Monday, February 16, 2009

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.

15 comments:

Klepsacovic said...

/who undead warrior, sort by location... none in Dalaran. Sadface.
Standing around, looking, looking, OMG GNOME WARLOCK, GET IT! Oh wait, just a mage. Oops.

Honestly I thought the hanging out for unbreaks was kinda cool. It created a dependency between players which for once was not exploited (people seemed to ignore the jerks trying to charge for unbreaks) or even complained about much (since people tended to congregate in one area and unbreak each other).

The afk next to civilians for an hour though... not cool. "Have this token of my love. I'll see you in an hour." It's no wonder they were so prone to reject people and then look for love 10 seconds after giving away their hearts.

Anonymous said...

I have a better idea now as to why my poor undead warrior was pelted with rose petals ALL WEEKEND.

I am also amused by how the valentine's event encourages you to go up to totally strange NPCs and demand chocolates.

But mostly I think that the violet drake achievement is lame. No offence, but what a great scheme to get people to keep their subs up for a year. And imagine what the pressure will be like to keep doing whatever crazy achievements Blizzard come up with for the rest of the holiday events.

No thanks, I prefer having the freedom to say 'Haha, no that achievement is lame/not fun, I'll skip it'

Rich said...

klep, you can't do a who for the opposite faction, though.

I kept seeing people doing "/2 LF GNome Warrior, PST" and me saying "you know we're HORDE, right?" but i guess they were just looking for someone to say "there's one in the bank, gogo" or whatever

Gevlon said...

Is this achievement has something to do with the lot of "pls mend me" spam in all cities? They became worse than "pls boost me in RFK" and "10G plx" guys.

It's worse than the zombie event. At least I could kill the zombies.

Dwism said...

This post made me think of my favorite wow-webcomic. The lastest edition of http://www.darklegacycomics.com/177.html
has the same issues with the rp side of this event.
Personally im usually very happy bout these events, but this one has me gotten in a "bah humbug" sort of mood. there should be a title for not doing this event, or doing something against it. Maybe its just the death knight in me, that has a problem with all theese cuddly gnomes and night elfs hugging and loving. But when our main tank/gm gets upset that he is heartbroken and cant get the right candy, well, I get worried ^^

Anonymous said...

How did you get on in the end? I ended up with every achievement except for one of the candies (after getting through 3 bags of them).

As the deadline approached, I was faced with the choice of staying up to 4am and talking to a guard once an hour, or bed. I chose...bed.

Angobar
EU Lightbringer server

Anonymous said...

Seems this was the hardest achievments for some of my guild as well quite a few of them still needed bags of candy.

Rich said...

@dw-redux:

CUE INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE, THE SCENE WHERE THE GET THE GRAIL AND THE OLD KNIGHT SAYS:

you have chosen...... wisely!

Rich said...

err.... angobar****.... meh, i need to choose bed myself here in a sec : /

Anonymous said...

You've pinpointed (again!) exactly my feelings about this particular seasonal event.

I was one of the pathetic people who circled the computer for the entire duration of the festival and in the end still didn't manage to complete the meta-achievement because of bad luck.

All in all, it didn't leave me with anything else then feeling unfulfilled. Most probably not what blizzard intended and most definitely not what Valentine's Day is about.

On a happier note, here's something for you Larisa: (Sorry that this is not post related, but I was a bit unsure where to put it.)

You’ve been challenged to make a post on your blog! Read about it here:
http://voodooventures.wordpress.com/2009/02/16/a-blog-challenge/

Hope you like it and want to participate :)

Hugs,
Maiara

Anonymous said...

@Klepsacovic: yeah you hadn't got to spend long time heartbroken. Just show up outside the bank in IF or SW and it was mended instantly. Most of the times I didn't even have time to ask for help before someone had found out. Hm... would be pretty convenient in real life, wouldn't it.

@Spinksvill: I was like that too so I'm not Hollowed. Then I was sucked into it, couldn't resist the Merrymaker title. And here I am making a Love fool out of myself...

@Ixobelle: well people tried to help out a bit by the general channel, informing others if there was a hordie of the right sort around. But you really had to be quick to catch them. A good thing to be a teleporting mage in those situations.

@Gevlon: I bet you didn't waste any silver on cologn and perfume... not even to try to make business on the event. Must have been hard by the way on Magtheridon, not many alliance players around for the hordies to throw stuff at.

@Dw-redux: yeah, if I feel a bit silly, being a pin pigtailed cute little gnome girl I can bet it felt even more stupid if you're a maintanking warrior. And for a roleplayer... it must be a pain.

@Angobar: a wise decision. Actually I got the title at last. I had some guildies helping me out with a few things. Like one running around getting heartbroken in a not-so-populated area of IF with a lot of NPCs, me running after, chain-mending him...
I never got the pet though. Bah. Next year.

@Esdras: yes, the candy seems to have been the worst thing for most players. The droprate of the black dress wasn't too bad after all.

@Maiara: oh, I've been tagged! I've got to check it out and hopefully I can make something out of it. I doubt I'll send it forward though, I just never do those things. So sending stuff to me isn't always a good idea, I sort of end up like a dead end. Nice to have you back in the blogging community by the way!

Darraxus said...

I found that standing in SW and looking both ways for people riding up was a good method. I got my title (which may well be the only Holliday Event I do this yer (unless I do the flame Warden one).

Carra said...

I hate the randomness aspect of this festival.

It doesn't feel like an achievement at all, it feels like blinkd luck. Someone in my guild didn't get all the candies after 3 bags of candies for example...

Jess @ Ice Cream and Permafrost said...

For the winter event, I spent some time scanning the horde player listings in battlegrounds. Didn't work so well this time - even hanging around in the barrens didn't help. Finally, Sunday night I saw one hanging around Dal, graciously letting us desperate searchers throw roses on him.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, this particular event's achievements were too focused on randomness. I didn't see a single bag of candy.

Yet, guildies would send me their word phrases.

Couldn't we have at least been able to eat the darned things?!