WoW Mathematics: Breach of Contract

Ever signed a contract later regretted? Unfortunately, they are all too common during the Blood-Queen Lana'thel encounter, as she regularly binds raid members into Pacts of the Darkfallen. The law in Icecrown Citadel cares not of requirements of intention and genuine consent, so surely it will not mind a breach? What is the most expedient and mathematically sensible way to do so?

Summary:

• To remove Pact of the Darkfallen the quickest way possible in the 10-man Blood-Queen Lana'thel Encounter, the raid members should run to the midpoint of the interval they form.
• To remove Pact of the Darkfallen in the quickest way possible in the 25-man Blood-Queen Lana'thel encounter:
• If the raid members trace an acute triangle, they should run to its circumcentre.
• If the raid members trace a right-angled or obtuse triangle, they should run to the midpoint of the longest side.

Compress Your Waveform

Many World of Warcraft raiding guilds use Ventrilo (Vent) to allow raid members to communicate more easily. However, it may be frustrating to find a large variation in volume between others' voices. Fortunately, Vent has a function to alleviate that.

The Compressor module can be used for reducing the such. It works by changing the shape of the envelope, or outline, of the waveform. It can be activated by going to Setup | Voice | SFX and adding Compressor under Sound Effects. To be able to configure these settings without a recommended configuration, one needs to know some of the basics of sound synthesis, in particular the ADSR envelope.

Random Ramblings to 24 April 2010

Cascading failure
A failure of a system where one component's failure causes a chain-reaction failure of other components. A system bearing a load is susceptible to this type of failure, where an overloaded component shifts its load to other components upon its individual failure. In an electrical grid, a cascading failure occurs when a transformer's failure requires the other transformers to bear the electrical load, increasing the chance that one of those transformers will also fail due to overloading.

Where the components are fully interconnected and handle a fixed load, the per-component load trend is a rectangular hyperbola. This signifies that the per-component load increases at an increasing rate as components fail. As a result, the chance of any individual component's failing also increases at an increasing rate.

A graph illustrating a cascading failure in a World of Warcraft boss encounter. The trend is a rectangular hyperbola.

WoW Mathematics: Sharing the (DPS) load

In any (conventional) boss encounter, a certain number of damage dealers (dps) need to whittle down the boss' health to zero over a certain time period. Barring any extraordinary tinkering by Blizzard, the health level remains constant between attempts.

This fixed DPS burden needs to be shared between all dps. I will examine the DPS burden per dps and how it changes with the number of dps that happen to die during the encounter.

Summary:

• Given a total DPS burden (total raid DPS) of D and a total number of dps of d, the average DPS burden per dps B, where x players are dead, is B = ^D/_{d - x}.
  

Insanity: The Yogg-Saron Soundtrack

I am surprised as to the number of songs written and sung about the mental state, and how diverse in musical style that collection is. This inspired me to compile a selection of those songs into an alternative soundtrack for the Yogg-Saron encounter in Ulduar.

Since actually mixing a full track would require me to pay royalties (and my disk jockey (DJ) skills are rudimentary), I will simply describe it. I will first present the entire list, then attach some commentary after it for those interested in the reasons for my choices.

The playlist

• Phase 1: Flo Rida, Ke$ha 2009, 'Right Round', R.O.O.T.S., Atlantic Recording Corporation, track 5.
• Start of Phase 2: Lady Gaga 2008, 'LoveGame', The Fame, Interscope Records, track 2.

My Computer and I: Fumbling in the Dark

My desktop is a 3-year-old Dell Dimension 8400. It was high-end at the time it was bought, but regardless is starting to show its age. I have upgraded some of its parts since then to keep playing World of Warcraft bearable, but of course it will need to be replaced eventually.

I have had my share of computer problems with my current computer (not suggesting that Dell is necessarily a poor computer assembler, mind you). Other than high school computing studies, I have had no formal training in maintaining a computer, so I usually need to end up experimenting when something goes wrong. Without further ado...

The Problem:
My LCD display suddenly stopped working. The screen went blank, even though the tower still seemed to be running.

Reused Boss Mechanics

All boss encounters as respective wholes are unique, although there are several cases of encounters sharing mechanics. From a computer programming perspective, it is good practice when mechanics that work are adopted again and incorporated in a future encounter.

A veteran player might notice this over the time they have been playing. In fact, while they have progressed through World of Warcraft's many raids, they may have noticed the following commonalities...