Reflections on Foolish Love

Another seasonal event came and gone, so its naturally time for reflecting upon the experience.

To recap some of the earlier reflections:
1) Merrymaker - big win. Fun combo of group and solo play. Very accessible.
2) Elder - pretty good, big hickup that you are forced to run a heroic, and therefore are forced to level up to 80.

So, Love Fools out there, what'd you think of this one?

I'll sum it up my experience with a word....

RNG

Random Number Generator.

If the RNG granted you one or more Bags of Candy, and then the RNG again favored you by giving you each of the required candies, you probably liked this one.

Looking at some of the achievements I dinged, you'd think the RNG was a big fan of me this weekend.

I got the Black Dress, which isn't required for the title, but is supposedly hella rare.

I got the permanent companion pet guy, which isn't required for the title, but is supposedly hella rare.

6 Picnic Baskets, although you only need one. Where's Yogi when I need him?

I even got two bags of candy.

Every single achievement associated with the event. Almost.

One silly piece of candy.

"You're mine" or whatever. Just a single piece of candy missing out of the pile.

So perhaps my assessment of the event is skewed. I'll try to remain objective...

The Good

1) A variety of activities, mostly just some talking to NPC's, which isn't too intense, good for a relaxing morning or two.

2) I don't know why, but I've grown to enjoy the ones where you have to locate one of each class/race combination. For Alliance on my server, Troll Rogue seemed to be the universal goocher. What was your toughest one to find?

3) Voting for your favorite Faction Leader. (see more on this below). Fun. Although I like Ironforge the best, I had to stick to my Nelf roots and go Darnassus.

4) Much less running around than other events. I did enjoy the exploration side of the Elder coins, but I'm also happy that most of the traveling for this event was portal to city / hearth back from city.

5) Mending Hearts. When I first thought about this achievement, 20 mendings, i was annoyed. Once I got into the groove, it was kinda fun, in a totally killing time way.

The Bad

0) Too Short - lol, that's what she said. 5 days? 6 days? If you had anything else going on this weekend, such as RL valentines day for the many many folks who choose to embrace a commercialized event in which corporations tell us to spend money in an effort to tell the important people that we love them, then you were definitely hard pressed to get it done. This loses major accessibility points in my book. But, if you say I Love You on a regular basis, say...via boosting runs, you're free of the normal pressures of val's day XD

1) Like a Plague - Thursday and Friday night in major cities was worse than when the Plague hit right before WotLK's release. Every coconut on the server was running all over the place. /General and /Trade were 1000% less readable than normal. If you're going for "game altering experience" then this was win, but those first two nights were intolerable IMO.

2) Un-Mendable Hearts - The overall mechanic of of the broken heart and requiring another player to mend, kinda fun. However, trying to finish off the Darnassus gift on a saturday morning, when your morning is 3 hours before the server's morning? Awful. I got a broken heart with no mender, had to abandon the pursuit until much later. I understand the "lets get players to interact" part of it, but would have been nice to have something other than a 1 hour timeout to reset this without blowing my hearth to go to Dalaran for a mending.

3) Shooting rockets - Ok, I get the reference to firing rockets too fast and what not. Hardy har har. But these add very little value. Map to action button, spam button, spam mouse click for ground area target. Complete achievement. But whilst going for speed, you barely even get to enjoy the visual of the rockets firing, which I think takes away from the experience.

4) Voting for Faction Leaders - I already said I like this one, so what's bad about it? Nearly zero publicity. They should put a NPC running around in Dalaran, constantly barking out the standings. Make people actually (A) aware of the standings, and (B) sorta want to contribute to it. Put a massive statue of the currently winning faction leader in front of both banks in Dal, updated hourly or something and the winner gets to keep their statue in place for a month. Make this stuff relevant. I think the only actual benefit is the winner gets some buff-giving NPC tucked away in some old-world capital city for a week. /bah

5) Too Many Items - I think the number of items was excessive. Sure, I'm nitpicking, but there were too many bag slots required, there were too many Icons that look identical or nearly so, too many differences between soulbound, non-soulbound but you must conjure it so no trading, non-soulbound but you can trade it, on and on.

6) 1 Minute Cooldown on Fragrances - Why? Just why? I mean, the whole concept of a seasonal event is a time sink that's mildly entertaining. Why require one minute between applying Perfume and Cologne?

The Ugly

Already said it. In the end, completion was entirely RNG based, which combined with the shortened duration of the event, is fail in my book.

Even if I had gotten the last candy, I'd still be disliking this aspect. But not quite as much :-)


The other ugly: Ganking Coconuts in Gurubashi

Four horde just stayed there for hours ganking anybody trying to pity the fool in Stranglethorn Vale. Again, I know the whole concept of the event is a waste of time, but this brings it to a new level.

Luckily in addition to being stupid, they also had slow reflexes, so I was easily able to spawn, drop the fool, pity the fool, and even make some headway towards the exit before they got me again.

And the Paladin who tried to chase me down, thinking crusader aura is the shiznit? Lol. Mammoth with Aspect of the Pack runs just as fast as you. I kited him nearly all the way to Booty Bay, /waving and /cheering the whole way, before he realized he wasn't going to catch me.

Bottom Line

Some fun random activities.

Potential for inter-faction and inter-race competition via leader votes.

Too much dependence on random numbers.

Accessibility cut short due to short duration.

Maybe a 5 out of 10?