Note: this post contains information on Wrath of the Lich King.
Discussion of the new Achievement system in WotLK has often referred to the fact that completing certain Achievements will grant their own rewards. Here’s a quick guide to the system as it stands at the moment.
I finally met my Waterloo, the grind that even I cannot contemplate.
I have a long and grindy history in Azeroth. I thought nothing of doing Revered with the Aldor and then Exalted with the Scryer (requiring a hefty amount of basilisk-killing in the middle) with my paladin because I wanted all the jewelcrafting recipes. I ground my Night Elf priest to Exalted Stormwind faction pre-60 and pre-easy-rep-gains because I wanted a horse. I have maxed-out fishing, for god’s sake.
I didn’t flinch at the idea of grinding my way to Exalted with the Consortium (before all the solo and 5-man Consortium content in patch 2.2, to boot) or the Kurenai. I have every Burning Crusade faction, bar Scale of the Sands and Ashtongue Deathsworn, at Exalted. I’ve just hit Exalted with Stormwind and Argent Dawn, and I’m a couple of days away with Darnassus, Exodar and Cenarion Circle — then comes Timbermaw and Frostspring Wintersaber factions.
But I have met my match: the rep grind that makes me shudder and think “oh god, no“. This terror: the rep grind to get Exalted with the Bloodsail Buccaneers for a swanky Admiral’s hat and parrot pet. This grind would necessitate killing 1,300 level 67 elite mobs (who drop zero loot – not even coins) just to get to Friendly with the damn Buccaneers… and then I’d have to grind my way back up from Hated with all the Steamwheedle factions just so as not to get ganked the minute I set foot in one of their towns.
No. Just no. I don’t care how cool the hat looks. HONEST.
In a creative and entertaining riff on the Discovery Channel “Boom De Yadda” ad campaign, Ilcyra of US-Bladefist has created a video tribute to Azeroth (and Outland too).
Follow the link for “I Love the Whole World (of Warcraft)”!
(In other news, my family visitors have departed, so normal content will resume shortly.)
Ubadkitty
Xygrlnxtdoor
Gankdalf
Ublinkudie
Ihealu (or any of the countless variations thereon)
Wontheal (now there’s a priest I want to run with, oh yes)
Damagecapz (yes, it’s a mage)
Hippycheeze
Missdameaner
Healzforgold
Chainhealz (no prizes for guessing which class this is)
Lovrgirl
Snipercon
Elitenemesis
Wykidd
Deadlynoob
Invmeplz
Lakersfan
In the good old days, all of these would have earnt the player a forced name change for contravening Blizzard’s naming policy. These days, all they earn is the scorn and derision of players around them…
I notice I’ve had a lot of hits today from Google searches for Inscription guides – presumably fuelled by today’s announcement that Inscription will be available pre-Wrath Day.
This is just a headsup for you visitors: I’m still planning to write a guide to levelling Inscription once all the information is available. Currently, Inscription still isn’t implemented in the Wrath beta, beyond some basic lowbie abilities (no Glyphs, just stat scrolls).
So, you’ll all be the first to know once I’ve got data to work with, but until then, no-one can give you a meaningful Inscription guide because the information is just not available yet. Watch this space!
I recently posted about my difficulty in finding things to amuse me in the pre-Wrath period: everything I could think of to do was either boring, or irrelevant in the face of the upcoming expack.
Well, here’s something that’s been occupying me for the last few days: catching up on Achievements, in advance!
I’m a completionist and an explorer at heart, which means the Achievements system is going to occupy a lot of my time during the lifespan of Wrath. However, there are a bunch of Achievements that I can easily work on before Wrath Day.
First, I logged into the Wrath beta to check out the Achievements panel and found all the pre-WotLK achievements I hadn’t yet completed. (Those of you without access to the beta can do the same thing by checking out the WoWHead Achievement list.) I broke these down into subsets:
And now I’ve been working on them. So far I’ve finished off a few of the individual general Achievements (like buying and equipping the “Gigantique” bag) and finished exploring every single Eastern Kingdoms zone. Now I’m working on factions, and I’ll break that up with some Kalimdor exploration.
None of it has any mechanical advantage, true. But it warms the cockles of my obsessive completionist heart to tick off all these little things I’d always meant to do but never had time to do – now I have time to do them, and a reason to boot.
(Tangentially, in one of my next few posts I’ll talk about some tips and tricks for levelling old-world factions, for those of you stranded in the doldrums of Revered reputation.)
I started thinking about this after seeing yet another “WTS ZA Bear Run, 10K. PST!” in Trade channel tonight, and the resultant discussion of “I’d never buy one!” “Good for you!” “That’s such a ripoff!” “n00bs!” “Chuck Norris!” “Murlocs!” (It is Trade channel, after all.)
Zul’Aman bear mounts from the timed chests are, as most people know, no longer available once Wrath goes live, because they were intended to be a reward for completing a non-trivial challenge and doing the run at 80 will be far from challenging. Bear junkies will be able to get polar bear mounts from another source, but the Zul’Aman bear will remain a reward for those who got them at 70.
So, that’s got me thinking. My guild is doing Zul’Aman, but not all the time, and we haven’t conquered the timers yet – but we’re not far off. Do I want a bear mount? Yep. Do I want one enough to pay for it? ….I’m not sure.
How about you?
[poll=8]
A couple of months ago, I asked what you’d change if you had the ear of Blizzard’s dev team for a day, and I promised my own answer to the question – which I am now, finally, getting to.
My top three wishlist:
1. Achievements. Done! I’ve long lamented the lack of recognition in-game for non-mechanical achievements – exploration, world events and the like. Star Wars Galaxies, my first real MMO experience, handled it very well; LOTRO does a good job with it too. I’d hoped for something similar in WoW, and it’s good to see Blizzard are answering my prayers!
2. Meaningful Crafting. I really enjoy tradeskills. I like working on them, improving them, learning about them, and spending time on them. Unfortunately, in WoW there’s little reward for doing that; one crafter is much the same as another. I compare this with Star Wars Galaxies or EQ2, where a dedicated crafter could produce items that were better – in terms of stats or effects – than the items produced by other people.
The trouble is, even if Blizzard introduced a ‘quality’ differentiation, they’d be likely to make it a reward for time expenditure or a random uncontrollable reward (like alchemists learning recipes via discovery, or the new random ‘perfect gems’ for jewelcrafters). I want a system that rewards knowledge and good decision-making, not spending four hours a day on profession quests or random luck.
3. Web Chat Interface. This is something EQ2 did from launch, nearly four years ago; logging into the EQ2 website allowed you to talk in guild chat, custom channels and whispers.
As a guild leader, this would be a godsend – I have a certain obligation to be online and available for my guildies, at least to talk to, if not to play with. Web chat would allow me to stay in touch easily without having to be logged into the game itself, which would be incredibly handy.
I hate this time in the game’s lifecycle: that last couple of months before an expansion, where everything you could do is viewed in light of “well, is it worth it?”
It’s not that I’m not playing, or that I don’t want to play. I’m doing weekly Karazhans and 3-5 heroics a week on my priest, for badges; I’m doing dailies a few times a week for the cash injection. I’m still enjoying WoW – I’m not burnt out; I have no desire to stop or take a break.
But every time I think of a goal to shoot for, I can’t help but think “but that will be meaningless any day now”. I know, of course, that every goal is made obsolete sooner or later – gear is always replaced, level caps are always increased – but it’s right now with Wrath looming that it starts to affect my motivation.
There are certainly things I want to finish before Wrath Day, but most of them are, well, tedious prep-work – stockpile Honor and Arena points on my main, build up cash, et cetera. None of them are particularly exciting or motivating.
…I guess it’s back to levelling another alt.
What about you? What are you all doing to keep yourselves involved and motivated, as Wrath Day draws ever-closer?
Just an offtopic announcement for those of you who frequent the BA chat: the new version of Pidgin, 