Posted on December 21st, 2009 by admin
Here’s a question that occurred to me while I was walking home from the subway recently: What’s the average winning roll in a five-man group, assuming everyone rolls? That is, if you randomly chose five numbers between one and 100, what is the expected value of the highest one?
I know a bit of statistics, but I really don’t know how to begin getting at that one. However, I do know how to write a script that will calculate the answer. (Yes, these numbers are only pseudorandom, but I did some limited testing with real random numbers (from random.org) and the results were the same. Besides, I’m pretty sure Ruby’s Mersenne twister pseudorandom generator is good enough for testing distributions like this.) The average winning roll out of a group of five people is 82.8 83.8 83.3 (tested over many, many repetitions). Now can any mathemagicians tell me why?
The graph above, in case it isn’t clear, is average winning roll on the y-axis vs number of people rolling on the x-axis, tested over 100,000 trials for each group (the relatively small sample size
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Posted on December 17th, 2009 by admin
Following on the heels of J!NX’s new winter line of WoW merchandise, Hot Topic has released a new line of Blizzard-themed apparel just in time for the holidays.
Included among the many newcomers to the line are “spray-painted” Alliance and Horde logo shirts, faction insignia wallets, Starcraft II and Diablo III shirts, hoodies with a neat piece of art depicting an Alliance/Horde battle (replete with male model rocking a worrisome mustache) and, for the ladies in your life, a cute purple “Fight Like a Girl” t-shirt with a set of the highly feminine night elf hunter and blood elf paladin. That’s right — now you too can have a qtbelf on your chest, or the chest of a female WoWer near and dear to your heart. As long as she’s a size small or medium, anyway. The other sizes are sold out.
Speaking of near and dear to my heart, that model! Aye aye aye. For her, if that shirt was available in mens’ sizes, I’d buy it even if it said “I play as a female character in World of Warcraft.” I mean, I do. Several of them,
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Posted on December 14th, 2009 by admin
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers’ Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.
With the release of Icecrown Citadel in Patch 3.3 on Tuesday, it seemed like a good time to talk about loot policy. Everyone’s going to be drooling over the upgrades in there, especially some of the unique items like Deathbringer’s Will, and loot assignments may become heated affairs. This week’s e-mail highlights an issue that could come up in your guild — and why you should think twice before you let it happen. (FYI, to explain why he’s talking about Ulduar loot, the e-mail was sent to me in October, and I responded to it then.)
I am an officer in a guild where our loot rules until recently seemed fair to me but now I am not so sure. I have been raiding with my guild for almost a year as part of the first team and the way our loot rules work is main spec then off spec NEED rolls, if no one needs, it gets D/E. You get 1 epic and 1 tier per run unless there is no one else who can use the item or every 1 that qualifies for the item
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Posted on December 10th, 2009 by admin
Well, they started giving away pets for having an authenticator, so I guess it’s about time I went ahead and put one on my account. I’ve had the app on my iPhone for a while, actually, but I never really saw the point in attaching it to my account, especially since it seemed like just more hassle, and who knows what kinds of errors could pop up. And honestly, I haven’t worried much about hackers — I use a secure browser, I don’t click on unknown links. But I know, I know, it’s safer, and with the cute Corehound Pup out, I might as well go ahead and attach it.
And you might as well, too. Blizzard’s Store was flooded with people looking for authenticators yesterday, but things have slowed down a bit, and they’ve even got a brand new design with the Corehound Pup right on there. The price, as usual, is $6.50 with free shipping. If you’ve got an iPhone or an iPod touch, you can get the app free from iTunes, and we’re told that it’s coming to other platforms at some point in the future (guess when: “soon”).
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Posted on December 7th, 2009 by admin
Our podcast was live on the air as usual last Saturday, and the show is now up for your listening enjoyment. Artist Mary Varn was aboard to talk with us about her comic and her Warcraft career, and Matt Low of World of Matticus also jumped on to chat with Turpster and I about the latest WoW news, including the impending patch 3.3, the recent server outages, and the Taiwanese player who picked up all of the achievements in the game (which, probably not entirely concidentally, is the subject of Mary’s comic today).
And of course we answered your emails as well. For those of you wondering about our Podcast Awards nomination, voting has ended, and the winners are supposed to be announced next Saturday in a ceremony online. We’ll keep you updated — remember, if we win, we’ll be giving away any prizes we get to one lucky listener, and we’ll be recording a Warcraft bedtime story for all of you to download. Cross your fingers for us!
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Posted on November 30th, 2009 by admin
Last Wednesday night, It came from the Blog got together to Party like Pilgrims. We got some Pilgrim’s Bounty achievements and won some loot. Unfortunately, the Guild Roster gets buggy when there are more than 500 members. So I don’t know exactly how many showed up, but I estimate it at around 240 over the course of the event.
Blog Overlords Adam Holisky, Michael Gray, Matt Low and Kelly Aarons were there. Adam held a trivia quiz and gave out some loot codes to speedy contestants. And, of course, I was there, but I am the brood Blog Mother. We had a great time and really enjoyed running around with everyone. And of course, we took pictures.
We have more events planned soon. Expect a Battleground Bonanza, a Hogger/Faire excursion and some Feast of Winter Veil fun all in December. We hope you’ll join us!
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Posted on November 26th, 2009 by admin
Today families across the U.S. gather together to celebrate Thanksgiving, argue about politics, and accidentally set the garage on fire while attempting to deep-fry their turkey. Roguehunter of <Gnomeland Security> on Norgannon snapped this shot of a less-than-perfect Thanksgiving meal the other day. It seems that the two turkey guests didn’t appreciate their dad being the main course.
Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We’d love to see them on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@gmail.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next!
Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. Please include the word “Azeroth” in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing — use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards, Val’kyr on mounts,
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Posted on November 23rd, 2009 by admin
Well now, here’s an interesting thought to consider this weekend: Zemeny on Barthilas suggests that maybe it’s time to do away with a gear mechanic that Blizzard has used since Diablo. He thinks that set bonuses deserve to be put out to pasture. He doesn’t go into his reasoning much, but we can probably fill that in; not only do set bonuses tend to either be overpowered or too weak (as in, you usually need to have a specific set bonus to make or break a class), but they make gear choices uneven, usually leaving you to choose between an upgrade or a set bonus. Zemeny suggests we do away with the whole thing — create one set bonus per tier, leaving upgrades for the gear itself, or just turn the set bonus into an extra gem or inscription slot and give us more power that way.
Ghostcrawler shows up in the thread and says that the game would be pretty boring if set bonuses weren’t included — I presume he means that you’d just upgrade your gear according to iLvl, and that would be that. He even says that he wishes the tiers varied more, but
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Posted on November 19th, 2009 by admin
Welcome back to the Scattered Shots, the weekly hunter class column. This week we begin our series “Picking the right hunter loot.” Where we will review what truly makes something qualify as hunter loot, and not just loot hunters can use. We’ll also review the drops off of each major raids starting with Naxxrammas and ending with the PTR Patch 3.3 raid, Ice Crown. So join me, Eddie Carrington, aka Brigwyn from The Hunting Lodge, as we explore what loot we should put on our watch lists.
Things on the patch 3.3 PTR are getting closer and closer to wrapping up, so I thought it might be a good idea to review hunter stats and how they help you select the right gear for you. In the past we have talked about how to use iLevel to do a gear check. Also, we’ve talked about how to use the different hunter tools and resources out there to select an upgrade for your hunter.
What we really haven’t talked about was what makes up good hunter gear, and in each of the different raids in Wrath of The Lich King makes up some good hunter gear. And a recent comment on the
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Posted on November 16th, 2009 by admin
Kebina Trudough here, offering you the best gold making secrets they don’t want you to know about! I was like you once, poor and homely, before I discovered my patented system. Now you too can fill your pockets with the good stuff without ever breaking a sweat! Why spend all your time toiling when you could be vacationing in the Hot Springs? I’m not offering these tips for 100 gold, or 90 gold, or even 50 gold! No, not even 20 gold! My system is yours for FREE! Satisfaction guaranteed or I’ll give you a full refund (handling charges may apply). After all, Time is Money.
Among the goodies that patch 3.3 will bring is a very welcome change. Transmute: Titanium will no longer be subject to a cooldown! This means that you can turn all of the saronite bars you can get your hands on into titanium bars; and saronite is so easy to obtain. Check out our previous guide to mining saronite.
So how will this change how you will go about making your money? Pass through the break to find out.
Predictions:
Right now, saronite bars and ore are extremely cheap. Saronite is
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