Lady Luck Hates Me

Did you ever get the feeling that luck in the game isn't really all that luck based?  Almost as if blizzard has some program going on in the background that dictates luck and it really isn't all a function of the random number generator.

It probably all boils down to being lucky or unlucky but sometimes it feels as if it is you against the world.  This week was one of those weeks, once again, were it felt like that.  Being I had not raided on my hunter much in the past few weeks I managed to save up a few coins for this weeks run.

I rolled on two trinket bosses and every tier boss we beat as well as one other boss, kind of by accident, and won nothing.  I've learned to expect that.  But luck did shine on me, in a sense.  The hunter tier token dropped off of two bosses.  We never see the warrior, hunter, shaman, monk tier tokens.  They are things of myth, they do not really exist, or so I was lead to believe.

So here I was all ready with my /roll on the first one and I get a 94.  I am excited, I might actually get a tier piece.  A 94 is a solid roll.  The two shaman, two warriors, one monk and three other hunters of course were all rolling as well.  I watch the rolls go by, a few 60s, an 80, but nothing even close until the last person rolls, the monk, with a 95.  Son of a...

Such is the story of my life, we move along and the second tier trinket from the warrior, hunter, shaman, monk tier drops. Seeing one boss drop one is a miracle of all miracles but seeing two different bosses drop a tier piece I can roll on in one night is unheard of.  That piece never drops.

I feel that after my 94, and loss that followed, that I wasted the only good roll I will see for a while.  I hit /roll anyway and see a 90 pop up.  Awesome, two good rolls in one night, this must be a banner day for me.  The only other thing that dropped that I could have rolled on was a trinket with a gem slot off the second boss, which would have been really nice, but I rolled like crap on that one.

Being I am writing this post I am sure you can guess what happened on that tier piece.  Yeap, someone rolled a 91.  Once again I was beat by one.  It has become the story of my life.  Even when I have a good roll, I lose.  Even if I see something drop I can use, I lose.  While it is true RNG is RNG sometimes you can't help but think they system has something against you.

There is a new player in the raid, the girlfriend of one of the regulars.  She has quickly become a very good player and is really working hard to get better and it is noticeable from week to week.  She is getting much faster at responding to mechanics, she is getting better at her numbers.  Heck it is rare to see someone with as little experience as she has (only 3rd week raiding) even approach 70% potential this quickly nevertheless getting to, and over, the 80% potential marker on some fights on the logs from last night.

So why do I bring her up?  Something her boyfriend said on voice chat and a tin foil hat theory he has. 

See, she has luck, luck beyond luck.  I mean insanely sick luck.  She goes to solo old stuff, the 1% mounts drop stuff, and she wins the darn mounts her first or second time in.  She has received all the mounts, and multiples of each, from the big four rares on T2.  She has won a piece off the world boss every single week since it came out.  She has managed to snag 18 medallions of the legion.  When she uses a coin she is rocking an over 50% win rate, even if it is not always something she needs.  When she gets a tier piece, it is always either warforged or with a gem slot when she clicks on it.  When the mythic dungeon week was around she got the best in slot trinket from the box, and during the dungeons every drop she got was a 705 piece.  She is already rocking a 708 item level, basically 15 item levels higher than me, and she has only been playing 3 months.  Three freaking months, do you believe that?

So his theory is this, because she is new to the game, the game is giving her a lot of stuff.  It is letting her win often, it is trying to get her hooked.  Just like the slot machines in las vegas, where you put in 20 bucks and it lets you win 40, but then sooner or later, after you have had a taste and are hooked, it stops letting you win and starts draining your money.

He says because I have been constantly subbed for such a long time and have remained active and I am always soloing old raids, there is no incentive for the game to give me anything to try and hook me.  I am already hooked.  So I am looking down the long road to getting things because they think I do not need to get things to keep me playing whereas she is still new so they are still feeding her all the lucky drops and luck with coin rolls and such.  But once the system feels she is hooked enough, she will be in for the same hell I am.  Okay, maybe not as bad, but not as good of luck as she has been having.

I must admit, it does make a little bit of sense.  Thinking of it as something that would want to get you hooked so the easiest way to do that is to give you a taste of what it can be like when you win stuff.  And quite honestly if I were coding the game I would do that exact thing, when someone was still new I would give them a luck buff, if you will, that is not is seen by anyone to try and get them hooked.  It is actually pretty damn smart coding if it is true.

So perhaps the RNG is not really all that random but completely and 100% by design.  The people it feels it needs to hook have more luck, the people it thinks are already hooked have less.

Or maybe random is just random and his theory means nothing.  But it does make one wonder.  When I am treated as if I pissed in lady luck's cheerios and she is treated as if she is best friends with lady luck, maybe there is a new player luck buff.

Do you think that is possible?