Hanging around in the name of love

My bag problems which I wrote about last week reached a new level when I entered the hunt for the seasonal achievement title. Curse you Blizzard for putting this plague upon me! But trust me: I’m going to throw every single piece of junk you’ve forced upon me away when it’s over, except for the picnic basket of course, which I always carry round since the same event last year.

Shortly heartbroken
This whole love event is a little bit broken, at least from a pseudo RP perspective. Love is serious business isn’t it? If you’re heartbroken, shouldn’t you be that at least for an hour or so to make it at least slightly credible? Now it really felt kind of silly. I gathered with everyone else in the open area of Ironforge, hungrily looking around for another broken heart to mend. Not because I cared about the heartbroken character, but because I wanted to get the achievement done. When I saw the crowd I came to think of those aggressive birds which harass popular tourist spots summertime, constantly preying for another hot dog or ice cream to snap out of the hands of an innocent child.

Spending so much time just “hanging around” in the capital cities is a bit strange to me. Normally I don’t do that a lot. When I play I do things. I raid, I quest, I PvP (a little) I gather, I even visit AH sometimes and craft a little bit (not enough to get wealthy, but enough to support myself.) I’m not one of those people who park themselves between AH and the Bank, jumping around, sending off rockets, dancing and filling general, trade and every other available channel with nonsense.

But I had to put my normal interests aside, since hanging around obviously was the way to go if you wanted your achievement. So I looked for broken hearts and for warlock gnomes and I shot arrows, and once I’d collected the cards and other stuff I needed (well much more than I needed actually) I restricted my harassment of the guards, declaring them my love only once an hour.

To be honest it bored me a little bit. I can now completely understand why those people who spend most of their time online hanging around keep throwing out statements like “I’m bored” (are they expecting someone else to come to their rescue and amuse them?). If this was how I normally played WoW I wouldn’t just get bored, I’d go nuts. But it’s their choice.

Camping Horde district
The “hanging around” wasn’t restricted to Ironforge. Between the cooldowns I also took trips to Dalaran, parking myself just on the verge of the Horde district (keeping a safe distance not to be stunned by the guards). At some points we were quite a big party of alliance players, standing there, like the visitors at a zoo, eagerly hoping that one of the rare spawns would turn up so that we could sprinkle them. And if they did show up, you had to be quick, because generally they were in a hurry, mounted and on their way to the flight point.

One of the hardest things to find seems to be a troll rogue. People have been hunting all over the server to find one, without any success. Finally a player grew tired of it and made one for us, using his second account. He named this guy “Achievements” and then he had him summoned to Dalaran and parked, kneeling like a statue, just where we were all hanging around. Then he announced it in the General chat, so that anyone feeling an urgent need to throw flowers over such a creature could do so. He did all of this without any other intention than to be nice to his fellow players. So cheers for Jonta, Night Elf hunter of the guild “No Mercy” at Stormrage! This action of kindness didn’t make you rich, but at least you got my gratitude and appreciation.

I did what I could do to contribute by throwing up a picnic so that anyone who needed a romance could get it easily while waiting for the rest of the horde guys to turn up. Actually doing something for other people made the hanging around a little less boring. It was kind of cute to see all those little romantic encounters that Larísa got involved in.

But the Undead Warrior refused to visit us, even when I extended my hanging around to Undercity, Wintergrasp and all sorts of Battlegrounds. My co-players in the PvP spots must have been a bit annoyed with this little gnome who obviously didn’t care much about killing the other players. I was occupied clicking on every single horde player to see if it was the right kind.

As I’m prewriting this Friday afternoon, I still haven’t got the last candy heart I need and I’m starting to get a little bit worried since my playing this weekend will be rather limited. The time restrictions for this achievement are far from generous, considering the drop rate of some of the wanted items and the idea that you should be able to log on every single hour for the cool down.

Oh well. If I don’t get the achievement it isn’t like the end of the world after all. I’ll probably be stay in Azeroth another year. Just hanging around a bit.