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It’s that time of the month again, wait… that sounds wrong. Anyhow, Markco’s Blogging Carnival is back in town with a new challenge, admit your failures…
“It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
– Theodore Roosevelt, 1910
Why Dwell on the Negative?
First, this is not about dwelling on the negative. And it shouldn’t be, but acknowledging your failures is as important (if not more so) than celebrating your successes. Understanding mistakes and how to deal with them is an important part of being a good leader in any arena. There’s a few key points to making mistakes that I want to share before going any further:
Learning From Mistakes
1. Acceptance – You absolutely have to accept that it happened and there’s not a damned thing you can do about it.
2. What caused the mistake and how can you avoid making that mistake in the future?
3. Are there similar possible issues that can be avoided?
4. What have you done to ensure this doesn’t happen again?
Taken in this context a mistake can be a valuable tool, especially in business. For example, a security flaw could be exposed that could “potentially” protect the company from losing huge sums of money. The same applies to Goblins, we take what we do seriously. And though SRS Business is by no means a Fortune 500 company, I do try my best to learn from my failures. Now that I’ve beat around the bush, let’s get to my own slice of fail…
My Biggest Mistake
Back in March I made what should have been the deal of a lifetime, I bought out a TON of items for cheap. Literally stacks of gems, eternals, ores, multiple Argent Tournament pets, etc and all for a pittance. And the result? A 3 day Suspension…
No deal is worth losing your account over (for any length of time), but greed got the better of me. It “appears” I bought this stuff from a hacked account, and I got caught in the crossfire. It happens, but it’s not something I ever want to happen again. So, I learned from the experience and I shared my experiences here in the hopes that others wouldn’t be caught with their pants down as well. As a result I found out that I wasn’t alone, it had happened to a handful of regular readers as well.
Conversely, I also got out of the cross faction arbitrage racket after this happened, because I got suspended AGAIN the following week when I tried to transfer some gold from the Alliance to Horde.
Acheter (un) Chat en Poche
I’ve made my fair share of lesser mistakes as well, when I first started messing with the Snatch feature of Auctioneer for example, I was new to the feature and not fully understanding of it’s configuration. That’s a nice way of saying I bought hundreds of Netherweave Cloth at 5g each rather than 5g per stack. Then of course, I had to try to sell the bags, but suddenly there was someone selling 40 bags who undercut me into oblivion. Hard lesson learned there…
As for the Pig in a Poke or Cat in a Bag (that’s what the french talk above is about), I’ve taken some bad advice. Though, this was before my time in WOW I one time read a plat guide for EverQuest and it suggested making and selling enchanted items. Well, I sunk EVERYTHING I had into it. I generated a bunch of masks and went to sell them, no bites for a while… then someone wanted to look at my humble wares. He laughed and told me, “there’s no way you’re going to sell those, nobody wants Charisma!” That’s when I realized my mistake, I’d made the wrong item. It was the absolutely wrong stat, the one no one wanted. And all that money was completely and utterly lost. Also in the dark time before WoW I made the mistake of letting a friend play my character, I was hacked several times and found out later it was him. He’d changed my password and sold all of my stuff each time (facepalm).
The Lesson Endeth Here
And it is this, each of us makes mistakes. Everyone has felt like a bonehead at one point or another. At some point we all say DOH! Be it big or small, all mistakes can make us stronger and all mistakes have something to teach us. Learn from them, you’ll be better for it. If you can find the intestinal fortitude to do this – you will go far.
Until next time, thanks for reading…
Thanks for the tips. Ouch! Account ban is serious stuff. I guess the lesson for all of us is to be very wary of people selling via the chat channel. I have almost been caught there a few times for large quantities of items. I will be more wary now.
Any blog that quotes Roosevelt is worth reading! Thanks for sharing, and for fighting the good fight!
Yikes, I didn’t realize you could get banned for buying stolen account items if you hadn’t been the one doing the stealing! It would have been nearly impossible to resist buying the items you mentioned for crazy cheap, but I now know to watch out for shady dealers! Ty!
Were you able to get those bans overturned? It really doesn’t seem right that you’d get banned when there is really no way to tell if an account is hacked or not.
@Jez:
There are some pretty big warning signs that this was a suspicious deal, IMO.
“Literally stacks of gems, eternals, ores, multiple Argent Tournament pets, etc and all for a pittance. And the result? A 3 day Suspension…”
No one who’s gone to the trouble of collecting that much material is going to just unload it for a pittance.
@MissMediocre – Sadly, you can really get banned for anything. Because that’s how Blizzard set up the rules. Frighteningly, I’ve heard of recent issues with people getting banned after buying the Reins of the Crimson Deathcharger off the AH (the Shadowmourne questline reward), I’ve heard people say it was because of duping and at the same time I’ve heard people say that’s impossible. But the bans appear genuine. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t actually out to get you…
@Evidicus – I try to work in quotations whenever possible, however I don’t always have one that fits. This one however seemed just right, I’m glad you enjoyed it.
@Jason – To play devils advocate, it was suspicious. However, I can’t help but feel the nagging suspicion that there may be legitimate reasons to liquidate stock in this fashion. Sometimes Chicken Littles get scared, they sell everything (often at a loss) just to wash their hands of the whole thing. Sometimes it’s because they just can’t keep up with Joneses, and have decided they aren’t even going to try the undercutting wars anymore. And then there’s the disbanding guilds to consider, Bloodscalp is a large/old server and guilds come and go. There are plenty of times (I can imagine) where a guild would disintegrate and a lot of materials would suddenly be liquidated just to get rid of them.
That aside though, it was indeed suspicious and as I said in my post – I let greed overpower my judgment. It’s hard, when in the heat of the moment, late at night when you’re sleep deprived Goblin brain sees a great deal to pass it up. Sometimes the calculations begin and you don’t stop till it’s too late.
@Jez – I was actually able to get the suspensions overturned, and in one case received play time credited to my account (this was when they suspended me for trading gold between my alliance DK Saahk to my horde DK Khaas). It was obvious to anyone even making a passing glance that both were me, account names registered under same bnet account, even the character names were mirrors of each other. Even so, I missed out on some raiding time with Khaas, and I’m the guild’s MT. Missing out on a night of progression raiding because of some insider trading suspension is never a good place to be. In truth there really isn’t a way to tell, you can have a reasonable guess. But you can never know, just as you can never know exactly why you get suspended in the first place – Blizzard isn’t known for transparency.
@Kammler – Indeed, no deal is worth risking your account. But please be aware, I’m not suggesting avoiding trading altogether. Trade Chat is still an invaluable source for industrious types, a certain level of restraint and caution is however advised. I now adhere strongly to the following three rules when I see a “deal of a lifetime” in trade:
1. Stop, deep breath. Okay, continue.
2. If a deal looks too good to be true, it probably is.
3. And finally remember that as with sex, if it doesn’t feel right – pull out. No one says you have to do this…