WoW | The Blue Proto-Drake Equation

One of my hobbies, outside of working on crowd simulations or virtual explosions, is playing World of Warcraft. For me it covers a few needs in one, horribly time-consuming package:

• Escapism
• Cheap entertainment (I watch little to no television anymore)
• I get to hang out with old friends from college
• We form small gangs, go out into the World of Warcraft, kill things, and take their loot as reward (Sometimes we kill a bard and take his lute as a reward)
• Then we continue to kill things
• Lots of things
• Things with teeth

The other night, as a consequence of killing lots of things with teeth we witnessed an extraordinarily rare event (See equation below). We met up with a dungeon boss named Skadi the Ruthless, who, due to a minor disagreement with four out of five members of our party, had to be gently euthenized. After seven intense mintues of stabbing him with swords, charring him in the face with roaring streams of fire, and repeated electrocutions by firing lightning at his groin (I did the lightning), Skadi was kind enough to drop the reins to his personal flying mount, the blue proto-drake.

Figure-1: This guy	Figure-2: gave us one of these

This would be the real life equivant of gathering into a small group, showing up at Michael Bay's house, waiting for him to walk outside, say, to get his mail, and then beating the living crap out of him, Clockwork Orange style, for seven minutes straight; And when he finally expires, with his last gasp he folds over and slumps to the ground. In a bloody heap, he extends his arm and unclenches his fist to reveal a set of keys; the very keys that enable access and operation of the real Optimus Prime. Because of the code of chivalry, you have earned the right to drive Michael Bay's personal transformer vehicle down Ventura Blvd, turning heads. At every stop light, people run over to you, or roll down their windows and shout, "Is that Optimus Prime?!" And you shout back, "Yeah, that's right beeoches!" as you transform into a robot and leap over the intersection, then back into a truck, skipping every impediment all the way back to Canoga Park. Your vehicle, your prize. A symbol of mortally defeating the director of such hit projects as Pearl Harbor, Armageddon, and the Meat Loaf: Bat out of Hell II Picture Show.

Figure-1: Real life: If this guy	Figure-2: gave us one of these

NOTE: I do not condone, under any circumstances, the actual, violent attack of Michael Bay. Everyone I know who has successfully killed him claims he never drops the keys to Optimus Prime and the best loot you can expect from him would be the Michael Bay Box Set, which includes The Rock, but not The Island, or The Lionel Richie Collection. Plus he respawns like every 15 minutes, and isn't even an elite. And hurry, before he finishes remaking A Nightmare on Elm Street!

The Blue Proto-Drake Equation

So how rare of a drop is the blue proto-drake in World of Warcraft? The odd's can be accurately determined using the following equation:

where:
N = the number of people flying around on blue proto-drakes
R* = the average rate of star formation in our galaxy
fp = the fraction of those stars that have planets
ne = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per planet-forming star

fℓ = the fraction of life supporting planets that successfully develop life

fi = the fraction of life-bearing planets that successfully develop intelligent life
fWoW = the fraction of intelligent life that advances in technology to develop World of Warcraft
l = the length of time these lifeforms play World of Warcraft

fhUP = the fraction of WoW players skilled enough to run the Heroic Utgaurd Pinnacle instance

fK = the fraction of successful kills of Skadi the Ruthless
fPD = the fraction of times Skadi the Ruthless drops the [Reins of the Blue Proto-Drake]

fNP = the number of people in your party who are rolling against you

Based on real world, scientifically-measured observation (which can be verified by the four other people in my raiding party) when plugging in the probabilities of the first nine terms from the above equation, the result is 100%:

fp X ne X fℓ X fi X fWoW X l X fhUP X fK X fPD = 1.00

Unfortunately for me and 3 other people in my raiding party, that last term has a much lower probability of only 20%:

fNP = 0.200

We all rolled dice, ranging from 1-100:

One person rolled a 90.

I rolled a 93.

My friend rolled a 94.

He got the drake.

All those terrible odds, and it boiled down to a single percentage point. So much for intelligent life in the universe.

Maybe next time?