WoW Comics: Pets, Holidays and Achievements Edition

A few classic Dark Legacy Comics

Pets and Orphans, Unite!

Achievements!

Loremaster

Through The Looking Glass - I love how DLC comics often have the perspective of NPCs, humanizing the game mechanics to point out how rude or dismissive most players are.

Critter Glitter!

I found this among the many old screenshots from when Wrath of the Lich King first launched. Fun with arctic wildlife :)

Children's Week!!! (Don't Be A Dick)

I am getting seriously annoyed with the attitude of most WoW players these days, and here is a prime example, in story form:

I clear my way through a tower in Alterac Valley with my Children's Week orphan in tow - capping a tower in AV is one of the 4 goals for the "School of Hard Knocks" PvP achievement for this world holiday. Another player follows me up, also with an orphan out - I know he/she is also making a bolt for the flag and this is a slight annoyance, since I was there first, put in the effort of killing the guards that were aggroed, etc. However, a rogue without an orphan zoomed in, beat us both to the flag (as I was still getting pelted by arrows) and proceeded to cap it even though both of us with orphans out tried to petition him to stop. I would've been a bit annoyed if the other achievement seeker had snuck by me and stolen my opportunity, but to have someone blatantly block our efforts was just plain rude. This experience was followed by several other failures on my account - getting stuck in combat so that I couldn't summon my orphan (while another rogue capped the flag without an orphan despite the protests of yet another person trying to actually do the achievement), trying to get credit for recapping a tower on defense (that should really count), getting my face smashed in by a ret paladin intent on interupting my flag cap. Fail, fail, fail. People seriously need to learn how to SHARE in this game.

Thanks to Alliance players making an extra effort to kill players attempting to cap towers with their orphans out, and thanks to other Horde players being dicks, it took a number of AV games before I was finally lucky enough to sneak into a tower with my orphan and cap without anyone noticing.

Achievements like this would be a total blast if people were not so dead set on cock blocking other players for fun. I know a lot of other people had nice cooperative experiences with this set of achievements, such as teams allowing opposing players into their Warsong Gulch base to pick up a flag, drop it (without being killed or attacked) and repeat until the team completed the achievement. It reminded me a little bit of my favorite pasttime when WoW first released - cobbling together simple phrases from numbers, symbols and punctuation in order to bypass the linguistic filter meant to keep Horde and Alliance players from communicating. It was hilarious and entertaining to see gamers put forth the effort to think their way around the game's intended social system. I wish I knew where I put the screenshots I took long, long ago of my Night Elf hunter chatting with some random Horde player as we assisted each other with a difficult group quest...

Children's Week!!!

It's finally time for one of my favorite World of Warcraft holiday's - children's week! With the addition of holiday achievements, holidays have become a lot more tedious but also rewarding. In the past, there was no true incentive to participate beyond the goofy and often temporary rewards, but Children's week introduced a great permanent tangible reward - pets! I am a big fan of Speedy the turtle - he is adorable and has the cute ironic name so I always select him as my companion reward for completing the questline on every character. But this year has flown by, and it's my second Spring on Spirestone - I get to select a second pet! I'm torn between the adorable Mr. Wiggles the pig and Whiskers the rat. I wish I could have them both without waiting another year! Also available to me this year are Peanut the baby Dranei mount thingy, and Sleepy Willy. What to do!

As for actual achievements, those for Noble Garden had a slightly desperate "we couldn't think of anything so go pretend to be the Cadbury bunny" feel. Children's week's achievements seem more logical and humorous - Bad Example, Home Alone, Daily Chores, etc.

Happy Holidays! Part 2

It's almost time for Children's Week! I can't wait - two more pets and some more achievement points! It's silly that I'm so excited about getting a little rat pet (whiskers is so cute!) but I am. Speedy is still my all time favorite pet, but I can't wait to get whiskers too.

It's disappointing when holidays overlap, since that creates long stretches without any special events, but this is a short overlap and Noble Garden (Easter) is a pretty simple, straightforward event so it shouldn't be too difficult to finalize early.

Argent Tournament

When I first heard that the new content patch was going to include (in addition to the desperately awaited new raid instance Ulduar) a new daily quest hub with vanity pets and mounts as rewards, I admit to being extremely excited. I've always had a love-hate relationship with WoW, but the small changes they make to accomodate better gameplay, like adding the pet and mount books, are what really make the game stand out from other MMOs. Just as an aside note, if they added in player housing I would probably be hooked for life - this was the single coolest "extra" feature of Dark Age of Camelot.

Logging in on patch day, I made my way to the Argent Tournament grounds first thing - I wanted to get started on my way to glorious new vanity pets. I was surprised with what I found when I got there. I appreciate that Blizzard is attempting to level the playing field with dailies and quests that utilize vehicles, but jousting is far too annoying for a daily quest. As a player who has a healer, I understand how frustrating and slow it can be to get anything done on your own. My holy priest never managed to finish rep farming with Burning Crusade factions due to her inability to accomplish much on her own and my unwillingness to put another person on the hook for my dailies. However, patch 3.1 also introduced dual specs - effectively every healer class can now chose a dps spec as well, allowing them to complete their daily quests without trouble.

So, instead of making things easier for healers to do these dailies, they've made it tougher for everyone else.The idea behind the jousting is fun, but the process is slow and frustrating - especially for someone like me who tends to complete game dailies while I do my RL dailies - making dinner, putting away groceries, checking email and tidying my apartment, etc. Once you start jousting against an opponent you need to finish. There's little room for stop and go, and a lot of time needed for travel across the map in order to complete all the quests. And unlike other dailies that you can pick and chose from, you really must complete all the dailies. I made the mistake of skipping one quest on the second day, and as a result I had to wait a full extra day before I could proceed to the next set of dailies. Missing one daily set me back quite far.

I'm confused as to why they implemented a massive quest hub that requires players to control units rather than just completing traditional gameplay based quests. I play a hunter for a reason - I like playing a hunter. The jousting controls are annoying to me, and I greatly prefer old style dailies. I appreciate that Blizzard is attempting to provide a broad spectrum of quest styles, but these are dailies that literally must be done every day - so something that is pleasantly repeatable is necessary. Not something that annoys you before you even start doing them. I dread these dailies, but I have to do them anyway because I desire the rewards. I am already sick of the quests and I don't even have enough marks to purchase a single vanity pet!

That being said, I have progressed pretty well so far. I am an Exalted Champion of Silvermoon, my home city. In just 2 more days I will be an Exalted Champion of the Sen'Jin (horray - raptor mount here I come!), and after that I'll tackle Thunder Bluff. I can't help myself, the flamingo pet is probably the best addition. I mean, it's certainly better than a MAGICAL BROOM...unless the broom splits up like the Sorcerer's Apprentice...then it's cool. Creepy, but cool. Unfortunately it's not nearly as cool as the baby restoration druid pet.

I have to say that Blizzard really dropped the ball on balancing the pets, though - the Alliance pets are much neater than the Horde equivalents. Here's hoping there are more pet rewards added in the future.

Happy Holidays!

It's Easter all over again, and I'm going to punch a bunny if I don't get my elegant dress tonight. I opened hundreds of eggs yesterday and still have yet to loot one!

The bunny sticks are awesome though - I love turning people into bunnies and then chasing them around Dalaran as my cat (using Eyes of the Beast).

In The Cards

I am usually not the type of person to comment on my own luck or lack thereof, but it occurred to me after a second week of trying to finish off my bravery deck that my in-game luck just might be of the bad variety. 

Case #1: Firefly

I killed 1,400 + fireflies in Zangarmarsh in an attempt to capture my own cute little firefly pet (still flying!), with no luck. I was given fireflies by luckier (and very kind) guildies and still haven't managed to acquire my own!

Case #2: Greatness Deck

I broke down and bought an 8 Sunday night, but was unable to come up with a 6 in time to finish my deck. The Darkmoon Faire will be back at the end of April, so here's hoping my luck improves before then! I should especially thank Singeslayer for milling all my herbs and making all my dye. He's spent easily a few hours helping me out with this, and unfortunately for him I'm still not done. He had no idea what hell he was getting himself into (added bonus for me!!).

Horray for Pets and Mounts!

I finally managed to finish getting items from Oracle rep - my proto-drake mount is massive and very green! The proto-drake whelp is adorable too. So finally off to farm Frenzyheart rep for achievements.

Still I am lagging embarrassingly far behind thanks to my month or so break - I need ~10 or so achievements in both versions of Naxxramas, and a handful more 5 man achievements as well. I'm only at 5610 points.... /sadface

Achievements Are Addictive...

...and other totally obvious observations.

In the month leading up to the release of Wrath of the Lich King, I was planning a lot of things - replaying Final Fantasy XII (because I'm such a sap), running myself out of new Sudoku puzzles for my DS, and tackling the utterly MASSIVE backup of reading material that's been collecting on my bookshelves ever since I first began playing MMORPGs years and years ago. Unfortunately for me, achievement points are exactly the sort of thing that I can't resist. So instead of crossing a few books off my list and perhaps finishing one of the many old PS2 games I never got around to finishing (somehow Okami and Odin Sphere have just been lingering half finished for years) I found myself crawling all over the world of Azeroth - uncovering every last crevice of the world for the "Explorer" title and ugliest tabard ever created, diving back into beginner instances and old world raid content.

There was - and still is - a real feeling of accomplishment when polishing off some of these more difficult items. It's not just the competetive spirit that keeps me jockeying to accumulate more points than other players on the server - it's a desire to check these items off the list, clear my achievement interface of items "to-do" and fill it with items "done". Blizzard is brilliant for tapping into this type of psychology to keep people occupied in the lull that precedes a major content update...evil bastards!

Oh the vanity...

I have loved vanity pets from the onset of WoW, but due to the limitations of bank space, and each pet taking up a slot, I have never kept many on each character. The implementation of the pet "book" to store vanity pets was the excuse I had been waiting for to begin collecting. And once I begin collecting something, well, I don't stop until my collection is complete no matter what it takes! Had it not been for the achievement, I probably would have been able to limit myself to the cutest and rarest pets, but my desire to reach the 50 pet mark for Stinker the skunk meant I had to compromise a bit, adding snakes, cockroaches, and chickens to my little family of dragon whelplings, cats, and collector's edition pets.

It took me the better part of a week's worth of dedicated farming to land myself a firefly vanity pet. After mercilessly slaying over 1,400 little digital bugs with a 1/1000 random drop rate, I still never saw a single pet drop. Instead two seperate and very generous guild mates, upon hearing my nightly firefly count rise without any luck both managed to net their own captured fireflies in record time, several hundred kills at most! And both generously donated their prizes to my cause, which was really very sweet! I really do love my pets, and the fireflies are one of the cutest pets out there (not to mention that they are one of the geekiest as well, with the adorable Firefly reference "still flying").

So while I continue to doubt my random number generator luck, I have no doubts that I know some of the sweetest and most thoughtful guys out there! Thanks Khygar and Bhaird! Since I am writing this after the fact, I should mention that Bhaird also donated a black tabby cat to my menagerie. Kitty! I hope to net a few fireflies as I level up my alts in the Outlands, so that I can regift them to the generous guys who insisted I take these cute bugs off their hands. Let the counting recommence!

Achieve This!

As I suspect that the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion "Wrath of the Lich King" will weigh heavily on my random musings for the next aeon, I feel the need to begin the process of dissecting the transitional experience before I become completely anesthetized to the changes. First and foremost on my thoughts in the last week is a concept familiar to anyone who has ever played an MMO or RPG style game: farming. It is in the front of my mind, as I have spent the last few days killing hundreds (really, hundreds. Eight hundred and thirty-eight to be completely accurate up to the moment) of firefly mobs for the slim chance of obtaining my own cute little firefly pet and the adorable skunk rewarded for collecting 50 vanity pets. Every time I get sucked into "farming mode" for one reason or another, I am reminded of the ways in which MMOs function as work rather than play. Play is an open ended concept, and carries with it both implied unpredictability and enjoyment. Work is directed and focused, and though it can be fulfilling it is not primarily regarded as enjoyable. MMO's somehow manage to fuse together work and play into a system that functions as both entertainment and labor, and that dichotomy serves as my primary academic interest in the genre.

Having deliberately and agonizingly avoided all information about WoTLK, I was unaware about the new system of achievements that is being added to the game. Early last week when my curiosity overcame my better judgement I stumbled upon a listing of these various achievements. The more I read, the more and more amused I became at the magnitude and intense time commitment some would require. The sheer size of the list is impressive (nearly one thousand different achievements are currently listed, though this includes "double" listings for many, one for each faction) and while I am eager to check them off one by one, I am left to wonder why this is being added to the game.

While it's true that this new system provides motivation and reward for the completion of tasks that might otherwise remain incomplete (and hey, some are just plain silly fun), it also firmly cements the cycle that ties most serious MMO players to a game title: an unattainable, perpetual goal. The current list of achievements, as long and exhaustive as it is, will likely never be complete. It is a system that can very easily be expanded infinitely. It is both a whimsical diversion to fill empty hours in-game and a devious method of keeping players addicted. In the aimless months that typically precede a major patch or expansion, many players desert a game, and not all of them return. The timing for the release of this feature, exactly 1 month before the expansion, leads me to believe it has been orchestrated to serve as a tool to keep players task oriented and engaged with the game. And hey, it's working. After all, I did kill eight hundred and thirty-eight fireflies, and I'm still going strong - in a caffeine induced, sleep deprived, dry-eyed stupor.