Drop System Wacky Times (in General)

I think we should see if the drops occur at certain times or are actually really random. If they do drop during certain times, and it just happens to be the next person to click the fight button, we can keep track of the times during the week that you have a chance of getting items.

So if you get a drop, post the day and time here, let's see if there is a pattern.

Recent ones:
November 25 10:48 AM EST
Varda is pleased with your victory and grants you a An Amulet of Might [0]. Use it well!

November 26 3:37 PM EST
Varda is pleased with your victory and grants you a An Elven Stiletto [55x4] (+5). Use it well!

since I support all scientific endeavours:

From: system Sent: 2:35 AM EST Delivered: November 27 2:37 AM EST
Ulmo is pleased with your victory and grants you a A Mageseeker [5x3] (+2). Use it well!

From: system Sent: November 21 10:37 AM EST Delivered: November 21 10:38 AM EST
Tulkas is pleased with your victory and grants you a A Cornuthaum [0] (+2). Use it well!

i think since it is triggered by fights it should correspond with times of high fight volume. not that it couldn't happen in the middle of a dead time of fighting but more often it would occur during the times most fights occur.

Unrelated, but are tourney characters exempt from the randomness? If not, there's a balance issue as well as an ultimately forsaken rare.

Tourney Characters don't appear to receive drops.

From: system Sent: November 17 4:49 PM EST Delivered: November 17 4:50 PM EST
Tulkas is pleased with your victory and grants you a A Katana [74x11] (+9). Use it well!

Just so you all know, this isn't just being overlooked, i'm adding everything to an excel sheet and hopefully will get a month's worth of data and then i'll come back with a report for you. Please keep posting.

From: system Sent: November 26 5:06 AM EST Delivered: November 26 5:08 AM EST
Tulkas is pleased with your victory and grants you a A Katana [74x10] (+9). Use it well!

From: system Sent: November 26 6:48 AM EST Delivered: November 26 6:50 AM EST
Varda is pleased with your victory and grants you a A Cloak of the Istari [6] (+5). Use it well!

From: system Sent: November 26 9:33 AM EST Delivered: November 26 9:35 AM EST
Mandos is pleased with your victory and grants you a A Pair of Gloves of Mercy [0]. Use it well!

From: system Sent: November 27 8:16 AM EST Delivered: November 27 8:16 AM EST
Mandos is pleased with your victory and grants you a A Katana [74x1] (+0). Use it well!

I do not know where my first two went but I have copied all of them down:

3rd Drop 08/30/2009 From: system (3:47 PM EDT) Varda is pleased with your victory and grants you a A Buckler of Mandos [10] (+3). Use it well!

4th Drop 09/03/09 From: system (5:55 PM EDT) Mandos is pleased with your victory and grants you a A Pair of Gloves of Mercy [0]. Use it well!

5th Drop 10/30/09 From: system (12:16 AM EDT) Tulkas is pleased with your victory and grants you a A Pair of Spellboosters [4] (+1). Use it well!

6th Drop 11/19/09 From: system (2:03 PM EST) Tulkas is pleased with your victory and grants you a A Katana [74x1] (+0). Use it well!

7th Drop 11/25/09 From: system Sent: 8:27 PM EST Ulmo is pleased with your victory and grants you a An Executioner's Sword [82x7] (+7). Use it well!

With just a quick glance, I'm pretty sure that there isn't any time better than any other to fight

ok I found the other two.....I love Forums :-D

1st Drop 06/25/09 From: system (6:34 AM EDT) Varda is pleased with your victory and grants you a A Lesser Rune of Balrog Flame lvl 20. Use it well!

2nd Drop 07/06/09 From: system Sent: (8:19 PM EDT) Delivered: 8:19 PM EDT Tulkas is pleased with your victory and grants you a A Lesser Rune of Solitude lvl 20. Use it well!

From: system Sent: 12:37 AM EST Delivered: 12:38 AM EST
Varda is pleased with your victory and grants you a A Halidon Familiar lvl 20. Use it well!

I need a day of the week or a date merrit.

"With just a quick glance, I'm pretty sure that there isn't any time better than any other to fight "

It's hard to see patterns with a low amount of drop data, and without actually looking at it organized.

For instance right now with just this data you have a 47% of getting a drop on thursday as opposed to any other day of the week. So right now if there is a wacky time it will be that day.

Again I need at least a month or two of data points before I can make any real conclusions.

Wraithlin, you don't need anywhere close to a month's worth of data.

With simple statistics, you can make a very accurate with as little as 40 unbiased data points.

Unbiased is the key word here - there are a multitude of confounding variables that could possibly get in the way.
-Who volunteers their data (they might fight a certain parts of the day or more on certain days - if the drops are truly random, they will appear to be clustered around EXP time because I expect more people to fight during EXP time)
-Overall, there probably won't be as many drops at 3AM PST (Most of the players live in the US, and most people aren't up at 3AM (West coast) or 6AM (East coast).

There are a lot of other confounding variables.

So if you want to collect "least a month or two of data points", all the more power to you, but the pursuit of figuring out a pattern, I expect, will be fruitless. IF you do come out with any real pattern, I would bet as much money as I own that they won't be more drops because there are "wacky times" - rather, that they follow other confounding variables that just seem to give them a pattern.

Yeah I understand the 40 data point theory and the underlying influences, I took a couple statistics classes myself. I figured 1-2 months would actually be the 40 data points, but since everyone hasn't taken statistics, 1-2 months sounds better than 40 data points. And you're right, we don't know the underlying reasons for why they drop, however if nobody ever bothers to try to find out we'll never know. As far as I can tell this game is full of people trying to find ways to figure out how the admins made the game, I'm just trying one more.

From: system (5:09 PM EST)
Tulkas is pleased with your victory and grants you a A Pair of Gloves of Mercy [0] (+8). Use it well!

Can't you lift a lot of this data from our prior drop threads? There should be dozens with exact dates and times.

And sorry I can't help with any recent ones... as I haven't received a drop in a couple of months.

Sent: 9:41 PM EST
Mandos is pleased with your victory and grants you a A Rune of Balrog Flame lvl 20. Use it well!


Holy crap. First drop in a couple of months. I was beginning to wonder if something was broken.

So final report:

Not unexpected but the items are not spawned at certain times, but are rather spawned based on the number of fights. At least that's the only real explanation I can come up with for the drop rate.

The best strat you can do to try to get items would be to save BA as a clan and all use BA in the same time periods to try to soak up enough fights to land your clan an item.

Also just a group of friends can do this same thing, off time BA spending would be the best, so very early morning.