Fishing in World of Warcraft: Old Crafty and the Gambler's Fallacy
(Fishing for Old Crafty in The Valley of Wisdom, Kalimdor, World of Warcraft.)
As I’ve described before, I am a longtime player of World of Warcraft, sometimes casually but other times with more fervor and dedication. In World of Warcraft your character may have two primary professions (mine are skinning and herbalism) along with various secondary professions like archaeology, cooking, and fishing—all bona fide pastimes, or at least interests, of mine in real life (skinning aside).
I’ve always gravitated toward fishing in World of Warcraft, perhaps because its repetitive nature is somewhat meditative, affording plenty of time for reflection without the intricacies of strategy eating up precious thought cycles. My interest in fishing in World of Warcraft naturally spawned a desire to obtain the various fishing achievements that are possible to obtain in the game. One elusive fishing achievement for me was the “Old Crafty” achievement, which is awarded to your character for fishing up the rare fish named “Old Crafty” from the Orc capital city, Orgrimmar.
(The “Old Crafty” Achievement in World of Warcraft.)
For an Alliance character like mine, this would prove to be quite a challenge, as Orgrimmar is a capital city of the opposite faction, the Horde. This means that my character would be in constant danger of being killed by an enemy player while trying to keep a low profile in the fishing pools of Orgrimmar. And given that Old Crafty has a drop rate somewhere between 0.04 percent (one in twenty-five hundred) and 0.1 percent (one in a thousand)—I found conflicting information on the drop rate for Old Crafty online—I would most likely be fishing in Orgrimmar for some time in order to actually catch this rare fish while under constant threat of being ganked by enemy players.
One of the fallacies—i.e., patterns of poor reasoning—that one learns about in typical critical thinking courses in college is the Gambler’s Fallacy, which is the mistake of thinking that one is more likely to win after a long run of losing attempts at independent chance events, such as pulls of a slot machine level or spins of a roulette wheel. As I was fishing (and fishing—and fishing—and fishing) for Old Crafty in Orgrimmar, it occurred to me that I myself was in danger of falling prey to the Gambler’s Fallacy as well—mistakenly thinking that I would be more likely to catch Old Crafty on subsequent casts merely because I had been fishing for Old Crafty for so long already without success.
In reality, each cast in my attempt to catch Old Crafty in World of Warcraft is an independent event, with the results of the cast not tied in any way to previous casts, as if the result of each cast were determined by the roll of a thousand-sided die, with successfully catching Old Crafty occurring only if one particular side of that thousand-sided die should come up. In reality, the programming code that governs fishing in World of Warcraft likely functions very much like this. For each fishing cast in World of Warcraft, the game likely generates a random number between 1 and some large number based on the intended drop rate for each item, say between 1 and 1,000 assuming a drop rate of 0.1 percent for a rare item like Old Crafty. Old Crafty is thus only caught when a particular number—say, the number 1, for example—is produced by the random number generator. If any other number comes up, some other item is caught (such as the plentiful Raw Longjaw Mud Snapper, or perhaps the less-plentiful-but-still-more-common-than-Old-Crafty 17-, 19-, or 22-Pound Catfish.
While I couldn’t determine precisely what the intended drop rate is for Old Crafty—either 0.1 percent or 0.04 percent, depending on the source I found, I thought it would be interesting to keep track of exactly how many casts it took for me to finally fish up Old Crafty and to provide a list of everything I caught in-game along the way. Although various online sources suggested fishing for Old Crafty in The Valley of Spirits or The Valley of Honor, I opted instead for a relatively safe, hidden spot on some rocks next to the waterfall in The Valley of Wisdom, partly out of curiosity whether Old Crafty could indeed be caught there as well and partly because it was the safest spot for an Alliance character to fish in Orgrimmar relatively unseen and undisturbed by any Horde-player passersby. (For the record, and for anyone looking for the answer to this particular question, Old Crafty can indeed be caught in The Valley of Wisdom.)
(En route to Orgrimmar to catch Old Crafty.)
Here is my list of everything I caught from The Valley of Wisdom in Orgrimmar, over several days, while attempting to fish up Old Crafty:
Raw Longjaw Mud Snapper: 1,973
Raw Bristle Whisker Catfish: 796
Raw Brilliant Smallfish: 587
17 Pound Catfish: 13
19 Pound Catfish: 8
Lesser Mana Potion: 8
Lesser Healing Potion: 6
22 Pound Catfish: 3
Bloated Mud Snapper (containing Malachite): 2
Burnished Cloak: 1
Infantry Leggings of the Aurora: 1
The 1 Ring: 1
Old Crafty: 1
Total: 3,400
So it took me exactly 3,400 casts to catch Old Crafty as an Alliance character fishing in The Valley of Wisdom in Orgrimmar, which works out to approximately 0.0294 percent—much closer to the smaller 0.04 percent estimate than the more optimistic 0.1 percent estimate. Note, however, that there is no way to know exactly how long it will take to catch Old Crafty, because each cast is a completely independent event, just like the pull of a slot machine handle or the spin of a roulette wheel. I could have caught Old Crafty on the very first cast, or I could have caught it after tens of thousands of casts. In my case, I seem to have taken about 900 casts more than I might have expected to take, given the lower estimated drop rate of 1 in 2,500 (i.e., 0.04 percent), dashing my optimistic hopes of catching Old Crafty in even fewer catches—by the luck of the draw, or the luck of the random number generator, as the case may be!
(Old Crafty finally in-hand!)
If you have any doubts about whether the time spent fishing up Old Crafty in World of Warcraft, in a total of 3,400 casts, was worth it, see my previous blog posts about the existential value of my World of Warcraft endeavors here:
And see the following resource for more on the Gambler’s Fallacy in particular—covering randomness and decision-making in everything from literal gambling, to the lottery, to the stock market:
Happy virtual, literal, or metaphorical fishing! 🎣
