Pop quiz everyone!

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
1

A bit of background:

While doing the Underbelly Scales quest in Redridge, I had an anomaly in the drops. The quest wants 6 scales, however after getting 4 in about 5 min, they stopped dropping. After 50 kills, no drop. I’m convinced I experienced a bug.

Furthermore, after reseting the quest, I got all 6 in 12 kills. I asked others what they thought and they told me I was crazy.

Looking up the quest, many have claimed that they get the scales in around 10-12 kills. Like me. For the sake of simplicity, lets say it’s a 50% drop rate. A coin flip.

My question is: If heads = no drop, and tails = a drop, what is the probability of never getting heads in 50 flips? Also, given your answer, would you say that the quest was bugged?

I’ll give you a hint: it’s not 50%. I’ll add more over time.

Hint 2: consider how many outcomes per flip, and how many flips were made.

Hint 3: consider 2 flips. There are 4 possibilities: H T, T H, T T, H H. 1 in 4, 25%

Hint 4: now 3 flips: H H H, H H T, H T T, T T T, T T H, T H H, H T H, T H T. If you consider EVERY POSSIBLE OUTCOME there is only 1 in a 8 that has no heads. 13%.

THE ANSWER: 150 views so far and no answers. If you take all possible outcomes of a single flip, you get 2. I flipped 50 times, and all of them landed heads. The math looks like this: 2^50. That’s it. You multiply 2 by itself 50 times. This accounts for EVERY possible outcome. The chance of failing 50 flips in a row is 1 in 1,125,899,906,842,624.

If there are 7 billion people on earth, each person would have to run the test about 160,842 times. That is how rare this is. If the quest didn’t glitch, I’m probably the unluckiest person in the world. Moreover, plenty of people are claiming this happens all the time. Class dismissed!

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2

Idk but WoW probability has always been jacked.

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3

Yeah it’s not TRUE random chance because the game has to purposefully pick a number.

No machine works 100% of the time. But if it does break, I’d consider it a bug.

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4

True Probability doesn’t increase if one possibility doesn’t or does happen.

Every time you flick a coin it has a 50/50 chance, and a very, very small one it will land on the edge or to be affected by the technique of the flipper. The coin does not remember the pervious tosses so every time is 50/50 (approx).

It can be heads thousands of times in a row. Computers cannot make truly random numbers.

On the point of drops, I have had it happen too, 7 of 8 in 10 kills and 40+ kills for the last one.

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5

Each flip is 50/50. But were are talking about ALL flips. If the drop chance is 50%, and you need 6. The safest answer is 12.

The odds of getting them in 11 or 13 kills is fairly common. Every digit lower or higher, respectively, is exponentially rarer than the last.

Getting all 6 scales in 6 kills is 1 in 64. → 1.6%

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6

Sorry but it’s 12 minimum if there are two outcomes and it is set at 50/50, you cannot give an actual accurate figure.

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7

That’s exactly what probability is though, an estimate.

That would be:
1 in 1071508607186267320948425049060001810561404811705533607443750388370351051124936122493198378815695858127594672917553146825187145285692314043598457757469857480393456777482423098542107460506237114187795418215304647498358194126739867559165543946077062914571196477686542167660429831652624386837205668069376

Or 107150860718626732094842504906e+301

If you think that is normal, never go outside because you are much more likely to get struck by a meteor.

Also, the minimum is 6 kills. Because you can theoretically get them all first try.

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8

Well the drop rate isn’t 50% it’s roughly 10% so you not getting it in 50 can happen though unlikely. When I first did that quest I had a similar experience though not to the extent of 50.

It’s just rng being rng.

Any quest that requires you to loot items off of mobs and the required number low always have a low drop rate.

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9

Perhaps, idk the exact drop rate. But the question still stands.

Edit: Actually, if the standard is around 10%, quests that require you to get 8 misc items would require you to kill like 80 enemies. Even if it is 25%, we’re talking around 32. This certainly isn’t true for most quests.

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This should answer all your questions: i.imgur. com/jq4dQBP.jpg

11

sounds like it glitched. sometimes you can fix a glitch by relogging or resetting ui.

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12

Yeah I tried both. What’s interesting is questie was miscounting the scales I had while this was going on.

13

hmm, might be good to turn it off if a quest isnt updating.

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14

I would also like to point out that it is pretty common for people to mention something along the lines of “The previous percentage isn’t added into the next.” No one is saying this. That isn’t how calculating probability works.

If I say you have a 1% crit chance, you would, MOST LIKELY, only see 1 crit every 100 swings. Even if every single swing is a 1% chance. It could be on the 3rd swing, 47th swing, or 101st swing. But for it to occur even 5 times within 100 is fairly unlikely.

15

That happened to me with the (Fine Moonstalker Pelts) back in the beginning of Classic. Dropped the quest and boom, got all the pelts.

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16

I’m glad someone else can back me up!

The both of us are very, very unlucky. Or something broke.

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17

All propabilities and math aside, WoW quests are just buggy like that. Seems to happen A LOT with the legion client.

I’m in Westfall with 14/15 bandanas wondering if I’m bugged, then I see multiple people in chat saying they’re stuck on the last one too. Gooey spider legs and buzzard wings drop just fine, it’s the quest items that bug out.

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18

This was my exact experience as well. Condor meat, spider legs/goo, boar snouts, was fine. The dragon scale quest item was the only culprit.