Greedy Goblin

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Blizzard never stops griefing

I can ride to Ashenvale and oneshot lowbies "for lolz". It is obvious griefing. And it can be stopped by a single line of code: characters that would give no honor are seen unflagged by you, even on PvP servers, so you can't attack them unless they attack first.

Many people were victims of such griefers and Blizzard still did not implement that one line of code. Why? Because of three things:
  • griefers are playing $15 too: griefing is an emotional vent. Arthasdklol was pawned in BG by hordies, so goes and kills lvl 20 hordies. Everyone laughed on arthasdklol in school, he pulls the whole instance, leaves and laughs on the 4 LFD fodders. The game provides him emotional relief, so he will feel good about the game.
  • there are no "griefers": I can't imagine anyone who does nothing but griefing in WoW. The "griefers" are not a small but active group, griefing is done by a large player group in the small minority of their time. So 100 griefs are not made by 3 sick kids, it's made by 60-80 people who griefed once or twice.
  • griefing is not self-sustaining: If one can clean ICC, he goes back for more rewards. If he can't he doesn't. Success makes the activity to repeat. However successful griefing does not make it to repeat. Corpscamping a lowbie in Ashenvale takes the same time from the griefer as it is from the victim and provides them the same reward: nothing. There is no point in griefing, it is an irrational act driven by anger or sadness. As the anger is vented, the griefing is no longer lucrative. The guy just gets bored and leaves.
The above things mean that griefing is pretty rare. I can recall only a handful of events when I was griefed. Putting developer or GM resource to "fix" something that's only mildly annoying, and pretty rare for the majority, on the other hand great source of relief for some paying customers is bad business.

Griefers disbanded the WG raid for long-long time. Yet Blizzard did nothing. Now, when they are working around the clock to make a new expansion ready, and Wintergrasp is completely obsolete content, they got the time and effort to fix it? Coincidence? If you look at the patch notes, two lines below the "WG fix", you can find "Honorable Kills are no longer awarded for killing players below level 5." Strange coincidence that just a week ago this was the "moron of the day" addenum.

So why did Blizzard fix "griefing" by WG kicks in the middle of the Cata-deadline-madness? Because we started to kick for performance reasons! Imagine that killing a lowbie in Ashenvale would somehow make a raider more powerful! Ashenvale would become unplayable for lowbies and Blizzard would hotfix it.

The results were clear, WGClean was the ultimate winning strategy in WG (and by extension, Tol Barad). The M&S cause so much damage to any team, that anyone using an M&S cleaner addon will finally get domination in these battlegrounds. Of course it's symmetrical, so the defeated faction always has the option to use it too, leveling the field.

Blizzard, having much more data than I could ever imagine, acknowledged WGClean to be a useful winning strategy. They just found it to be harmful to their business, since making WGClean mainstream and must-be for any frequent WG/TB player would make these aspects of the game unplayable by M&S, who are also paying customers.

Please note the huge difference between "griefer kicks everyone" and "WGClean kicks M&S". The former is a rare annoyance. The griefer had his sick fun and won't bother you again for a month. On the other hand WGClean will kick the M&S every single time until he fixes his play (which will be forever). Also, if you are a victim of an obvious griefer, you feel bad about him. If you are kicked for low performance, you feel bad about yourself or the game ("I don't suck, the game is bugged/unbalanced/fail").

So I'm very happy as a researcher and very sad as a player. My research project with WGClean was complete success: I not only could reach huge increase in winnings in only a week, but also was confirmed by Blizzard. As a player, I enjoyed WG and was looking forward for TB, a place that I will see only once or twice a week now, with huge guild premades, as just joining randomly would be equal to being GY-camped for half an hour.

81 comments:

Townes said...

Maybe it really is a strange coincidence and nothing more. Not as interesting an idea, but plausible.

Anonymous said...

You can't gank lowbies on a PVE server, this is why PVE servers are recommended over PVP servers for new players. It's a form of consent to be ganked in return for being able to gank others.

I'm still amazed you're saying it was the effect of WGClean that built momentum rather than the aid of a 110 level 80s strong guild given the numbers at the start was only 15 players. But you censored that response so I guess this one is staying between me and you as well.

Yaggle said...

Blizzard is addicted to the huge revenues the way a drug user is addicted to heroin. You are threatening their continued addiction to M&S money. And like a drug addict, they will ruin themselves in the end.

Buboe said...

Hmmm.
Two possibilities here I see.
Blizz killed WGClean because it's a winning strategy that shows up the "M&S" (as defined by you)
Or..
Blizz stopped it because they have access to a moral compass that you and your low-affect following lack.
I'm guessing that the second option is just noise to you. It's a real shame, as when I read the early Gevlon pages, you seemed not to be such a caricature of a person.

Gevlon said...

@Anonymous: but I can still kill their questgivers, flightmasters and auctioneers, /spit on them, kill their named quest monsters.

Also, I "censored" your nonsense because I thought you are just a random illiterate, but I have to "censor" so many of you that I rather explain it to you: the 110 lvl 80 was here in August and September too and we sucked like hell. We even sucked in early October. Then on the last week of October and in November we rocked. Must be a coincidence.

@Buboe: yes, their moral compass stopped kicking M&S. Their moral compass does not stop lowbie ganking, /spit-ting, gearscore addon and so on. Weird.

Squishalot said...

"Coincidence? If you look at the patch notes, two lines below the "WG fix", you can find "Honorable Kills are no longer awarded for killing players below level 5." Strange coincidence that just a week ago this was the "moron of the day" addenum."

The main thing in common is that they were both reported to GMs, and that they both weren't working as intended. There are plenty of other things that you've posted on your blog that haven't been taken up, because they are working as intended.

Note the next sentence in the WG fix - this change will also apply to Tol Barad in Cataclysm. The fix isn't for some obsolete thing, it's for Blizzard's brand new world PvP area. It just happens to also apply to Wintergrasp, because the mechanics are the same.

This change has nothing to do with WGClean being successful and everything to do with said actions being unintended outcomes of using the Raid system in a world PvP battleground. The fix has only come late in WotLK because they haven't been bothered, but wanted to get it right for Cataclysm. Why make the same mistake twice?

"the 110 lvl 80 was here in August and September too and we sucked like hell. We even sucked in early October. Then on the last week of October and in November we rocked."

I'd say "screenshot or it didn't happen", but you and I both already know you don't have the screenshots. So I'll satisfy myself by saying that you have no evidence for that claim other than wishy washy touchy-feely anecdotal evidence.

"My research project with WGClean was complete success: I not only could reach huge increase in winnings in only a week, but also was confirmed by Blizzard."

Again, false claim. You have no substantive evidence.

Fifthlive said...

I read today that Tol Barad would be a 1:1 ratio with a cap of 80 person.

I not sure if I like this. Depending on how many that queue up for TB it might be a lower amount of decent players to good players on one team or the other, and yet again there is a raid for the winning team.
Might be harder to get a majority of persons that work for the victory.

On the other hand the more a M&S loses the less "fun" he would have and in the long run stay away from TB.

Ephemeron said...

"Griefers disbanded the WG raid for long-long time. Yet Blizzard did nothing. Now, when they are working around the clock to make a new expansion ready, and Wintergrasp is completely obsolete content, they got the time and effort to fix it? Coincidence? If you look at the patch notes, two lines below the "WG fix", you can find "Honorable Kills are no longer awarded for killing players below level 5." Strange coincidence that just a week ago this was the "moron of the day" addenum."

Yes, coincidence.

Note that Blizzard never fixed any of your other profitable M&S-abusing schemes (like, say, single-arrow posting) or paid attention to other "moron of the day" inserts. And now suddenly, after ignoring you for years, they've finally clued in?

Nah, I suspect that there's an unrelated reason here. It's just as likely that they've recruited a bunch of new applicants after Blizzcon 2010, so they can now afford to have a team dedicated to stamping out PvP-related exploits.

Gevlon said...

@Squishalot: I have the screenshots. I posted them. Or you say that I photoshopped them to look better? If so, then you should stop reading the blog as it contains nothing but lies.

Ranjurm said...

It's a bit of a stretch to declare that your WG-kick program was the source of the change in World PvP raid leading. To use your own argument against you, there was an exceptionally small percentage of the user population that was affected by your activities; an amount far lower than the number of people that have been ganked during their WoW career.

Unknown said...

@Squishalot
Although I too tend to think that this is a coincidence and that WGClean was not a sole reason for such swift changes, there are a lot of things that are not working as intended and have been reported/talked about in WoW forums for years, but have not been fixed yet.

Let's take for example the infamous underground mining/herbing. It does not take a PhD in math to do the complex geometrical check to find out whether the farmer is currently under the node he is trying to mine.

The same goes for speedhacks, bot character "hearts" in the air, and similar things that for some reason lack some pretty trivial server or un-hacked client side checks.

I will leave the reasons for all these unfixed things on the conscience of members of Blizzard's Moral Compas Team.

P.S. There is a thread about WG changes on US forums:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=27607289959&postId=277288279741&sid=1#1

Now indeed nothing will stop creatures like Etkolinck to enjoy their specific way of 'fun' in WG and TB:
I like to pick a random newbe quest I haven't done yet. And wait for people to ask to share quests while in WG. Then I share my Forsaken starting area quests or what ever lowbe quests I have picked up.

I do it as a slap in the face to the people to freaking lazy to fly out to WG 30mins before there first battle on Tuesday and pick up that round of weekly's.

I mean really people,, ya know they reset every freaking week,, you can pick all four of them up right off the flight path,, whats so freaking hard about that?

Anonymous said...

It really depends how the addon was picked up and put to use.

Also, it was clear from the start that this was unintended behaviour as you cannot kick players in BGs, too, so why shouldn't the same rules apply to the outdoor BG?

The reason it wasn't in from the start is the iterative process that WG received through WotLK - this particular hole just fell through the cracks.

So, in my opinion, it was a combination of both. It was bound to be fixed at some point in time one way or another, but maybe the emergence of the WGClean addon accelerated the whole process of getting a fix in.

It's impossible to prove unless Blizzard admits it or one would have access to their data.

Anonymous said...

A heartfelt congratulations to the author of WG Clean.

They join the proud company of the esteemed authors of the AVRe and PoisonSwapper, makers of addons so good, Blizzard deliberately and (almost) immediately changed game mechanics to make them redundant.

And, I suppose, a hat-tip to Gevlon himself for commissioning the addon.

Gevlon said...

@Ephemeron, Ranjurm: but WGClean had the perspecive of spreading. The 1 arrow trick and all the M&S-abuse things were done by me and a little fraction of the playerbase. Most players don't care about the gold, so they won't adapt my methods, even if I post them on my blog.

However the kick addon could be used on every server and become standard, just like DBM or GS.

Anonymous said...

The possibility of getting attacked by higher level players is one of the reasons I play on a PvP server. I don't want to be babysat by Blizzard. I want the constant threat of an unbeatable enemy that I have to escape from.

Also, where would you draw the line? 10 levels? 15? In vanilla wow I regularly killed level 60s on my 49 rogue. if the lowbies outnumber the higher level then the gap can get even wider.

Furthermore, there are plenty of reasons besides malicious unprovoked griefing for high level characters to kill low level characters: revenge for killing an alt, protecting lowbies, protecting NPCs, attempting to provoke a bigger PvP battle.

In other words, Blizzard doesn't do what you suggest because people who are on PvP servers actually want unrestrained PvP.

As for the rest, you seem to be a bit delusional today. Blizzard doesn't make bug fixes in response to a single addon being used on a single server by one guild. And they certainly don't turn them around and release patch notes on them in less than a week.

Nerdrager said...

Make wgclean automate leaving the raid group when you join and then find a way to negotiate between clients (addon chat channel?) who is the raid leader.
Add a spam line in general from the raid leader once the raid group is formed stating that they're left playing with M&S and that they should:
- leave the raid group
- whisper the rl for an invite (automated filtering and accepting here)
- get the addon

Obviously the M&S are going to leave the first group only to be filtered and griefed even more. :P

It can be a less than ideal strat since the M&S are still in the first raid group wasting tenacity, but if the addon becomes commonly used the results would the same as its first implementation since in the long run they would be forced to stay in the M&S raid.

Blizzard would need to go out of their way to either making impossible to leave wg groups or directly break the addon... or accepting that people have the right to play how they want (not going to happen, but at least they'll need to work on a fix)

In the end wg is there to provide phat lewt and something easy to do for morons, might be more goblinish to let them have it and play "content that matters" like arena and rated bgs..

Coa said...

@Jana

What he does is perfectly alright. It's absolutely ridiculous how people spam asking you to share the quests when they zone in right next to the quest givers regardless of whether you're defending or attacking. It's especially annoying when some idiot is spamming the chat asking for people to share the quests the day before reset by when the majority of people have finished and handed in their already.

Anonymous said...

I'm not English, so would somebody clarify this point to me. Gevlon saying "grief" but not "gank" word, but Oxford states "grief" is "intense sorrow, especially caused by someone's death". Sad to say I don't really get it.

XLos said...

This;
Honorable Kills are no longer awarded for killing players below level 5.

Is the fix for an exploit with level 1's and getting hk's. Low levels dont get the increased loading time or the increased ress timer if you will and there where people where farming lowbies with bots and what not to gain hk's for the said achievements in cata.

Xlos said...

Too see the old exploit in action;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHKDP_siR-I

Gevlon said...

@Arthor: "griefing" is a gaming slang, it means "doing something to cause sorrow in the victim". Ganking can be "griefing", just like many other action.

Aljabra said...

@Squishalot
"they both weren't working as intended. "
They both weren't working as intended for 2 years of WoTLK, and no one gave a damn about it. And now, long before it becomes an actual problem (as people will need to level up to get to Tol Barad anyway, and WG is mostly obsolete by now), when they have tons of real bugs they need to fix before the impending release date, they go all the way to fix this one? Most interesting part is that there are PTR running for every patch, and somehow this one change misses the PTR and go live directly. Certainly coincidence.

" The fix has only come late in WotLK because they haven't been bothered, but wanted to get it right for Cataclysm."
The fix, in fact, is extremely simple, so they had been able to do it long time ago - after all they already have all the mechanics needed in BG and LFG systems. It's not a bother, it's just something you need to have on your to-do list.
What's much more interesting is that it even got to front line of the patch notes, and there are lot of changes, that didn't.

" So I'll satisfy myself by saying that you have no evidence for that claim other than wishy washy touchy-feely anecdotal evidence."
"Again, false claim. You have no substantive evidence."

Your desire for it to be false claim is getting in the way of your rational thinking. There are plenty of evidence and many witnesses, as there are many people in The PuG, who observed the whole deal right from the start. In fact, there are screenshots in one of the previous posts.

Anonymous said...

i agree with nerdrager: that's the most simple solution to keep wgclean working. the possibility of others to still cost tenacity is the same as before only that they can observe each other on the map while fishing.

if blizz changes it to make it similar to bg's (leave raid -> leave battle) maybe some other possibility like a 'enough people vote him as afk -> get him kicked' (addon) would be the next step.

in regard to griefing:
when i lately leveled my mining and herbalism from zero on, i killed every enemy regardless of their level for 2 simple reasons: it helps providing a simple bit of change in the 'ride in a circle looking for nodes' and because i can.
then again, this might not be griefing since i didn't do it to inflict harm on them since i don't care about their feelings anyway.

Unknown said...

@Coa

You are partly right. It does show them 5 M&S, who beg for sharing the quest, their place! However, the share quest dialog pops up also for rest of non-Loremasters and people, who did not do the particular starting zone.

I can agree that it was not the perfect example, however my point was that, unless some "vote afk" system is implemented, WG and TB will be a paradise for all kind of special-case lol-kids, since they will be free to execute all their ultra-creative and destructive forms of 'having fun' without any meaningful consequences.

Sarge said...

I've followed your WGClean reports throughout and I'm pretty sure, that this is not a coincidence, but a direct reation by Blizzard to this this addon, which changed this battleground substantially.

My guess is, they rather live with battlegrounds severely influenced by M&S than dealing with anry M&S customers, who demand their rightful place in the battleground.

Guess Tol Barad will be equally imbalanced, like WG has been throughout WotLK.

Ðesolate said...

I´m a bit depresst, as always when things turn out to be pro-leeching / stupidity. But well, being ganked on Eredar (my first pvp-server in start BC) by 5 vs 5 glad ranked teams, because they were bored, looking at BG honor leecher, fishermen in during-battle-WG, GY-ganker, Bossfight AFK-bob, flame-/"rude"boy in /2, beggars, below 1k dps level 80´s, speed-/fly-/GCD-/clippinghackers, goldbuyer, eb@ychars (even naming their arenateams ebay ftw and yes I could prove they´ve been sold...)... I´ll stop here and still have ~100 more.

I don´t get really mad or sick of that. I´ve seen this from the start on. Never cared, because they never mattered to me. I´m gone in some minutes to meet a new excample of M&S. I even started to investigate them, laugh at them, make myself feeling a bit better by not beeing a curse at the succes-orientated players.

No really I´m fine with them, as long as they don´t steal to much of my time.

But there are some very "special" people out there giving me the creeps. Really I´m scared by them. I can´t even get near to their minds and don´t get where they lost their minds...
Who you might be asking? Well that´s the people defending begging, hacking, leeching, etc. trying to get an argument about fishing during WG battle is meant to be, low dps are fine since you can boost them with no efford, you have enough gold for 20 accounts, so share.

I ask myself, what are you doing in reallife? Have you ever helped a disabled person? have you ever given 500 bucks to a bum? have you ever talked to someone who tried to gnaw his arms open just to get rid of his own life?

I doubt even 5% of you would be as "selfless" in reallife or even ingame as you demand on others. I´ve worked in an hospital for 10 months instead of going to the german army. I´ve seen a lot of those self claiming "socials" beeing unable to save an old woman from death because it is "disgusting" to ventilate her and much more of such crap. Yes I don´t care if she smells like something disgusting, it´s my job to help her no matter where or when it happens.
And I dare to claim myself asocial.

I´m just about to end my "textwall" with saying I´m pissed off. Not by the WG changes or TB changes. Not by the people who claim "I told you so".

I´m pissed off because there are people who claim to be intelligent but can´t get it that leeching and fooling around like a five year old without any brain (in any on-duty-queue) is simply harassment. Do you also support the 0,1% selfish-unemployed or the failing 40-million compensation payed manager (heard about telekom?)?

Think about it.
I´m done with it by a lifetime of nullifying the same lame excuses.

Iridias said...

Someone asked why Blizzard didn't fix the other "bugs" that can be used to abuse the M&S. Well thats simple: they don't hurt Blizzard. In most cases, the M&S don't even realize, that they have been abused. And as long as there is no risk, that the M&S quit their accounts, Blizzard just don't care. But WGClean had the potential to do exactly this.

And regarding to "Blizzard doesn't make bug fixes in response to a single addon" - what about AVR?

Coa said...

@Jana

People sharing irrelevent quests because some idiot cannot seem to understand that the questgiver is right next to him as he zones in is the least of those problems. It's a mere annoyance at most, people that tend to do it tend to share the same quest in my experience so it's easy enough to simply leave it in your quest log.

chewy said...

The other day I was convinced that the fix was unrelated to WGClean, now I'm not so sure. I want to believe that Blizzard will react to the community since their track record of such behaviour is very poor (See Larisa's threads on the subject) and if they've had a change of heart it's a good thing for the game and player communities.

On the other hand I have to agree with Squish that there is no substantive evidence.

Martin said...

Until you can explain why similar swing in win ratios happened in last 4 weeks on other servers as well, you should not claim that it was a result of WGClean.

Gevlon said...

@Martin: what are you talking about?

Brian said...

Blizzard would need to go out of their way to either making impossible to leave wg groups or directly break the addon... or accepting that people have the right to play how they want (not going to happen, but at least they'll need to work on a fix)

In the end wg is there to provide phat lewt and something easy to do for morons, might be more goblinish to let them have it and play "content that matters" like arena and rated bgs..

chewy said...

I read today that Tol Barad would be a 1:1 ratio with a cap of 80 person.

I not sure if I like this. Depending on how many that queue up for TB it might be a lower amount of decent players to good players on one team or the other, and yet again there is a raid for the winning team.
Might be harder to get a majority of persons that work for the victory.

On the other hand the more a M&S loses the less "fun" he would have and in the long run stay away from TB.

chewy said...

"but I can still kill their questgivers, flightmasters and auctioneers, /spit on them, kill their named quest monsters."

Of course you can! That's supposed to happen! It's a MMO. If someone is ganking you or killing your quest givers, call for help.

Back in the days we had battles over Astranaar and in the Barrens without any kind of BG. So... what the hell are you saying?

Squishalot said...

@ Gevlon: "I have the screenshots. I posted them. Or you say that I photoshopped them to look better? If so, then you should stop reading the blog as it contains nothing but lies."

Gevlon, you and I both know that the screenshots do not show what the PuG's performance in WG was like prior to WGClean. Therefore, it is a false claim to say that you sucked in early October and rocked in early November, because your performance was above server average already. You even admitted last week that you cannot dispute this.

Again, all you have to go by is touchy feely anecdotal evidence to suggest that your high performance with WGClean (of which, as you admit, a large proportion occured in non-peak periods) was to do with the addon, and not the PuG's presence on server.

"@Martin: what are you talking about?"

It appears that many previously one-sided servers are experiencing a shift in momentum, where WG is no longer as dominated by that single side. That's certainly been the case on my server, where the Horde are resurgent at present. This is potentially attributable to the lack of interest in WG by decent players, in view of Cataclysm being released shortly.

Considering that the primary incentive of obtaining WG is to access VoA and obtain T10 loot, and Cataclysm will inevitably replace T10 loot very quickly, it's fair to say that much of the value in participating in WG has been lost for many players.

I don't have any data to support Martin's claim, but if it's true, this further reduces the value impact of WGClean.

@ Aljabra: "Your desire for it to be false claim is getting in the way of your rational thinking. There are plenty of evidence and many witnesses, as there are many people in The PuG, who observed the whole deal right from the start. In fact, there are screenshots in one of the previous posts."

There are no screenshots of pre-WGClean performance. There is similar evidence, from people in the PuG and others on the server who would testify that WG performance increased after the PuG joined the server. Therefore, there is no concrete evidence that WGClean made nearly as much difference as Gevlon claims.

Ferdinand said...

I don't find it completely implausible that the appearance of an addon dedicated to kicking players from Wintergrasp raids would spur Blizzard to disable that function. I think it's more likely, however, that this is simply an extension of the design philosophy that led them to implement queues and force raids to disband upon entering the zone. It was on the devs' to-do list, and they're getting it out of the way before Tol Barad hits.

Xenxu said...

Of course the fix is related to WG Clean. If you doubt that, you haven't been playing this game very long. Or you have, but you are yourself an M&S. Sorry.


Blizzard has a huge history of doing this. They design the game, they lack proper testing and/or foresight, players figure out how to be competitive or creative, and they destroy that aspect.

The thing to remember is that WoW is not a serious game. It is meant to be an experience, a theme park of rides that you are not meant to have an impact on.

Every raid boss is supposed to have but one strategy, every player is supposed to be geared the same way. Every WG is supposed to be played the same way. "Fun" trumps strategy.

Of course, "fun" is different for real gamers and lawl kids. Blizzard has time and time again taken the sides of the lawl kids and denied or even punished players playing creatively and using Blizzard's own game against them (LK Grenades, roof campers).

Real games are allowed to develop organically, fake games like this are churned out in order to spoon feed you and create false sense of playing.

Cheers!

Gevlon said...

@Squishalot: There are two weekly reports, one about 33.9% and one about 40.8%. It seems that The PuG got much better over a week!

Squishalot said...

@ Gevlon: In theory, it should have made no difference as circumstances between those two weeks haven't changed, and 33% and 40% is purely weekly variation. Given that variance, your numbers are actually within tolerance for a 'no change' conclusion.

By the way, Gevlon, I started reading your blog because it had some good ideas, and I still hang around for those occasions. However, the direction you're taking your blog is highly disappointing.

To quote Andru:

"You're losing it, Gevlon. I much rather liked your philosophy of letting people sink or swim based on their own ability.

But advocating active killing becaouse 'they're wrong' is just stupid."

@ Aljabra: According to wow.curse.com, WGClean has been downloaded 196 times. Assuming that each person who downloaded has kicked only *three* people on average, that's almost 600 people who are likely to have logged a complaint about it, in the space of a couple of weeks. So yes, considering that, it comes to me as no surprise that Blizzard felt it was necessary to drop it on the patch notes.

Gevlon said...

@Squishalot: see tomorrow's post, it will definitely be a sink or swim.

Also, you should read today's post, because your answer to Aljabra is against it but you never bothered to disprove the post. I claimed that Blizzard NEVER do anything about griefing. I'm sure that corpsecamped lowbies filed more complaints than WGCleaned M&S, yet ganking is possible.

They did not stop WGClean because it griefed some. They stopped it because it was productive.

Kuon said...

According to this post
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=22748782480&sid=1

Blizzard had been going to disable kicking from WG for a long time.

It is surprising that they've done it just after WGClean appears and in the middle of an expansion rollout.

Squishalot said...

@ Gevlon: "They did not stop WGClean because it griefed some. They stopped it because it was productive."

I'm not arguing that they stopped it because it griefed people. I'm arguing:

1) They stopped it because it wasn't working as intended. This has been my argument from the very beginning. Reread my first comment in this post. Corpse-camped lowbies is working as intended - roll PvE or don't flag yourself if you want to complain. World BG kicking isn't intended - you have no real alternatives if you wish to participate as part of the organised group in WG.

2) It appeared on the front page of the patch notes (which is Aljabra's criticism of my argument) because of the high number of complaints that have been received about it in the last few weeks.

Whether it's productive or not will never be seen, because there isn't sufficient data to determine its productiveness, again, as we have both acknowledged.

Healer24 said...

I would like to point out one assumption that your post seems to hinge on: that fixing griefing is both simple and easy.

World of Warcraft is a complex system with tons of code behind it. Unless you, yourself, are a Blizzard employee with access to that code, you can't accurately tell how difficult (or easy) a particular change is to implement.

If your assumption is wrong, then the rest of your conclusions collapse. Your logic appears to be sound, but your premises might not be.

pippen1001 said...

Gevlon i was wondering if perhaps, you could use the option of leaving the premade wg raid and make your own raid and make everyone join it if they want to be in a group with WGclean. Much as your previous encounter with the horde spy.

Unless Blizzard bans forming of own raids or bans you from kicking any player while in wg this should be a viable tactic?

Ðesolate said...

"almost 600 people"
At having arount 3Million+ players in Europe that would be ~0,02%. For an excample in the RealID-War 20% of blizzards customers declared quitting wow 12% quitted their abo until the day the real-id-forum thing was abandonned.

I´d even say the addon has been downloaded in US so make in arount 6-7Million what gets us to 0,01%. Assuming a "bug" declared in the actual situation making Blizzard changing something, well have you seen the bug list? After all its easy to stop, but by saying It´s been 600 people... ...blizzard gives a shit on 0,02% of their customers as we know.

I personally got 598 Tickets by using the AV-Noobfilter "/e has voted you afk type "/afk revote" to..." and emotes didn´t get banned in AV, also I didn´t even recieve a ban nor a warning. Just some GM´s telling me the ticket numbers and to keep them up fine laughing.

I think, as gevlon says, it were the "enemys" who complained having loosing in a row. Such unbalance even on a single server attracts blizzard to action as if you´ve bugged out an straight new boss to slay it solo.

Nielas said...

I am sure that Gevlon's systematic kicking of people out of WG raids got Blizzard's attention.

However, this fix isn't some big reaction to it that was pushed forward just to get a better of Gevlon. Blizzard would probably not bother with a quick fix to it if they already were not heavily patching for Cataclysm.

From a programming standpoint it is a trivial change to make. However, on large projects you try to not do small trivial fixes if it's not a critical bug since it would require you to do a ton of recursion testing on the entire codebase. The exception is when you already have the codebase open for a large update and you then can squeeze in all the small fixes that have been deemed too trivial up to now.

So Gevlon might have caused the issue to show up on Blizzard's rader but you are kidding yourself that they fixes it now because it is such a big deal. It is a small issue that they fixed because they have an opportunity to do so without the usual overhead.

Aljabra said...

@Squishalot
Assuming that each person who downloaded has kicked only *three* people on average, that's almost 600 people who are likely to have logged a complaint about it, in the space of a couple of weeks. So yes, considering that, it comes to me as no surprise that Blizzard felt it was necessary to drop it on the patch notes.
I guess, it's time for me to tell yet another story, that occurred in ancient times, on the Warsong-EU server. It was time, when orcs was greener, and many of us, including me, just started playing the game. BC was just a small dot on the far horizon and most advanced players jut got they hands on brand new T2 sets. It was a time of glory of High Warlord Veterok, an orc shaman, who, somehow, decided to settle down in Westfall. I don't know, who that guy was, why he did what he did, but for about three years, until the entire server population migrated on newly opening Russian realms, and the server was closed as no one left there, this guy was basically living on Sentinel Hill. He was there more often, than NPC, as he didn't liked NPC and spent most of his time killing them. When he didn't massacred NPC, he did it to the low-level population, who sometimes made attempts to protect NPC (most of those people was genuine newbies and so had not very much knowledge of PvP). The only way to get away from him was to spend 5 minutes as a ghost, untill the flag wears off, as he murdered anything he could, on sight. He was impossible to get rid of, as no sane Alliance player wanted to guard the place 24/7, as Veterok did. When too much of Alliance guard arrived (if it wasn't too much, he killed them as well), Veterok just moved to Stranglethorn and ganked some lowbies there, until Westfall was clear of threat again. It was very hi-class griefer, everyone on server knew of him, he was better known orc, than Thrall, and certainly way, way more hated. I can't even imagine, how many complaints was sent about the situation, how many times Blizzard GM had to think "Oh, it's that guy again!", but no action Blizzard-side was ever taken. So no, Blizzard don't really reacts to whining and see nothing bad in griefing.

Heywood Djiblomi said...

"Where there's smoke, there's fire..."

...and Blizzard is the firehose.

Skipping PTR and going directly to live? Sounds like a sense of urgency in response to SOMETHING.

Wilson said...

@Xenxu - "Of course the fix is related to WG Clean. If you doubt that, you haven't been playing this game very long. Or you have, but you are yourself an M&S."

People who consider personal insults to be an adequate substitute for hard evidence do not impress me.

Sometimes Blizzard responds to game issues rapidly, sometimes they take months to address an issue. If I were to believe that this was a rapid response to WGClean, then I could also believe that my efforts to call Blizzard's attention to it were significant. Then my (as Gevlon calls them) ape-subroutines would be pleased, and like Gevlon I could be happy. But as a rational person I have to remain open to the possibility that this was an inevitable byproduct of the Tol Barad development. Unless someone produces real evidence one way or the other, I see no reason to accept anyone's conclusions. No matter how much they may try to hurt my feelings.

Coa said...

@Gevlon

That's because being corpsecamped on a PvP server is just part of the experience according to them, getting ganked etc all falls under this. The only thing your complaint might be taken seriously if the same person does it you so much that is starts to border on stalking and harrasment. That's a PvP server mind you, on a PvE server you'll most likely get a different response.

Bliz Loves M&S said...

It seems to me that it is a reasonable assertion that Blizzard found out about WGClean and the level 1 Honor Kills either by monitoring this blog or by having someone who follows it draw their attention to those two issues.

Unlike most stuff Gevlon posts about, these two game-mechanics if left unchanged would have caused M&S to have a worse game experience.

(WGClean: I can't play WG :-(, no fair game, I quit. Level 1 HKs: I never have enough honor, other people got it easier through cheating, I feel inferior to my peers, this game sucks I quit).

The timing of Bliz's patch is highly probative of it being a response to Gevlon's blog/activities.

Seems quite a shame for those of you who continue to play WoW and follow this blog, and for Gevlon himself: if he points out a way to circumvent M&S, Bliz is likely to patch it. Sadly, M&S outnumber rationals, so even if Gevlon & others threaten to leave over this, Bliz doesn't care as it would rather cater to the M&S.

Like Yaggle said, this will come back to haunt Bliz, as the M&S hate each other -- if there are no smart people to herd the M&S the M&S will get annoyed and quit. Bliz needs to realize that there is need for balance here.

Anonymous said...

I claimed that Blizzard NEVER do anything about griefing.

Never? "Blizzard has increased the level of starting zone guards in areas [...] to 90."

Anonymous said...

Just simply modify the WGClean addon so it will initiate the kick for the M&S. Now, for the effective work it needs:
1) to be installed on the majority of WG raiders
2) to auto-accept kick votes initiated by WGClean from any given raider
3) maintain its blacklist as before and keep kicking M&S from that list

Shannon Fowler said...

World BG kicking isn't intended - you have no real alternatives if you wish to participate as part of the organised group in WG.

Yes you do, it's called being a productive member of the group. It's crazy, but it works for some of us on a regular basis.

Anonymous said...

But... griefing and it's cousin, ganking are the only reason for PvP servers to exist. Every other PvP oriented activity can be accomplished on normal servers.

Are you suggesting that these servers are pointless?

Anonymous said...

Maybe the M&S got together and reported you for griefing them, by stopping them playing (or afk'ing) in WG. How ironic!

Now multiply that across all realms (with WGClean) and you may see that potentially, a lot of players could be complaining?

Maybe Blizzard could also potentially see that one/two players in each WG, has the power to say who can play or not, and that doesn't sit well with them.

When I saw the patchnotes, I thought as soon as I saw it, that the addon may have been the reason and not just a coincidence, but until a blue post appears, I suppose we'll never know.

As WG is supposed to be available to everyone on the realm, regardless of their skill level, I don't see why any one person who thinks it's their raid, has the right to say who can play or can't play. Obviously, guild raids or pug raids are a different matter, but not WG.

If anyone is not contributing to the battle in any way, they should just be automatically kicked from WG regardless.

Asparagus McGeezles said...

First things first; Those of you saying Wintergrasp obsolete?

Since when is Honour in any form obsolete?

According to the wiki, I am yet to verify from a beta source that Tol Barad is 30 minutes with a 60 minute cooldown time...that's 1.5 hours.

We all know Wintergrasp is every 2.5 hours.

So with those figures... who says you can't do both battles except for the few times in a day those battle times will overlap?

Honour is Honour.

2nd;

Can't kick people from the raid....good. Like BG system...but Who says you can't report idiots and have them removed. Or trick them "Philbert Diggsbury IV has reported you AFK, type /AFK Clear or you will be kicked out of the instance." Sure it is a dirty and low move...but it does get "those that would hinder progress" removed.

3rd; Griefers, grow up, its the internet, they are everywhere. Get some thicker skin and simply take away their method of griefing you. Don't rez, go somewhere else, anything. Sure you shouldn't have to, they aer causing the problem. Well sometimes you have to suck it up and deal. Report it and Drive On. Adapt and overcome.

Hell that little phrase can answer so much in WoW, all the people whining about "they nerfed mah class bro" "why can't i make golds" "What is the hit rating for a Sandwich Merchant" "what chants I get for daggers" Basically all the moronic stuff.

It won't go away, but you can ignore it. If you want change...make it.

Asparagus McGeezles said...

First things first; Those of you saying Wintergrasp obsolete?

Since when is Honour in any form obsolete?

According to the wiki, I am yet to verify from a beta source that Tol Barad is 30 minutes with a 60 minute cooldown time...that's 1.5 hours.

We all know Wintergrasp is every 2.5 hours.

So with those figures... who says you can't do both battles except for the few times in a day those battle times will overlap?

Honour is Honour.

2nd;

Can't kick people from the raid....good. Like BG system...but Who says you can't report idiots and have them removed. Or trick them "Philbert Diggsbury IV has reported you AFK, type /AFK Clear or you will be kicked out of the instance." Sure it is a dirty and low move...but it does get "those that would hinder progress" removed.

3rd; Griefers, grow up, its the internet, they are everywhere. Get some thicker skin and simply take away their method of griefing you. Don't rez, go somewhere else, anything. Sure you shouldn't have to, they aer causing the problem. Well sometimes you have to suck it up and deal. Report it and Drive On. Adapt and overcome.

Hell that little phrase can answer so much in WoW, all the people whining about "they nerfed mah class bro" "why can't i make golds" "What is the hit rating for a Sandwich Merchant" "what chants I get for daggers" Basically all the moronic stuff.

It won't go away, but you can ignore it. If you want change...make it.

Anonymous said...

@Gevlon said...

@Anonymous: but I can still kill their questgivers, flightmasters and auctioneers, /spit on them, kill their named quest monsters.

Blizzard did try that with the disaster that was dishonorable kills. The trouble was that it wound up being even more of a griefing tool since anyone that joined a raid group was in danger of having their rating obliterated and destroying several weeks of honor grinding. Since then, they've mostly ignored world pvp outside of adding hubs like halaa, WG and Tol Barad that are essentially outdoor BGs.

The thing about attacking towns like that is also that it exposes you to retaliation. Ganking someone then leaving/stealthing, only to return at some arbitrary time later, is extremely difficult to fend off without spending a disproportionate amount of effort. Camping a town sends out world alerts and puts the player near flight points where geared max level players could land on their head at any moment. Even the ones that disproportionately favor certain classes like the orgrimmar or gadgetzan roofs have had npcs added, which doesn't stop the action, it just means players can't do it while staying fairly safe from any retaliation. As far as I know, GM responses hinge on the whether the phrase "pvp solution" is applicable than any griefing response and the guards for the newbie zones seem to be getting bolstered dramatically into something that will require a party of level 85s to kill.

Also, I "censored" your nonsense because I thought you are just a random illiterate, but I have to "censor" so many of you that I rather explain it to you: the 110 lvl 80 was here in August and September too and we sucked like hell. We even sucked in early October. Then on the last week of October and in November we rocked. Must be a coincidence.

WG wasn't the focal point of your guild at the time, you were busy raiding ICC as progression and adjusting The PuG's raiding rules.

Patch 4.0 came out, dramatically altering the balance of the game, as well as its reward system, and the population via people who resubscribe.

A group of 15 prior to 4.0 had a very abysmal chance of winning, and I say this as a member of the larger faction on my server. People don't want to try if they don't feel they can have an effect on the end result. Simply inserting 5-10 people to a group of 15 and having them show up consistently dramatically alters how likely those initial 15 to influence the final win/loss result, which is a powerful effect. Apparently you "couldn't be arsed" to gather any actual data on this point and there are only vague, several week old, memories of whether The PuG's influence was any different.

If you want to claim to be a researcher, but "CBA" to gather data or acknowledge faults in the experiment for refining future research, then you're fundamentally the same as Arthasdklol who claims to be a great player by running up to the boss and haphazardly slapping their keyboard. There's the thinnest "social" illusion to the two being the same, but none of the underlying assumptions that lend the title its normal prestige.

Anonymous said...

@Amyiss said...

"World BG kicking isn't intended - you have no real alternatives if you wish to participate as part of the organised group in WG."

Yes you do, it's called being a productive member of the group. It's crazy, but it works for some of us on a regular basis.

Refer to the posts made November 5th and 10th. Gevlon was kicking players who were contributing, he only discontinued the practice because he was incapable of multi-tasking and micromanaging effectively. A more capable player isn't going to have those restrictions, even assuming they're using it for that intended purpose rather than as retaliation for some perceived slight. Keep in mind that the whole project started out of an attempt to deny someone honor as a form of revenge over a disagreement, the player remaining in WG afterward was entirely accidental.

Heywood Djiblomi said...

"Can't kick people from the raid....good. Like BG system...but Who says you can't report idiots and have them removed."

Yes, the GMs will get right to that report, after the 1,385 tickets queued ahead of it. The BG will have ended - several times over - by the time they could address it.

Self-policing just makes too much sense to be allowed to happen, I guess...

Ðesolate said...

"Maybe Blizzard could also potentially see that one/two players in each WG, has the power to say who can play or not, and that doesn't sit well with them."

You know that they only leave the raid. They can form their own raids.

"As WG is supposed to be available to everyone on the realm, regardless of their skill level, I don't see why any one person who thinks it's their raid, has the right to say who can play or can't play."
Of course that includes fishermen, bots, farmers, leechers...
I don´t see why any person would defend leeching / farming inside a BG. If you say it´s ment to be because you can do it. By that conclusion may wars murders and (ingame) hacks have been justyfied.
Look over your nutshell.

Squishalot said...

@ Aljabra and Desolate:

You're missing one key point. I'm not arguing that Blizzard are patching griefing by stopping WGClean from working. I'm arguing that they're patching a 'not working as intended' bug in the game.

In both circumstances that you're outlining (griefing of lowbies and baiting people in AV), that's working as intended. So there's no reason to change it, of course.

And again, the reason it's being done right now is likely because it impacts on Tol Barad. Regarding the PTR - did you happen to test it on the PTR? Have you heard of people griefing using RL privileges on the PTR? If so, evidence would be nice, if you're going to claim that it never went there first.

Taemojitsu said...

Squishalot:
>So I'll satisfy myself by saying that you have no evidence for that claim other than wishy washy touchy-feely anecdotal evidence.

And you have no evidence against it.


Aljabra:
>I guess, it's time for me to tell yet another story, that occurred in ancient times, on the Warsong-EU server. It was time, when orcs was greener, and many of us, including me, just started playing the game. BC was just a small dot on the far horizon and most advanced players jut got they hands on brand new T2 sets. . . .

Well, there's always the standard disclaimer that "griefing with PvP solutions is not treated as griefing" :P..

I don't recall exactly, but in the original alpha wasn't the penalty for ganking lower-level players a "dishonourable kill" that would reduce reputation with your own faction to the point of causing guards to attack you? Before being modified to only apply to lower-level NPCs when the revised honor system launched on live.

(I miss rooftop battles in Gadgetzan lol...ranged aoe snares to prevent people from jumping on crates ftw!)

Taemojitsu said...

Oh btw, if anyone wants some sort of idea of what WoW PvP was like before catapults, this is some random mage PvP video that I saved during a period of time when I wasn't playing WoW, it isn't the best but wasn't meant to be:
Divinity II by Avengence - WCM

Jim said...

First of all, kicking people from the WG raid is nothing new. People were getting banned over it months ago on my server (Trollbane US). They may have been getting banned though because it was getting out of control and disruptive.

Second of all, it is pretty clear this change had to do with Top Barad. Just this week they announced that TB would be 1:1 (no tenacity) capped at 80 players (40 a side). This means kicking someone from the raid would likely kick them from the zone if there was a waiting list. Even the most psychopathic of you would have to admit that would be unfair.

Otterlover said...

I have no doubt that the changes were implemented as a direct result of WGClean and this blog.

Over the past year I’ve seen players kick others from WG for no reason other than that they didn’t like them. Yet never before was this fixed as it wasn’t a systematic process like WGClean.

When I reported the honor farmers through the ticket system I received nothing but an automated response identical to ones that I’ve received in the past when reporting underground mining bots etc. I submitted another ticket and spoke to a GM, mentioning that I had recorded video of the activity. Their response was “thank you but we cannot accept video or screenshots as evidence”.

The activity in Western Plaguelands continued until just after Gevlon posted the video on his blog. Quite the coincidence that despite having being around for a long time, both of these issues were ‘fixed’ at the same time.

Anonymous said...

I believe the change to HK from less than level 5 toons had more to do with goldfarmers using level 1-3 toons to farm HKs, buy gems, sell on AH. They would camp at a GY and a lvl 3 would kill the level 1 over and over and over again, with a bot - no rez timer or anything.

Squishalot said...

@ Taemojitsu: "And you have no evidence against it."

Oh, but there is! The masses turned out to see Gevlon's victories in WG and put up with his the PuG's catchcry advertising after each new win.

Is it touchy feely anecdotal evidence? Yes. But this is still provided from Gevlon (though not in such language) - the rate of wins on the server was higher after the PuG joined than before. So treat it with the same degree of believability as you would Gevlon's claim that he's been getting more wins than before recently.

Why do people keep pointing at WGClean as the reason it was changed? Why not point at THE BRAND NEW PATCH AND WORLD BATTLEGROUND being released in two weeks time? WGClean isn't the only possible reason that they might want to change the mechanics.

Thankyou, Jim, for having some sense.

Taemojitsu said...

The "evidence provided by Gevlon" was that the presence of The PuG, when diluted by the not-insignificant existing population of the server, was not enough to provide consistent wins :S That was the entire reason the addon was developed.

Do you have any other evidence..?

Ðesolate said...

@Squishalot:
Well, you´re missing one Point. Everywhere you are thrown together with a bunch of people you can´t select (BG LFD) you can vote them out or flag them afk. That´s missing in WG. In fist Blizzard said there is a RL in WG who can select who plays in the raid and who not, so you can select.

Now they´ve got rid of that point but didn´t implement the afk-voting / kick voting to WG zone.
Why? I don´t get it (it´s a basic BG mechanic).

I never doubted it has been changed by the "special" way BT plays (60 minutes cd & 40vs40 like AV) kicking people out of an BG is something quite different than what WGClean did in WG.

Obviously TB has the mechanic that beeing kicked out of the raid means beeing kicked out of the zone. What compares to What in WG?
Nothing.

Aw and I never said the change came because of WGClean. I just said Blizzard gives a shit on 600 tickets.

Squishalot said...

@ Taemojitsu: "The "evidence provided by Gevlon" was that the presence of The PuG, when diluted by the not-insignificant existing population of the server, was not enough to provide consistent wins :S That was the entire reason the addon was developed.

Do you have any other evidence..?"


That the screenshots show that they still don't have consistent wins. And Gevlon's anecdotal evidence that their stream of successful defences occured out of peak periods, where the weaker faction traditionally has dominance.

At the end of the day, Gevlon has no raw numbers to compare to. Therefore, "as a researcher", he should be kicking himself for being such an idiot and not designing his experiment properly.

@ Desolate: "Well, you´re missing one Point. Everywhere you are thrown together with a bunch of people you can´t select (BG LFD) you can vote them out or flag them afk. That´s missing in WG. In fist Blizzard said there is a RL in WG who can select who plays in the raid and who not, so you can select.

Now they´ve got rid of that point but didn´t implement the afk-voting / kick voting to WG zone.
Why? I don´t get it (it´s a basic BG mechanic)."


I'm surprised that they didn't implement afk-voting to WG as well. I have no answers for that. But I'm not surprised if Blizzard wish to treat WG as another BG, because that is essentially what it is.

"Aw and I never said the change came because of WGClean. I just said Blizzard gives a shit on 600 tickets."

No, you actually said that you thought it was because the enemies were raising tickets in response to losing! Which is even more laughable.

Blizzard cares about FotM. People cry about Paladins being OP, then Paladins get nerfed. People cry about encounters being too difficult, so encounters get nerfed. 600 was a lowball estimate - certainly, Gevlon and his team have kicked out a lot more than 3 per download. Flavour of the month is crying about being kicked from WG. So whether the change was planned from long ago, or a recent decision, the fact that they've been getting a lot of complaints means that the 'fix' gets publicity.

If they found a bug to stop flying warlocks in Stormwind, I'm sure that'd go on the patch notes too.

Ðesolate said...

If someone tuns the win-loose ratio by 180 degree Blizzard notices, no matter how few the tickets are. Or did you see any lvl 3 "from the horde"? and yes that got fixed too.

But yes it is unlikely since the BT-related reasons are logic.

"Which is even more laughable."
Well everyone has the right to laugh at something.

"If they found a bug to stop flying warlocks in Stormwind, I'm sure that'd go on the patch notes too."
Were the flying druids over OG / SW at the patchnotes? Not really.

Anonymous said...

My observations are very different than the "there are no griefers"

Starting with the Something Awful forums where essentially people pay RL$ to be with other griefers. Blizzard had to add extra mailboxes because people were parking their mammoths on them. Nobody was gaining honor or benefit for keeping their mammoths there. But it was very common. I think the reason why WoW has fewer griefers is that Blizzard has an ongoing policy of trying to counteract griefing. But something that is griefable will be griefed.

And pretending that a randomly joined WG was a raid organized by a raid leader seemed like a bad design. Guild/chat raids have a RL who is leading and should have power. Randoms should not. WG is a random. This fix makes sense.

Hyperiom said...

Firstly, have you seen Sirlin's definition of a scrub?
Secondly, it's absolutely terrible to ever say anything is "one line of code" because it's never, ever that easy. If it was that easy, there would be no bugs in the game and everything would be perfect. It doesn't work that way.

Taemojitsu said...

>That the screenshots show that they still don't have consistent wins. And Gevlon's anecdotal evidence that their stream of successful defences occured out of peak periods, where the weaker faction traditionally has dominance.

Screenshots and anecdotal evidence both support a drastic increase in win percentage with the use of the addon.

Do you have any evidence that supports your claims? All you do is cite things that weaken any argument you try to put forward, that isn't a very effective rhetorical technique I think. :/

>At the end of the day, Gevlon has no raw numbers to compare to. Therefore, "as a researcher", he should be kicking himself for being such an idiot and not designing his experiment properly.

If it's so easy to provide "raw numbers", you should be able to do it too ^_^ Just screenshot your server's stronger faction as having 10:1 defense win ration vs the other faction, and also getting instant promotions. That is, if you can't find any non-touchy feely evidence with raw numbers to support your argument.

  (※You could use this to argue either that "It appears that many previously one-sided servers are experiencing a shift in momentum, where WG is no longer as dominated by that single side" or that the Wintergrasp results from using the addon are not statistically significant in a static population.)

Then everyone will listen to you like you want them to! ^_^

Squishalot said...

@ Desolate: "Were the flying druids over OG / SW at the patchnotes? Not really."

That's because it's not fixed yet, as far as I know.

Squishalot said...

@ Taemojitsu: "Screenshots and anecdotal evidence both support a drastic increase in win percentage with the use of the addon."

Wrong. Screenshots support a drastic increase in win percentage above the server lifetime average, not period before / period after add-on.

"Do you have any evidence that supports your claims? All you do is cite things that weaken any argument you try to put forward, that isn't a very effective rhetorical technique I think. :/"

The irony is that Gevlon's evidence is precisely the evidence that I'm using. Numbers don't lie. And if you believe the claim, then frankly, your math skills belong back in primary school.

"If it's so easy to provide "raw numbers", you should be able to do it too ^_^ Just screenshot your server's stronger faction as having 10:1 defense win ration vs the other faction, and also getting instant promotions. That is, if you can't find any non-touchy feely evidence with raw numbers to support your argument. "

Again, back into primary school with your logic. As a researcher, Gevlon should have gathered evidence on WG performance in the 2-3 weeks prior to WGClean, but he did not. Ask Gevlon himself if you want evidence / confirmation of that. Hence, he should be kicking himself.

I'm not trying to make any claims. I'm trying to get Gevlon to justify his claims, but he can't.

Ðesolate said...

@Squishalot:
Druidflying: Thought so since I haven´t seen some in quite two weeks, but maybe I´m not hanging around in major citys enough...

WGClean: I´m still searching for some of the old server statistics at Agamaggan-EU. It turns out to be a bit tricky but not impossible.

But I´d like to ask do you think that the WGClean addon had no affect on WG? Do you really think that former incooperative players turn into cooperative does nothing to the performance of WG?

Of course Gevlon claims it is a success, because from pure logic it is.
More cooperating player -> higher performance and working tactics -> actually working coordination in defense and offense -> More likely to win

Just a little counterquestion:
Do you think premade BG groups win because they have better equipment or are magically boosted by blizzard? Or is it because they cooperate instead of running around like chickens?

Taemojitsu said...

>At the end of the day, Gevlon has no raw numbers to compare to.

>The irony is that Gevlon's evidence is precisely the evidence that I'm using. Numbers don't lie. And if you believe the claim, then frankly, your math skills belong back in primary school.

No u

>I'm not trying to make any claims.

glad that's cleared up :P

Squishalot said...

@ Desolate: "But I´d like to ask do you think that the WGClean addon had no affect on WG? Do you really think that former incooperative players turn into cooperative does nothing to the performance of WG?"

I don't deny that it may have had an effect on WG. Logically, the argument is sound - by definition, if people come back to the raid and follow instructions (as opposed to griefing outside the raid), then cooperation increases, and performance as a whole rises.

What I take issue with is Gevlon's claims on the measure of that success. His first blog post about the results of WGClean suggested that the entire difference between the WGClean weekly win ratio and the server average was due to WGClean. No matter which way you cut it, that can't possibly be true, unless Gevlon is willing to consider his efforts in WG for the prior three months as 'just as bad as the M&S', if there was no increase in performance while the PuG was on the server.

His claim about being happy as a researcher can't be true either, because he doesn't have the necessary information to prove what he believes (i.e. the numbers before WGCLean). As far as a research experiment goes, it was a disaster because the experiment wasn't set up properly. He can only be happy as a player and possibly as a leader, but nothing more.

"Do you think premade BG groups win because they have better equipment or are magically boosted by blizzard? Or is it because they cooperate instead of running around like chickens?"

It's a combination of both. Premade 5v5 arena teams running around in BGs aren't just lethal for their cooperation and coordination, they're geared to the teeth as well. Cooperation can only get you so far though - a premade team of 5 relatively fresh 80s will still get gunned down by 5 random guys in all-wrathful gearsets as long as they have half a brain. The problem with the question of PvP and gear is that to get good gear, you have to be good at PvP (arena rating for wrathful sets), so there's automatically a correlation (note - not necessarily causation).

@ Taemojitsu: I'll clarify for you. I'm not making any unsubstantiated claims. Happy?