Mirror mirror, on the wall

[Pococurante]

Ok on Scarlet Crusade/Horde the duping has just gotten out of hand.  At this rate recipes as a market will crash.  There are engineering schematics like Arcanite Rifle and Sniper Scope appearing on the AH by the handful, with prices as low as a single gold.  At first I thought I'd simply won the lottery and was snapping them up to resell.  But there's no place to resell them.

Someone please confirm recipes can be traced...

[Ironwood]

Eh ?

Actual duping ?

[Pococurante]

Well I can't claim to know.  I just can't think of any other reason recipes that were highly unusual/expensive since GA are now suddenly showing up daily for chump change.  It's not like SC/Horde is a particuarly high pop server to justify the IGEs of the world catassing to that degree, and really why would I catass all day for an object I'll sell for one or two gold pieces?  I'd do better gathering herbs or ores.

[Fabricated]

I've been suspicious of duping ever since I started seeing 4-5 of the same blue items appearing on the AH, being sold by the same person. The thing is though that they could all be just be some IGE mine-worker's selling alt.

[SurfD]

I've been suspicious of duping ever since I started seeing 4-5 of the same blue items appearing on the AH, being sold by the same person. The thing is though that they could all be just be some IGE mine-worker's selling alt.

One of the Auction House tycoons on our server (someones alt by the name of AHore) actually responded to people claiming he was dupeing because of similar things. 

I am pretty sure his origional post is long gone, but he said that essentially, if you make playing the AH your primary income model, things like that wouldnt be unusual.

Appearently this dude had somewhere in the neighbourhood of 4k gold in material assets that he shuffeled around on the AH, and checked it as often as 10 times a day, from work, school or home.  He would do stuff like buy EVERY one of certain high want Blue items and then re sell them in bulk depending on market swings.  He said that loot drops werent actually as completely random as people think, rather that occasionally he would see "runs" of certain weapons/items.  Some weeks he would see/buy 5 "Butcher" swords a day, then there would be weeks where they never showed on the AH, so he would dig some out of his "stock" and resell them in lots of 8 or 10.  It looked like he was dupeing, but really he was just responding to "market trends" if you wish, that only someone who practically lives in the AH sees.

Supposedly if you are dedicated to AHing for cash, it can be very lucrative.  Most of this dudes stuff was tied up in stuff being sold, but he indicated that he increased in net worth by around 100+ gold on a good day.

[Pococurante]

Sure and that's the game I play.  I love merchanting.  It's the only playstyle to which I really apply myself.

But trust me, when an item with a four month history of showing itself once a week with an average buyout price in three digits suddenly shows up *daily* with single digit prices there is something else going on.

My playstyle is deflating.  That reduces my retention potential as a customer.

[Fabricated]

Well it could also be people just finding the shit more.

I remember when I first saw the Hammer of the Titans plans on the AH. 2-3 digit prices, even though there were pretty much NO hammersmiths.

Now you can get the recipie for 4-5G.

P.S. Any advice for getting blacksmithing past 285? I'm going fucking crazy. I'm also going to be a hammersmith since no one else wants to be one, and my pally friend loves hammers.

[Ironwood]

Actually, I think the latest patch has also fucked with the drop rates too because now that you mention it, I am seeing a FUCK of a lot more Pristine Diamonds.  So many that the price has dropped from 500 to 175 and they're STILL NOT SELLING.

It's interesting and is making me think....

[Righ]

It's not duping. How shall I put this... the seeding of drops is improperly applied. Once you hit some common patterns, you can cause things to drop, and the farmers have come upon that by the chance of their repetitive farming patterns (often botted/scripted).

I have had the same blue from the same exact mob every three times it has respawned, by repeating a pattern of attacks on intervening mobs. By the time I got the fourth, I was convinced the randomness was flawed. (Ogron's sash, scalding whelp back in my early 40s if you care). Other people have had (and are exploiting for profit) similar things. Blizzard says it's just surprising luck.

[Fabricated]

It's not duping. How shall I put this... the seeding of drops is improperly applied. Once you hit some common patterns, you can cause things to drop, and the farmers have come upon that by the chance of their repetitive farming patterns (often botted/scripted).

I have had the same blue from the same exact mob every three times it has respawned, by repeating a pattern of attacks on intervening mobs. By the time I got the fourth, I was convinced the randomness was flawed. (Ogron's sash, scalding whelp back in my early 40s if you care). Other people have had (and are exploiting for profit) similar things. Blizzard says it's just surprising luck.

Or chests. Me and one of my friends have found 3 Crystalpine Stingers from the exact same chest now that you mention it.

[SurfD]

It's not duping. How shall I put this... the seeding of drops is improperly applied. Once you hit some common patterns, you can cause things to drop, and the farmers have come upon that by the chance of their repetitive farming patterns (often botted/scripted).

I have had the same blue from the same exact mob every three times it has respawned, by repeating a pattern of attacks on intervening mobs. By the time I got the fourth, I was convinced the randomness was flawed. (Ogron's sash, scalding whelp back in my early 40s if you care). Other people have had (and are exploiting for profit) similar things. Blizzard says it's just surprising luck.

If i could figure out how to do this for a Hand of Edward the Odd, I could be a fucking millionaire......the last one went for around 3000g on my server, and that was only becasue someone bought it under the table, rather then letting it go crazy on the Gadgetzan AH.

[Ironwood]

Same Mob in Scholo.  Same Pristine Diamond drop.


I think you're right.

That's a little scary.

[Zetor]

I don't think it's possible to reliably cheese drop tables, or we'd be seeing a lot of high-end epics on the AH instead of the sucky ones.
I agree that WOW's pseudorandom algorithm sucks though. It's very apparent when trying to grind a tradeskill.. you could try making a yellow item and get no skillups 20 times in a row, then get 10 skillups on the next 10 items. And this isn't an isolated thing, I've worked tradeskills to 300 like eight times so far, and it happened every single time.

BTW, PBDs have dropped in price since they drop from Zul'Gurub. We got one from a jinxed hoodoo pile actually.


-- Z.

[Merusk]

The "random" loot table was discovered to be fairly non-random in instances by one of the larger raiding guilds on my PvE server.  They had been getting the same drops from certain bosses in MC and BWL every time they fought.  Then on one of their raids a few weeks ago their usual raid-leader was late to the party and they went-in with someone else leading.  This time around they got an entirely new set of drops, including a sword they'd never seen before and had been assuming was 'uber rare' despite Thott saying otherwise.

Not wanting to believe this based on hearsay alone, my guild did a Scholo Baron run.  We'd ALWAYS (not exaggerating) gotten beaststalker boots  off of the spider guy when our MT lead, and he'd lead all of the guild runs.  This time around we had someone else lead and we got new drops not only from him, but from all the bosses.  I haven't been on the PvE server since that run, but it's too coincidental in nature to not make me suspicious.

As for the tradeskill runs, Blizz, like SOE will tell you their randomizer is fine.  The reason is they're looking at it globally rather than on an individual basis.  I'm sure globablly they're hitting their numbers and averages, but looking at and talking of balance in those terms has always been foolish, IMO. Your players don't see those global numbers or circumstances, ever. All they experience is their own little world, so you get skewed perceptions that the randomizer sucks because 'this time it did this, then another time it did that.'  Balancing /randoms on a more individual basis and then balancing the world around that would be a better way.

[SurfD]

I seem to recall somewhere someone mentioning a rumor that drops in Instances were seeded based on your group/raid leader, and One of the Devs posting saying that this was not the case.  Wonder which is actually true.

[Dren]

Seems reasonable, from a Dev perspective, to put in code that made giving really good BoE items that fit the class that found it a much more rare occurence than other classes.  That would put a little bit of push on trades and the player economy or guild sharing activities.

I don't think it would be something the Devs would admit though.

[Fabricated]

Anyone remember PSO's system? Where your name determines your section ID, which in turn determines what drops for you?

[Sairon]

Perhaps this can explain why some guilds got a truckload of OBEs and others haven't seen a single one. Same with other gear, some guilds whine that they only get might all the time, while my guild only get felheart. You'd think that after a ½ year of raiding it would normalize.

[Righ]

The name thing has come up a few times, and is a persistant rumor. Because it doesn't really hurt to feed this superstition, we change raid leader for our MC raids, and some people swear it has reduced our Cenarion drops, which we'd had a fairly long (but not statistically significant) run of. I pointed out that it was probably seeded off the first hit on a boss, as I tend to be the person who pulls Lucifron to the main tank, and he ALWAYS drops Tome of Tranquilizing Shot. A couple of people fell for it.

[Ironwood]

Seriously.

Another P. Diamond in Scholo.  Again, in the same fucking library room.

What's going on ?

[Pococurante]

Well at least it isn't as destabilizing as the old UO message in a bottle fiasco.  I'm making awesome bling off this though. "Yes yes of COURSE it's still worth 80g - I'm just doing you a favor selling it at 35g and pocketing the 33g profit"  I'm content to ride this down but it does make me wonder what will happen to the economy as characters mature into their tradeskills.

[pants]

I seem to recall somewhere someone mentioning a rumor that drops in Instances were seeded based on your group/raid leader, and One of the Devs posting saying that this was not the case.  Wonder which is actually true.

Could possibly be both.  Random numbers can be tricky beasts for computers to produce in a truly random fashion - I know I've been caught out by using a random function at work which turned out to not be getting reseeded correctly.  Took about 3 months to notice the recurring patterns though.  So I think its very possible the dev doesn't realise their rand() function isn't truly random in the depths of the cpu.

[AOFanboi]

Random numbers can be tricky beasts for computers to produce in a truly random fashion

Anyone producing random numbers by predictable means is living in a state of sin.

[Chenghiz]

My guild has noticed a significant increase in the number of Pristine Black Diamonds on the market, and their subsequent drop in market value. I don't think anyone's complaining.

[Ironwood]

My guild has noticed a significant increase in the number of Pristine Black Diamonds on the market, and their subsequent drop in market value. I don't think anyone's complaining.

I'm not complaining if it's ON PURPOSE.

But no-one is talking...

[Phred]

PBD's are used in the new librams from ZG so it makes sense they would have increased the drop rate.

[Ironwood]

Perhaps.  Again, no-one's talking.

And why the same place all the time ?