I fly in Draenor all the time!

Unfortunately, I haven't been ably to blog because of work, and I haven't figured out how to do both at the same time effectively. So, I'm just going to put up a quick note:

I don't comprehend the "No flying in Draenor" attitude.

I can understand the dev's apparent point, that they want to force you to do what they want you to do, but I don't agree with it. I think it's self centered of them to force you lo engage in their content.

But I don't understand the players who claim to be OK with no flying in Draenor once you have explored a zone.

I fly in Draenor ALL THE TIME. I don't think I go anywhere without flying or using a teleport mechanic. I don't see the difference between flying 80% of the way on a Gryphon / Raven / whatever and flying 100% of the way on my own mount.

I also don't see why I need to kill every pissed off beast in Nagrand if all I want to do if gather wood for my Lumberyard. Even if I could fly, I would still have to kill SOME of them, because they guard those precious trees with their lives.

I just don't get it. The only reason that even starts to be valid is the "But then you would easily get to that hard to get to cave to do that quest..." Ok, fine. Put that quest in the list of quests you need to do to unlock flying. Solved.

I would bet money that the majority of players that claim to by fine with no flying in Draenor fly around in Draenor just as much as I do.

My problem with classes

I don't like classes. I think people should and will specialize their characters without having to be forced to. And then when a new situation arises that needs a different specialization, then they should be able to completely reuse the parts of the character that work, that they have already developed, towards that new specialization without penalty.

You should not have to level it up again, etc.

Eve Online is classless, there is nothing stopping you from training in any skill you want, and since only one character on your account can be training at a time (Unless you basically pay for two accounts) there is little point in training up two characters unless you need two for purposes of hiding activities from your main's corp or the convenience of never having to leave the trade hub.

World of Warcraft is not, you are forced into a skillset at the point of character creation. The problem arises when you need to do things your "class" cannot do. And since classes are designed to be unique and special snowflakes in relation to the other classes, you are then pigeonholed into those skills.

This arises conditions where your "casual raid group"... (And I'm going to define "casual raid group" as a group that does not prioritize raiding to the point that they create alts specifically to match the raid content.) does not have the class breakdown needed for the encounter. If you need "Hunters" for a raid boss, and you don't have any, you are in trouble.

Classes that are specifically designed to each be their own special snowflake cannot to "generic" enough to circumvent the need for specific roles. Blizzard had a campaign way back when when to "Bring the player, not the class." when they were trying to "standardize" classes more. What a waste of effort! They were basically saying "Yeah, we know classes don't work, but we're compelled to keep them."

In a classless system, people can step up and learn those roles as they become needed, without having to re-do their entire character. There's always room for more tools in the classless character's toolbox.

The pure “roleplayer” will say “But I like the fact that my class is different! There is lore involved.” Great! Build your character with a specific lore and history! Knock yourself out! You are free to do as you wish in a classless system.

There are also people that can't make decisions on their own and need to have their hand held. That's fine too! Have “templates” for the major defined “classes” that list out what skills would be important to that classical role and make them available. A player can just work off that list to develop skills. The advantage here is that without specific classes, any classical role... be it the classic rogue, wizard, or a specific one based on a fictional character can be modeled.

Fans would even step in with their own versions of their favorite fictional characters.

Innocent until proven guilty

So, another blogger accepted a donation in WoW gold. Certainly, that's perfectly innocent in that no real money, good, or service was exchanged. It was a tip.

His opinion is that doing that is perfectly within TOS, and that even IF banned , he could prove his innocence. His belief being that we have rights and are "Innocent until proven guilty."

That works in a court of law because the prosecution has special abilities that can be brought to bear. Money is trading hands? They can get a warrant for your financial records, etc. Blizzard can't do any of that. Selling WoW gold for real money isn't a crime of any kind.

Certainly, the TOS clearly specifies that your rights as a customer are granted by them and can be revoked by them at any time. Of course they try to be fair about it and will allow you to appeal. They also have the ability to investigate only what goes on on their network. They cannot, for example, get a warrant for your bank or credit card transactions to find out if you really bought that game time legitimately or what have you. Their only real tool is to look for patterns of activity that points to possible out of game connections. There is no “Burden of proof” on Blizzard as if this were a criminal case. They do not have to prove you are engaged in RMT, mere suspicion is sufficient.

And accepting donations is going to look pretty suspicious. Suddenly you have a character that gets sent gold in the mail for no reason and can now afford to buy game time and vanity items? Let's assume they buy the whole “Those were donations!” line. You're still on a list. The first time you buy an item from another person that is being watched, action will probably be taken.

The more donations you accept, the greater the chance of that action being taken. It's just a bad idea to paint a target on yourself like that.

This leads me to my point. How draconian should a game company be in their “donation” policy? On one end of the spectrum, anything goes, and no records are kept or analysis done. That was the way it was done at first before anyone even heard of RMT and the world was viewed as innocent and pure. On the other end of the spectrum, totalitarian control where every transaction of any kind is analyzed to be sure it's value for value. Obviously, that would be unacceptable for players, as they would feel like they're being watched “Rockwell” style.

I think trades should be value for value with in a range of about 50% to 100%. Some transactions should be exempt, like transactions within the same account and transactions within the same guild, assuming guild hopping is not evidenced. Some transactions have to be investigated, like if you send your girlfriend's character 50K for a pet as a “Birthday gift.” The cost of that investigation is part of the cost of doing business. Some transaction patterns would be highly suspicious to the point of warranting an immediate ban, like hundreds of “gift” transactions in a month.

Now, you could come up with theoretical scenarios for pretty much any of these bannable events that are perfectly innocent, and that would be unfortunate if innocent people got banned and had to appeal. But you can't just throw up your hands and say “Welp! Can't do anything about RMT.” You have to investigate and be ready to ban.

This is a reason why I like the concept of the RMT token. If done right, (As I detailed in an earlier post.) and in conjunction with transaction analysis and investigation, RMT can be made to be so painful as to be not profitable.

"Legacy of the Ancients" quest

I like to try to do quests without having to google them first. To that end, I need there to be an in game lead in, or an NPC that has a clue about what you need and can give you a hint, regardless of how vague... that leads you in the right direction.

So. I wanted to upgrade my Lumber Mill in World of Warcraft to level 3. Easy, right? You just get the blueprint, have the required resources, and viola, your crew of master craftsmen (Who apparently don't own a level or a plumb line between them.) build it in just one hour.

Hmm. Can't buy it. I need to get an achievement first. Ok. Fine. Let's see... 75 lumber work orders. Got that! Two quests. "Legacy of the Ancients" and "Reduction in force." Ok, I have already done the second one, just by finding the fallen tree and freeing the CEO of Barov Industries. He then goes to work at the Lumber Mill and gives you the quest.

But the other one. What? Ok, the guys at the Lumber Mill might know something. After all, I'm trying to upgrade that building. It makes sense that they would have a clue how to do that. I go click on all of them... they apparently know nothing at all.

So I google it.

Apparently, there is a rare mob called a "Petrified Ancient" that you're supposed to harvest for lumber. It spawns in many locations, the vast majority are off in the weeds somewhere you would not normally go. And of course, you won't see it unless you have a Lumber Mill... so you might have seen one while questing and have never known.

So apparently, Blizzard's quest team expects you to just randomly come across a rare mob while just wandering around in the far reaches of the world. Of course you would pretty much have to be looking for lumber to cut down, too.

What the hell! What quest guy at Blizzard thought this was a good idea? Ok. So how do you find this tree? First, get the tom tom addon. Then make 4 macros, one for each of the zones you may have to search.

The first macro, all the points in Nagrand.

/way Nagrand 41 59.4 Petrified Ancient

/way Nagrand 40.6 30 Petrified Ancient

/way Nagrand 42.2 26 Petrified Ancient

/way Nagrand 65 19.2 Petrified Ancient

/way Nagrand 85.8 30.2 Petrified Ancient

/way Nagrand 73 62 Petrified Ancient

The second, all the points in talador:

/way Talador 51.2, 31 Petrified Ancient

/way Talador 52, 48.8 Petrified Ancient

/way Talador 36.6, 69.6 Petrified Ancient

/way Talador 46.8, 85 Petrified Ancient

/way Talador 57, 79.6 Petrified Ancient

The third, all the points in Spires ar Arak:

/way Spires 37.4, 30.6 Petrified Ancient

/way Spires 35.8, 47.8 Petrified Ancient

/way Spires 65.6, 46.4 Petrified Ancient

/way Spires 64.2, 59.2 Petrified Ancient

/way Spires 56.2, 76 Petrified Ancient

And lastly, the fourth, all the points in Gorgrond.

/way Gorgrond 70.6, 25.6 Petrified Ancient

/way Gorgrond 61.8, 32.2 Petrified Ancient

/way Gorgrond 57.6, 43.2 Petrified Ancient

/way Gorgrond 50.4, 42.2 Petrified Ancient

/way Gorgrond 41.6, 37.6 Petrified Ancient

/way Gorgrond 49, 50 Petrified Ancient

/way Gorgrond 73.4, 39.4 Petrified Ancient

/way Gorgrond 53, 65.4 Petrified Ancient

/way Gorgrond 41.4, 76.6 Petrified Ancient

/way Gorgrond 43.6, 92.6 Petrified Ancient

After you search a zone, the command to cleat tom tom's waypoints is:

/way reset all

I suggest just focusing on Talador, it seems to be the most running around on the ground friendly.

What's the moral of the story? Some developer probably thought he was making the quest “hard” by forcing you to explore the world to find a quest you only know exists through ancillary means (It's listed in the Achievement you need.) because, in his mind, that's what you are supposed to do. Well he is wrong. All he really did was frustrate people to the point that they posted lists of all possible spawn points on the internet for others to use.

Developers! DO NOT make shit with unnecessary difficulty for people that can just search the internet for the information to thwart you. It annoys them because they have to “break the fourth wall” to do your quest, and It makes you look lazy, incompetent, or sadistic.

Here's how it should have been done. Seed a couple of Petrified Ancients in Nagrand and remove the dead lumberjacks, they have no part in the lore. you're basically told to go there by the Foreman of the Lumber Mill, because that's “The Frontier of Lumber.” Put one near the fort, one near the Circle of Blood. Have an unrelated Rangari quest to find a strange flower that happens to grow by the one near the fort. Now you've found the Petrified Ancient without being able to interact with it just through normal questing.

Then when it's time to update the Lumber Mill. and you've done the 75 work orders, the Foreman mentions something about a “Weird petrified tree” in Nagrand. Oh! You've seen that weird looking tree! You make the connection and know what to do. Why do they need this tree? Because they're going to build the pinnacle of Lumber Mills, and need to test it out. If you STILL can't figure it out, Ok. You might have to google, but at least there were in game clues you could have caught up on.

WoW token, part 3

Back to the WoW token. The tokens are now available in the US, EU, and China regions, I will refer only to the US market because that is where I am. The tokens appear to work the same way in all three markets.

Again, as in the other 2 posts, I will refer to the the tokens separately. There is the RMT token you buy for dollars in the Item Shop, and the Game Time token you buy for gold in the Auction House.

What's new this time is the rate of swing between the price extremes in the auction house. Our friends at www.wowtoken.info shows this:

Notice how the wave is smoother, almost perfectly sinusoidal. That's not the web site smoothing it, that's the raw data, Blizzard is calculating a sine wave around the desired average and setting the price to that. Again, the “market price” is not driven directly by supply and demand, but is a calculated value set by goals Blizzard wants to achieve.

What are these goals? Possible goals include reduce illicit RMT, make cash by selling gold, create a gold sink by selling game time for gold.

The cynical among us have expressed the opinion that their goal is to grab the cash. I don't think that's what they're going for right now? But I'm fairly sure the system will eventually slide in that direction just because it can. This is the “Moral hazard” of an unregulated money printing machine.

So I ran a little experiment to probe the workings of the system. First, I waited for the price of the Game Time token to be at it's lowest and tried to buy one. Nope, all sold out. And when you try and they're not there, you're locked out from trying again for one minute. So I waited a minute and tried again. Nope. A few more times, nope. Nope. Nope. They are really out of stock. That makes sense, the price is really low and they all got bought. The price was set by Blizzard to ensure that all the RMT tokens that got converted to Game Time tokens were bought so as to not have too long a delay for the people buying the RMT tokens.

Ok. On the next part of the experiment. I then waited until the price was at it's peak and bought an RMT token in the Item Shop and listed it on the AH. It did not immediately sell, as you would expect. The price swing is so great that anyone who wants to buy a Game Time token has noticed this and knows to NOT buy when it's at the high point... come back in 12 hours and start looking for the low point.

I bought my RMT token at 11:26 pm on Sunday, May the 3rd when the price of the Game Time token was 25,742 gold. I immediately listed it for sale with the knowledge that my sale price was guaranteed. 13 and a half hours later, at 1:07 pm, it sold for 19,648 gold, just over the low point of 19,482 which occurred at 2 pm. That was a bitch because I had to sit there and watch it for hours waiting for it to sell. There was no other way to know exactly when it sold. Sometimes you have to take a beating for science! I then immediately bought a Game Time token off the AH (There were some now because the odds of mine being the last were statistically impossible, and since mine just sold, they were still in the process of being emptied from the AH.) and converted it to game time.

I got 25,742 gold for my RMT token, but the guy who bought it only paid 19,648 gold. The difference, over 6000 gold, is gold Blizzard pumped directly into the economy for cash. This goes on for every RMT token bought at the high point and sold as a Game Time token at the low point. Which I am certain is the vast majority of the tokens.

What did I learn? First, that they're not gaming the availability of the Game Time tokens. They are also not gaming the sale of the RMT tokens, either, even though they easily could seeing as how the sell price is guaranteed. They made me wait the full 13 and a half hours to get my gold. The illicit gold sellers don't make you do that, at least as far as their advertisements claim. So, of the 3 goals I suggested earlier, the ones best served are “reduce illicit RMT” and “make cash by selling gold”. “Create a gold sink by selling game time for gold” doesn't even start because the system is a gold faucet. Not a gold sink.

In my opinion, the GOOD goals are “reduce illicit RMT” and “create a gold sink by selling game time for gold.” There should NEVER be a case where you make dollars directly by injecting gold into the economy.

So Blizzard has already blown the moral hazard here. But why? Let's analyze. The tokens are different, apples and pineapples different, that's why a straight up supply and demand market won't work. A stable price won't work either, the prices need to be separate, with the amount of gold the RMT token sells for balanced against the fight against illicit gold sellers, and the price of the Game Time tokens set to remove the same amount of gold (or more) from the economy. Right now, you would have to sell more Game Time tokens than you sold RMT tokens to eliminate the gold faucet they have right now.

The morally superior position would be to guarantee that there was no profit motive by selling enough Game Time tokens to create a gold sink in addition to removing the gold created by the RMT tokens. That position would be the one that is “best for the game” and the one they should be taking.

Their system cannot do that because the tokens are linked by price, the mechanic of applying a sine wave to the price creates a QE scheme that essentially unpins the prices, but without allowing the quantities to change to compensate, creating a gold faucet. By accident or design (I'm assuming by accident.) they've created a cash grab that is injecting gold into the economy, gold the economy doesn't need and will probably respond to with inflation. How much inflation is unknown.

What I would do if I were Blizzard:

First, set the amount of gold you get for an RMT token to a stable value, set to fight illicit RMT. Give the gold to the player immediately.

Then set the price of the Game Time token to remove all that gold plus 10%. Sell as many as it takes to do that. Heavily advertise the fact that they're sacrificing subscription fees to effectively combat illicit RMT and the “good of the game” by creating a needed gold sink.

Grinding for mats

Back in the day, I used to run around collecting mats for hours at a time to then convert those mats into items through crafting. Sometimes it would be to then convert those crafted items into even more crafting mats. Here's an example:

In Howling Fjord, I studied the pattern of Cobalt Ore veins and figured out that they were in groups of 3, only one of which could be spawned at a time. So I mapped the location of all ore veins in a path that took spawn time + 1 minute to fly. I could go past 12 sets of 3 possible spawn points for ore veins in that time. Once I made a few passes of the loop, the ore spawn time would be synchronized with my flight path such that ore would spawn and I would always be there to mine it within a minute.

What can I say, I like analyzing systems and solving puzzles.

Today I can't do that. At 9:00 after I put up a blog post, I log onto WoW and run my 2 current characters through their Garrison routine. I make crafter items if I have enough mats, and I go to the AH and relist everything with a price 5% lower than the day before. I'm done in half an hour, 45 minutes tops.

And... that's... it. There is no point in trying to collect more mats. There is nothing to search for or find to further crafting. And I find that lacking. Sure, I have more time on my hands, which I should probably spend getting a PhD online, but instead I'm spending it writing blog posts no one reads. One could argue that at least doing this helps to organize my thoughts on the subject more coherently, and that it's a more productive use of my time that mining Cobalt Ore to craft into breastplates to DE into dust.

So, I have to study the system, because that is what I do. Why has WoW derailed the gathering / crafting connection? Well. It's because of assholes like me. People that would analyze the system and optimize their interaction with it to extract more resources from it. Normal people would be going around Howling Fjord finding no ore. Then they see one pop and immediately this asshole descends from the sky on the fastest flying mount possible and mines it, then flies off. Must be a bot or hacker! How could he know that ore was about to spawn?

And I'm just a minor asshole. I'm not cheating in any way to mine that ore. I just reverse engineered the algorithm that spawns the ore and positioned myself to get all of it. If I really wanted to be an asshole, I would spend 8, 10 hours a day doing it as my job, like gold farmers do. Or, I could go right to maximum asshole and write bots to harvest resources. No no, I strictly follow the rules.

So Blizzard has set up a system where everything is on cooldown. Then, in a jaw dropping display of “wuuut?” (Spoken in the voice of an Alliance Peon) allowed people to completely abuse that system by having up to 11 garrisons per account.

I want to see Blizzard step back a notch and increase the number of recipes, some off raids or drop off mobs in the world, and bring back SOME mats grinding to sink time in conjunction with the Garrisons, which would have a limit of one instance of a each crafting building per account.

And for god's sake, untie the wings on my flying mount when I get to level 100 and complete a quest!

The "rate of drift" rule

“The velocity that prices needs to drift to meet each other is directly proportional to the speed at which sales are made."

I'm going to call it the “Rate of drift” rule.

Meaning the more often an item sells, the faster it's sell order price needs to drift down and it's buy order prices need to drift up.

Ok. Lets define some terms.

"drift" is the percent move per period. "Period" is how often you update the price, or the rate at which an automatic system does it for you.

"speed at which sales are made" is the volume of sales. If 10 items are sold in a day, on average, then sales are made every 2 hours, 24 minutes when looked at statistically.

The law, then, is that your sell price should drift downward at a rate that allows the statistical possibility of a buyer to present itself during a window where your item's price is the most favorable. Or, the buyer's proxy, the buy order, which is drifting up to meet you.

The “brute force” solution is to park your ass on the AH and relist your item 1 copper lower than any other seller that deigns to post a price under yours. Thus assuring that YOURS is “next to sell.”

But the reality is that the buyer is only available when they look at the market with the intent to buy. In this case, with 10 items sold a day, it's every 2 hours, 24 minutes on average. Obviously, that's something of a simplification. People buy less in the middle of the night, for example. But in general, the law is sound. After all, it's “In the middle of the night” somewhere and for someone all the time.

Markets, if left to do so, will seek equilibrium between the law of supply and the law of demand. The “Brute force” solution of 1 copper undercutting is only efficient in the eyes of the market if the price being undercut is too high to begin with. And by “efficient” I mean “Not wrecking the market.”

The way to prevent this, and move towards market equilibrium, is to know when sales are made and how much they were made for. With that information, you can intelligently calculate the optimal rate of drift. Without knowing how many sales were made, and how much they sold for, you are flying blind.

You might say “But Eve Online has that information! Why do people still sit there and undercut?” Because the prices have to drift towards themselves to meet and there is no mechanic to do that without manually resetting the price. When you rely on the players to do it, you get an asymmetric pattern with prices drifting down (undercutting) but rarely up. People putting in the buy orders are also the sellers, speculating on the item. An auto incrementing buy order lets them step back and let the market work just like the auto decrementing sell order. The pattern must be symmetric to have balance.