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Hallow's End was exactly random enough
Now that Hallow's End is over for another year, it's time to settle up. We already asked whether you got what you wanted, but according to the informal polls (and the feedback I've been hearing), quite a few people didn't actually get everything they were trying for. As we mentioned on the podcast the other week, many people who said they did everything they could probably didn't (did you really go trick-or-treating every hour of every day during the holiday?), but it's not too far a stretch to suggest that maybe the drop rates for some of the hardest items to get (the Horseman's helm and the Sinister Squashling pet seem to be the toughest, though I heard a lot of stories about hard-to-find toothpicks, too) are a little bit lower than they should be for fairness. Not so, says Bornakk -- he said while the holiday was ongoing that the drop rates were fine, and now that it's over, he says they're still fine. That doesn't mean Blizzard won't change it for next year, but it does mean that they don't have any current plans to change the holiday at all. "The randomness," as he says, "can win sometimes." Our condolences if you were trying for an item and didn't get it -- even on a 50/50 coin flip, there's still a chance to see one side 1000 times in a row. We sincerely mean this one: better luck next year.
The math behind random drops and rolls
Reader Sekhar P. sent us an interesting story of a strange roll seen in Naxx recently: Haunting Call dropped, and four people needed. The rolls came up, in order: 1, 2, 3, 4. The raid boggled at how unlikely that must be. Sekhar's tip set off a round of discussion among our WoW Insider staff: while it seems unlikely that four numbers would come up in sequence, the math on it isn't any more likely than any other four numbers (3, 69, 82, and 95, for example, or even 4, 8, 15, and 16). The odds come out to 24/100^4, about 0.00000024%, or about two chances out of 10 million. Of course, probability is tricky, so the chances that any one of those rolls would come up is still one out of 100 -- just like coin flips, previous die rolls won't affect the current die rolls (mistaking that is often called the gambler's fallacy) But the chances that any specific four numbers would come up are the astronomical chances above.Of course, math aside, that still doesn't keep us from trying to predict how random rolls might work. We also recieved word from reader Emily about a site she and some friends are working on that is trying to predict just how much you'll have to run a certain instance to pick up some of the rarest items in the game, like Baron Rivendare's mount. Unfortunately, it's not a relevant indicator -- it looks like all they're doing is "simulating" runs on the item, and then tracking when it drops in their simulator. They're putting the math behind the chance into practical numbers.
Two chances left to enter WoW Insider's Dell notebook giveaway
We're really starting to get down to the wire now-- there's only two chances left for you to enter to win in WoW Insider's big Dell notebook giveaway. To enter, all you need to do is comment on that post (not this post-- commenting on this post gets you nothing but the satisfaction of making your mark on our site), and you get to do it once per day, so since the contest ends tomorrow, you have only today and tomorrow left to leave comments.Now, the contest has gone on for six days so far, and there are about 31,000 comments on there, so your chances of winning right now if you've left a comment every day are about 6 in 31k, or about 5,166 to 1 by my math (and my math is usually wrong). I won't lie-- those chances are pretty slim, but I will say that (if my math is correct, and it probably isn't), you have a better chance of winning this laptop than bowling a 300 game (11,500 to 1), being struck by lightning (576k to 1), and getting injured by fireworks (19,556 to 1). With that kind of perspective, your chances are pretty good, wouldn't you say?Go leave a comment on the contest post anyway-- the odds are (probably) in your favor.
Reminder: WoW Insider's notebook giveaway continues
Have you seen WoW Insider's huge contest for that kitted-out WoW edition notebook from Dell? It is blowing up-- there are already over eleven thousand entries and counting. And did you know that you can actually enter once every day the contest is in effect, all the way until this coming Friday afternoon? Sure, with 11,000 people entering, your chances of winning are pretty slim. But if you've only posted once already, you could double them by posting today. And triple them by posting tomorrow. See where we're going with this?Run over to the WoW Insider contest post and put another comment up if you haven't already today (and in the meantime, you can drool over their writeup of the system and think how much money you'll save if you win). Sure, it's repetitive and mindless action with the slim promise of a great reward, but c'mon, we're MMO players. We're used to that by now, right?
