Feats of Strength – the real version

Let's talk about Feats of Strength again. I admit it's the third time this week that I mention them, and that's a little odd considering that I'm not that much of an achievement junkie in the first place. Not more than the average at least. But I’ve got some kind of hangup on this at the moment, so I’ll blog on and hopefully it will ease my mind. Here we go: time for this week's ponderings from the bar.

My Feats of Strength
This post takes off with the announcement from Blizzard that we’ll get yet another ”Feat of strength” if we only can be bothered to log in once during a three week period.

Reading about it I asked myself what other feats I had in my bags. Since I've never paid any attention to them, I had no idea. A quick check in armory revealed that I had acquired 18 until this day, and to be honest most of them were less than overwhelming:

• Getting myself a Collector's Edition for Wrath, well done, pat on shoulder?
• Getting a Crashin' Thrashin' Racer as a Winter veil gift like everyone else in 2008. Wohoo?
• Obtaining one emblem of any kind, really? I'd rather consider it a Feat of Strenth to manage to avoid them altogether.

The Champion of the Naaru and Hand of Adal titles admittedly took a bit of effort, and so did the Winterspring Frostsaber mount - even though that grind had been heavily nerfed by the time I got around to do it, and the process of getting it was more of a pleasure than a pain. So getting it didn’t really involve any particular need of being strong.

However, most of the Feats of Strength won’t fill me with a sense of pride. The list consists of a number of randomly picked events during my lifespan as a WoW player, which happen to have been documented this way. as a matter of fact some of the feats are so cheap that they inevitably dilute the concept of feats as being special and desirable.

Individualization
This is a bit of a pity, since there actually is some potential in this feature. Just like the rest of the achievement system, Feats of strength could be a tool for players to make their characters stand out from every one else.

Even if your lvl 80 mage looks exactly the same as the one next to you at AH, wearing identical gear but a slightly different hair style, your individual experiences and areas of interest in the game will differ. The Feats of strength list could offer an opportunity to put this at display.

In the current form, the system is automatized. When you do certain things in the game, a note is added to your armory profile, armory either you like it or not. There’s no way to undo an achievement; those lists are forever (or as long as the game lasts).

But let's play with the thought that the Feats of Strength worked in a different way. What if it was the player who chose them? You could pick the ten achievements you were most proud over, as a declaration to the world: “Look at what I’ve done! Those are the top performances I have done!” A die hard PvP:er would of course display his best PvP achievements, a raider would highlight the most prestigious boss kills and the dedicated grinders would made no secret of their Loremaster or Insane titles.

Picking the best achievements would be a bit tricky and I’m not sure how my own list would look, but I know it would be different to what it is today. My Twilight Vanquisher title from April 2009 required far more strength than logging into WoW for the five year anniversary, that's for sure.

True Feats of Strength
Since it's my Friday night post, I'm letting my mind wander best it likes as we're enjoying our after-work pint. So now I'll stroll away and talk a bit about what I would consider to be the True Feats of Strength, which is someting quite different to the stuff that Blizzard rewards.

If you think about it: aren't there ever so many game related activities that will require patience, effort and courage? Those deeds will never be documented in a log, never flashed out as a guild message - and yet they are what will stick to our memories as we one day in the future will recall our years of WoW playing.

What's the bravest thing you ever did in Azeroth? When did you find yourself at a turning point, taking a hard decision that took you in an entirely new direction in the game? Which are the deeds that required all strength you could ever come up with? When did you challenge yourself with a task that seemed way out of your reach, taking the risk of a bitter and embarrassing failure?

When I think back at my own time in Azeroth I believe one of the bravest things I ever did was to take the plunge into the unknown, switching to a server where I didn't know a single soul, to join a guild that was raiding 25 man T5, while all I knew was how to Karazhan. A true feat of strength. Or the moment when I pressed the cubes in Magtheridon for the first time in the spring 2008. Looking back it seems as a fairly simple thing to do, but to me - it was huge!

Joining Adrenaline, taking a leap in difficulty and expectations was another one. I knew that I would be on trial for weeks; There was no guarantee I would pass it and if I didn’t it would pretty terrible in my records. "Why did you leave your former guild?" "Ahem. They thought I sucked so I was asked to leave..." But somehow I overcame my fears and took the chance, aware, regardless of the risks.

The fact that I've stuck to my guild ever since, being there through ups and downs, no matter what, is also something I feel good about, even I most of all think that I'm just privileged and lucky to have found such a good home. So probably it's not a true feat of strength. But it's important to me. The guild anniversaries outlast Blizzard's anniversaries by far!

And then there are the offline, but still WoW related activities. The very idea to start to blog in English took me a bit of courage, and to keep doing it for such a long time and with such intensity is probably Feat of strength material, (even if it’s also bordering to being a candicate for the Insane in the Membrane title. 600 blog posts, all about one single video game? Am I out of my mind?).

I won’t ever be able to write into my Feat of Strength log: "This mage is a dedicated WoW blogger since February 2008." But it sure would tell more about me as a player than the fact that I once got a Green Brewfest Stein more or less by accident.

Real Life Feats of Strength
This post is going towards its end, but before you head off for another pint in the bar or a nightly conversation in front of the fireplace, I'll ponder a little over the next level of Feats of Strength.

Have you ever thought about how your Real Life Feat of Strength list would look?

Taking the risk to be a little boring and predictable, I believe that my Mother title would top my list. The fact that I've given birth to and raised two children never ceases to amaze me. My list would also include some radical changes my life direction. Moving to a new place to live, switching jobs and career. Daring to step up when the situation required it - even if I didn't think I was fit to do it.

Then there are some feats of strength that are more on the sad side, feats I would rather have been without. Experiences such as dealing with deaths in the family, situations where I’ve been forced to act more like a “grown-up” than I had asked for, taking responsibility not only for myself, but for others. You know. The crap we all will encounter sooner or later in our lives, either we're prepared for it or not.

My conclusion - what I’m really trying to say with this post - is that I think we give ourselves too little credit for what we achieve in life.

We're so quick to identify our shortcomings and - the job we didn't get, the so-and-so grades, the GF/BF that dumped us, the friend we let down, the competition we lost, the opportunities we missed because we took the wrong decision. We love to dwell on it, calling ourselves all sorts of names. Fail mother. Fail friend. Fail lover. Fail student. Fail, fail, fail. But how we think back of our success stories, how often do we even notice them? How often do we recongize that we that we make a difference?

We have so much to be proud of, even if it doesn't show in a feed or will be celebrated with a flash message on a screen. Don't ever forget that.

It’s time to finish and bring out a Friday night toast. This one is for all our real Feats of strength - in the past and in the future.

Cheers!

"Any FoS for killing them?"

Maybe I'm a bit grumpy. But I cringed inside as I read this comment at MMO-Champion's news report about elementals attacking the capital cities:

"Any FoS for killing them, tabard, etc? If not what the point?"

Is this how far the stimuli-response training has taken us? Are we nothing but trained animals, performing acts on command, but only as long as we can expect a proper reward? Have we lost the idea of what's it like to roam about in the playground just for fun?

I see this player in front of me as he passively stands there, looking at the invasion, doing nothing as the elementals rip the citizens into pieces. What does he care? He won't move a finger unless Ghostcrawler gives him a Feat of Strength. Or at least a shiny tabard. It's a minimum!

I keep reminding myself that it's just one voice in a forum. A whiner. There have always been whiners around, so what's new? There are probably thousands, even millions of players who happily will defend the cities, not to get achievements or to get access to epics from mini bosses, but because they're playing a game in an imaginary world, which they care about. I try to stay positive.

However I can't quite get the worrying thought out of my head: he might not represent the entire community, but he represents something - a mindset that has stuck. How and when did this happen to the player mentality? It surely wasn't like this as I started to play in 2007.

And what will the future hold for WoW and the MMOs that will follow? Is there any way back? Can Blizzard find an alternative in their next MMO or will they continue on this path, since the rats - sorry - players want it so badly?

Why removing the Insane title is OK but screwing up players isn’t

So it looks as if we can’t go insane in Cataclysm. Or at least we’ll have to find another way to show it to the world than by putting a title above our heads.

Blizzard representative Bashiok recently wrote the following:

“Insane in the Membrane is a feat of strength, not an achievement. Feats are things that you can't be guaranteed to complete, which is why they're feats and not achievements. Most of them are actually now impossible to complete, and this feat will join a long list of "you had to be there" moments in WoW time.

The feat isn't being removed of course, those who have it will retain it, however; some of the requirements are, so it will no longer be able to be completed by anyone who has not already done so.

It's possible that in some very specific situations where someone has completed the reputations which are being removed, but not others that will still be in the game, that it can still be completed. But it's something we're waiting for clarity on, and will
let you know as soon as we do.”

And this was confirmed in one of the panels at Blizzcon, where they explained why you won’t be able to get the title in Cataclysm:

”The biggest problem are the changes to the bloodsail buccaneers, that kinda put a bullet in that feat of strength for now. It's fun to do painful things in WoW. If there's a huge outcry for it we'll try to put something equally brute in the game.”

Feats of strength
If you ask me, I’m totally fine with them moving this feat out of my reach. There are already a lot of others that I’ll never be able to get and you know what: I can live with it. I don’t cry myself to sleep for not being a Scarab Lord either. Why would I?

The thing is: feats of strength aren’t that important. They don’t have any impact whatsoever on your character’s stats or abilities to perform. And the sad truth is that I think we’re heavily overestimating the e-peen impact it has. People don’t care that much about those things anymore. We’re all so preoccupied polishing our own achievements and epics that we don’t bother about what anyone else has.

If you’re a completionist at heart, the feats of strength might mean something, but for most of us it’s just a little bit of flavour added to your character. Nothing more.

I think it’s only natural – or actually even good – that they update the feats of strength every now and then, removing the possibility to get them, for instance when they have been trivialized due to a higher level cap. Sure, it sucked a little that I never got the bear mount in Zul Aman, but on the other hand, I’m glad for those who got it. It was absolutely the right thing to do to remove it from the game. Those who got it had to really perform to get it and they deserve to stand out and show off a bit. If I ran through this now, it would feel totally wrong if it gave me that mount.

The game moves on. Some mount drops are removed – but there will be new ones, I assure you. There will always be new feats of strength to strive for, new worthy goals to aim for. If you’re stupid enough to grind for the Insane in the membrane achievement, I’m positive you can keep grinding for something equally insane in Cataclysm. Have no fear.

How Blizzard screwed up
However. This isn’t all there is to this story, which was brought to me by Khaas at the blog Srsbusiness, who sent me an e-mail and asked for my take on this. There are other circumstances, which he talks about in his own blogpost, and here comes the part where I think Blizzard screwed up the players.

You see, it wasn’t until very recently that they said that this was going to happen to the Insane title. As a matter of fact, they’ve assured the players exactly the opposite! One year ago, blue poster Ancilorn wrote the following in the EU forums:

"Just for clarity, Insane in the Membrane will not be removed in Cataclysm. We can only confirm this one for you, but since it's undoubtedly one of the most brain-melting achievements, we thought it nice to let you know that you don't have to rush to have this done before the expansion. ;) "

Apparently they hadn’t thought this through properly when he came up with this "clarification", but the consequences are unfortunate. This title is special in the manner that it is the most extremely grindy achievement you could think of. There’s absolutely nothing that would stand a comparison to it.

If they would remove some other achievement with a month of notice, such as a meta-achievement mount from one of the raid instances, you could argue that it would give plenty of time to complete the achievements you were missing out.

For the Insane title however, a little more than a month is a fairly short time. If you want that title and you’ve only begun your grinding, you’ll be pretty busy the next few weeks to finish it in time. Players who have put their trust into Ancilorn's statement and planned accordingly have every right in the world to feel deceived.

Blizzard has screwed up on this one. They didn’t mean to, but it happened.

And I think this is a good example to explain why they normally are so annoyingly vague as they reply to player questions, why they don’t want to give exact answers about their plans and upcoming changes in the game. They don’t want to accidentally make promises that they later will have to break because things took another turn than they had anticipated.

Ancilorn slipped and now there will be qq.

And this is my third post this week. My slowing down is going badly. I blame Khaas.

Blizzard’s message to guilds: Get Bigger!

A few months ago there was a huge hullabaloo about the changes to the loot tables of 10 man raiding vs 25 man raiding.

In Cataclysm the drops are going to be the same, something that infuriated many 25 man raiders, who argued that it takes more effort to organize it, and that this should be rewarded.

At that point Blizzard made it very clear that they didn’t want better gear to be an incentive for players to go for bigger raid formats. They wanted us to go for whatever raid size we enjoy rather than what would pay off better. That’s why they made it even, with only a slightly higher drop rate in 25 man raids, in order not to kill off the bigger raids completely.

Now Blizzard is going in an entirely different direction, as they’re presenting the how the guild levelling will work and what guild achievements and perks we’ll see in Cataclysm.

If you’re a small, tight 10 man raiding guild, you can forget about a lot of the guild achievements, and your levelling speed is likely to be way slower. Blizzard will reward guilds that grow Big. Not just a little big, but Crazy Big. The bigger guild you have, the quicker will you reach the level cap and get access to all the goodies.

And I must say that I’m a little bit taken by surprise. What happened to the “we want you to not be punished for just wanting to play in a smaller group of friends” philosophy? Where did this sudden love for mega-big guilds come from?

Changed philosophy
When the guild levelling system first was introduced, they said that only the XP provided by the top contributors every day would be counted. This would mean that a small guild with very active players would stand a fair chance to level almost as quickly as a guild with several hundreds accounts. Well, probably not entirely since a big guild could organize multiple raids, getting more boss kills and more XP that way. But at least it would smoothen out the advancement pace a little. So not anymore.

In a recent blue post, Mumper stated:

“There is no concept of "Top 20 contributors" anymore. We changed that functionality many months ago.”

Totalbiscuit ranted a bit about this in his last show, and I’m just as surprised as he is. Just when did they change this? And why haven’t they said anything about it until now?

The impression that they’re looking for big numbers is reinforced when you look at the recently announced guild achievements. Many, many of them are about quantity rather than quality. And I’m talking about insane quantities.

Take for instance the achievement “That’s a lot of bite”, which requires you to catch 10 000 fish. Quite a different task to a 15 man guild than it is to a 500 man guild, right?

Some of those achievements don’t seem to give much of reward, except for adding to the guild XP (which in itself actually is a pretty big award. Some of the perks you get at max level are really good.)

But there are achievements that give stuff that probably is pretty handy. We don’t know for sure yet what the recipe “Big Cauldron of Battle” does, but I could imagine it’s some flask equivalence to fish fiests that will bring down the consumable costs for your guild. To get it you need to make 25 000 flasks. What small or average sized guild can do that easily?

Alea Iacta Est
Blizzard has always had a good eye at the legendary guild Alea Iacta Est – so good that they even made an anniversary interview with them. I wonder if it’s guilds like them they’ve had in mind designing this?

Now don’t read me wrong; I like them too and I’m a frequent listener to AIE's podcast The Instance. Randy and Scott are nice to listen to and provides a lot of positive energy to not only their own guild but the entire community. But even if I’m fascinated by their epic size, spotting thousands of accounts, I can’t say that I long to belong to such a big guild myself. I like to be in a guild where I recognize every toon and there aren’t more of us than that I can remember which alt belongs to who.

Adrenaline is definitely not the most social guild you’ve ever seen – we’re fairly focused on our raiding endeavours and outside of it, we’re not an extremely talkative bunch of people. But as I log in I feel that I’m the member of a team and not just an unknown name in a 3 000 headed crowd. Our guild chat is small and intimate. We don’t run our own podcast. But we have other qualities.

Looking at the latest news about the guild achievements and the guild levelling, I’m however asking myself if Blizzard really sees the qualities of the small guilds, or if they’d rather want to see more AIE type of guilds on every server.

Randy and Scott brought up this issue themselves in their last show, admitting that many of the achievements will be a piece of cake to their mega-guild, something they get without even paying attention to it. Within weeks of the launch of Cataclysm they’ll have their guild chat spammed with it thanks to their very size.

Take the Critter Kill Squad, where you’re supposed to kill 50 0000 critters. Any small guild that hasn’t lost their mind will stay away from that achievement. Even the cutest Armadillo pup can’t motivate you to go through the hassle. But for AIE? It’s nothing.

Actually the hosts of The Instance didn’t sound too enthusiastic about their incoming achievements, and I don’t blame them. The enjoyment you get from making an achievement usually corresponds very well to the effort you have to make into getting it. It must feel like a rather hollow, non-deserved victory to get all those treats.

What’s the idea?
For my own part I keep asking: Why? What is Blizzard trying to achieve?

Because surely they have an idea in mind? They don’t give away carrots randomly; they normally have a purpose, trying to make players to play the game in a certain way.

They handed out badges to make us play more five-mans than ever before, and extra badges to make us do it with random strangers. They’ve made us revisit old raid content through the weekly raid quests in a futile effort to revive raid instances we’d left behind.

If they now mainly reward quantity-related guild achievements, they apparently want to give incentives for guilds to grow bigger. If they wanted small, tight communities they could have made up achievements that rewarded the smaller scale. I’m not sure how you’d make up such an achievement, maybe it would be something like: “X percent of the guild members must have killed raid boss NN”.

But as it is now it’s all about the Big Numbers.

The question is: will it work? Will guilds be so desperate to get access to those perks and achievements that they’ll try to merge into server-wide superguilds that gain achievements as by default?

For the good of the game I hope not. In a time when we tend to spend more and more of our online time in quiet solitude, playing with stranger you’ve met in LFD and never likely will meet again, I think the game needs the smaller guilds, where you’re not just a number in the big cooperation, but rather a member of a tight team.

I hope that the playerbase will ignore the message from Blizzard and stick up for the smaller format. Regardless of the incentives to go Big.

When progression raiding becomes a grind

She looked surprisingly elegant, not the destruction and death you could expect from a pile of bones coming alive. Her wings moved ever so smoothly as I took off from Krasus Landing, as if they were put together by baby soft, weightless feathers.

I couldn't stop smiling. Finally, after all those wipes, The Bloodbathed Frostbrood Vanquisher was mine. I experienced a sensation of lightness, as if I had been released from something. A burden. Most definitely a burden, even if it felt a bit odd to use that word. After all, weren't we talking about a game I'm supposed to play for fun and relaxation? But I think I simply was relieved that I got it done before we were hit by the enrage timer of any raiding in this expansion.

Getting the meta achievement
Sunday night I completed the 10 man version of the Glory of the Icecrown Raider meta achievement - my last, serious goal for Wrath of the Lich King. This doesn't mean that I've stopped raiding entirely. We've got a few more drakes to get before we're finished. But we're closing in, oh yes, we're so closing in.

It has been a strange couple of months, where our guild has been put at test. I knew we had a strong sense of belonging, but the guild loyalty and comradeship has gone beyond my expectations.

In theory it doesn't sound too bad, does it? You grab 10 players, you head off to ICC and you progress through the hardmodes and achievements, wiping a little, learning the fights one after one until the box flashes up on your screen. Glory of the Icecrown raider, yay! Shouldn't take more than a couple of weeks at our gear level and with the ICC buff, should it? Tick, tick, tick, BAM, done!

In reality it's been way more complicated. It isn't exactly as if our guild is perfectly well balanced for those purposes. We're still a 25 man raiding guild, but until Cataclysm, we can go on a break if we want to, without risking to lose our spots as raiders. Running 10 man raids, which is what we can do with our current squad, is optional. Some players have taken the opportunity to a hiatus. Others have kept going, at least to grab the ICC mount, which was one of our set goals. The result has been a huge surplus of ranged dps, compared to the amount of tanks and healers. We've rotated a lot, which has meant that it has taken longer for the dps:ers to complete the meta, especially for the ones who also have missed a few raids due to the summer vacation season.

A painful grind
Our tanks got their mounts more than a month ago and most of our healers shortly after. They've had absolutely nothing to get for their own benefit in ICC. No achievements, no shiny upgrades, no progress, nothing.

All they've had to look forward to as they have signed up for raids has been yet another grind night with content they've done before. And yet they've kept signing. Week after week, raid after raid have they turned up, to make sure that every active raider will get a shot at the mount. In the meanwhile, our officers have made spreadsheets, keeping track on everyone's status, trying to make the achievement hunt for the guild as efficient as possible.

My mount was the 16th and it hopefully won't be too long before we've got the last few, putting an end to all this.

I can imagine how painful this must have been for those who got their Sindragosa achievement or Putricide heroic weeks and months ago. They did their share of wiping and learning back in time. They downed them and they know exactly how it should be done. The problem is that everyone isn't on the same page. In every raid there has been a couple of players, still in the beginning of their own, personal learning curve. And there are no shortcuts in the most difficult fights of those achievements. Every single player has to learn the dance steps by himself, sorting out exactly where to put the feet.

Those encounters are technically demanding, putting pressure on every individual to not make any mistakes. You can't rely on a couple of veterans carrying everyone else, since it's "on farm". Everyone has to execute it well, and while it can be useful to watch videos before an encounter, most of us need to learn, practice and wipe a few times before it eventually clicks.

Week after week, our veterans have patiently been wiping until the newcomers have learned their lesson. Hardly ever have I heard anyone of them getting annoyed. They've shared what they have been able to, and have patiently waited.

Progression - and grind
It's a strange situation. Normally it's the same for everyone. Sometimes you do farm runs, sometime progression and we learn it together. But so not in this case. While a few in each raid group have enjoyed fun, interesting and engaging progression raids, the same encounters have been horrible, tedious grinds for others. But as opposed to other grinds, those raids have included a lot of wiping.

However our tanks and healers haven't fled in terror. They've stayed. Sure, they're a bit tired, but still they keep showing up, willing to help out everyone else until the job is done. Not just their own mounts, but mounts for everyone.

I know that this attitude isn't something you find in every guild. The world is full raid groups that fall apart as soon as a few players have completed their goals. All of a sudden player will disappear without any previous notice and they suddenly start prioritizing their real life as soon as they've reached their personal goal. That's what you could expect.

The patient fight to get everyone a mount is an amazing effort and I'm truly proud to belong to a guild with such a team spirit.

I smiled as I cruised above Icecrown on my new dragon. I'm well aware of that she's not super exclusive compared to for instance the Naxx meta mount, which was brought out of the game in a patch. I've even heard first hand reports that it's common in the beta, so apparently quite a few players have managed to get her.

Regardless of this: in my eyes she remains a beauty with a very distinct look of her own and I love her. She will forever remind me of our guild spirit at its best. We are guildies and we help each other out. In grind as well as in progress.

Old legendaries will count!

Last week I was a bit worried at a blue post, which implied that only legendaries you had acquired after the launch of Cataclysm would count towards the guild achievement “We are legendary”.

Now it turns out that there was no need to worry.

Mumper, Lead Content Designer at Blizzard, posted:

“We are making a exception for this guild achievement. Any legendary items you have already earned will count.”

That should settle it. There are still a few things that are unclear. What happens if someone who has a legendary joins your guild? Does that count? Or if you got a legendary back in time, but that player has quit the guild? Will it or won’t it count?

The logical solution to me would be that you won’t get the achievement just because someone who carries a legendary joins your guild. You should have to be a member of the guild at the point you get the legendary. That’s the entire point of the achievement – to reward guild efforts. If someone leaves the guild with the weapon I think the achievement still should stay in the guild.

But you never know. I suppose it depends on what’s possible to track from a technical point of view.

Anyway, I was glad to learn about this exception. Guilds that have worked hard and stayed together for many years will have an advantage and already be far on their way towards the legendary achievement at the start of Cataclysm. That’s only fair.

I facepalmed before getting the mount of my dreams

Sunday night offered a mixed bag of WoW moments.

It started with a huge /facepalm, one of the worse “I’m an idiot”-realisations that I can remember from my years of playing. However it ended with a beautiful ride where the hero rides off into the sunset. All is well that ends well, isn’t that the saying?

Facepalm moment
But let’s start on the bad side.

Have you ever felt stupid in WoW? I mean REALLY stupid, angry with yourself for being incredibly thoughtless and careless and what-not? This was one of those occasions.

It was initiated by a spontaneous application from a mage, posted on our forums, as all apps are. I had a look at his Armory profile and was a little bit concerned with one of his choices of glyphs. It wasn’t the standard one which EJ recommended, at lest last time I checked them out. But I wanted to be sure, so I went to my own profile to have a look at my glyphs. And that’s when I got the shock.

I was specked arcane, but my main glyphs were intended for a frost spec! No kidding. Where I expected to find Arcane Blast and Arcane Missils, I stared in disbelief at improvements of Frostbolt and my non-existent Water Element!

I don’t want to think about for how long this has been the case. It’s for long, that’s for sure. I remember experimenting a bit with a second arcane spec, which replaced a frost offspec that I put up with the intention to see if I was capable of aoe-farming (which never came any further than to an idea). I can clearly see why and when the mix-up happened.

Not having your main nukes glyphed is a massive downer, and I feel really horrible about it. Our guild is doing hardmodes, for crying out loud! We’re bringing pots and flasks and buff food, squeezing out every little inch of dps we can. And I make a major error like this? It’s on par – or worse – than not using the maximum rank of a spell.

However you can’t change the past by dwelling on it, sulking and hitting yourself in the head. What’s done is done and what counts is that I’ve fixed it and that I’ve learned my lesson. From now on I’ll be paranoid about checking my glyphs.

Ulduar hardmodes
Let’s move on to the pleasant part of Sunday night, the sunset.

As always on Sunday nights we were gathering a 10-man raid to go and grab some more hardmodes and achievements in ICC, where our goal is to get mounts to everyone. We have quite a few already but since especially the ranged dps has to rotate a lot, some of us still are missing out a couple of achievements.

This Sunday night first seemed to be a disappointing no-go, since one of our tanks had technical issues and couldn’t log into the game. We were left with 9 raiders, no main-spec tank and one off-spec tank. Not be best setting for ICC hardmodes, not even with the 30 percent buff.

We didn’t let this stop us though. One of our dps:ers switched to an alt paladin, geared for tanking, and off we went to Ulduar, to do some hardmodes for the Rusted Proto-Drake.

First off was Firefighter. How much hadn’t I heard about that fight? Supposedly about the hardest one you could find in Wrath. And I’m sure it was back in time before everyone was overgeared. Now we got him down on second try, and it really isn’t much to brag about. But nevertheless it was really fun to run around in a sea of fire, looking out for dangers coming from all directions. “Don’t stand in fire” has definitely got a new meaning after seeing this fight.

When we were about to face General Vezax, our ordinary tank had managed to come online, so we did him quick enough with a full group before we moved on to Yogg-Saron.

Last time I faced him was back in January in a 25-man group, when we went back to finish the legendary mace. And before that it had been ages since I set my foot in Ulduar. So it felt slightly awkward to try to remember this fight, now with added difficulty, such as not having any access to sanity wells. It turned out to be as fun and chaotic as I remembered – or even better – in this spiced-up version. We didn’t have to struggle too badly though, and after a few tries I could see him go down.

Oh, the joy! Sure, we were way overgeared and I’m perfectly aware of that it doesn’t give me any bragging rights, at least not compared to what it would have one year ago. But nevertheless – it always gives me a nice feeling to tick of another check box, to reach completion of a goal. My Glory of the Ulduar Raider achievement was finished and a brand new proto-drake was awaiting me in the mail box.

I added it to my collection, headed for the flight point in Dalaran and took of into the night. The model was the same as my seasonal-achievements-mount, but the colour was more down-to-earth, rust instead of purple.

Isn’t it a bit funny by the way? A brand new dragon that comes full of rust. Reminds me a bit of the denim trousers that are sold worn out, complete with holes and everything.

I’m totally happy about it though, and it will surely become my mount by default. At least until I get the ICC one.

My next goal
What remains now for me now is to get the hardmodes in ICC I’m missing for the mount and to kill Algalon. Yeah, and Halion. Due to my vacation I haven’t made it into any of those raids yet. After that I think I’ll consider myself pretty much done with Wrath, ready to face whatever lies ahead of us in Cataclysm.

I know one thing for sure though. In Cataclysm I’ll see to that I always have the right glyphs.

Our legendaries won’t count

We had a little discussion on vent the other night, where we were asking ourselves if the deeds we’ve done in Adrenaline the last two years will be recorded as already completed guild achievements.

I reckoned – or at least hoped –that they would. After all, when the achievement system was introduced for individuals, we got a ton of achievements recorded. Admittedly the game didn’t remember everything we had done. I remember that it felt particularly weird to have to revisit Mechanar, which I farmed so excessively in TBC, just to get it documented that I actually had completed it. But a lot of it was there from the start.

So wouldn’t it be natural if long-time guilds would get credit for our glorious past? I thought it would, but apparently Blizzard thinks differently.

I’m quoting a blue post, referred by MMO-champion:

“Dark Phoenix Mount Reward
[…] First and foremost, they must be unlocked via a guild achievement. Let's just say, that for example, you need to complete the new guild achievement "We are Legendary" in order to unlock the Dark Phoenix. That achievement requires the guild to gain access to all 6 legendary weapons currently available in the game. (note that all guild achievements start on Cataclysm launch, so anything you have now will not matter, it must be done with your guild after launch)”

As with anything related to Cataclysm I suppose that this isn’t set in stone. Maybe it will change before launch. But he does sound worryingly certain about this thing. And it makes me rather disappointed.

So far my guild has managed to get two legendaries – the mace and the axe in Wrath. Oh, and yeah, one alt got an Illidan legendary as we ran a retro raid in BT, although I’m not sure if it was guilded or not, so it might be out of our hands. That warglaive didn’t take a ton of effort, but on the other hand, the mace and axe did. And all this work was for nothing?

I can’t help scratching my head seeing this. Are you serious? Really? I know that Blizzard has good reasons to try to make us go back and relive old content and take away some of the pressure from them to produce new. But isn’t this to push it a little bit too far?

Of course the situation could be that they haven’t got any choice. There might be technical limits that prevent them from tracking historical deeds of a guild. But it seems strange to me. If guild ranking sites can track guild progression automatically, why shouldn’t Blizzard be able to do the same?

We should be half way to “Legendary” as Cataclysm is launched, or at least a third, if there was any justice. As it stands now it appears rather unlikely that we’ll ever get it.

Account-wide Achievements? No Thanks!

There’s an idea that has been floating around in the community for quite a while now and that pops up to the surface every now and then, most recently in the chat with the developers.

Players are asking for account-wide achievements.

If you did something astonishing – like Herald of the Titans – or something very trivial as Emblematic – they want this achievement to show up on not only your main character, but on whatever alt you have in your stable.

A terrible idea
So far I haven’t said anything about it. There are so many suggestions and requests coming in from everywhere, and you don’t need to react to everything. I’ve just watched it and shrugged. As time has passed however, I’ve become more and more annoyed and astonished that no one seems to have any objections about it.

But now I’ve finally reached the point where my inner pressure is too big for me to remain silent about it. It’s time to speak up. Prepare yourself for an incoming rant of unusual proportions even for being Larísa!

To put it short: I think this idea is just terrible and doesn’t make any sense whatsoever in a game that is supposed to still have some sort of RP flavour.

At it’s core I think that achievements should be see as some sort of public record or even diary, where you can read about what Larísa the mage, Arisal the rogue or Arasil the druid has been up to, what experiences she’s had during her lifetime.

It is a little bit related to the stories you can put into the flag addons that roleplayers use, where they write down a little bit of information about their characters. Of course it’s not the same – the achievement log is auto-generated, you can’t take away anything or add as much as a comment. But it’s similar in the way that it adds depth and gives a better understanding for a character.

Get over it
I honestly can’t find any good reason whatsoever why I’d like to walk around with a baby alt, fragile, inexperienced and terribly geared, pretending that she’s an Astralwalker.

“But what if you want to change your main? I worked for months for my Insane in the Membrane title and now no-one will know because I want to re-roll a worgen in Cataclysm!”

My answer to this is short and sweet: Get over it! If you’ve got a main which you have a ton of achievements on, but don’t enjoy playing anymore – you should give her a long and well deserved retirement.

We’re not into this game to build monuments over what leet players we are. At least I’m not. We’re building sandcastles. And then we break them. And then we build new ones, in different shapes and sizes.

But if you just can’t let go of your character with all the achievements on it, by all means: take some nice screenshots, put together a movie, a photo gallery, a website as a homage to your soon-to-be ex main. Do whatever you want to, but leave it there.

Your new baby hasn’t got all that fancy achievements on her? And so? She’ll get new ones! This is how it works when you switch to an alt. The phoenix is born anew from the ashes. But it’s a baby phoenix to begin with. You can't expect it to be aged and decorated with medals and achievements right from the start. That wouldn't make sense.

Achievements for PUG uses?

I think those who ask for account-wide achievements are quite deeply into playing the e-peen game. They’re afraid to lose their bragging rights. When they’re playing their alt, they’re frustrated that they can’t show off that they’re in fact Kingslayers under a temporary disguise – not just some random scrub newbie player. They want to distinguish themselves, for whatever reason. Sometimes they claim that it's for practical reasons – to have easier access into pug raids.

And do you know what? I don’t buy this for a second. Just because you know a fight inside out from the perspective of one class, it doesn’t mean that you know it from a different role.

For my own part I’ve almost only raided on my main mage, but the very few Naxx visits I did on my rogue, clearly showed me how different this was in what you were supposed to do, how you should position yourself, various things to think about. And then I only shifted from ranged to melee dps. I was completely utterly useless! A newbie, almost as inexperienced as someone levelling their first character!

But as it now is, my lack of experience with this character is at least viewable for anyone who screens her. The achievement log doesn’t lie. Yet.

I don’t say that the achievement you have on your main is completely irrelevant. Of course you could and should mention it when you’re trying to get into a pug raid. Your overall-knowledge about the encounter can be an asset to the raid; if the raid leader is inexperienced he might want to take advice from you.

However – there’s nothing that prevents you to do this in the current system. You can mention your main character to the pug leader, he or she can look that up in Armory and you’ll be fine. If they want to check if you’re telling the truth or if you’re a liar, a few simple questions should be enough to settle it. You don’t need hoax achievements to back your story. I think that in the end it's all about vanity, the urge to be able to show off - at any time, on any character.

Developing your account
Now the question is: will the developers listen to the people who feel entitled to free achievements on their alts or do they share my objections? I’m not entirely sure. We have definitely seen a strong movement in the design philosophy from the idea that a player is working on improvement on one character towards rather developing an account.

An example of this is the introduction of the Bind-on-account items. As opposed to account-wide achievements I don’t mind this feature. I’m fine with the fact that you can buy enchants for your alts if you’ve once become exalted with Sons of Hodir on your main. Or that you can buy nice shoulders or weapons for your emblems and give them away to whichever character you want to, to speed up your alt levelling a little.

It’s still possible to explain within the game story: your grown-up, wealthy main character is like a filthy rich uncle, who can send gifts to the less fortunate relatives. Whatever. There’s one big difference in the approach: Just because you get those items, it doesn’t mean that your character suddenly is exalted with a faction you’ve never done a single service for or even seen at all.

Blizzard’s official comments
Blizzard has responded to questions about account-wide achievements a couple of time recently.

Nethaera commented in a thread in the official forums:

“It's a possibility for the future. I can't give you much more than that at this point in time, but we do agree that getting a great Achievement on one character and then having to earn it again on another character may not be the most fun for some people. If and when we do make this possible, we'll let you know.

Many things that go with this idea are still undetermined and there are a lot of additional questions that need to be answered such as yours. We'll need to figure out if it's all Achievements, Feats of Strength, only Meta-Achievements, and much much more. We don't have answers on this as of yet either and again, we're still talking about something that is a possibility and not assured at this time. We have a lot in the works right now that we hope you'll enjoy.”

The answer in the Twitter chat showed that account-wide achievements isn’t on the top of the to-do-list for the developers. They may not even like the idea at all. I’m not sure. This is what they said:

“Q. Will there be account-wide Achievements? If so, can we expect to see things
like vanity gifts for having multiple characters?

A. It’s an idea we definitely want to do, but it’s pretty challenging technically, so it’s not on the immediate horizon. We can’t promise anything obviously, but I wouldn’t feel the need to get difficult Achievements on more than one character on the same
account.”

My reaction to this was confusion. What exactly is it that they would want to do? Hand out gifts for having multiple characters? Or having account-wide achievements, as long as they’re not referring to difficult things? Emblematic is OK, Herald of Titans is not?

Whatever it is – obviously it’s technically complicated and I hope it remains this way for a long time to go.

In the end I think the danger of account-wide achievements doesn’t lie in the fraud that it actually is; the problem is that they would detach us from our characters. In combination with the increased use of our real life names as opposed to character names (brought to us by Real ID), it will bring us even further away from the RPG origins than we already are.

We’re not longer playing our characters; we’re John Smith, who has done this, this and this feature in WoW.

It’s not a path I’d like to walk.

VoA Achievement Request: A Triumph of Stupidity

A guildie of mine couldn’t get a pug spot in VoA. Why? He didn’t have the achievement for the latest boss. The fact that he had cleared three wings in ICC or that he had ridiculous good gear, spotting four pieces of T10 and belonged to one of the most successful and well established raiding guilds on the server didn’t matter. “Link achievement or no invite.”

I know I probably shouldn’t write another rant about this, it’s like beating a dead horse, as I think you English people put it. Everyone knows about the Link-achievement and Gearscore stupidity that has invaded our game, sucking the fun out of it. But I just can’t refrain from having another go at it because it makes me so mad and I need to get it out of my system.

The VoA embarrassment
Asking for achievements as a qualifier for an invitation to VoA is nothing but insane. The instance is so ridiculously easy that it’s embarrassing. Embarrassing for Blizzard, who put it up in the first place, without any proper design, just reusing some old models, not putting any effort whatsoever into the environment. And it’s embarrassing for the players, since it’s the essence of a loot oriented playstyle, where challenges and efforts mean nothing.

VoA is far easier than many, if not all of the five-man heroic instances. Totalbiscuit did a lust murder on the topic in his last Blue Plz Show, and I can’t but agree on everything he said. That place IS an abomination. It’s disgusting, it’s lazy design, and it’s actually an insult towards any raider who has spent a number of nights wiping on pretty challenging bosses in ICC to just hand out those tier pieces in a weekly lottery.

So thinking closely about I maybe should congratulate my guildie for not being invited to that horrid place. He hasn’t missed anything, except for the opportunity to become incredibly bored with a boss that, to quote Totalbiscuit, is just standing there doing NOTHING, just waiting to be looted.

Nevertheless – I can’t blame him for wanting to see the frost dude at least once with his own eyes. Content is content, right? So when I ended up in a 10-man pug for VoA this weekend (greedily collecting the last few frost emblems I needed for a crafted upgrade – I promise, I won’t make it a habit to go there) and there was a spot open, I quickly managed to get him invited. He got his achievement and I guess it will do as an entrance ticket for the 25 mans in the future. If he ever wants to do it again that will say. I wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t.

But to all those little boys with small egos and probably even smaller… well you know… to those disgusting little creeps, I just want to say that you should be GRATEFUL if a player of the calibre of my guildie wants to join your run. I despise you when you request achievements and a skyrocketing gear score for such a pathetic mission as to clear a place that doesn’t deserve to be called a raid instance, since it’s nothing but a loot machine. If anything you should be begging for him to come and help you out, because he’s far better than you deserve.

Awwww. Feel the rage!

A few thinking people
Thanks God there still are a few thinking people out there, who gives me some kind of hope for the future of mankind. There are players who make their own judgements, based on knowledge about the game and all the classes, players who look upon Gearscore requests as an insult. A few days ago I saw someone advertising an ICC pug, saying: “If you link your Gearscore I’ll put you on ignore”. More of that, please!

Tickled pink: Will you participate in the Winter Veil?

He's back! Greatfather Winter has cloned himself and established a Winter Veil camp in Ironforge and Orgrimmar respectively. Goblin vendors are selling rather useless, but probably tasty seasonal brews and we're all asked to go looking for that reindeer, who seems to get lost almost as easily as Corkie. It's the same procedure as last year. Are you tickled at the thought of participating in the Winter Veil event 2009?

Larísa:

I actually never paid much of attention to any world event until Winter Veil hit last year. I didn't bother, since the little rational goblin voice in my head judged them to be rather unnecessary, not offering any upgrades, taking tons of time, giving nothing but bags filled with junk.

When Blizzard introduced the title Merrymaker as an award for completing the Winter Veil quests and a bunch of added achievements, I changed my mindset was changed. In an instant I got turned into one of those sad social casual players; I just KNEW that I had to become Merrymaker Larísa, whatever it would take, no matter of if it was useful or not.

Since the Christmas period generally is rather slow in the game, most guilds putting raiding at a halt due to lack of players online, it turned out not to be as bad as I had imagined; on the contrary I found it to be a pretty fun, lighthearted and entertaining way to spend my hours online. I would definitely rather bribe Greatfather Winter with cookies and milk and look up monks all over the world to toss snowflakes over them than going on a grind. Most of the things I was supposed to do put a smile on my face.

Above all - it was the first time I did everything, so Winter Veil offered the sweet added taste of novelty, which comes with all new content - be it a new kind of quest or a new raid instance. The freshness is the same.

Quick jump forward to this year. Do I get equally excited and happy about Winter Veil, now that I've already done it once before?

Well, I thought I should make an effort to follow the tradition, so I bravely set out on the mission to rescue Metzen and kill that Abominable Greench over again, even though I already had the achievement. And to be honest I wasn't very tickled.

A bit of the charm with those quests last year was to find the creatures - now they're highlighted on the new map interface with built-in questhelper addon. The rewards aren't impressive, the quest design and animations are old-style, not anything of the fancy things introduced in WotLK, and this year I don't even you don't get any achievement flash my screen.

So basically: No, I'm not excited at the quests and achievements.

On the other hand I AM rather delighted at the Winter Veil period as such. I love the decorations everywhere, the atmosphere, the snow balls flying through the air, the Christmas dresses (although Larísa admittedly is freezing in her bikini), the unlimited feeling of childishness and playfulness which don't see that much of for the rest of the year.

I'm also wondering what gifts Greatfather Winter will bring us this year. There have been speculations that it will be something needed to complete the only new achievement, BB King. But I can't stop hoping there's something else. If Ghostcrawler can't give us a pony, what about a new cute vanity pet? I'm tickled at the thought.

Elnia:

I am tickled at in seeing Grandfather Winter again. Growing up, Christmas was always my favorite holiday, not so much because of the food (I liked Halloween candy better) or because of the presents (I can’t remember a single one) but because it seemed to be the only holiday when people were happy.

In Warcraft terms, The Feast of Winter’s Veil is a special time for me because during this feast last year I dinged 60 for the first time. It was also the first Warcraft holiday I participated in because I was not playing the game in September and October of last year. I remember being mildly frustrated because I couldn’t complete the Achievement because I wasn’t high enough level.

For reasons I can’t explain now, I had decided that I wasn’t going to upgrade to the expansion but just cap out at 60. So I actually spent most of the Feast working on the Ambassador title instead, which I achieved on Christmas Eve. My Christmas present to myself was to be one of the first Night Elves on my server to have the Mechanostrider, which has been my land mount ever since. I still remember getting whispers about how I must have hacked the game.

The result is that I am tickled pink to finally, after an entire year, have the Merrymaker title. The first day I rushed out to drop the bombs, kiss the revelers, and defeat the Horde with a little helper from my friends. It took me about three hours total to get it all done but I am pleased indeed. I do not have a violet drake yet but in my own way I can talk about what a long strange trip it’s been.

Last year at this time I wasn’t even planning on playing to 80, and I never would have dreamed it would take me six months to go another 20 levels. I never would have dreamed that I’d meet Larisa and that I’d start writing for a blog. Never would have imagined I’d get involved in the gold game and now have so much gold I don’t know what to do with it.

A long strange trip indeed. One that has left me feeling tickled pink.

Would you like to be Little Grey?

He’s been the topic on everyone’s lips the last week: the Taiwanese player rumoured to be called “Little Grey”, who has done all available achievements in WoW.

You could question if it’s even possible to “beat the game”, since there’s always something else to do – if nothing else you can level another class or experience it from the opposite faction’s point of view. Nevertheless I believe that most of the community will agree that Little Grey is the one who has been closest to play WoW to its end, even though this will change instantly with the next incoming patch.

What is so impressive about this is the diversity of his deeds. If you’re going to collect every single achievement in the game, you can’t just be focused on one aspect. You have to be a hybrid player in its modern sense, who can compete in any area with the specialists.

This guy is obviously a skilled and dedicated raider. No matter how big support you have from the guild, you need to be good in yourself to get the undying titles in for instance ToC25hc. He also has to be a good PvP:er, a pet collector, a faction grinder and a business at AH to be able to afford the most expensive vanity mounts.

Not envious
We’re scratching our heads, asking: how is it even possible? But we have no reason to doubt it. We can only say “well done” and “congrats”, hoping that someone like wow.com will be able to get in touch with him for an interview with some answers on our questions. How did he manage? Did he have fun? Where does he find his motivation and – above all – the time?

My question however is: are we envious of Little Grey?

I know I’m not. Not at all.

Sure, there are some raiding achievements I’d really like to do. Clearing ToCGC25. Killing Algalon. Getting one of the undying achievements. Things to strive for and be proud about. But I can also live happily with a lot of the gaps in my achievement record. I’m even glad they are there.

As long as I have achievements left to do, I know I’ll never run out of things to do in the game. Sure, we can always come up with our own challenges, soloing instances, levelling in new manners – naked, pacifistic, undying and such. Even if they’re not labelled as achievements. But sometimes we’re just void of creativity, and want the game to give us some suggestions about what to do next. And in those moments the achievements come in handy.

I haven’t earned my Chef hat yet, I’ve never declared war to the goblins in Booty Bay, and there are tons of creatures in need to be hugged – or killed. Despite of the Pilgrim event, I still haven’t done the turkey speedkill. I want to kill some rare spawns and read all those mystically appearing and disappearing books in Dalaran. I have yet to join a raid against the horde cities.

As a matter of fact I feel rich! I’m rich on potential game experiences. No matter how much I admire Little Grey, I’m equally thankful I’m not him. Reading about him I can't helping thinking about the title of a SF short story I read once upon a time: "After You’ve Stood on the Log at the Center of the Universe, What Is There Left to Do?"

Eleven hugs
And as if this wasn’t enough to keep me from getting envious, I only need to look at the statistics. Since they started to take records last year, this guy has killed 392 006 creatures, given out eleven hugs and waved ONCE.

I on my hand have killed 133 086 creatures, hugged 155 people and waved 207 times.

I need to work on improving my hugging.

Tickled Pink: Do titles matter to you?

Bane of the Fallen King. The Ashen Verdict. Wrathful gladiator. Three new titles that will come with the 3.3 patch. How much do we care about them? Do the titles as such tickle us enough to make an effort to get them? Or should they come with other rewards? Plectical at Rawrcast suggests that players with the Loremaster title should get 10 percent more gold from quest rewards or that Battlemasters should do more damage in BG:s and arenas. Is that a good idea?

Larísa:
Titles. Who cares about titles in real life? I don’t. On the contrary – people who are obsessed with titles give me giggles. As I grew up we always used to laugh at Germans who seemed to be excessively interested in that stuff. As if it wasn’t enough to write “doctor” about someone who was that, they had to add another “doctor”, as if they just had to make sure. But on me the effect was rather the opposite. How could you ever take someone who called himself “Herr Doktor Doktor” seriously?

Do you remember how it used to be in the old days? Sure, there were some titles around, but people didn’t make such a big deal of it. I barely noticed them to be honest. I remember a guildie who was particularly proud of some title she had gotten in the old PvP system. Could it have been “Commander”? But to me it didn’t’ say anything. The first titles I got were Champion of the Naaru and Hand of A'dal. It was pretty far into TBC and didn’t come with a lot of prestige. I saw them as nice souvenirs, reminding me of those endless quest chains to get them, but I didn’t really expect anyone to notice.

Enter WotLK. Enter titles. A ton of them, ranging on the entire scale from silly to imba.
On the silly front I count “Jenkins”. I guess that title is supposed to be funny, but it only gives me shivers. Yeah, I’ve got it on my mage, but I wouldn’t dream of displaying it. Whenever I find a “Jenkins” in my pug, I fear the worst and expect all sorts of immature behaviour - l33t-speech, loot drama and ninja pulls.

The imba titles on the other side are quite impressive – for a little while. The sad thing is that their value decreases rapidly as time passes. While “Twilight vanquisher” was pretty cool early in the expansion, it can be acquired easily now with people geared in ToC epics. It doesn’t say a thing, so if you still wear it, it’s rather for some sort of RP reasons. You think it goes well with your character. You feel like a “twilight vanquisher”.

All in all, if you ask me, I’m almost as uninterested of titles in WoW as I am in real life. The only one that ever caught my attention was “Merrymaker”. I thought it so fit well with a sweet little pink pigtailed gnome with a sweet giggle and explosive spells. So Merrymaker it is. Larísa is also Elder, Hallowed, Matron, Love Fool and God knows what after the long strange trip which ended recently (yay!), but I don’t bother show it.
Would I make an effort to get one of the new titles? Well, I certainly want to kill the Lich King in heroic mode. But it’s not primarily in order to be able to expose myself as Bane of the fallen king. The title would just be a side effect.

So should Blizzard should add more incentives for players to get those titles? In my opinion: only in the form of vanity items. Dragons and non combat pets are fine as rewards, but giving substantial advantages to players with certain titles wouldn’t only cause imbalances in the game. It could also become a too strong incentive, making it harder for some players to keep the RL/game balance at a healthy level. And that’s exactly the kind of gaming behaviour that Blizzard is trying to move away from.

Elnia:
I agree with Larísa that there should be no substantial rewards tied to titles in game. Unlike her, I like to collect titles. I have five of them now: Ambassador, the Explorer, Chef, The Argent Champion, and The Guardian of Cenarius. I usually wear whatever holiday title I have during the holiday but in-between I almost always use Ambassador for role playing purposes.

Interestingly, I also share Larisa's dislike for titles outside the game as well. Except for the polite terms of "sir" and "ma'am" (which are originally titles) I never use them; it seems to go against the grain of our American sentimental egalitarianism. This is why it frustrates me when people give me titles that I don't actually have. It's true. All I have to do is show up on a college campus and with minutes I will be addressed as "Doctor" or "Professor" even though I do not have a doctorate or ever taught a college level course. I guess I just look like a professor and that's good enough for most people. Thankfully no one has ever called me Doctor Doctor because I would lose lose it it and smash smash their their face face.

The reason I like to use titles in game is two fold. One, they are useful for role playing purpose. It's cool when I meet another Ambassador that plays along and we can discuss the respective duties of the our Ambassadorships and what we think of the big political decision of the day. I've probably learned more about the actual lore behind Warcraft though this means than I have any other way.

The other reason I use titles is because I think it creates a sense of identity in the same way that people dress up their AH alts in bunny ears or with a diamond tipped cane. Let's be honest. From a distance all night elves look basically the same: tall with pointy ears. If we are in tree form we all look exactly the same: like wilted celery. And don't give me nonsense about how I'm disrespecting trees. I'm a druid healer myself. But if you take out a sheaf of celery that has been in the fridge for too long, stand it on the counter, and walk it along it moves and shakes exactly like a running "tree" does. If it looks like wilted celery and runs like wilted celery than celery it is and I don't care if people want to sex it up by calling it a "tree". It's celery. Call me Ambassador Celery. I'm O.K with it.

Where was I again? The fact that from a distance all gnomes look like balls of cotton candy. No? Titles. That's right; titles. As I was saying titles help to spruce up the trees and give their identity some bark. Without titles trees would be rootless and leave the forest whenever they could, fir sure. Do we players want that? I think not. It's roots that give trees their nourishment and allow to them thrive. If Blizzard allows rootless trees the next thing you know they will begin to wilt and people will mistake them for walking celery. So a title for every tree and a tree for every title.

I do think that titles do tell you something about a person that you can't tell just by looking at them. For example, my own impression of the Jenkins title is exactly the same as Larísa's impression and arrived at completely independently. The problem is that the interface limits one to displaying one title at a time, which limits the amount of information conveyed. So I think we should be able to display all our titles and see who really has the biggest ego. I want my title to be: The Explorer Ambassador to the Chef of the Argent Champion. Now that's a title that commands respect, isn't it Herr Doktor Doktor.

One of those epic moments - followed by another fail

A few hundred posts back, in June 2008, I made a list of my 10 top moments in WoW. I think it's still pretty much valid. During the time that has passed since I made that list, I've had a few more experiences that could deserve a spot on that 10-in top list.

One was when I was promoted from a trialist to a regular member of my guild last year. I still remember that first frightening jump into the comparatively serious raiding environment, where I suddenly found myself in Black Temple, trying to catch up with strategies, very unsecure and not quite sure if I really belonged there. But they decided I did . I was as proud as I was shocked.

Another moment was downing Archimonde the same autumn after hundreds of wipes. The pressure on each individual was huge, but I made it, I didn't wipe the raid and I was standing on my feet as he passed into the final, triumphant easymode at the last few percent.

Sarth+3d early this spring would definitely compete for a spot on the list. Now, as we're overgeared, we're heading there when we have some time over just to give more players a fancy mount. But when we did it the first time it was totally different. It was a sweet victory that came after a huge effort from everyone.

This weekend I had another one of those epic moments. And I bet nine out of ten of you who are reading this won't quite understand what was so epic about it. But if you've made the kind of journey through Azeroth as I have over the last years, you'll understand what I mean, so I'll share it with you.

It wasn't a moment of the kind that gives you achievement points. It isn't recorded anywhere at all, except for in my memory. No one noticed and no one but me will care. And still it was so shiny and purple that it gave me tears in my eyes and a huge smile on my face that wouldn't quite wear off for the whole evening.

The story of a pug
So what was it that had happened? As simple as that: I was asked if I wanted to join a heroic ToC 10 man handpicked pug.

The story begins earlier the same day, as I pugged the normal 10 man ToC. This turned out to be one of those good runs. We only had one wipe, when a couple of miserable players missclicked or something and managed to get smashed by Icehowl. A few annoyed comments followed, but then we shaped up and oneshotted everything properly after that, as smoothly as if it had been a guild run.

I wasn't one of the wipe causers. For once I managed to do everything right. I was quick on the snobolds, I mangaged the poison and fire debuffs correctly, I spellstole every single buff I could, I switched shields and targets exactly when I should and I moved around properly when chased by the giant bug, while happily taking out the adds. And I topped the dps as well as the damage list! I have no idea how this happened. Probably all the stars stood in the right constellation or some Azerothian godess had decided to give me her blessing for an afternoon. But it did happen, even if it probably was this one and only time.

And when I logged in again later the same evening, I got this whisper from one of the participants. He was putting together a team for the Grand Crusader 10 man the next day and since I had done so well in the normal version he wanted me to join.

Tears filled my eyes as I whispered him my "thank you".

It turned out that the run would be scheduled at a time that just didn't work with my real life obligations, so I had to turn him down. But that didn't matter much. Just to get the question - based on my performance in a pug - was definitely one of the my best moments in the game. Ever.

Never being asked
If you're a healer or tank you probably have no idea what I'm talking about. On the contrary. You're used to and a bit annoyed of being constantly approached by people who want you to come and heal or tank a certain instance for you.

If you're an veteran player with a huge in-game network, maybe even some real life friends playing and a solid reputation on your server, you're probably also used to get those whispers.

But I'm neither. I'm Larísa with endless learning curve, Larísa who always has to struggle a little bit longer than other players to master the gimmicks - moving out of fire, moving into beams, clicking a shield quickly or whatever it is. Larísa who has learned a stupid moving pattern with keybindings in the wrong places and now is fighting like mad to get it right. I'm Larísa who always was picked last at school during the athlete classes. I'm Larísa, the leftover, the reserve that you have to put up with when the best ones can't turn up. The one that is never asked.

And here I was, invited, not because I was in the LFG-channel and they had to take the chance on someone. I was invited personally because this group wanted ME to tag along. Can you imagine?

I cried. And I smiled. The disappointment that I had to turn him down didn't diminish my joy.

The next day I dinged exalted with the Wintersaber trainers and bought my beloved mount. It's just as shiny and beautiful as I had imagined and I'm glad I made the effort to get it. It was well worth every kill - and the process to get it was much more social and fun than I ever could have imagined.

But in epicness it can never compete with the moment when I was invited to the Grand Crusader 10 man raid because someone had thought that I did a good job.

Back to Earth

And so came Sunday night and our guild went to do Vezaxx on hardmode. I ate a ton of shadow crashes and to be honest: I sucked badly, so badly that I logged off in a low spirit, embarrassed, once again cursing myself because of my stupidity and incompetence.

I'm back to Earth again, facing the next steep climb on the learning curve. On the other hand - isn't that the very reason why we keep playing? WoW wouldn't be much fun if there wasn't another hill waiting behind the corner.

How I turned into a grinding moron

Did you believe that Larísa is one of those players who think for themselves? Did you think that she wouldn’t behave like a mindless sheep? Did you expect her to stand above the faceless crowd of morons and slackers?

You lived in a lie. Gevlon, listen to the breaking news and get your illusions shattered. Larísa has transformed into, if not slacker, at least a moron.

Since a week back, I’ve joined the squad of Bar Addicted Players. And this is not a side effect of my membership in the Brew of the Month Club. I’m referring to another kind of bar – an old-school, hypnotizing reputation bar.

Yep. I’ve decided go ahead with one of the 33 things I want to do before I quit the game. I’m going to get myself the ultimate symbol of grinding and vanity in Azeroth: a completely useless and pointless Winterspring Frostsaber mount. The only way you can get it is by grinding yourself to death to become exalted with the Wintersaber Trainers.

Waiting for a PUG
What sparked this project was one of those lonely nights when I once again spent hours trying to find a 10-man PUG. While I know that there are players who don’t mind walking around in Dalaran in circles while waiting for something to happen, I’m not one of those. It gives me rashes all over the body - I have to DO something. I want to have a goal and a direction, something to hold on to.

A natural one would be to level an alt. Who doesn’t like to see the ding-sparkles all over the screen and then head to the trainer to see what yummie little gifts he has in mind for us? However, the LFG system doesn’t allow that. I can’t disguise my lvl 67 druid as a full-epic-mage looking for a 10-mangroup for ToC. So that isn’t an option. My main is always my first priority and she needs badges, period.

Another idea of things-to-do while waiting is to quest randomly, doing a huge bunch of quests that still remain for to do in Icecrown, Grizzly hills and ZulDrak. But for some reason I can’t find the motivation for it. Since I’m not heading for the Loremaster title, I don’t see any goal to strive for. It’s just a time-killer. And even though you can make some gold on it, there are more efficient ways to become rich.

Why not AH?
The most sensible thing would probably to spend the time at AH, trying to make some good deals. The advantage of this would be that I would still be in range to read the Trade channel, where some players (for a reason I don’t understand) prefer to announce their runs rather than using LFG.

I normally don’t need to gather gold to keep myself fit for raiding. By simply transmuting an epic gem every day I’m online, I get enough to cover costs for repairs and consumables and I’ve been steady around 5k gold for as long as I can remember. However – if I doubled my fortune I could buy some crusader orbs and get myself a new shiny dress before I manage to acquire enough dkp to get it from the guild.

The only problem is that I hate, simply hate the AH grinding activity as such. I more or less fall asleep every time I try to go through the lists for business opportunities. I’ve never cared about the stockmarket in real life either. And that’s why I’ll never escape into AH while looking for a group.

The final alternative of what-to-do could be PvP – and it happens from time to time that I do it. But it lacks something – the feeling of progress, either towards a goal, or skillwise. I just don’t get anywhere with it.

And this is how it comes that I ended up looking at my 33-list and decided to go for the frostsaber. I wanted to do it at some point, why not now? I’ve always liked the crispy winter landscape, and since I was in a lonely mood, it seemed fitting to physically move myself to the most empty and remote area of all.

I imagined there would be no one there except the trainer and his pet, forever at watch high up on the rock. And so I set out for my lonely mission out in the wilderness.

An altered state
Somehow this grind isn’t quite what I expected. The burnout and sickness of the whole thing which I had thought would arrive after just a few runs is still missing.

Admittedly, I’m doing the same thing over and over again – currently two quests, which require me to kill bears, those butterfly-like flying creatures and two sorts of guys in a village. However, something strange happens after a while: I slip into an altered, meditative state of mind. I come at peace, void of troubling thoughts. It’s soothing. And even if I still want to find a group I’m not quite as frustrated as I was before. I’m not in any hurry.

Sometimes the grinding coma is interrupted by the presence of other players. Obviously I’m not the only one who has gotten this bug. When the peace is broken by horde players, I usually grumble a bit to myself, wishing I could teleport them to any other spot of Azeroth by pure willpower. KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF MY SHAMANS, WILL YA!

When the other guys are alliance, things become more complicated. It definitely pays off to group up for the kill x amount of mob-quests. The respawn timer is horrendous, not at all like the one associated to the Son of Hodir quests, which adjust depending on the amount of present players.

You have every reason in the world to keep competition to a minimum and join your forces. But on the other hand: if I do so, I will lose my spot in LFG and no one will know that there’s a mage who is willing to bounce into ToC any minute. In a group, this mount grind will turn into my major activity instead of a sidekick while I’m waiting for the real stuff. And I’m really not that insane. Not quite yet.

But I’m on my way. The bar is steadily growing. Just two more rounds and I’ll be honored. It makes me feel strangely good about myself.

Say hello to Larísa The Moron!

How I almost started to care about the Harvest Festival

Fitz at Healer Trek gives the Harvest Festival an F grade. “Worst holiday in the game, no doubt about it. If you find a reason to care about Harvest Festival let me know why. I'd love to know.”

Well, as a matter of fact I almost started to like the event when I stumbled up it this weekend. I say “almost”, because in the end it was a fail. I’ll tell you the story.

The yellow exclamation mark
It all started where all our adventures in Azeroth begin, with a shiny yellow exclamation mark. It was a beautiful Sunday morning in Dun Morogh, I had just come online and was about to take the usual quick jump from entrance of Ironforge down to the Brewfest camp for the daily booze party, when I noticed a new guy standing there, begging for my attention.

I consider myself pretty much well updated on what’s going on in game. The combination of excessive blog reading and regular browsing of wow.com and MMO-champion is usually enough to keep in touch. But this guy had slipped through the net. He was talking about some sort of harvest celebration and had a mission for me as well.

I draw the conclusion that this must be part of some sort of seasonal event, which probably gave some fancy fluff rewards, if nothing else another pet to my collection. But instead of following my instincts, looking up a “how-to” guide to complete the Harvest Festival in the most efficient way, I decided to do it differently this time. I would approach this the way I played WoW when I started in February 2007. I would follow my instincts and let the quest take me wherever it wanted to. I would explore the world rather than conquer it.

Of course there was a difference now to my first stumbling steps in Azeroth. I knew the world a little bit better. So the journey to this Uther’s Tomb in Western Plagueland was pretty straightforward.

As I was riding the gryphon, I checked out the achievement tab for the holidays. Even if I didn’t want to use any Internet guide for this event, I thought I could check out the achievements for it. That would give me an idea about where this adventure would bring me and didn’t feel like cheating. But I soon found out that there wasn’t any achievement at all for it. I decided to not be disappointed about it. It only meant that there was no tick-box stress luring on me. I could enjoy it as a casual, relaxed adventure.

Disappointed
Finding the tomb wasn’t hard, even without addons and guides. I had a vague memory of where it was situated, and it turned out that I was right. It was even included in the world map, so I shouldn’t have worried about it.

I approached the place, curious and a little bit excited. I had no idea about what would happen. Was there to be some phasing? Would I pick up the next quest in a long chain? Would a ghost appear and talk to me, maybe some cool voice acting performance? This could be anything!

I guess I don’t need to tell you that I was pretty disappointed when I did my clicking and the only difference I could notice was that the quest was completed. Oh well, there would surely be a nice follow-up once I got back to Ironforge to turn it in. The guy would have another mission for me, and so would the ghosts hanging around the place by the dinner table. Once I turned in this quest there would be a jungle of yellow exclamation marks for me. And I wouldn’t have a clue about what anyone of them meant. Oh joy!

Little did I know.

I received my 12 gold, a crap book and a “thank you”. No yellow mark. Maybe this was the kind of quest giver who wanted to hold a little speech and wander around doing a little piece of acting before he told me what he wanted. So I waited. And waited. And waited. Nothing.

The food table
Then I turned around, looking at the ghost party, starting to click whatever I could, desperately hoping that there was something more I could do, now that I finally had come to my senses, using a “let’s see what this leads me to” mindset rather than a “let’s get over with this grind” mindset as I approached an in-game event.

Yeah, there was a firework vendor. But his assortment wasn’t impressive to be honest. And then there was this food on the table. I inspected it suspiciously. This was the kind of food that probably would have come handy when I was levelling my first character, provided that it wasn’t a mage, who brings his own. But for me – to be honest it was just another bag filler. The only fun thing about it was that the supply was a bit limited. If I took enough of fruit from the table, the plate would disappear. This amused me for a second, for some reason it tickled my sense of wardrobe role playing. I felt immersed as I wondered around, tasting all the goodies of the table.

And that was the end of my Harvest Festival experience.

Reasons to like it
Fitz gave the event an F-grade and considering my disappointment I’m not far from doing the same. However, there is one little reason to like this event that I would like to point out: the pleasure of change.

The longer I play WoW, the more I’ve come to appreciate anything that isn’t exactly the same from day to day. The Darkmoon Faire moving around. One day it’s there – the next it’s not. There is a point in those holiday events coming and going: it gives variety and a sense of the passing time.

For this reason, I even visited the Pirate day event in Booty Bay! I’m not a huge pirate fan myself and the fun of speaking as a pirate is beyond my sense of humour. The whole thing felt shallow and provided little content, most of all it appeared to be a lag party on the rooftop. But nevertheless – it was a change, a welcome break in the everyday life of Azeroth. Those things definitely helps to make the world come alive – especially if you choose to approach it from a casual, exploring, deliberately inefficient way rather than grinding them.

I almost started to care about the Harvest Festival. Given just a few follow-up quests and a little bit more of content, it could have been a little bit of fun.

A rant about our fear of temporary changes

I will start this post by throwing the first stone at myself. I’m not better than anyone of those people that I’m about to attack. It happens that I whine too, and I’ve probably bitched a bit myself in the past. But I’m not worse than I can change my mind, OK?

Now with this settled, I just want to let my heart out about a thing that is bothering me: the conservatism of the WoW community, at least the vocal part of it. It’s absolutely astonishing.

Whenever there’s a small temporary change in the game mechanics, people go nuts about it, complaining, bitching, moaning, whining about the cruelness and stupidity of the developers. Eventually they manage to create a negative atmosphere around the whole event, effectively taking the fun out of it for everyone else, even those that from the beginning didn’t have any clear opinion about it of their own.

The scourge invasion
For instance it happened before the launching of WotLK, with those infectious scourge running around in the capitals. Do you remember? I was sulking and bitching myself! Maybe not in this blog, but at least in my head, and probably in whispers to people I know. Now afterwards I just want to apologize. I was dead wrong and I’m sorry about it.

Blizzard gave us a twist, a new sort of challenge, something we had to figure out how to deal with on our own, not by doing what we’re always doing. And how did we react? We tossed the gift away, like spoiled kids. It wasn’t like the game was going to be like that forever. It was a matter of weeks or even a few days, since they were forced to stop it sooner than they had planned (even though they’ll never admit they did). But we couldn’t cope with it because our bank alts were killed. Seriously, our reactions were completely out of proportion.

Children’s week
The outcry about the Children’s week achievement last week is another example of it. I’ve complained about it a bit myself, not aloud, but in my head. I was thinking about writing a post about the stupidity of forcing PvE players to go to the BGs, thus destroying the gameplay altogether for the PvP:ers, since our incentives were completely different to theirs.

I /signed wholeheartedly at the well put rant of Euripides, who suggested that the achievements should rather have been about winning the BG:s. In that way the motives of the regular PvPers and the temporary PvPers chasing achievements wouldn’t interfere. But giving it a second thought I’ve changed my mind.

Yeah, I know it was a pain to get it done. It took me quite a few hours to succeed. Especially I remember a WG that went on and on forever. Both sides refused to attack, just assembling in respectively flag room, orphans up, waiting for someone to come so they could retake the flag. The situation was quite absurd.

On the other hand: was it really so bad? They screwed up the BGs the way they’re normally played, but they gave us something else, a new sort of PvP. I caught myself many times thinking that the true opponents in BG wasn’t horde, but alliance players, competing with you to capture a flag or a tower. You had to invent new strategies on the fly. Was it best to sneak, wait for another alliance player to do something brave and foolish, and then grab the chance? Or should you by emotes and telepathy try to convince the achievement junkies on the horde side to cooperate with you?

You could pick up some strategic advice from bloggers about how to do it, but in the end, there wasn’t just The way to complete this, since the BGs varies a lot, from server to server and battle to battle, depending on the players. You had to think for yourself. It was unpredictable and actually rather fun, if you just didn’t cling so desperately to the idea that everything in Azeroth always should be the same.

A new approach
I’ll end this rant with a promise, which I hope you’ll hold me to.

Read my lips:
Next time there will be a game-mechanics changing temporary event for a week, I’ll refuse to join The Leage of Organized Whiners. I’ll open my eyes, try to see the new and fun in it and adapt to the situation.

Seriously, those things don’t break the game for us. They shake us up a bit, which is exactly what we need sometimes, whether we realize it or not. They break the routine and the grind that we constantly complain about, the repetition that we find so boring.

They’re not a problem. They’re a possibility.

I should be mad but I’m not

I should be mad. I really should.

When I think about it I must agree with Green Armadillo at Player versus Developer. The concept of the “Shake your Bunny-Maker” achievement IS an example of objectification of women. You can’t come around the association to Playboy ears – even though the tail is missing – and this is emphasised by the “age limit” put at level 18.

But no matter how I try I can’t work up any real rage. Probably I’m too used to it. This is how society looks like; it’s just how things are. So I’ll let Green Armadillo stand for the serious side of this and throw myself into the play, ignoring what it represents. Because to be honest: I think those ears are just adorable! At least on a pink pigtailed gnome – they look absolutely natural and adds some more cuteness to her. (I didn’t think it was possible, but it is.)

Clicking until nausea
I can’t say that I adored the egg-hunt as an achievement. I switched between the methods. Sometimes I camped a strategic spot with several spawn points within reach. Sometimes I grew too bored and ran around in circles, constantly spamming my rush buff to speed it up. That was a little bit more fun, even though it didn't give as many eggs. But no matter of method this event was most of all about clicking and clicking and clicking until nausea. Winner was the one who didn’t get cramp in the mouse arm. You didn’t just have to collect the eggs. You also had to loot them and to some extent eat what was inside.

Some players tried to make it a bit more convenient, making up a script to do it automatically. That could be treacherous though. I spoke to one of the readers of PPI who plays at the same server as me. Suddenly there was a bitter exclaim from him. He had just realized that he had kept eating every chocolate egg he looted for the last half hour, even though he already had completed the eat-100-chocolates-achivement. He had forgotten about the script he had made….

Bunny ear hunt
In that perspective, the bunny-ear-thing felt like a blessing, something else but eggs to worry about. And it requested you to leave your chosen egg camp for a while. Since people didn’t bother about clicking away the buff, it was quite impossible to tell which race and gender all of those pink bunnies were. It was better to head to one of the capital cities for that part.

But one player actually did something about it. He sent out a question in general, asking if there was any female gnome around that he could put bunny ears on. And I was happy to answer him: “Yes, catch me if you can!” Then I took off my rabbit costume, used my egg rush ability and started to run around all over the place, sometimes crouching in a bush (they’re perfect hiding places for a gnome and you can giggle at all the people who try to loot you, thinking that your pigtails are eggs) .

A minute later there came a happy exclamation: “Got’ya!” and I found myself wearing another couple of extra ears. I smiled happily at him before I took up the hunt for my last few treasures.

Teasing the raid leader
Now I’m so done and over with this event. I don’t want to see another egg. Ever. I’ve got my title and I gathered the extra 100 eggs to get the new polymorph. It’s not necessary to have in any way, it is all about vanity, but I as a gnome mage I just feel the urge to learn whatever spell I may come across. It’s in our nature.

In a few days the eggs will despawn and a new mad rush will start for The Children's Week. We’ll see as many orphans around as we saw bunnies before.

But I don’t think Noblegarden is quite over yet. We’ll live with those ears for a little bit longer. The Spring flowers won’t despawn, as far as I know. While we were setting the best strategy for the rather difficult Auriaya pull in Ulduar, people started to amuse themselves by putting bunny ears on the bald head of our gnomish raid leader. That wasn’t a pretty sight, to put it mildly. But it surely annoyed the hell out of him, which of course made it a lot more fun. The question is: how many ears can you put on a rl before he kicks you from the raid? Who will be the one to cross the limit? That remains to be seen.

All I know is that I don’t mind wearing those bunny ears. I see the problem, but I love them too much to care. Feel free to use your spring flowers whenever you see me. I look great in them.