Let us go back one year. Wrath of the Lich King is currently in Beta and lots of information has been made available about the new achievement system that has links to all parts of the game. One achievement stands out for doing all the holiday achievements as it awards a shiny protodrake mount which is a 310% speed. As this would be a very cool thing to have I like a lot of others started preparing for what was required.
This post now provides a retrospective of all that I've been through in order to get hold of this great mount.
Brewfest 2008
At this time it's required to drink each brew supplied from the 'Brew of the Month' club so the token grind was there to join the club and make sure that all the drinks would count towards this. Later Blizzard would relax this achievement, a subject I don't want to get into now, but it irked slightly at the time.
Hallows End
'Trick or Treating' and traveling summed up this holiday for me. Killing the Headless Horseman was a trivial requirement after the changes put in in patch 3.0 but getting the Hallowed Helm and Sinister Squashling (something I already had) required either a lucky drop from the boss or a drop from the treat bag. Everything else was fairly straightforward, guild members meant buying wands from the Trade channel wasn't required. This one wasn't a problem, no stress.
Winters Veil
PvP reared it's ugly head again with the requirement of getting 50 honorable kills while disguised as a gnome. Losing the disguise upon death meant there was queuing for a lot of battlegrounds but patience was the order of the day for this one. Everything else was very straightforward so again no stress.
Lunar Festival
Once again I was sent around Azeroth visiting elders and had my first taste of sneaking into Alliance cities. It was at this point that I realized just how much the Alliance could be jerks by fiercely guarding their Elder. Other than that a guild run through the Northrend dungeons and a pug for the outdoor raid meant this was wrapped up very easily with no real issues.
Love is in the Air
This was the achievement that nearly broke me. Everything was progressing smoothly, I had love fools to pity, arrows to shoot and rose petals to scatter. However I also needed bags of candies to pull the candies from and this would not drop for me. In the end I had to resort, on the penultimate day of the holiday to logging in once an hour on the hour to try and get it to drop. After many hours it did and the relief was tangible. Lots of stress and the beginning of some doubt as to whether it was worth it.
Noblegarden
A late arrival to the meta achievement and probably the biggest grind of all the achievements. Everything you required could be bought for chocolates but you also required enough to eat so there was a lot of running around opening eggs. Some music to listen to and a bit of patience and this one got added to the list.
Children's Week
If Love is in the Air made me question the whole thing then this festival ran it a close second. School of Hard Knocks had already been well analyzed and understood just what would be involved. The Alliance remade some ground by helping with the flag recapture in WSG and some creative use of Vanish allowed for a flag capture in AV. As it turned out a lot of patience and a complete disregard for trying to win any of the battlegrounds made the achievement very doable.
Midsummer Fire Festival
More traveling, and more sneaking into Alliance cities. A quest reset by Blizzard meant I had to sneak in more than I expected but did provide extra blossoms for buying things I actually wanted rather than what I was required for achievements. Again just some effort on my part got this one done.
Brewfest 2009
Here we are again grinding tokens for an outfit. For some reason I had to kill Coren Direbrew again but the level 80 version with the gear we're now sporting meant this wasn't really an issue. I am now officially sick of ram racing but I got enough tokens to buy the clothing, got drunk, fell a long way and danced my way to success.
So here we are with a very shiny mount and a heck of a lot of achievements.
I don't regret having gone through with it, other players have gone for the hard mode achievements in raids while others have fought hard in arena matches for similar rewards. This suited the way I play the game and so made sense for me to work towards it.
Would I do it again? This is an interesting question as I have another max level alt and others I could be working on. Having done it once on my main I'm not feeling the necessity to go through it all again. However knowing what I know now means it might be a lot easier the second time, so I wouldn't like to commit myself either way at this stage.
Sunday, 27 September 2009
Saturday, 26 September 2009
Not going on the raid....
It's not a phrase anyone wants to hear, you've made yourself available for a raid, you've got everything prepared and now the evil raid leader (me in this case) indicates that you won't be going.
A little background, we'd added Trial of the Crusader back on the raid calendar and there were 22 signups. 5 tanks, 6 healers and 11 DPS. Given that we only run 10 man raids it was clear we could run two raids but it did mean that 2 of the signups would not get to go. Our guild has guidelines on how people get selected, generally on based on how many previous raids that person has been on and should someone be excluded they have preference for the next raid they sign up to.
You'd hope with such clear and understood reasoning in place this would be ok with people and they could wait until the raid instance reset and the guild organized another run. For the majority of people this is ok, but there always seems to be a minority who feel the need to vent on the forums that they've been somehow hard done by and why the decision to bench them for that raid was incorrect.
Now it's perfectly possible that a mistake will be made, everyone here is human and fallable, but even if this happens don't go ranting and raving about it. If anything, all this is going to is antagonize those who run the raids and a petty raid leader may put you on the bottom of the list of signees. Fortunately for those involved I'm not like that (though have been tempted) I just write about them here.
As with all things I resort back to my maxim of 'It's just a game' so if you're going to get so bent out of shape about missing one night's instance please realize that this is your issue rather than mine.
A little background, we'd added Trial of the Crusader back on the raid calendar and there were 22 signups. 5 tanks, 6 healers and 11 DPS. Given that we only run 10 man raids it was clear we could run two raids but it did mean that 2 of the signups would not get to go. Our guild has guidelines on how people get selected, generally on based on how many previous raids that person has been on and should someone be excluded they have preference for the next raid they sign up to.
You'd hope with such clear and understood reasoning in place this would be ok with people and they could wait until the raid instance reset and the guild organized another run. For the majority of people this is ok, but there always seems to be a minority who feel the need to vent on the forums that they've been somehow hard done by and why the decision to bench them for that raid was incorrect.
Now it's perfectly possible that a mistake will be made, everyone here is human and fallable, but even if this happens don't go ranting and raving about it. If anything, all this is going to is antagonize those who run the raids and a petty raid leader may put you on the bottom of the list of signees. Fortunately for those involved I'm not like that (though have been tempted) I just write about them here.
As with all things I resort back to my maxim of 'It's just a game' so if you're going to get so bent out of shape about missing one night's instance please realize that this is your issue rather than mine.
Saturday, 19 September 2009
Oh gods...
Oh gods what have I done.
There's been some changes in our guild with GMs stepping down one of whom happened to be the raid leader. Obviously this left a void and in the hope of trying to preserve the work that had been done over the last year I may have put my name forward and agreed to organize the attendees for each of the raids we've got on our calendar.
Now the only complications that there are include the fact that other officers at the moment are pushing to have a committee choose the signups which I don't believe will work with the way our guild runs and we're looking to start having official runs (rather than guild pugs) into Trial of the Crusader while still working towards clearing Ulduar.
The trick, when it comes down to it, will be trying to organize raids which all members who want to can go on, and that also maintain a good chance of defeating the encounters and not have a frustrating night running up repair bills.
Over the next few weeks we'll see how well this works out, whether the guild copes with me doing this organization and whether I'm able to cope with organizing it.
May the Earth Mother be with me.
There's been some changes in our guild with GMs stepping down one of whom happened to be the raid leader. Obviously this left a void and in the hope of trying to preserve the work that had been done over the last year I may have put my name forward and agreed to organize the attendees for each of the raids we've got on our calendar.
Now the only complications that there are include the fact that other officers at the moment are pushing to have a committee choose the signups which I don't believe will work with the way our guild runs and we're looking to start having official runs (rather than guild pugs) into Trial of the Crusader while still working towards clearing Ulduar.
The trick, when it comes down to it, will be trying to organize raids which all members who want to can go on, and that also maintain a good chance of defeating the encounters and not have a frustrating night running up repair bills.
Over the next few weeks we'll see how well this works out, whether the guild copes with me doing this organization and whether I'm able to cope with organizing it.
May the Earth Mother be with me.
Saturday, 12 September 2009
I remember this place...
After a serious case of real life kicking my backside up and down the corridor of my office I've managed to get back into playing a bit and hitting some raid groups.
Having slightly burnt out grinding the Argent Tournament to get the Crusader title it's been nice to play at a slightly more relaxed pace. The badge changes have meant that there are plenty of groups forming in the guild to do daily quests and it's been possible to catch up with gear and then start boshing my way through Ulduar redeeming the keepers and generally seeing the bad guys off.
Mutilate is still proving to be a lot of fun though I have switched my offspec back to combat swords, currently I'm using some rep reward swords but I'm hoping for some drops which will make it more raid viable, especially for fights where different poisons or the combat abilities are required.
Our guild is about to start scheduling runs into Trial of the Crusader and I'm feeling good about trying my blades in there and hopefully picking up some shiny new ones.
Not entirely sure what direction (if any) I'm going to take with future posts so they might be random ramblings or they might have some kind of theme. Hopefully there'll be a few readers out there to find out.
Having slightly burnt out grinding the Argent Tournament to get the Crusader title it's been nice to play at a slightly more relaxed pace. The badge changes have meant that there are plenty of groups forming in the guild to do daily quests and it's been possible to catch up with gear and then start boshing my way through Ulduar redeeming the keepers and generally seeing the bad guys off.
Mutilate is still proving to be a lot of fun though I have switched my offspec back to combat swords, currently I'm using some rep reward swords but I'm hoping for some drops which will make it more raid viable, especially for fights where different poisons or the combat abilities are required.
Our guild is about to start scheduling runs into Trial of the Crusader and I'm feeling good about trying my blades in there and hopefully picking up some shiny new ones.
Not entirely sure what direction (if any) I'm going to take with future posts so they might be random ramblings or they might have some kind of theme. Hopefully there'll be a few readers out there to find out.
Saturday, 25 April 2009
Can we get some adds with a little less whirlwind
Rounding up and AoEing trash in instances and raids isn't a massive problem for rogues these days, no cooldown on Fan of Knives and a couple of slow daggers means we can easily keep up with mages and warlocks.
However there is a certain ability that warriors are fond of in PvP that several trash mobs are also keen to use. I'm talking about Whirlwind, something that will kill me 9 times out of 10, and quite frankly it's getting on my nerves.
I'm not talking about remove the ability, that would be unnecessary, but can we stop giving it to trash mobs that the tank expects to round up and be burned down at the same time.
Reasons are this:
This came to light the other night when we were attacking the military wing in Naxx. Our melee DPS included me and 2 death knights and unless I got lucky with evasion or the healers were on the ball I died on nearly every trash pull compared to the plate wearers who laughed it off. This slows the raid while I'm rezzed and buff up and quite frankly annoys the bejesus out of me. In the end I resorted to try and train ranged skills and this isn't fun.
I mention this now because of the Razorscale fight in Ulduar which has Iron Dwarf adds during the air phase and the highest priority one to kill does a, guess what, whirlwind attack. At least this one we should be able to run away from, but that still limits dps on a fight that relies on killing things quickly.
This is probably a personal moan, and I expect QQ comments should anyone choose to do so. But when raid trash is designed to be rounded up and killed en mass it seems slightly unfair that classes with low armor that need to stand in the middle (I'm including Arcane mages in this) can be killed very quickly because one guy decides to spin around with his big sword.
However there is a certain ability that warriors are fond of in PvP that several trash mobs are also keen to use. I'm talking about Whirlwind, something that will kill me 9 times out of 10, and quite frankly it's getting on my nerves.
I'm not talking about remove the ability, that would be unnecessary, but can we stop giving it to trash mobs that the tank expects to round up and be burned down at the same time.
Reasons are this:
- When doing single target dps, Quartz will show me when whirlwind is being cast and I can run the heck away.
- When mobs are being tanked away from each other, a mob spinning around is a good indication that it's performing whirlwind.
This came to light the other night when we were attacking the military wing in Naxx. Our melee DPS included me and 2 death knights and unless I got lucky with evasion or the healers were on the ball I died on nearly every trash pull compared to the plate wearers who laughed it off. This slows the raid while I'm rezzed and buff up and quite frankly annoys the bejesus out of me. In the end I resorted to try and train ranged skills and this isn't fun.
I mention this now because of the Razorscale fight in Ulduar which has Iron Dwarf adds during the air phase and the highest priority one to kill does a, guess what, whirlwind attack. At least this one we should be able to run away from, but that still limits dps on a fight that relies on killing things quickly.
This is probably a personal moan, and I expect QQ comments should anyone choose to do so. But when raid trash is designed to be rounded up and killed en mass it seems slightly unfair that classes with low armor that need to stand in the middle (I'm including Arcane mages in this) can be killed very quickly because one guy decides to spin around with his big sword.
Wednesday, 22 April 2009
Patch 3.1 Fallout
The big patch has landed (and was quickly followed up by a smaller one) which has brought many changes and additions to the game. Here's a quick run down of the major ones that have affected me and my thoughts.
Fishing dailies
Having leveled fishing up to 450 trying to catch the rat and fishing up all the coins in the fountain it's quite nice to have something else to fish for with random rewards. There's only been three of the five quests offered so far but I've received the jeweled fishing pole, the weather beaten fishing hat, a new fishing line and some vendor trash which has netted a tidy sum.
Dual Specs
I've purchased this for Crash so far, which does provide a slightly pricey achievement. I've stuck with an assassination spec for raiding and have a subtlety one for mucking about in PvP and soloing. Personally it's just a nice thing to have, but for classes which can do more than one thing it does add an extra dimension to putting groups together and changing group makeup once you're in the raid.
Assassination Spec
The two big changes I've noticed are the Hunger for Blood change, which is a blessing given how much I hated having to try and remember to refresh the buff within 30seconds. Now once a bleed is there I can put the buff up and given Rupture up almost constantly it's less of a problem to refresh it when I have spare energy. Secondly the changes to poisons to proc based on weapon speed rather than a flat figure means it's possible to use a 1.8 speed dagger in the main hand again rather than trying to find the fastest available, and not necessarily finding them in the raids we're hitting as a guild.
Subtlety Spec
I hadn't played subtlety since TBC when I spec'd for a blast at the battlegrounds to grind honor for the season weapons when they were the best available to the 10 man raider. However now for soloing and hitting battlegrounds or WinterGrasp it feels really good. Premiditation, Ambush, Eviscerate is generally enough to reduce most mobs to tears if not kill them outright.
Ulduar
Our guild is clearing Naxx fairly regularly now and so far we've had one night to have a play around in this new instance. The Flame Leviathan fight is an interesting diversion and we've managed to down Razorscale. However the lack of spawns in the air phase of that fight means I don't think we've done it properly, but at least know what not to stand in and the tanks know what to do during the landed phase. This appears to be a tougher raid than Naxx which means hopefully the challenge will remain for longer. Plus there's always the hard modes to beat once we've killed the bosses on normal.
Argent Tournament
I loved the Isle of Quel'Danas when it opened, especially considering the Blood Elf lore surrounding it, and worked hard to get to exalted with the Shattered Sun Offensive in order to purchase the title once our server unlocked phase 4.
The new tournament appears to be more of the same and I'm eagerly working my way through the quests. So far I've managed to become the exalted champion of Silvermoon and am currently working on Thunder Bluff as I need the most rep with them. Once I've become a champion with them I'll move onto the Trolls which should then net me the Ambassador title while I work my way to the Crusader title that I really want for when we face Arthas.
Non-combat Pets
Finally the Horde have a way of getting hold of some pets that were only available to the Alliance. The Westfall chicken is obtained by buying the seed from the farmer in Brill and then spamming a /chicken emote at a nearby chicken until the quest becomes available. The Sprite Darter Hatchling is another kill grind through Feralas. This was a lot quicker and easier than any of the dragon whelps, twenty minutes of running around and the egg dropped.
I'm planning to write some more posts about my experiences on the bosses in the new raid as and when we hit them.
Fishing dailies
Having leveled fishing up to 450 trying to catch the rat and fishing up all the coins in the fountain it's quite nice to have something else to fish for with random rewards. There's only been three of the five quests offered so far but I've received the jeweled fishing pole, the weather beaten fishing hat, a new fishing line and some vendor trash which has netted a tidy sum.
Dual Specs
I've purchased this for Crash so far, which does provide a slightly pricey achievement. I've stuck with an assassination spec for raiding and have a subtlety one for mucking about in PvP and soloing. Personally it's just a nice thing to have, but for classes which can do more than one thing it does add an extra dimension to putting groups together and changing group makeup once you're in the raid.
Assassination Spec
The two big changes I've noticed are the Hunger for Blood change, which is a blessing given how much I hated having to try and remember to refresh the buff within 30seconds. Now once a bleed is there I can put the buff up and given Rupture up almost constantly it's less of a problem to refresh it when I have spare energy. Secondly the changes to poisons to proc based on weapon speed rather than a flat figure means it's possible to use a 1.8 speed dagger in the main hand again rather than trying to find the fastest available, and not necessarily finding them in the raids we're hitting as a guild.
Subtlety Spec
I hadn't played subtlety since TBC when I spec'd for a blast at the battlegrounds to grind honor for the season weapons when they were the best available to the 10 man raider. However now for soloing and hitting battlegrounds or WinterGrasp it feels really good. Premiditation, Ambush, Eviscerate is generally enough to reduce most mobs to tears if not kill them outright.
Ulduar
Our guild is clearing Naxx fairly regularly now and so far we've had one night to have a play around in this new instance. The Flame Leviathan fight is an interesting diversion and we've managed to down Razorscale. However the lack of spawns in the air phase of that fight means I don't think we've done it properly, but at least know what not to stand in and the tanks know what to do during the landed phase. This appears to be a tougher raid than Naxx which means hopefully the challenge will remain for longer. Plus there's always the hard modes to beat once we've killed the bosses on normal.
Argent Tournament
I loved the Isle of Quel'Danas when it opened, especially considering the Blood Elf lore surrounding it, and worked hard to get to exalted with the Shattered Sun Offensive in order to purchase the title once our server unlocked phase 4.
The new tournament appears to be more of the same and I'm eagerly working my way through the quests. So far I've managed to become the exalted champion of Silvermoon and am currently working on Thunder Bluff as I need the most rep with them. Once I've become a champion with them I'll move onto the Trolls which should then net me the Ambassador title while I work my way to the Crusader title that I really want for when we face Arthas.
Non-combat Pets
Finally the Horde have a way of getting hold of some pets that were only available to the Alliance. The Westfall chicken is obtained by buying the seed from the farmer in Brill and then spamming a /chicken emote at a nearby chicken until the quest becomes available. The Sprite Darter Hatchling is another kill grind through Feralas. This was a lot quicker and easier than any of the dragon whelps, twenty minutes of running around and the egg dropped.
I'm planning to write some more posts about my experiences on the bosses in the new raid as and when we hit them.
Wednesday, 25 March 2009
The one where Crash writes a catch up post
By the Sunwell, where does the time go when everything appears to be happening at once.
Real life has been intruding quite a lot recently which has meant I've not had the time to write as much and playing has been mostly in fits and starts as and when time has allowed.
Some notable stuff that has happened:
Our guild is moving on to attempt Malygos at the moment, and once I get another couple of upgrades then I'll be aiming to stab the big blue a few times.
The only other big decisions at the moment are whether I'll go for dual specs on both characters, or just Medrare in case I decide to scratch an itch to try healing, plus working out how the class changes will affect how I play each of my characters. I've avoiding getting too attached or repulsed by any of the changes as they get announced as chances are they'll change before ever hitting the live server.
Catch you soon....
Real life has been intruding quite a lot recently which has meant I've not had the time to write as much and playing has been mostly in fits and starts as and when time has allowed.
Some notable stuff that has happened:
- I finally got round to sticking my head in Obsidian Sanctum and have defeated Sartharion.
- I've defeated every boss in Naxxramas, and picked up a piece of T7.
- Chef Crashandburn has been seen around the place adding cooking, to the list of professions at 450 (Skinning, Leatherworking and First Aid being the others).
- Medrare has dinged 80 and has successfully tanked a heroic, grabbing a staff at the same time.
Our guild is moving on to attempt Malygos at the moment, and once I get another couple of upgrades then I'll be aiming to stab the big blue a few times.
The only other big decisions at the moment are whether I'll go for dual specs on both characters, or just Medrare in case I decide to scratch an itch to try healing, plus working out how the class changes will affect how I play each of my characters. I've avoiding getting too attached or repulsed by any of the changes as they get announced as chances are they'll change before ever hitting the live server.
Catch you soon....
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