Another lag-o-riffic weekend in World of Warcraft, (server down! server down!), and a few interesting issues cropped up that I was tracking with my l337 forum stalking skills. You might wonder why I would stalk the forum instead of play the game — you might not wonder, no difference, because I’m going to tell you anyways — Warcraft fucked me over a couple times this weekend so while I was fuming, I’d go forum stalk.
Nothing new, just a couple of buggy quests that, for some reason unbeknownst to even me, I kept trying to redo to PROVE to myself that they were, in fact, bugged. O ya, and a kinda sorta uber item I was selling on the Auction House that vanished into the nether regions of Lag. Enjoy the adventure!
Back to the forum stalking: Seems there might be a bit of a problem with dice rolling in Warcraft. Players reporting group members rolling multiple 100s out of /random 1-100 and other group members consistently winning /randoms over a few hours of playtime. Now I’m not a big believer in anecdotal evidence, ESPECIALLY in MMOGs, and I haven’t witnessed this bit of mathematical nonsense yet, but the odds are astronomically against those streaks being anything but hacks.
If the reports are true, that is. Obviously, they could be false, but I have seen some very odd things in Warcraft. Very odd, indeed.
For example, this weekend I was putzing around in The Former Farm Zone, which is still The Farm Zone, just not as good.
After spending an hour or two trying to figure out why in the world the (allegedly) Chinese Farmers are still spending 24 out of 24 hours a day in this zone, I decided that I was never going to figure out the continued appeal of that shithole and was on my way to the griff (the Warcrap travel system), when who should cross my path but one of the Lolys.
Most of them had been in the zone the whole time, but I couldn’t find where they were hanging. I searched all the obvious camps, tried out a few mobs in each, hoping for a score, but nothing. I wasn’t going to spend my whole weekend trying to satisfy my curiousity, but a few hours trying to get rich (and quick!) seemed a small price to pay. And here comes opportunity knocking with a Loly running out into the zone, seemingly unaware of my interest in his activity.
So I followed at a casual distance, not too close, just another player learning a new zone, no danger here. I watched the Loly go straight to a chest, hidden in the middle of a pile of ruins. Not the first possible chest spawn position in this camp, not the second, but the spawn position buried in the middle that is not visible to the naked eye from a distance. (And no, the Loly is not a dwarf so he doesn’t have the super leet treasure ability.)
I had spent some time at those ruins not an hour before, so I knew all the spawn positions for the chest. I don’t have x-ray vision, however, so I have to run to each position and look around the corner for it and naturally, I usually checked the other two spots first as they were geographically closer to the entrance.
Ok, odd. But could be a coincidence or incredible luck.
The Loly leaves and takes off for another part of the zone, his secret admirer (me) in tow. We go over a couple of bridges to a remote camp and, again, he makes a beeline to the spawned chest. Not the spawn spot to the left, nor the one that is forward and to the right, but the far left position … in a house. Now how did he know not to check the other houses?
I think we all know how he knew. And just in case I might not have been a believer at this point, he repeated his performance at a third camp for the Farm Zone hattrick.
So when I read about possible /random hacks in Warcrap, I pay attention. I believe one time is luck … three times, I’m not believing in luck anymore.
Maybe the chests spawn at timed intervals, and he just makes the run as they spawn.
Not in this situation. Timer with chest spawns in one of several possible positions. (Unlike a dungeon chest spawn which would be similar to what you suggested.)
It’s not proof by a long shot. I don’t have access to the WoW coding, so I can just speculate. Mighty strange at any rate.
The whole “OMG RANDOM HACK” is just the standard WOW forum mindset that everyone but that person is trying to cheat, especially blizzard. It is of my opinion that there are some issues with the random number generator – I’m not sure how it’s seeded, or what psuedorandom function it uses, but I do know that half a dozen SM runs have given us no illusionary rod and that one person in our group (whom I can say doesn’t cheat ever) has rolled 100s on drops four or five times in the last two weeks, nobody else has (except for one time one person tied her 100 leaving the item on the mob which if I was in a less trustworthy group it’d have been stolen)
About the chests: farmers probably know exactly what chests can spawn what value of stuff, and if those out of the way chests are a) fast enough respawning and b) have enough valuables to be worth it, then someone could just farm the chests – checking the OTHER chests would just be a waste of time, since they’re out in the open and probably already cleared. This isn’t to say there ISNT a hack involved, but there’s really no reason to beleive there is.
I bow to your obvious greater knowledge on how they code these randomizers, but to be blunt, “there are some issues with the random number generator” gives me zero confidence in WoW’s ability to properly code it and fend off hack attempts. Rolling multiple 100s is possible — it’s so improbable, however, that even a few reports of this is laughable. In a very “omg what else have they screwed up” kind of way.
In 5 years of EQ, with many many many /randoms, I saw a handful of 100s rolled in group. Never, never, never did I see someone pull it off consecutively. Three times in a row? We would have kicked the roller out and ninja’d his ill-begotten loot.
As far as the chests go, I can buy that the farmers have got this down to a science. I don’t believe that farmers would pass up any chest in a higher end zone, however. I’m not sure a radar hack is impossible or extremely difficult. Dwarves, after all, get that ability as a racial trait, and we’ve already seen evidence of PVPers with uncanny abilities to beeline straight to stealthed rogues.
But, this definitely isn’t my area, so I’m guessing is all. My confidence in Blizzard keeping the game relatively hack-free is dwindling.
Appreciate your insights.
My wife logged into her Hunter last night in time to catch the tail end of a conversation in guild. It appears that a former guildmate, grouped with a couple guildies and others who quit, is using a random hack to win all the loot rolls. Two things prompted this discovery: he never rolls under a 90, and he is always the last to roll. But then he’s the priest in group, and they’re in Blackrock Spire, so he’s got them by the shorthairs.
If you’re playing on Lothar, watch out for Anesthesia. He’s not just whiny, he’s also really bad at disguising his use of hacks.
And shame on you, Blizzard, for trusting anything the comes from the client.
From what I’ve read, the problem is not with the loot oriented dice roll, which is done server side, but with the “/random 100” command, which may be done server side, but appears to other group members as “Futon rolled 98 (1-100).” The trouble is, “/me rolled 99 (1-100).” also appears the same way. No special hack software needed.
Unless someone can show me screenshots of someone cheating the grouploot dice roll, I’ll have to consider this no big deal. Group with people you trust, or ungroup people who won’t play nice. Social solutions to social problems.
You want a screenshot as proof? Sure, let me just fire up Photoshop and you’ll have your proof right away that I rolled 103 (1-100) five times in a row. Now a video cap might be more believable, but screen shots are easily forged.
I use a UI customisation that tracks the locations of chests, minerals, herbs, clams, etc… on my map. It’s called gatherer, and has been widely discussed on the UI forums. I can see chests that have spawned on the other side of walls, as well as their position when they are not spawned.
I imagine that Loly was using this mod or something similar. Use of a legit mod like this doesn’t mean Loly’s not a gold farmer, however.
I didn’t even know such a thing existed, but I’m sure going to give it a try. Sounds great.
From what I read, it shows where you previously have gathered items (or if you installed someone else’s gather stats, where they previously gathered). As opposed to showing you what has spawned currently?
In the situation I witnessed, the Loly type bypassed closer possible spawn points for the chests and went directly (and correctly) to the actual spawn.
I’m going to try that mod either way, but if it tracks the current spawns, rather than just possible spawn points, that would be the bomb.
???
The Gatherer mod was developed to track the location of mined herbs and minerals, orginally. It was later expanded to track chests and other “openable” objects, since they were easy to track. There has been some debate about the ethics of using a mod that tracks chests, or other objects that are intended to be visually scanned for.
Rolling multiple 100s in a row, while infuriating if you’re not the one doing it, is not a sign of a broken random number generator. Consider the probabilites:
chance of rolling a 100: 1 in 100 (duh)
chance of rolling 2 100s in a row: 1 in 10,000
chance of rolling 3 100s a row: 1 in 1,000,000
chance of rolling 2 100s in 10 rolls (not necessarily consecutive): 1 in 1,000
Now, given that there are hundreds of thousands of players playing WoW every day, and that a good percent of them are rolling at some point in that day each of these has a high probability of happening at least once a day, if not multiple times (especially the last one).
The probability of rolling a 24, 46, 49, 12 in a row is 1 in 100,000,000 but you dont’ hear anyone writing about it because they didn’t lose a chance to get their ‘uber rod of dung-spewing (+3 to fairy damage)’. It’s a fact of human nature that you’ll usually hear the complaints first and loudest.
Now consider this: WoW is one of the most complicated pieces of software around. The detractors can complain all they want, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a highly complicated system: the system maintains the state of a persistent online world with thousands of people running around, buying, kill, farming, auctioning in real-time all the while maintaining world integrity by fending off would be hackers (Blizzard has learned plenty about this from previous games). Throw in a rich 3D user interface and a good dose of chaotic human behavior and it’s a wonder the system works. My reason for explaining this? If Blizzard can create said system don’t you think they can create a random number generator? Don’t you think they tested that piece? Don’t you think they’d safeguard it from hackers since it’s so important (not to mention obvious to would be hackers)?
So lets do some more probabilities:
Chance Blizzard messed up rand(): highly unlikely
Chance some hackor, hacked it: very highly unlikely
Chance we’re all just reading complaints from a handful of gamers who happened to be see a couple hundred rolls: 1 out of 1
Some of you seem to be labouring under the impression that the odds of rolling 100 increases as you roll more. This isn’t true. The chance of rolling 100 will always be 1 in 100, regardless of how many times you roll.
That being said, random numbers generated by a computer are not truely random, but rather ‘pseudo-random.’ A computer will take a list of numbers and use some sort of algorithm combining those and some large variable, such as the number of seconds since midnight, and then spit out a result.
Speaking as a professional software developer, it’s highly unlikely that Blizzard even wrote their rand() function. It’s probably one in a standard library that is used in a million different applications and has been thoroughly tested (and quite probably mathematically proven) to deliver reliably random numbers. (As someone said, it really is pseudo-random, but for all practical purposes there’s no difference.)
I don’t discount the possibility of a hack, but it is far more likely that someone is griping about someone else’s lucky streak.