Guild Wars 2

Out of curiosity I decided to keep track of who won the Moa Racing, for 100 races. The results are a little surprising considering I always thought it was random, with each moa having an equal chance:
The Mystery Moas between them won 18 (I combined them because only one runs per race, they each won 6)
Mortt won 16
Meep won 18
Monna won 23
and Motti won 25

It’s possible it will balance out with more races (I’m still trying for the mini so I’m still keeping track) but I was calculating the percentages every 20 races and the results were pretty consistent throughout.

I only did it enough times to get 3 wins. And unlike my usual random luck (over 700 skill points and no precursor drop yet), I actually came out ahead. Of course I stopped once I got the achievement. Guess it is time to akitten dragonball (pvp not my forte) now to knock that one off.

I’m only going to bet until I get the mini (and I only decided to do that after I realised it would be cheaper than buying it), but like I said I was curious, I watched 60 races before I started betting.

Yeah, 100 is not a large enough sample size unfortunately.

Yeah it would be good if other people could add to the data. Although it does need to be something you record as you’re going along rather than working out how many you won after the fact.

Although people do seem to have noticed the trend. Just before I posted this on the wiki I asked in-game if one was most likely to win and although everyone acknowledged it was random and it could be any of them Motti and Monna were the most popular.

One interesting thing to track might be whether this trend is the same across all servers, or whether different moas perform better on different servers. Your results seem to mirror what I was seeing on Tarnished Coast, Danikat, although I only watched about 10 or so races (enough for me to get the achievement).

Danikat’s 100 races:
Motti 25
Monna 23
Meep 18
Mystery 18
Mortt 16

Data from reddit users :

70 races:
meep 17
morrt 14
monna 14
mystery 13
motti 12

54 races:
Mortt: 12
Monna: 11
Meep: 10
Mystery: 10
Motti: 9

115 races:
Mystery 32
Mortt 27
Monna 21
Meep 20
Motti 15

Totals so far

Mystery moa: 73
Monna: 69
Mortt: 69
Meep: 65
Motti: 61

Conclusion so far
It’s random.

I totaled them up because I like numbers, not because I believed I would find anything in here. As long as it is 100% random and there isn’t any sort of strategy that a player can apply to get an edge, it is the money sink that we all think ANet is trying to give us. As soon as there is a way to better your chances, this way will end up on the wiki, all the players are going to start betting on the same moa, and the whole thing doesn’t work as a money sink anymore (on the contrary). The question isn’t so much whether there is a pattern, but more why would ANet do such a thing?

I don’t think Anet would but I have to admit I’d be tempted to do something like that. Tweak the RNG so one moa does have a very slightly higher chance of winning (2% or so), just to see if anyone notices.

But I agree it’s most likely intended as a gold sink, so it wouldn’t make sense to make it profitable in the long run. Although most people calculate that winning the mini moa will cost around 21-25g on average and it sells for about 30-35g on the TP, so you could make a profit that way.

On average, it will cost 28.41g to get a mini. So you would need to sell for 33.52 to break even. And dont forget standing around for the 57 races.

i am sure as hell not betting on motti that lame duck

You’re going to stand there for all that time just to get a mini? Man it was boring enough standing around betting on the races for like a half hour-40 minutes to get 3 wins for the ach, and I only did that because I’d like to get the wings and there’s no way I’m playing 20 games of dragon ball never mind winning them…

Well, I finally got my mini. I always bet on Motti and it took me 49 races, and I had 4 tokens left over which I traded for silver, so it cost me 23g 70s.

Considering the cheapest I’ve seen it on the TP is 31g I think that’s a good deal.

Also if you think that’s a lot of time to stand around for a mini try asking people about trying for a mini polar bear in GW1.