what it did thanks to a handful of us who effectively boosted the dribbling masses and spoon fed them the strategies they needed, It was harder then it had to be on account of the fact few listened, here we see the difference between a "new" and a scrub. @ spinksville whats wrong with my name? its just as valid as "shadowhawk" "ghostfox" or any other oh so cool(emo) names i saw all the time.

Shannon Fowler said...

I'm curious why you feel that VoA is worth doing at all. Slim chance at a drop you would be interested in, with about as many badges as you could expect from a heroic run with guild members (or two, if you can get people to stay for the whole instance), done in about the same amount of time when considering spamming trade.

I'm not trying to insist you're wrong for doing so, I'm just rather disillusioned with badge farming at all at the moment.

sha said...

@markco

Marketing produces zero goods or services, it is simply the process of how the goods or services are exposed to the clients/consumers. It is meant to get people in the door and from there the sales process takes over.

In this case Gevlon is lieing in his marketing by saying he has more people than he does. However, he is able to sell his product (voa clear) because he still delivers the concepts behind the lie, a quicker filling and clearing raid.

Even socials will get over a lie if the results turn out favorably for them. It's only when the outcome is negative that players/clients/consumer would put a negative mark against someone who lied. Marketers should never lie if they don't have control of the product as well (ie a software developer creating marketing for his own product).

format said...

Real world version is the commercials with "customer testimonials" played by payed actors and written by the marketing team.

Or the doctor who is not a doctor despite he is wearing the lab coat in a doctor's office.

When all these 'people' are raving about the product and the 'doctor' says it works. It is hard not to be caught up in the social pack mentality.

Anonymous said...

I checked Chaox's armory, and he's 5% over the hitcap (atleast) and over haste softcap. what a fucking waste. He's terrible, and also, pvp shoulder enchants and no headenchant whatsoever. and yet, he's got this "gearscore". Unbelievable

Dàchéng said...

I too am with Larísa on this one. I don't think it's okay to lie.

Quixotic said...

@Emily L'Orange assuming that you're correct in saying the badge farming rate is about equal (and I'm not sure it is) there are still several reasons to do VoA:
-You can pug it with virtually no chance for a wipe, while you cannot do the same for ICC hardmodes.
-You have a chance at a piece of gear that will allow you or a guild member to spend a token from ICC elsewhere, so it's a more valuable piece of gear. Essentially, you can get an ICC25/ICC10HM drop off of a faceroll boss.
-You can only do each ICC once a week, so if you have time to spare and you want to get badges as quickly as possible, you might as well do VoA.

Anonymous said...

"LF10M VoA25" was not a lie. He did need 10 more people for VoA. And then another 14 to make a full raid. The implication that he needed only 10 more was not stated. It was an incorrect assumption by those who made it but not Gevlon's lie. Besides, a savvy pugger should have suspected something from the phrase "maybe a tank". There are no maybes when it comes to tanks. You either have two or you don't and nobody needs three for VoA.

"LF5M VoA 25, we are going soon, leave the other raid" was aggressive but true because Gevlon was the better recruiter and the other raid lead had nothing to counter with.

/trade is pvp and the other guy lost.

Anonymous said...

Generally speaking its not okay to lie. But it does depend on the situation. If you are never going to be unsure about what you told to who (Tell everyone the same thing) and if nobody is being notably negatively effected by the lie, then its not such a bad thing.