Are instance drops really random?
by Eric Vice 
Aug 20th 2007 at 6:00PM
There are so many angles you can spin this blog entry from Coralie from that it took me half an hour (and three quarters of a can of Four Cheese Pringles) to choose one. I think I've made the choice that is least likely to involve her purchasing a server transfer to Zangarmarsh and hunting me down.
Coralie is a rogue on the Sentinels realm who, like most rogues, is trying to keep her head above water in a series of instances that are not known to be overly rogue-friendly. As a fellow rogue, and a subtlety rogue no less (who in my opinion have it much worse) I feel her pain. Instance slots are sometimes hard to come by for those of us who practice the art of subterfuge, and let's not even talk about raids.
Coralie's problem doesn't appear to be getting groups though. Apparently the Stormwraiths are good to her. Coralie's issue is with the boss loot tables. She doesn't go as far as to imply that anything is rigged against her, but her post is pretty compelling. Apparently the paladins in her guild have taken to bringing her along on instance runs because they find her to be a good luck charm for plate drops and other paladin items. If I'm reading this right, she's even taken to distributing "personally blessed" Lucky Charms to paladins who need to make runs when she isn't available to go herself. (As a side note, if she has enough of them to have multiple stacks, she certainly doesn't lack perseverance.)
Those of us who frequent database sites such as Thottbot or Wowhead know the numbers game that's involved. Each piece that a boss drops has a percentage drop rate attached to it. But is it really purely a numbers game? We've all been on runs with either a paladin or shaman healer and no cloth wearers when nothing drops except cloth and wands. Do you have a guildmate with ridiculously bad luck like Coralie? Or do you think perhaps there might be more to drop rates than pure math? As ridiculous as it sounds, Coralie sure makes a compelling (albeit exceptionally amusing) argument.
In all seriousness, I would never accuse Blizzard of any wrongdoing. Posts like Coralie's definitely make you think though.
Filed under: Odds and ends, Instances, Humor, Analysis / Opinion
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Nitelite Aug 20th 2007 6:20PM
Both my GF and myself have notoriously bad luck with drops. But only from 1 boss, Prince in Karazhan.
Both she and myself have been 25+ times and have not yet got the bow or the mindblade. Of course to make it worse, I've taken my alt and got the Decapitator. And seen many many alts get both items before our characters do.
It's really sad. And with itemization so crappy for shadow priests and bows between prince and Vashj non-existant, we both would like to scream.
erwillia Aug 20th 2007 6:21PM
I helped a buddy run Black Morass countless times until he got his Hourglass of the Unraveller. He hit exalted before he got his hands on it...
tieryn Aug 20th 2007 6:21PM
As a shadow priest, I cause nothing but +healing gear to drop (wether it be cloth, leather, mail or plate). The pally healers adore me and my healing set is slowly starting to look more impressive than my +shadow dmg gear. /sob
Carlsberg Aug 20th 2007 6:30PM
getting zero tanking drops in kara. Havnt been able to upgrade my gear for a long long time. Our 2nd kara team gets all the tanking drops but the tanks in that team already have the gear, we have rouges swinging the king's defender for fun. /cry
NerdblurbSteve Aug 20th 2007 6:28PM
I'm wayy past exalted with the Sha'tar and i've yet to see Warp Splinter drop my Hunter chestpiece. However, if you're a Druid and want the Lunar Pauldrons from the 1st boss in Mech, just /invite me and i'm sure i can gurantee a drop.
Alerek Aug 20th 2007 6:30PM
I don't have particularly bad luck, but I see it go in runs. I get nothing but cloth one night and then it turns around and I'm getting every Paladin item in the instance all in one go. Of course, my warrior alt gets nearly a full set of Blackened Defias Armor in two runs through DM and my GF's Rogue Main never sees a one despite running the instance god knows how many times.
Statisticians call it "Regression toward the Mean" which essentially means that it's random but that to individuals encountering only a few of the random draws, it can seem anything but.
The Crowing One Aug 20th 2007 6:33PM
I can't help but listen to the rationale of the argument stating that bad BoE drops may be Blizzard's way of "pump priming" the economy. Give out drops you can't use and will end up tossing on the AH, making you some cash which will go towards the purchase of that you actually need?
Green Armadillo Aug 20th 2007 6:37PM
When my girlfriend's balance druid got to the late 30's, I used my 60 mage to run her through the SM library for a hypnotic blade. Doan almost always drops one or the other of his two blues, so this should, on average, have taken one or two runs. It took eight. Those aren't good odds. I don't claim that Blizzard set out to "screw" people, but the frequency with which I hear that people haven't seen a drop (not "someone else won it") really makes me think that their random number generator isn't all that good at being random.
That said, almost as frustrating was the full clear of MC or BWL where your entire class doesn't see any drops. Well within statistical probability, but if you're playing a comparatively overpopulated class, a prolonged dry spell followed by a bidding war when a scarce item finally drops can leave you without an item for so long that your guild gets bored of running an instance (and sharding other classes' gear) and stops. :(
skwol Aug 20th 2007 6:55PM
77 black morass runs for my shaman's hourglass. 16% drop my sweet arse
Josh Aug 20th 2007 6:39PM
First time I ran Mech, our shadow priest has to log just as we down the 2nd boss. We get another rogue in (I hate it when there's another rogue besides myself in a group) Pantheon goes down like nothing and he drops the chest piece. I got out-rolled by 3 points. Now I could have offered to pay off the other rogue, but oh well. Haven't seen it or the trinket drop 15 runs later.
I is a sad rogue.
Dave Aug 20th 2007 6:39PM
Yes, it's all random.
You as a single player have an absurdly small sample size, and the smaller a sample you have on something the more amazing and inconsistent the results happen to be. This is why aggregate data helps to even out the numbers and show more of a random pattern to everything that happens.
Blizzard doesn't have much of an incentive to 'fix' the drops, since pure random chance does the best job at making sure things happen on a predictable scale. Any idiots who insist that because they did this or brought that or whatever have absolutely no basis in reality for their actions and are doing the same sort of things that gamblers do to improve their "luck" when the biggest influence on whatever happens, is pure random chance that is unaffected by anything at all. You may see crazy crap happen in the short, small-sample term like the exact same loot dropping 3 times in a row, but the reality is that over the course of 10,000 runs you'd even out and get a purely random result based on the weight of the percentages assigned to the loot.
Same as there's no "hot slots" or "ready to hit the jackpot" things, it's all an independent trial every single time you roll the dice, spin the wheel or deal the cards.
Flightless Aug 20th 2007 6:47PM
Of course it's all random, but perseverance pays off. From 65 through Kara I had really bad luck with drops--either nothing I could use dropped, or I got outrolled by a guildmember (different problem, still random). Then in 1 week I got my tier 4 headpiece, Nathrezim Mindblade, Quagmirran's Eye, and the offhand item from Nightbane. So it is a totally insane sample size, and there is no real correlation, but what you can draw from it is just to keep going.
Tristessa Aug 20th 2007 6:50PM
I've ran Shadow Labyrinth at least a dozen times, and have yet to see the Shoulderguards of the Bold drop. Shaman and Paladin pieces seem to always drop in my party as well.
I agree with Dave above about sample sizes and all that--but you really shouldn't torture people by making them go through hell and back to get their drops, especially for some casual gamers who're forced to PuG it all the time. =_=;
It always seems that the crap players out of the whole party get the good drops too. The undeserving mage, the tank that doesn't hold aggro, etc. Life sucks.
Ermintrude Aug 20th 2007 11:28PM
My badluck is hoorendous when it comes to drops. I have been chasing the T4 shoulder token off Curator for ages now. Every single time I have gone in "Of the Defender" drops instead of "of the Hero". We have alts running around in T4 gear before some of our mains.
As an affliction lock I am chasing Rityysen's Lost Pendant as well. Of course every time I am not there it drops and is sharded. When I am there? Nada...nope....out of luck..nah nah you won't ever get me! Make the darn thing BOE!
nav Aug 20th 2007 6:52PM
Totally random. My iPod, on the other hand, definitely analyses the rhythyms of all my songs and shuffles them appropriately when in 'random' mode.
Anyway, I won't be on WoW for a while as unfortunately I lost the money I was going to use to buy my gamecard while gambling on my favourite sports team's winning streak continuing, but annoyingly they lost last weekend as the pitch was wet, and they're used to dry grass. The weather forecast is never right.
I really should have listened to my psychic. They did warn me.
wischnu Aug 20th 2007 6:53PM
Drops are not random. I've been tanking Kara 20+ times with my feral druid and not a single loot of leather tanking gear dropped.
Wait, maybe there is a reason different from luck for that.
Freehugz Aug 20th 2007 6:56PM
My hunter buddy:
"Hey make sure I go with your group to kara. Hunter gear always drops when you go."
Tobie Aug 20th 2007 6:57PM
Exalted - Violet Eye - no t4, no King's Defender
Exalted - Sha'Tar - All from Heroic Mech runs. No Sun Eater.
It can't be that random.
Ipew Aug 20th 2007 7:00PM
We ran BM 67 times to get my shammy friend his enchancement helm :/ Yes, we kept count.
Also, even after every other tank in the guild, and even a few priests, getting the King's Defender, our group 1 main tank for Kara never had it drop for him. It finally got handed to him on his first run with his new guild.
Meg Aug 20th 2007 7:03PM
A random distribution on a sufficiently large sample size pretty much guarantees that there will be "unlucky" outliers like Coralie. If there *aren't* people on the hinky edge like this, it's a sure sign that the distribution **isn't** truly random.
Of course, that doesn't make this stuff any less frustrating.