Variable Drop Rates?

I was wondering if anyone else seem to notice that drop rates seem to change over time. For example, Everlasting Tonic from the z chests the first time around to the second. Maybe I was lucky but I opened about 400-700 chests a month and got one or two EL tonics each month. In May '09 opened about 1,000 chests and no EL tonic this time.

Similarly with Gifts of the Traveler, I got more than a few gold weps., mini yak, and other high end drops the first couple of weeks and now getting crap drops.

So is ANet regulating drop rates over time? So when a new item gets introduced you get better drop rates and then over time decrease the rate?

Drop rates are a percentage chance.... technically even if say, everlasting tonics were a 50% drop rate, like the flip of a coin... you could still flip that coin 100,000 times and never get it. (Chances are you will, due to the high rate). But that's really just it. it's like saying 1 in 10 men are gay. if you have 10 men together, this does not mean ONE of them is gay. it just means 10% of men as a whole are gay.

Its random. Ive been opening gifts on 2 accounts, and haven't had anything but rock candies, tonics, and kegs.

Your were lucky, your not any more.

In other words each time you open something it's a seperate event. Because something is 1/200 chance doesn't mean each time you open the chest or gift doesn't make it 1/199 etc.

There were a million better examples than that, but it works. Its all down to the percentages, I never get anything other than the basic fireworks or the summoning stones from the traveler.

Hmm, you guys read the post? Just saying it seems the rate for high end drops were greater during the beginning for Traveler Gifts and better for EL tonics the first year around. Does anyone have any empirical data on this? Like I say i may just have been lucky in the beginning.

I'm voting with the "you were just lucky at first," crowd. But if it's data you want, some folks have been reporting their gift results on wiki since they appeared.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Gift_...eler/Drop_rate

I don't know if there's a similar data entry point on GuildWiki or not.

As for the zChest drops, I've no idea because I don't follow them. But I suspect there's somewhere people are reporting what they get, if not on wiki then on a thread here.

Nope its the other way around. I always got crap out of the zchest and the few traveler's gifts we've gotten, but it keeps getting better every month/week.

Anyways, its random. Everyones experience is going to be different. Yours is the complete opposite of mine.