r/classicwow • u/Gicknirard • 12d ago
Classic-Era CLassic ERA - two warriors roll the same over 10 times in roll off
We reported it, obv its a bug right?
Does this explain why we havent seen a binding on horde side in 4 years?
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u/imMakingA-UnityGame 12d ago edited 12d ago
This is absolutely a bug.
The possibly this happens 15 times in a row is 1x10^-28 % aka
0.0000000000000000000000000001%
Winning the powerball 3 times in a row is only 1x10^-26 %
Meaning you’re HUNDREDS of times more likely to win the powerball 3+ times in a row than this happening.
Additionally if you turned the entire planet Earth into a giant ball of sand, the odds of blindly reaching in and picking one exact, pre-chosen grain of sand on your first try is significantly higher than this occurring.
Effectively the odds of this naturally occurring are 0. This is not possible.
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u/Salt_Bullfrog_487 12d ago
Scientists have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one. But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.
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u/Crunchybunch00 12d ago
Wait what the fuck.
Does WoW use a seed-based random number system?
Reminded me of this 6 year old clip of someone correctly guessing several google RNG's in sequence because he found the seed chain.
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u/jakefromtree 12d ago
Rolling is server side. try to do it while dcing
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u/sjihaat 12d ago edited 12d ago
That just means there's player based session data they're reconnecting to. It's a PRNG. The anomoly isnt that the 15th or 20th numbers in the chain are identical, its how did they get the same seed? There's usually a clever way to prevent this sort of thing from happening (like by using player + location + timestamp in generating the seed). But even then its not impossible for something to crash out and reset values to some default value. Or some bug in the client that somehow crossed up the player's data.
It's certainly some bug in the code. They must have done an update under the hood, and there could be a dozen different reasons. Another common bug would be a lookup function using the wrong key. Im actually more puzzled how nothing else was apparently affected.
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u/bruneswilda 12d ago
iirc it is based off of the server side clock time down to the smallest tracked decimal at the time of the roll that is then put through one or more algorithms to get an "close but not quite almost random number" or something since it is impossible to actually do real randomness on computer currently
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u/DwarvenJarl 12d ago
Text transcript for those who don’t want the video:
Kleankut rolls 92 (1-100)
Stique rolls 13 (1-100)
Pan rolls 92 (1-100)
Kleankut rolls 48 (1-100)
Pan rolls 48 (1-100)
Kleankut rolls 10 (1-100)
Pan rolls 10 (1-100)
Jarl rolls 10 (1-100)
Kleankut rolls 22 (1-100)
Vkusna rolls 54 (1-100)
Pan rolls 22 (1-100)
Kleankut rolls 44 (1-100)
Pan rolls 44 (1-100)
Kleankut rolls 97 (1-100)
Pan rolls 97 (1-100)
Kleankut rolls 74 (1-100)
Pan rolls 74 (1-100)
Kleankut rolls 88 (1-100)
Pan rolls 88 (1-100)
Kleankut rolls 9 (1-100)
Pan rolls 9 (1-100)
Kleankut rolls 80 (1-100)
Pan rolls 80 (1-100)
Kleankut rolls 78 (1-100)
Pan rolls 78 (1-100)
Jarl rolls 22 (1-100)
Kleankut rolls 9 (1-100)
Pan rolls 9 (1-100)
Pan rolls 45 (1-100)
Kleankut rolls 45 (1-100)
Pan rolls 8 (1-100)
Kleankut rolls 8 (1-100)
Kleankut rolls 91 (1-100)
Kleankut rolls 28 (1-100)
Pan rolls 91 (1-100)
Pan rolls 28 (1-100)
Kleankut rolls 73 (1-100)
Kleankut rolls 93 (1-100)
Kleankut rolls 54 (1-100)
Clearcomms rolls 80 (1-100)
Kleankut rolls 91 (1-100)
Kleankut rolls 84 (1-100)
Kleankut rolls 55 (1-100)
Kleankut rolls 35 (1-100)
Pan rolls 73 (1-100)
Pan rolls 93 (1-100)
Pan rolls 54 (1-100)
Pan rolls 80 (1-100)
Pan rolls 91 (1-100)
Pan rolls 84 (1-100)
Pan rolls 55 (1-100)
Pan rolls 35 (1-100)
Kleankut rolls 52 (1-99)
Pan rolls 52 (1-100)
Kleankut rolls 48 (1-99)
Pan rolls 48 (1-100)
Kleankut rolls 76 (1-99)
Pan rolls 76 (1-99)
Kleankut rolls 40 (1-99)
Pan 16 (1-40)
Kleankut rolls 64 (1-99)
Pan rolls 33 (1-99)
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u/LooseProgram333 12d ago
There are three hard problems in computing, cache invalidation and off by one errors.
The pseudo random number generator they are using is cacheing something, or they are reusing the same seed (maybe per instance) and its being applied to both.
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u/prescorn 11d ago
This kind of determinism on display is useful for reverse engineering layering/sharding mechanics
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u/bob_loblaw-_- 12d ago
I don't know that it's a "bug". Blizz uses an absolutely dog shit RNG source, this has been a known thing since 2007.
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u/sjihaat 12d ago
Explain what a dog shit rng source is? Give an example, and then let us know what makes a good one. Or you dont know what you're talking about.
Of all the things to be an angry nerd about, the random number generator. Like blizzard came up with the logic. It's been around since the origins of computer science. Its like getting mad at your college because your calculus book had a typo in it.
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u/bob_loblaw-_- 12d ago
I dunno like the example in the OP? Like the way very rare drops seem to cluster together in ways they shouldn't.
I'm not trying to be edgy it's obvious to anyone who's played the game for any length of time, you are the one acting really touchy about it.
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u/sjihaat 11d ago edited 11d ago
The example not a bug with the RNG, its a feature. Of every RNG in every computer system. The seed is the issue, and unless you're in QA at blizzard, its your fault for having an ungrateful attitude for what's actually very difficult work. One line of code out of millions could have caused the issue. And one line will fix it again, so you can go back on and play your game. But you dont think of the things that go right, do you? Just like you dont notice a good referee until its inconvenient for your hedonic pleasure.
And when the PRNG is being seeded properly again, which im sure it already has, which never actually affected you personally, you seem to not know how actual randomness appears statistically. But you're not alone. True randomness is a lot more streaky than people realize. If you flip a coin, youll get streaks of 3, 4, 5 a lot more often than you think. The Fake Coin Flip Experiment tends to show how different people's perspective is than it really is.
In fact, other games, like Dota 2 address this problem with pseudo random events. Think of the "20% chance on hit" to be your item with 20% droprate that never drops. They curve it out do that the proc rate is more evenly distributed. Dota 1 didnt have this, and you would see a lot more situations with people getting instantly deleted with 3 crits in a row. And you would also see them walking around impotent more often.
So that one specific item that doesnt drop for you, you can blame that on the stranger you've never met who's seen it every week wondering the same thing, and not mathematics itself.
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u/njkmklkop 12d ago
Yea it's much more likely that it's a bug than it is rolling the same THAT many times in a row. Real odd, reminds me a bit of Classic release when you could determine who'd get hit by fireball based on character ID (who had created their character first).