Wednesday, November 28, 2007

What are the odds?

Warning: This article may contain math or have been produced in a facility that handles math. Severe allergic reactions could occur.

So, I took last week off from work. I got some time in to prep myself for the American Thanksgiving holiday, get some much needed time off from work, and of course play tons and tons of WoW.

I've been leveling Bremmie my little rogue with the companionship of a like level Shaman. We eventually got to the point where it was time to run Scarlet Monastery and since we didn't have folks on in the guild to run and neither of us wanted to pug the place, we traded runs on our 70s for the little guys.

I got to go first. Once Herod was down, I gleefully looted the Tabard of the Scarlet Crusade. This only drops off the newbies that Herod summons as he falls and at some point became a green. I've always wanted this piece on one of my toons and was so happy to get it.

Then it was the shaman's turn. Lo and behold, the tabard dropped for her too!

So, I got to wondering, what exactly are the odds? Allakhazam reports a drop rate for this bugger around 0.56%. I figure There are a dozen or so of the non-elites that can drop it (I didn't count, just an approximation). At 12 x .56, we get 6.72% chance for it to drop in a single run. Since each event is (presumed) independent, the probabilities are just added up.

But we both got it. On separate runs. So, those are also independent, but we multiply them in this case (since we have to hit that 6.72% twice) and come up with 0.45% chance for both of us to get the drop. Pretty lucky that it worked out like it did. If you ask me. Which you didn't.

I'm just saying is all.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wonder if they raised the drop rate with 2.3.2, along with the decrease in leveling pain from 20-60?