Children's Week

[Azaroth]

It's hilarious that you can recolour a mount and legions of people will grind for a year to get it.

[K9]

So far my experience is that these changes have actually made AV more playable. All other BGs are sucking hard.

[Lantyssa]

It's hilarious that you can recolour a mount and legions of people will grind for a year to get it.

How do you recolor a mount?

[Soulflame]

To be fair, the achievements seem to be grinds for four hours over one week at semi-random intervals over an entire year.

I got this done last night, the worst parts were WSG (two matches) AV (two matches) and praying for a UP PUG (I hate PUGs.  The guild DK that came along to DPS managed to do more dps and damage than the entire rest of the group together.  Yay guildies.)  The rest was fairly trivial

Noblegarden was far far worse, in my opinion.

[Tarami]

It's hilarious that you can recolour a mount and legions of people will grind for a year to get it.

How do you recolor a mount?

Blizzard do that for you. You just have to do the in-game grind. Both parties win!

[Merusk]

It's hilarious that you can recolour a mount and legions of people will grind for a year to get it.

How do you recolor a mount?

He means a palette swap.  There's other color protodrakes out there, so in his estimation you're insane if you do all these over the year for a mount.

Not that I'm not insane, but I do it for the titles and the mount.   It really is less of a headache than it appears, except for the pvp achievements. Those prove painful on some battlegroups.

[Chimpy]

It also is rumored to be uber-leet speed like the phoenix or the gladiator netherdrakes!

[kildorn]

It's hilarious that you can recolour a mount and legions of people will grind for a year to get it.

What did we learn from the xbox 360? People are easily addicted to doing something if it gives a little ding at the end. The drake is a much bigger carrot than "nothing!" that people are willing to go nuts for with achievement systems.

Hell, I don't even bother with the seasonal achievements, and I still find it nice to have a little golden bar pop up randomly telling me I did something.

[Simond]

Got the EotS one on my second attempt. Mind you, that was in frost presence with bone armour, icebound fortitude, and anti-magic shell all up at the same time + imp. unholy presence, so...yeah.

(Also undead so had WotF if needed as well) 

[Azaroth]

It's hilarious that you can recolour a mount and legions of people will grind for a year to get it.

What did we learn from the xbox 360? People are easily addicted to doing something if it gives a little ding at the end. The drake is a much bigger carrot than "nothing!" that people are willing to go nuts for with achievement systems.

Hell, I don't even bother with the seasonal achievements, and I still find it nice to have a little golden bar pop up randomly telling me I did something.

The Army needs to invent a system of ringing bells and flashing lights. It'd solve their recruitment issues immediately.

I can see it now. Millions pouring through the bases collecting an entirely new spin on "kill ten rats".

The outrage that only one class gets flying mounts would be epic, though.

[Hindenburg]

The Army needs to invent a system of ringing bells and flashing lights. It'd solve their recruitment issues immediately.

I can see it now. Millions pouring through the bases collecting an entirely new spin on "kill ten rats".

The outrage that only one class gets flying mounts would be epic, though.

Called ranks and medals, they are.

[Ingmar]

The violet proto-drake isn't just a recolor, it is a 310% speed mount I believe. Those are pretty hard to get for anyone not in a cutting edge raiding guild or really, really good at arena.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Got all the pvp achievements done in one night. While I'm sure the first day was a huge cockblock there were only a few people per bg with orphans out so its clearly going to get less obnoxious as time passes.

[Paelos]

The violet proto-drake isn't just a recolor, it is a 310% speed mount I believe. Those are pretty hard to get for anyone not in a cutting edge raiding guild or really, really good at arena.

Get ready for the world to be filled with them come november then.

[Ingmar]

No skin off my back, I just want to go faster, I don't care if everyone else can too!

[Fordel]

Pfft, flying mounts!

[Rasix]

Like all achievements, I'll be doing the easy ones and skipping anything that looks remotely painful.  Finished out the Valentine's Day one and I think that's the last one do that for.  As an aside, people asking me to respec to help them complete an achievement can just pick between my main and off.  I'm not redoing my action bars for one second off my fucking earth shock.

Of course, skipping mains and lapses in my subscription have made these holiday achievements a moot point anyways.

[Samprimary]

My battlegroup was being slaughtered by organized leet twink guilds all night in WSG. Yet, when one blood elf paladin ran in and grabbed the flag, he stopped, saw I had the orphan out, and dropped the damn flag right in front of me.

I was amazed! In gratitude I ran over to his side and using emotes clarified my intent to grab and drop the flag a gajillion times till everyone in his group had the Frenzied Defender award.

[Khaldun]

I didn't have that much trouble doing any of them in the end, but I hated every second of the WSG one because it created a completely awful experience for everyone. The people who liked BG PvP hated what happened, the people who liked achievements hated what happened. It took about ten minutes of sitting there for the Alliance and Horde players to develop an understanding: you send one person down, we kill him, then one of us will go down, repeat until everyone's done, then we'll actually play. Every once in a while, it would interrupt because a PvPer would get bored and kill someone before they took the flag or because one or the other team would try to get a "two-fer", e.g., not reciprocate with a sacrificial lamb.

[Nonentity]

Yay, I'm a Matron!

But yeah, the BG achievements I was very vocal about. I was the worst of the bunch, to be fair - I was a speed clicker, and I would /afk out of the BG as soon as I got them, wait 15 minutes, then go about getting the next one.

WSG was pretty hilarious, to be fair - 9 horde with their orphans out in the flag room, and one guy running out midfield by himself. I just managed to click the fastest, so then I AFKed out of that one. Eye took me a couple tries, until I got some backup from some other players on the team to actually capture it. AV was pretty hilarious - I followed a Paladin with Crusader Aura up to the first tower, then he was busy getting shot by the archers, so I clicked the tower. AB was also basically just running ahead with a Paladin behind me. No achievement took more than a few minutes, with the exception of eye.

However!

On the flipside of the coin, I needed to do a legitimate Warsong Gulch later, and it was a pain in the ass. Thankfully, only a few people had their orphans out, so I actually did manage to win it.

Oh! Pro tip, by the way. If you're going for the 25 Tabards achievement, you can buy the PVP tabards, and with the new '2 hour resell' system they have in place, you still totally get credit for them without wasting any marks, if you then immediately turn around and sell them back.

[Xanthippe]

My battlegroup was being slaughtered by organized leet twink guilds all night in WSG. Yet, when one blood elf paladin ran in and grabbed the flag, he stopped, saw I had the orphan out, and dropped the damn flag right in front of me.

I was amazed! In gratitude I ran over to his side and using emotes clarified my intent to grab and drop the flag a gajillion times till everyone in his group had the Frenzied Defender award.

For every story like that, I'll give you 10 where some asshole without an orphan races me to a node in AB, and caps the flag an instant before I can  with my orphan trailing behind me.  And then gloats about it.

I really hate some of the people who play WoW.

[SurfD]

As an interesting side note:  Did you know that using a Dark Iron Boot Flask actually Changes your characters gender!?

Appearently it does not simply change your appearance, but completely changes your gender flag.

I found this out when I went for the Iron Council achieve of downing them while under the effect of the flask.  My character is a Matron (female Tauren Druid), and when i pop the Flask, I lose my Matron Title, and gain a Patron Title for the duration of the effect!

bizzare.

[Soulflame]

A similar thing happens if you're a male, and you fly into that village where you are transformed into a blue valkyn (or whatever the hell they are.)

[lesion]

If you pop the blood elf orb from Magister's Terrace after the boot flask you turn into a fancy lad.

[Kitsune]

It took me about four goddamn hours in EotS to get a flag capture; the middle of the battlefield was a seething pile of retards all grabbing at the flag, so it took that long just to lay hands on the thing.  Once I had it, the capture was easy.  Everything else was smooth sailing, no problems.  That being said, WG and AV were both easy solely because the players were blatantly defying the spirit of the battlegrounds and cooperating with the opposing team to share the achievements.  I plopped down in a tower in AV and just kept recapturing it for the Horde to get the achievements; the flag room was packed within minutes by a whole platoon of orcs /hugging me.  It was a little disturbing.

I'd known all year that this achievement was going to suck, bad.  I'd been dreading this week, and am just glad that the shitty part is behind me, leaving just smooth sailing to my spiffy dragon thing.

The scary thing is that I've won the stranglethorn fishing contest, and went through the 200 arena fights for the murloc pet.  I'm perfectly willing to go through hellish grindfests for prizes, and when even I'm like, 'Holy fuck, this is a terrible idea.' you know that Blizzard screwed up, badly.

[Simond]

Got my title tonight after pugging normal-UP. Yes, the boring pve run was the only thing holding me back. 

[Ingmar]

Even on normal the Skadi gauntlet has a tendency to suck in PUGs so I can't really blame you.

[Xanthippe]

I got in a pug for heroic UP with a couple of guys who called everyone else "jackass" or "jew."

Have I mentioned how much I hate some of the people who play WoW?

Achievement done, time for a break. 

[Paelos]

This the one that broke me. I don't care about the drake anymore, I'm just not going to play the game this way. I really really hate putting pvp into these achievements, so I just give up on this one. It's not fun.

[Zetor]

I managed to get the pvp stuff done right away, on the very first day the achievements were out. WSG was surprisingly painless, and in EOTS... well, I play an elemental shaman, so I just removed the entire horde group from the flag area with a thunderstorm, grabbed the flag and ghost wolfed to a tower.

Still, playing BGs for the next few days was significantly worse... I probably should've taken a screenshot of 12 alliance zerging the center area and me+two others trying to fight off the horde from our last node. Then we died, the node turned, and the zergers finally realized that you kinda need a tower to cap the flag... kek.


-- Z.

[ezrast]

This the one that broke me. I don't care about the drake anymore, I'm just not going to play the game this way. I really really hate putting pvp into these achievements, so I just give up on this one. It's not fun.

Funny, this is the first world event achievement that *hasn't* been too onerous to bother with for me. Maybe it's because PvP is the only part of the game I consistently enjoy, but getting rewarded for running around Outland (pretty!) and then doing some BGs struck me as pretty cool, unlike collecting a million fricking eggs/candies/elders/whatever. Different strokes, I guess.

[Paelos]

Most of the other achievements have been about collecting silly trinkets or clothes and exploration. I like all that stuff because I'm an explorer/achiever type. What's I'm not is a killer type, but I could have dealt with these pvp achievements if it wasn't for every BG. I've boycotted WSG for the last 2 years. I will not run it ever again.

So yeah, you're right about different strokes, but I don't care about mounts at all so this doesn't really bother me much.

[Gobbeldygook]

The experiences related in this thread with regard to the BGs are completely different from mine.  I waited a couple days, then did it.  In the non-AV BGs, there were consistently only 1-2 people on my side with their orphans out whether I was playing during prime or off-peak hours.  I got AV and AB in one attempt, I think two EOTS games, and three for WSG.

For all of you people talking about how absolutely HORRIFIC EOTS and WSG were, were you trying to do the achievement on day one or what?

[Paelos]

For some, the idea of setting foot in another BG is enough to make them say fuck it.

[Nevermore]

For all of you people talking about how absolutely HORRIFIC EOTS and WSG were, were you trying to do the achievement on day one or what?

I tried for it yesterday and EotS was beyond horrific.  On my server's battlegroup, Horde in the 70-79 range in EotS consistently had at least a 2-1 advantage in numbers and usually had at least one group of 79 twinks.  It almost always took around a half hour just for the BG to start and most of the time the Alliance side would have between 5-7 people.  I had to try 24 times before I finally got that stupid flag.  That was the single worst experience I've had in WoW.