Greedy Goblin

Monday, May 16, 2011

The Occu’thar monopoly

Occu’thar, the next boss of Baradin Hold is on the PTR. He is currently unkillable, but soon he’ll be the next loot pinata. Blizzard has a long history of making the Tol Barad and Wintergrasp bosses weaker than the “real” raid bosses of the same tier. 378 loot for free!

Well, only if you are on the alliance! Behold my newest evil initiative, reviving the most glorious moments of the ganking project: hold Tol Barad on the first week after 4.2 arrives, so the horde can’t raid Occu’thar in the first lockout (except at 5 AM maybe). For this I’m now recruiting PvP-ers. This is the time for you to make something that will get in the news. Impact PvP. If killing people who will respawn in 15 secs is not enough for you, if you enjoy large scale PvP battles or you were thinking about joining The PuG, here is the opportunity! Join the “Occu’thar monopoly” project!

Please note that this will be the only impact-PvP project in WoW. WoW is designed exactly to make PvP consensual “fun” or irrelevant annoyance (ganked guy corpseruns and flies away, losing only 1 minute). Here we will lock out a whole faction from the free ilvl 378 shower in the first week!

Why am I doing this? To ultimately prove that the “magic macro” works. To prove that the horde can’t fight back despite it would be easy: TB is strongly assault sided, so all they had to do is make a pre-made and beat us out. But they can’t make the pre-made as they can’t stop the “fun ppl” from queuing up. I will strongly motivate them to queue up, but they could make the logical decision: “I’m not a good PvP-er, so we have better chances without me”. Newbies will make this call. M&S won’t. They will be outraged on the idea that they are so bad that their participation is making the team weak. They will queue up just to prove that they “pwn”. So the horde will fail to set up a good team and win. Since I'm using the "magic macro", we own TB. I mean on the battles I was present we won all but one (read Tuesday's post about the lost one). On Saturday there were battles when we owned 3 bases most of the time (on weekends the kiddies are unleashed, increasing M&S count)

How can we limit the M&S incursion on our side? Simple: as TB is ours, our M&S will have their chance at Occu’thar, and will have their victory quest done on reset day so won’t be motivated to take TB. There will be lot of new shinies for them in Firelands. Also, Alliance have less players, so less M&S too. Theoretically the horde could win on reset day but they won’t form pre-made as they won’t take us seriously. Only after Saturday-Sunday will they start panicing and try to fight back. Our M&S will be elsewhere, theirs will swarm to TB both to get Occu’thar and to prove that they can win.

It will be an ultimate proof that the M&S is not “newbie”. A newbie fully understand that he is not ready yet for such battle and step aside. The M&S never-ever accept being sub-par, which would be the first step fixing that.

17 comments:

Espoire said...

I look forward to observing this project. If I were better at PvP, I would be tempted to join you, but I'm not very good, I'd make it harder by participating.

See what I did there?

Maybe I'll hop on the Horde side.

Squishalot said...

I agree with the initiative, I disagree with the philosophical conclusion.

As a casual player, if I have half an hour to play, why should I sacrifice and sit out now, just so that other people can raid a boss that I don't have time to wipe and learn on (after all, the first week will involve much wipeage)? At the end of the day, "M&S" going into TB are following a utilitarian imperative - do what provides them with the most utility.

Because you can't distinguish between an M&S who doesn't realise that they aren't good, and someone who isn't going to be able to raid BH afterwards (or has no intention of raiding BH), you can't come to the conclusion that you're hoping to reach.

Having said that, I think the real test will be to see if you remember you need to do this by the time 4.2 comes around. That's a long time away.

Gevlon said...

@Espoire: one can learn. Knowing you are not good enough is the first step becoming better. If I were you I'd give it a try. There is time till 4.2. Also.

@Squishalot: I can't imagine why would a casual player waste his only half an hour playing time on a lost TB battle when there will be so much new content in 4.2

Squishalot said...

@ Gevlon: Exactly how much new non-raiding content is there currently proposed in 4.2? Barely any. There's one new quest line involving Thrall, and a few new daily quests.

That being said, there is basically nothing new for people who enjoy PvP. So again, if someone casual finds PvP more enjoyable than other grinding options, TB is a valid choice for them to make.

KhasDylar said...

@Squishalot: Is you say, there's barely any new non-raiding content in 4.2, than read the PTR patch notes and the official previews again. There will be a lot of new content, which you can do solo in Mount Hyjal as you progress in the story for saving Nordrassil where you can accumulate Mark of the World Tree - if you like currencies, and possibly you can buy some new, non-raid level loot with it.

Wilson said...

I'll go on record as saying this will fail. You will not have the manpower or the motivation to hold up your side of the battle for 168 hours, and your macro will be much less effective at the beginning of a content cycle than it is here at the end of a cycle. You may win most battles, but there will be losses.

Jim said...

Your experiment stinks.

If you want to prove that your tactic of bringing out the M&S on you opponents side works, why are you poisoning the experiment by recruiting people to your side?

If your side holds TB all week you have no idea if it was because of your tactic or if it was because you recruited lots of good pvpers to your side.

Anonymous said...

Whats the difference between getting people together to cover a flight master vs getting people together to "own" TB for a week? In both cases you are reducing the enjoyment of others. Might as well become a corpse-camper.

Lighstagazi said...

Here's my main problem with this project. What happens when you lose? Does it prove your theory wrong, or do we just get excuses about what you did wrong, or how someone was sabotaging you?

Even if we accept that your expected results prove your hypothesis right, I don't have any faith that unexpected results will prove your hypothesis wrong, which makes this feel like a faulty test case. It's a situation where if you're right, you win, and if you're wrong, you don't lose.

Lighstagazi said...

@Anonymous
The difference is that you can't realistically fight back against the flight master. There are other options, such as hearthing, mounts, and enabling name plates, which all "work around" the problem. There is no other alternative for getting loot/achieves from that boss except killing that boss, or already having better gear.

Gevlon's hypothesis is that M&S won't have the better gear, or alternate means to getting it, and thus will gladly flood TB for him.

Squishalot said...

@ KhasDylar - It doesn't take a player, not even a casual, an entire week to finish a new quest chain.

@ Lighstagazi - I agree with you 100%. There's always a new excuse if something doesn't work - influx of M&S on his side as 4.2 starts, all of the 'good' players are busy wiping in Firelands to bother with TB, etc. Maybe even that he gets locked out of TB because the Horde really don't care enough to send the M&S in, and his macro does nothing because everyone is off doing things in 4.2, and not in hanging around in Trade chat.

Gevlon said...

@Lighstagazi: and the readers have every power to decide if my excuse is valid, or what measure of success is accepted as success. My decision is irrelevant for them.

Lighstagazi said...

@Gevlon: I'd be interested in seeing you construct a test where your theory can fail, rather than yourself and your methodology. Or try making a test to prove for an alternate theory, even if it's just a short exercise in playing Devil's Advocate.

Anonymous said...

@Lightstagazi:
An experiment being able to prove one right, but not to prove one wrong doesn't make it valid. For instance, if I find your fingerprints on a knife, it proves you touched it, though even if I don't find them, it doesn't prove me wrong - you could have been wearing gloves. That might be a minor point, though. In any case, I'll postpone judgment on the experiment until I see the results.

As a general rule, though, I agree that it would be nice if Gevlon explained what would constitute a failure and a falsification of the hypothesis before the experiment. In that way one avoids discussion about whether this really proves anything and suchlike after the experiment. Why don't you just state how many of the 56 (?) Tol Barad battles in the first week you expect to win, (which would seem to be all of them), and how many you would need to lose before admitting the macro doesn't work?

Anonymous said...

Diminishing turns

The more you utilize the macro, eventually it'll be ignored.

Lighstagazi said...

@Anon: You're right, that doesn't make it invalid. But sticking with the crime metaphor, it's a rather weak case if you go "We think he was wearing gloves, dodged the security camera, and never spoke with anyone about it. Oh yea, and we don't have a body yet."

There can be tests for true of both conditions though. You can catch the killer on security camera during the act, or you can have security footage of the alleged killer in a store, 3000 miles away at the time of the crime. Not having him on camera doesn't prove anything.

It just seems Gevlon chases the "proof positive" case too hard, and might get some interesting results from looking for "proof negative" for a while. Drawing from some of his other recent posts, a sort of "Why bother breaking traffic law?" instead of "Why bother following traffic law?"

Lighstagazi said...

Also, if I remember correctly, he has posted failure conditions before, back when IG was trying to completely block WG. He has no problem admitting failure, defeat, or general incorrectness when presented with evidence to the contrary. It just seems he doesn't go looking for it either.