Yesterday I dinged the For The Alliance achievement for killing all the Horde leaders.
So I share some quickies with you....
/trade LFM for the alliance - Logged in and saw the usual routine in /trade, some coconut is putting together a raid on Horde leaders. But I had a few hours to kill and my only real "goal" was to do some Jousting dailies and check the AH. Only one guildie on at the time and he was actually signed up to do it already, so I figured "what the hey".
Fountain Coins - Small aside. When you're in a raid group and cannot do any questing, fishing for coins is a not tooo unreasonable use of your time.
Staging Area - Meet up in Astranaar. Brings back old memories. When originally leveling, I had Amava hearthed to Astranaar for so much longer than would make actual sense. I was questing all over Azeroth, but would always hearth back to Astranaar and actually physically click on one of the beds upstairs to lay down before logging. Ah, the memories. Noob.
Yelling, Saying, and Emoting - One sure way (or rather, three sure ways) to ruin the element of surprise is to /y, /s, and /e (or any of the built-in emotes that don't require use of /e). Although the opposite faction might not be able to translate your words (kek), they will see the fact that you are nearby. Loose lips sink ships.
Don't Aggro The Guards - We assembled just outside the side gate to Orgrimmar with the instruction of "dont aggro the guards". I was fearing that this is when the PuG attempt would all start to unravel, before it even began. All it takes is one coconut to pull a guard and then hell breaks loose and we become a disorganized mob and fail. Kudos to the team for showing enough discipline to hold still and wait for instruction to commence the attack.
No Fuss - Not a whole lot to say, somewhat uneventful however lots of adrenaline. Most of the uncertainty was whether the PuG would collapse and we'd waste our time. Getting lost here and there added to the excitement.
The Route - Assemble outside Org. Kill Thrall. Port to Theramore and run to Thunderbluff. Brief moment of panic as half the raid got split up by taking wrong elevators. Kill Cow leader. Portal to Shatt and then portal to Isle of Quel Danas. Fly to Zul'Aman. Kill Blood Elf. Portal to Ironforge. Fly to Chillwind. Get lost trying to find sewer entrance. Get lost inside Undercity. Kill Undead boss. Hearth to Dalaran and check email.
Escorting a Friend - My friend was actually dualboxing the raid, playing his healer and /following his rogue. Traveler's Tundra Mammoth, FTW. Made transport of his toons so much easier.
War Bear - And I now have a Bear mount that I'll probably ride for a few days and then return to my Cobalt War Talbuk which remains my favorite mount. Something about the tall narrow shape and the hoof sound fx I like the best.
Better late than never - Some would say I was 6 months late dinging the achievement, and to them I would say "suck it".
The Number Nine - Nine honor kills. Yes. Nine (9). Only nine hk's in the process of killing all four Horde bosses. Talk about an organized resistance.
Showing posts with label Achievements. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Achievements. Show all posts
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Thursday, April 9, 2009
A Potential Twist to Immortal / Undying
I won't really bother with a full-blown post about last nights Immortal attempt, or the associated emotions.
But I will sum it up: I went in not really even thinking about it. The butterflies are definitely gone. Two and a half wings later with no deaths, my interest was piqued. The first false-start on Gothic in four months of raiding, causing one player to be locked on the dead side and the rest of the raid on the live side showed me just how easy it is to piss this one away. Butterflies swatted, dead, kaput. They shall not be allowed to return.
Moving beyond last night, the experience over the past few weeks had me thinking about the overall concept of the Immortal.
(A) I've read a bunch of posts and comments to posts on other blogs that people want the achievement to be for them personally and not for the team. As long as you personally survive each boss fight during one raid lockout, you ding the achieve.
(B) I've read a bunch of posts and comments to posts on other blogs that people want the achievement to count for each boss individually, similar to the 20-man achievement. This week you do a clean kill of Anubrikan and ding that one part of the overall goal. Next week you do a clean kill of Heigan and ding that part of the goal, and so on with each boss being a discrete unit, until you eventually complete them all.
(A) BAH, and (B) DOUBLE BAH
The people voting for (A) are not team players. They should go play Legend of Zelda or something where your game only depends upon your own play. Raiding is a team sport, whether you choose to believe it or not.
The people voting for (B) probably don't deserve a "double bah", but I don't subscribe to that one either.
Although the Butterflies are dead, I still believe in the spirit of the achievement.
As the raid progressed last night, and we killed boss after boss with no deaths, my excitement level was definitely increasing.
That's a good thing, I'm here for excitement, so even if the disappointment of that first death is a nuisance, I still value the experience of the night.
An achievement like Immortal / Undying is trying to encourage us to do what we're here to do anyway, but only do it better. Nobody enters a fight thinking "ok, i'd like to die on this one." Well, maybe there is a strat for a Warlock to commit suicide at the beginning of Malygos P3 so he can cast some curse or debuff or something before he plummets to his death, but that's a bit counter-intuitive and an exception to the rule.
I'm not a role player, per se, although I do suffer from mood swings that make my Druid Moodyswinger's name an extension of my own personality.
But I can empathize with the RP aspect of a toon dying.
Picture yourself and a band of 24 comrades-in-arms venture off into a dungeon in search of treasure or thwarting evil or rescuing a princess or whatever.
One of you dies in combat. Hell, maybe one of you dies in his sleep. Doesn't really matter, does it?
You're dead.
Makes it pretty hard to enjoy the treasure that the dragon was hoarding or a passionate night with the princess who just fell in love with her heroic rescuer, yes?
Tobold recently wrote about some of his joys and griefs with raiding. One aspect I'll focus on here is the concept of exploring fights blind with no pre-knowledge of boss abilities, contrasted with the execution part of a fight where you have full knowledge of the boss abilities and also techniques used in the past to successfully defeat the boss.
Execution and performance is what I'm all about.
I recognize that not all players share that view, but for me, its all about planning our fight and then performing under the pressure of combat. Mix in just enough random effects to require some improvisation on the fly, and tune it to be very demanding on each player to deliver flawless execution.
Our strategy and approach should be robust enough to mitigate the risks of all the little things that can go wrong.
Sometimes you randomly D/C. Call verizon and have them check your line, maybe that's busted. Stop downloading nudie flicks while playing.
Sometimes the boss does random things that can get ugly. KT iceblock is one such example, the target is random. However, your strategy should plan for this by informing raiders to space out and then during the execution it is up to each player to be aware of their surroundings and find a safe spot amongst the rest of the team.
Sometimes your cat steps on the keyboard. Give him cement boots and throw him in the harbor. Dogs, FTW!
Having a reward for flawless execution is a Good Thing.
I'm fine with the fact that my Immortal achievement is dependent upon 24 other people. Success as part of my team is what keeps me logging in and not playing a single-player RTS or RP game.
I'm fine with the fact that my Immortal achievement requires intense focus and attention to detail across an extended period of time and is bound to a single raid ID.
But, here's my beef with the current way Immortal works.
Once you fail, that's it.
There is no longer any benefit for flawless performance during that raid ID. No reason to keep trying. And in fact, the de-motivation that comes with failing Immortal encourages sloppier behavior since people don't care about the run as much once Immortal is disqualified.
Sure, people who die suffer a slightly larger repair bill. Also, people who die on a boss slow us down a bit because they have to rez/run back and rebuff (but we're looting during this time anyways, so this is minor).
Immortal should remain unchanged. You got this one right, but...
Blizzard needs to add a separate, parallel, persistent reward for each flawless boss kill. "Separate" means it has nothing to do with Immortal, the two are totally independent. "Parallel" means that both achievements/rewards can be pursued at the same time. "Persistent" means that this reward is present each time you kill a boss, and not just the first time you ding the achievement.
The reward should be tied to team performance, and not individual performance. Remember, we're not out solo'ing, we all signed up for a team sport when we accepted the raid invite.
Proposal 1: Emblems - Somebody died? No Emblems off of this boss for anyone in the raid.
All bosses, all the time, not just your first clean kill.
And make the Emblem gear f'ing fantastic. Make us WANT this.
Encourage continuous drive towards flawless victory.
Proposal 2: All Loot - A harsher example would be all loot from the current boss. No loot drops if anybody dies. Perhaps too harsh, especially since your first few kills are the sloppiest and hardest, and the loot from those helps subsequent runs be flawless.
I dunno, as I re-read this one, a part of me is liking Proposal 2. No loot until the team figures it out and nails it. Once you prove that, then the loot flows, making it easier each time you come back.
Hmmm, I wonder? Probably too harsh.
Proposal 3: Selective Loot - Make a separate loot table that only drops when the kill is flawless.
In my ideal situation, it'd be the Best-in-slot gear that drops in this mode.
For each "difficulty setting" (id, 0 drakes, 1 drake, 2 drakes, or whatever the equivalent hard-mode indicator is for each boss), include some exclusive items for a clean kill.
The better the reward, the larger the motivation for teams to help eachother improve and help eachother survive. Even after a silly death due to unavoidable D/C on a boss early in the night, there is still a reason for the team to maintain focused.
One issue I could see with this is that people who die will be kicked out rather than coached on how to improve survival.
Sure, that's always a fear. If they nerf our class, change our utility, homogenize our spells, always fear that leaders will just kick you.
However, this fear would be mitigated by the fact that the Raid Leader would need to replace you with....a person who reliably survives. This is much harder to PuG, since you really never know what you're going to get from an unknown player. I think the challenge to replace you is greater than the effort to try to coach you for improved performance.
Another issue might be that players focus too much on survival and not enough on their responsibilities in the raid. I know I probably DPS a little bit lighter on Immortal attempts, just to be that much more certain to not pull aggro. But you know what? I'm damn well attentive to web wrapped people and I bust them out immediately instead of hesitating to get just one more shot in on the boss while my DPS trinket is up so I can boost my epeen (not that DPS players do that kind of stuff anyway, amiright?).
I doubt my proposals would cause people to stop looking at the meters as the be-all-end-all of raiding, but a boy can dream, can't he?
Is flawless execution worth striving for? Is it something that should just sorta make you smile when it happens but shouldn't expect it as a normal occurrence?
What other ways can Blizzard encourage the team to survive?
But I will sum it up: I went in not really even thinking about it. The butterflies are definitely gone. Two and a half wings later with no deaths, my interest was piqued. The first false-start on Gothic in four months of raiding, causing one player to be locked on the dead side and the rest of the raid on the live side showed me just how easy it is to piss this one away. Butterflies swatted, dead, kaput. They shall not be allowed to return.
Moving beyond last night, the experience over the past few weeks had me thinking about the overall concept of the Immortal.
(A) I've read a bunch of posts and comments to posts on other blogs that people want the achievement to be for them personally and not for the team. As long as you personally survive each boss fight during one raid lockout, you ding the achieve.
(B) I've read a bunch of posts and comments to posts on other blogs that people want the achievement to count for each boss individually, similar to the 20-man achievement. This week you do a clean kill of Anubrikan and ding that one part of the overall goal. Next week you do a clean kill of Heigan and ding that part of the goal, and so on with each boss being a discrete unit, until you eventually complete them all.
(A) BAH, and (B) DOUBLE BAH
The people voting for (A) are not team players. They should go play Legend of Zelda or something where your game only depends upon your own play. Raiding is a team sport, whether you choose to believe it or not.
The people voting for (B) probably don't deserve a "double bah", but I don't subscribe to that one either.
Don't Stop Believin'
Although the Butterflies are dead, I still believe in the spirit of the achievement.
As the raid progressed last night, and we killed boss after boss with no deaths, my excitement level was definitely increasing.
That's a good thing, I'm here for excitement, so even if the disappointment of that first death is a nuisance, I still value the experience of the night.
An achievement like Immortal / Undying is trying to encourage us to do what we're here to do anyway, but only do it better. Nobody enters a fight thinking "ok, i'd like to die on this one." Well, maybe there is a strat for a Warlock to commit suicide at the beginning of Malygos P3 so he can cast some curse or debuff or something before he plummets to his death, but that's a bit counter-intuitive and an exception to the rule.
Consider the RP Aspect
I'm not a role player, per se, although I do suffer from mood swings that make my Druid Moodyswinger's name an extension of my own personality.
But I can empathize with the RP aspect of a toon dying.
Picture yourself and a band of 24 comrades-in-arms venture off into a dungeon in search of treasure or thwarting evil or rescuing a princess or whatever.
One of you dies in combat. Hell, maybe one of you dies in his sleep. Doesn't really matter, does it?
You're dead.
Makes it pretty hard to enjoy the treasure that the dragon was hoarding or a passionate night with the princess who just fell in love with her heroic rescuer, yes?
Consider the Performance Aspect
Tobold recently wrote about some of his joys and griefs with raiding. One aspect I'll focus on here is the concept of exploring fights blind with no pre-knowledge of boss abilities, contrasted with the execution part of a fight where you have full knowledge of the boss abilities and also techniques used in the past to successfully defeat the boss.
Execution and performance is what I'm all about.
I recognize that not all players share that view, but for me, its all about planning our fight and then performing under the pressure of combat. Mix in just enough random effects to require some improvisation on the fly, and tune it to be very demanding on each player to deliver flawless execution.
Our strategy and approach should be robust enough to mitigate the risks of all the little things that can go wrong.
Sometimes you randomly D/C. Call verizon and have them check your line, maybe that's busted. Stop downloading nudie flicks while playing.
Sometimes the boss does random things that can get ugly. KT iceblock is one such example, the target is random. However, your strategy should plan for this by informing raiders to space out and then during the execution it is up to each player to be aware of their surroundings and find a safe spot amongst the rest of the team.
Sometimes your cat steps on the keyboard. Give him cement boots and throw him in the harbor. Dogs, FTW!
Having a reward for flawless execution is a Good Thing.
Where's the beef?
I'm fine with the fact that my Immortal achievement is dependent upon 24 other people. Success as part of my team is what keeps me logging in and not playing a single-player RTS or RP game.
I'm fine with the fact that my Immortal achievement requires intense focus and attention to detail across an extended period of time and is bound to a single raid ID.
But, here's my beef with the current way Immortal works.
Once you fail, that's it.
There is no longer any benefit for flawless performance during that raid ID. No reason to keep trying. And in fact, the de-motivation that comes with failing Immortal encourages sloppier behavior since people don't care about the run as much once Immortal is disqualified.
Sure, people who die suffer a slightly larger repair bill. Also, people who die on a boss slow us down a bit because they have to rez/run back and rebuff (but we're looting during this time anyways, so this is minor).
Recommendation to Blizzard
Immortal should remain unchanged. You got this one right, but...
Blizzard needs to add a separate, parallel, persistent reward for each flawless boss kill. "Separate" means it has nothing to do with Immortal, the two are totally independent. "Parallel" means that both achievements/rewards can be pursued at the same time. "Persistent" means that this reward is present each time you kill a boss, and not just the first time you ding the achievement.
The reward should be tied to team performance, and not individual performance. Remember, we're not out solo'ing, we all signed up for a team sport when we accepted the raid invite.
Proposal 1: Emblems - Somebody died? No Emblems off of this boss for anyone in the raid.
All bosses, all the time, not just your first clean kill.
And make the Emblem gear f'ing fantastic. Make us WANT this.
Encourage continuous drive towards flawless victory.
Proposal 2: All Loot - A harsher example would be all loot from the current boss. No loot drops if anybody dies. Perhaps too harsh, especially since your first few kills are the sloppiest and hardest, and the loot from those helps subsequent runs be flawless.
I dunno, as I re-read this one, a part of me is liking Proposal 2. No loot until the team figures it out and nails it. Once you prove that, then the loot flows, making it easier each time you come back.
Hmmm, I wonder? Probably too harsh.
Proposal 3: Selective Loot - Make a separate loot table that only drops when the kill is flawless.
In my ideal situation, it'd be the Best-in-slot gear that drops in this mode.
For each "difficulty setting" (id, 0 drakes, 1 drake, 2 drakes, or whatever the equivalent hard-mode indicator is for each boss), include some exclusive items for a clean kill.
The better the reward, the larger the motivation for teams to help eachother improve and help eachother survive. Even after a silly death due to unavoidable D/C on a boss early in the night, there is still a reason for the team to maintain focused.
Potential Pitfalls
One issue I could see with this is that people who die will be kicked out rather than coached on how to improve survival.
Sure, that's always a fear. If they nerf our class, change our utility, homogenize our spells, always fear that leaders will just kick you.
However, this fear would be mitigated by the fact that the Raid Leader would need to replace you with....a person who reliably survives. This is much harder to PuG, since you really never know what you're going to get from an unknown player. I think the challenge to replace you is greater than the effort to try to coach you for improved performance.
Another issue might be that players focus too much on survival and not enough on their responsibilities in the raid. I know I probably DPS a little bit lighter on Immortal attempts, just to be that much more certain to not pull aggro. But you know what? I'm damn well attentive to web wrapped people and I bust them out immediately instead of hesitating to get just one more shot in on the boss while my DPS trinket is up so I can boost my epeen (not that DPS players do that kind of stuff anyway, amiright?).
I doubt my proposals would cause people to stop looking at the meters as the be-all-end-all of raiding, but a boy can dream, can't he?
What do you think?
Is flawless execution worth striving for? Is it something that should just sorta make you smile when it happens but shouldn't expect it as a normal occurrence?
What other ways can Blizzard encourage the team to survive?
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Immortal Aggro
Immortal Failure
Achievement far out of reach
Death on second boss
A week or so ago, I wrote about the anticipation and excitement of our first deliberate attempt at Immortal achievement, clearing Naxx-25 without any deaths on boss fights.
Had two players D/C on the second boss, and one player run into the fire (invisible on her video settings), thus disqualifying the achievement about 20 minutes into the raid. Ok, put your feet up for the next 2.5 hours, the pressure is off.
Fast forward a week, and we're back at it, fresh raid ID, fresh expectations of becoming Highlanders. So how'd it go?
Death on second boss
Mind you, a different second boss than last week. This time we had somebody on the dead side of Gothick bite the bullet. Supposedly the DPS on that side were getting too close to whirlwinding mobs being tanked in the corner, leading the healer to need to blast away with larger than normal heals, leading to the healer generating lots of threat, leading to dead healer. I dunno, dude.
So, again, 20 minutes into the night, disqualified from the win.
From there on, it was all slop, all the time.
The highlight being a Gluth wipe that involved a continuous stream of zombie chow just running a train straight to the boss. Kiting was at the biggest all time level of failure. My favorite moment was when I "magically" had wings appear over my toon and I was unable to fire at any mobs for a little while. Did the f'ing pally cast f'ing BoP or f'ing whatever on me? Really? Are you f'ing kidding me? Makes it kinda hard to pull the f'ing chow chows off of the f'ing healers and f'ing boss.
Whatever.
I was able to control the nerd rage a little bit, and had enough composure to only throw soft non-breakable things around the room.
I'd be lying if I said it the experience wasn't upsetting, but then again, us drama queens thrive on getting upset, so in the end, a good evening of entertainment. There's no person to blame, there's no one single specific thing to change, its just that so many variables have to align perfectly, and I fear that we started too late to have enough chances before the upcoming patch that will make the whole point moot.
It Just Doesn't Matter
Like Bill Murray in Meatballs, I'm chanting "it just doesn't matter."
In a week or two, the hopes will pass and I won't be thinking about the fast flying mount that's out of reach.
And a week or two after that, Ulduar will release and we'll all be happily distracted for a while.
It just doesn't matter.
The Silver Lining
All was not sour for the evening.
A big feather in our cap on the Four Horsemen. We took a very slow, calculated approach to the fight to ensure no chain lightning nailed the team. We had good communication from the officers ensuring everybody knew their job, and the team showed good discipline during the execution. That was reassuring to see, although we did lose a player to god knows what in a phase of the fight that really should not have any death.
We also Safety Danced again, which is nice to know we can do that little beauty semi-reliably.
Kick me in the jimmy!
And the real kick in the nuts was when one of the players keyed his mic and we all hear a brief moment of cheering in the background.
Seems that his roommate or friend or neighbor at the LAN center or something just dinged Immortal.
In the immortal words (f'ing pun f'ing intended) of Buzzcut of Beavis and Butthead fame...
Kick me in the jimmy!
Friday, March 27, 2009
Immortal Cocoons
Ok, so yesterday's reference to "butterflies" was a phrase indicating a feeling of anxiety or nervous excitement, and not the airborne phase of a certain insect's lifecycle.
But, to switch it around, if the Butterfly is what we'll morph into when we ding the achievement, then we must still be snug inside our cocoons, still getting ready to spread those wings and fly. I think we're pupas right now or something. Whether the biologically correct term or not, I just like saying the word.
Ain't I poetic? And mature?
Well, the early parts of the evening went according to plan. Quiet, soothing environment. The calm before the storm.
When I logged in, I started looking over my alchemist to see if there's some other elixirs I'd like to use than my standard Mighty Thoughts / Agi combo.
Brewed up some of the +350 health ones (fortitude?) and some Guru's Elixirs. +20 to all stats is actually pretty cool, and since it buffs agi and also raw stamina which then gets converted to attack power via Survival talents, it is not entirely discarding all DPS enhancement value.
Just like in my good old ice hockey days when, before a game, I'd visualize laying out a incoming winger at the blue line, I mentally pictured the little things l'll be doing to stay alive in Naxx.
We got the team together. You could tell there was an electricity in the air, although, thankfully, nobody was harping on and on about our goal for the night.
Everybody take a deep breath, because we're starting trash pulls.
Patchy
Start the night with our good friend Patchwerk. Normally a testing ground for balls-to-the-wall DPS, HPS, and TPS. But not tonight. Tonight, we're here for one thing only. Ranged DPS wait 10 seconds or so before opening up. Melee DPS hang tight until the RL gives the instruction.
Spent way less attention to DPS than usual, and I refused to check the Damage Meters for the entire night. Despite trying to go so deliberately slowly, we still killed him in less than 3 minutes, which is comical.
25 players enter, 25 players leave.
Grobby
Ok everybody, you know its not polite to fart near your friends, so run to the back before you let loose.
Everything's going fine, gassy folks are positioning right, tanks are picking up slimes, DPS is truckin.
And then the dreaded.....Oh, SHT, [name-of-healer] is D/C'ing.
Ok, don't panic. Another healer calmly calls out that he will heal the DC through any damage. We're focused, we're on target.
And then, maybe 5 seconds later, and the second dread....Oh, FCK, [name-of-dc-healer] just got tagged. She's about to fart in the middle of the room.
But we're a bunch of cool customers, so we all shuffle around the expanding cloud of nasty that's occupying the middle of the room.
Things continue fine for another minute or so.
The exact sequence of what happened next is a bit blurry to me, and I'm not looking over the combat log until later, so this is simply from memory of what I observed during the event.
*) A melee DPS D/C'd. DAMN YOU, INTERNETZ! Whether he then was insta-gibbed by something and died, or if it was over a brief time due to standing in a cloud that follows the kited boss, I'm unsure.
*) A healer got flagged, made the correct move to run away from the huddled masses, but made the incorrect move and ran straight into existing clouds and died. The player says that her screen was not showing any clouds at all, perhaps a visual setting?
So, about 15 minutes into the much anticipated Immortal attempt, phoot, no mas.
Despite the three losses, we killed Grob, no surprise there.
Move on to Gluth, still interested in practicing Immortal, and we nailed him perfectly, no deaths, outstanding kiting (IM-very-biased-O) by the hunters and mages.
And then Thaddius and the dreaded Ledge Boss. This is one of those moments that just make you cringe. On a personal level, its been months since I've failed the leap, but it still gets me nervous every single time. On a team level, I havent really tracked it, but it does seem that we lose somebody almost every week.
Nailed it. All 25 across safe and sound.
And then for the real fun. We're trying for the Shocking thing. Simple strat, basically same as we always do. Just run in very wide arcs around the boss as you switch sides.
As the fight wore on, the tension builds more and more and more. Who's going to fkc it up? More importantly, will it be me? Push those thoughts out of your head, focus on your positioning, the boss cast bar, and your own debuff. Run WIDE to the outside when you switch.
The lower the health of the boss, the further you move to the edge of your seat.
And then he dies, and your screen fills up with Shocking achievements, which was pretty damn cool. One shot, everybody survived, no crossed polarity.
From there, since Immortal wasn't an option any more, we went and 20-manned some of the wings, culminating in finishing off the 20-man achievement for many of the players. Topping the highlight reel was 20-man Safety Dance.
Although we didn't ding Immortal, I am very happy with the evening. Here's some of the keys that I think build the foundation for when we will ultimately get it done:
1) Communication - Two of the Officers co-led the raid, and the two of them did an excellent job of using calm voices and giving very clear instructions for things that we'd be doing differently versus our normal routine.
2) Pace - There was absolutely no rush. Example: Patchwerk. Its annoying how he paces around. If you're not ready to engage him at the right time, he might walk away and you wait 5 minutes. Or you might rogue distract him or have a MD hunter risk the frogger boss to pull Patch as he walks away. Not tonight. We were very deliberate about all our actions.
3) Control - Although only a series of trash pulls, the combination of large kicking/stomping mobs, roaming patrols, and hidden shades between Gluth and Thaddius often give us issue. The raid showed excellent control and discipline as we smoothly handled this area, allowing tanks proper time for positioning, choosing when to engage, focus firing mobs. Its the small things that make a difference and this segment of the evening was just right.
4) Confidence - Yes, we didn't get Immortal, but we did go in and nail out several achievements, all one shots. Thaddius Shocking and zero deaths was a big win. 20-man Safety Dance builds confidence.
I truly hope the guild wants to keep trying. We showed what our raid is capable of when we focus. We are disciplined. We are focused. We have effective leaders, and members who can follow instructions and deliver results. Immortal is DEFINITELY within our grasp.
While building on the existing strengths, we definitely need to learn from mistakes and not repeat them. None of these is intended to zing, or single out, the player(s) involved. I'm proud of the effort each raider put in. However, we do need to take action if Immortal is going to happen:
1) Visual Settings - The player who died on Grobbulus by running into the damage. You absolutely must get your visual settings configured properly. We can go to a Naxx-10 before next week's immortal attempt, and just sit in Grobbulus's room, fiddling with your UI until its right.
2) Disconnects - We had a few disconnects. Yes, it does happen, and often times it is out of the control of the player. Sht happens, especially when it comes to computer networking. However, some things might be in your control. For instance, I know if I raid from the house with DSL, incoming calls usually disconnect me, and the Cable Modem house does not have this risk. I will never attempt an Immortal run from the DSL house. Each player might have similar things under their control that can improve our chances.
3) Practice on Each Boss - I do appreciate that we changed modes once Immortal was gone and got a few other achievements. It was nice, it was fun, and many raiders (me included) needed them for the meta-achievement. However, if Immortal is ever to be a reality, we need to visit each boss with every raider thinking only about team survival. If we consistently stop practicing after the actual Achievement is gone, then we will have a tougher time on the later bosses, the first time the sun is shining and we succeed at the early ones.
Not sure what the future has in store for our Immortal attempts, or how many more weeks we have to shoot for it. Probably 4 more?
The thing I like about Immortal is that it really is simply encouraging something we should be doing anyway. We all want to be alive at the end of the fight, however, things like DPS e-peen, youtube videos playing on a computer next to your WoW monitor, and so on, all get in the way.
The more I think about it, the more I want Blizz to implement a similar achievement in each dungeon, but with a twist. I want it to give some tangible reward each and every time you ding it, not just the first time when you get a title or whatever. I think the game is better when everybody is trying to focus together on survival for every fight during every raid.
But, to switch it around, if the Butterfly is what we'll morph into when we ding the achievement, then we must still be snug inside our cocoons, still getting ready to spread those wings and fly. I think we're pupas right now or something. Whether the biologically correct term or not, I just like saying the word.
Ain't I poetic? And mature?
How'd it go?
Well, the early parts of the evening went according to plan. Quiet, soothing environment. The calm before the storm.
When I logged in, I started looking over my alchemist to see if there's some other elixirs I'd like to use than my standard Mighty Thoughts / Agi combo.
Brewed up some of the +350 health ones (fortitude?) and some Guru's Elixirs. +20 to all stats is actually pretty cool, and since it buffs agi and also raw stamina which then gets converted to attack power via Survival talents, it is not entirely discarding all DPS enhancement value.
Just like in my good old ice hockey days when, before a game, I'd visualize laying out a incoming winger at the blue line, I mentally pictured the little things l'll be doing to stay alive in Naxx.
We got the team together. You could tell there was an electricity in the air, although, thankfully, nobody was harping on and on about our goal for the night.
Everybody take a deep breath, because we're starting trash pulls.
Patchy
Start the night with our good friend Patchwerk. Normally a testing ground for balls-to-the-wall DPS, HPS, and TPS. But not tonight. Tonight, we're here for one thing only. Ranged DPS wait 10 seconds or so before opening up. Melee DPS hang tight until the RL gives the instruction.
Spent way less attention to DPS than usual, and I refused to check the Damage Meters for the entire night. Despite trying to go so deliberately slowly, we still killed him in less than 3 minutes, which is comical.
25 players enter, 25 players leave.
Grobby
Ok everybody, you know its not polite to fart near your friends, so run to the back before you let loose.
Everything's going fine, gassy folks are positioning right, tanks are picking up slimes, DPS is truckin.
And then the dreaded.....Oh, SHT, [name-of-healer] is D/C'ing.
Ok, don't panic. Another healer calmly calls out that he will heal the DC through any damage. We're focused, we're on target.
And then, maybe 5 seconds later, and the second dread....Oh, FCK, [name-of-dc-healer] just got tagged. She's about to fart in the middle of the room.
But we're a bunch of cool customers, so we all shuffle around the expanding cloud of nasty that's occupying the middle of the room.
Things continue fine for another minute or so.
The exact sequence of what happened next is a bit blurry to me, and I'm not looking over the combat log until later, so this is simply from memory of what I observed during the event.
*) A melee DPS D/C'd. DAMN YOU, INTERNETZ! Whether he then was insta-gibbed by something and died, or if it was over a brief time due to standing in a cloud that follows the kited boss, I'm unsure.
*) A healer got flagged, made the correct move to run away from the huddled masses, but made the incorrect move and ran straight into existing clouds and died. The player says that her screen was not showing any clouds at all, perhaps a visual setting?
So, about 15 minutes into the much anticipated Immortal attempt, phoot, no mas.
Then what?
Despite the three losses, we killed Grob, no surprise there.
Move on to Gluth, still interested in practicing Immortal, and we nailed him perfectly, no deaths, outstanding kiting (IM-very-biased-O) by the hunters and mages.
And then Thaddius and the dreaded Ledge Boss. This is one of those moments that just make you cringe. On a personal level, its been months since I've failed the leap, but it still gets me nervous every single time. On a team level, I havent really tracked it, but it does seem that we lose somebody almost every week.
Nailed it. All 25 across safe and sound.
And then for the real fun. We're trying for the Shocking thing. Simple strat, basically same as we always do. Just run in very wide arcs around the boss as you switch sides.
As the fight wore on, the tension builds more and more and more. Who's going to fkc it up? More importantly, will it be me? Push those thoughts out of your head, focus on your positioning, the boss cast bar, and your own debuff. Run WIDE to the outside when you switch.
The lower the health of the boss, the further you move to the edge of your seat.
And then he dies, and your screen fills up with Shocking achievements, which was pretty damn cool. One shot, everybody survived, no crossed polarity.
From there, since Immortal wasn't an option any more, we went and 20-manned some of the wings, culminating in finishing off the 20-man achievement for many of the players. Topping the highlight reel was 20-man Safety Dance.
What worked?
Although we didn't ding Immortal, I am very happy with the evening. Here's some of the keys that I think build the foundation for when we will ultimately get it done:
1) Communication - Two of the Officers co-led the raid, and the two of them did an excellent job of using calm voices and giving very clear instructions for things that we'd be doing differently versus our normal routine.
2) Pace - There was absolutely no rush. Example: Patchwerk. Its annoying how he paces around. If you're not ready to engage him at the right time, he might walk away and you wait 5 minutes. Or you might rogue distract him or have a MD hunter risk the frogger boss to pull Patch as he walks away. Not tonight. We were very deliberate about all our actions.
3) Control - Although only a series of trash pulls, the combination of large kicking/stomping mobs, roaming patrols, and hidden shades between Gluth and Thaddius often give us issue. The raid showed excellent control and discipline as we smoothly handled this area, allowing tanks proper time for positioning, choosing when to engage, focus firing mobs. Its the small things that make a difference and this segment of the evening was just right.
4) Confidence - Yes, we didn't get Immortal, but we did go in and nail out several achievements, all one shots. Thaddius Shocking and zero deaths was a big win. 20-man Safety Dance builds confidence.
I truly hope the guild wants to keep trying. We showed what our raid is capable of when we focus. We are disciplined. We are focused. We have effective leaders, and members who can follow instructions and deliver results. Immortal is DEFINITELY within our grasp.
What needs to change?
While building on the existing strengths, we definitely need to learn from mistakes and not repeat them. None of these is intended to zing, or single out, the player(s) involved. I'm proud of the effort each raider put in. However, we do need to take action if Immortal is going to happen:
1) Visual Settings - The player who died on Grobbulus by running into the damage. You absolutely must get your visual settings configured properly. We can go to a Naxx-10 before next week's immortal attempt, and just sit in Grobbulus's room, fiddling with your UI until its right.
2) Disconnects - We had a few disconnects. Yes, it does happen, and often times it is out of the control of the player. Sht happens, especially when it comes to computer networking. However, some things might be in your control. For instance, I know if I raid from the house with DSL, incoming calls usually disconnect me, and the Cable Modem house does not have this risk. I will never attempt an Immortal run from the DSL house. Each player might have similar things under their control that can improve our chances.
3) Practice on Each Boss - I do appreciate that we changed modes once Immortal was gone and got a few other achievements. It was nice, it was fun, and many raiders (me included) needed them for the meta-achievement. However, if Immortal is ever to be a reality, we need to visit each boss with every raider thinking only about team survival. If we consistently stop practicing after the actual Achievement is gone, then we will have a tougher time on the later bosses, the first time the sun is shining and we succeed at the early ones.
The Future
Not sure what the future has in store for our Immortal attempts, or how many more weeks we have to shoot for it. Probably 4 more?
The thing I like about Immortal is that it really is simply encouraging something we should be doing anyway. We all want to be alive at the end of the fight, however, things like DPS e-peen, youtube videos playing on a computer next to your WoW monitor, and so on, all get in the way.
The more I think about it, the more I want Blizz to implement a similar achievement in each dungeon, but with a twist. I want it to give some tangible reward each and every time you ding it, not just the first time when you get a title or whatever. I think the game is better when everybody is trying to focus together on survival for every fight during every raid.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Immortal Butterflies
Anybody who participates in my raiding life real-time will likely laugh when they see this post. Hell, even those who don't probably will also, but for other reasons.
As I write, it is tuesday lunchtime, waiting in anticipation for tonight's raid. By the time this post hits the blog, the events I'm anticipating will actually be over and done with.
Tonight is the first night we will be making a focused effort to become Immortal. Clear Naxx-25 without any deaths during boss encounters.
You'd like to think that clearing naxx every week would be prep enough. I mean, don't we all try to survive EVERY fight?
But this is different. Take Patchwerk. If you're shooting for a world speed record, every DPS will be pushing threat as absolutely close to the tanks as night elvenly possible. That runs a risk that a melee dps might eat a strike and bite the dust. I'll leave it as a debate for the readers as to whether that's reasonable or not, but the fact is, it can happen. Going for Immortal? Take your time. Instead of 2.5 minutes, lets kill him in 4 or 4.5. Let the rage-starved second and third tanks stay above you so they eat the strikes. Its why they're here, and its why we love them.
In prep for tonight, we've got lots of conversation going on the forums.
Tweaks to 4H to ensure survival. Tweaks to Thaddius, Heigan, Instructor Raz, and so on. Anywhere we've lost a player in the last several weeks. What went wrong, what do we do to fix it. On fights we havent had recent deaths, we reinforce the keys that make us win.
Then there's the consumables. Push the stamina and defensive stats more heavily than the raw DPS or Healing stats. We know we can kill these things with only 20 players, so go a little extra to help survive.
I'm leaving the decision of swapping a few gems for more stamina (which is also AP for my spec, so not entirely silly) for an impulsive decision close to raid time.
Once we start pulling, its Go Time. Game Face On!
No other computers on the network downloading anything or playing wow. No iTunes playing. No distractions. No extra sources of lag. No booze.
No "that's what she said" on vent, no matter how perfect the setup is, and how much its killing me to not say it. Lock it up and maintain focus.
Might bring my Immortal Ancona Chicken companion pet, but that's only because she's awesome.
I haven't died in Naxx in ages. Must remember the little things that increase personal and team survival.....
Nobody dies in Maex webs on my watch.
My grobulus farts go where they belong.
I keep my Zombie Chows on the frost so they cannot catch me.
Night Elves CAN Jump! Thaddius ledge boss will be cleared. I know what + and - look like, when to look for them, and what to do when they change.
I do not multishot on Razuvious so I don't mess up the priest MC's.
I assist the tank on the undead side of Gothik as he picks up the adds and I do not pull aggro.
I watch my debuffs and switch Horsemen without standing in the bad stuff.
My MD will be ready when Noth blinks to save my Mages.
I can dance like Swayze and Grey. Nobody puts Baby in the corner!
After eating a spore, I return to my spot to make the 3 seconds my healers get just a little bit easier.
I hide behind ice blocks and I mouse-turn to run out of the snow.
I know how to target the proper Soul Weaver and kill her from range. I know how to spread out to limit ice cube chains. I know how to NOT mana explode my healers. I'm ready to Wyvern Sting and Frozen Arrow any MC'd teammates.
I will not die in the fire.
I will not die in the fire!
Geeky or not, I've got butterflies in my stomach.
And I love it.
Thinking it over, this is exactly what I want out of Achievements. Immortal is pushing us to do something we should be doing anyway. Not like the silly 20-man ones, where Blizz is asking you to tell 5 of your teammates to sit out for no real reason. Stupid. Immortal is spot on. We raid naxx each week, and this achievement is making us do it better.
Anxiety. Tension. Build Up.
The team is depending on eachother to deliver flawless execution.
We might get it, we might not. Obviously I want to nail it, but if it doesn't happen, not the end of the world. Just exciting to be trying, and if we fail, I hope we come back and keep trying.
Tonight, before WoW time, everything will be peaceful and zen. When I get home, with a little help from the uber gf, I'll make some dinner, take the dog for a walk, do some coloring books and some bedtime stories, and then I'll tuck the little one in for the night, sing Twinkle Little Star, kiss her peaceful lil' sleeping forehead as I turn out the light.
Then, keeping with the calm meditative tone, I'll get tomorrow's breakfast and lunch prepared and packed and ready to go, make sure the dog has gone outside and he's curled up in a little ball all snug on his dog bed or the couch, that little rascal, and make sure everything is right with the world, because once I log in....
...its time for Daddy to kick some ass!
As I write, it is tuesday lunchtime, waiting in anticipation for tonight's raid. By the time this post hits the blog, the events I'm anticipating will actually be over and done with.
Tonight is the first night we will be making a focused effort to become Immortal. Clear Naxx-25 without any deaths during boss encounters.
Prep Work
You'd like to think that clearing naxx every week would be prep enough. I mean, don't we all try to survive EVERY fight?
But this is different. Take Patchwerk. If you're shooting for a world speed record, every DPS will be pushing threat as absolutely close to the tanks as night elvenly possible. That runs a risk that a melee dps might eat a strike and bite the dust. I'll leave it as a debate for the readers as to whether that's reasonable or not, but the fact is, it can happen. Going for Immortal? Take your time. Instead of 2.5 minutes, lets kill him in 4 or 4.5. Let the rage-starved second and third tanks stay above you so they eat the strikes. Its why they're here, and its why we love them.
In prep for tonight, we've got lots of conversation going on the forums.
Tweaks to 4H to ensure survival. Tweaks to Thaddius, Heigan, Instructor Raz, and so on. Anywhere we've lost a player in the last several weeks. What went wrong, what do we do to fix it. On fights we havent had recent deaths, we reinforce the keys that make us win.
Then there's the consumables. Push the stamina and defensive stats more heavily than the raw DPS or Healing stats. We know we can kill these things with only 20 players, so go a little extra to help survive.
I'm leaving the decision of swapping a few gems for more stamina (which is also AP for my spec, so not entirely silly) for an impulsive decision close to raid time.
Execution
Once we start pulling, its Go Time. Game Face On!
No other computers on the network downloading anything or playing wow. No iTunes playing. No distractions. No extra sources of lag. No booze.
No "that's what she said" on vent, no matter how perfect the setup is, and how much its killing me to not say it. Lock it up and maintain focus.
Might bring my Immortal Ancona Chicken companion pet, but that's only because she's awesome.
I haven't died in Naxx in ages. Must remember the little things that increase personal and team survival.....
Nobody dies in Maex webs on my watch.
My grobulus farts go where they belong.
I keep my Zombie Chows on the frost so they cannot catch me.
Night Elves CAN Jump! Thaddius ledge boss will be cleared. I know what + and - look like, when to look for them, and what to do when they change.
I do not multishot on Razuvious so I don't mess up the priest MC's.
I assist the tank on the undead side of Gothik as he picks up the adds and I do not pull aggro.
I watch my debuffs and switch Horsemen without standing in the bad stuff.
My MD will be ready when Noth blinks to save my Mages.
I can dance like Swayze and Grey. Nobody puts Baby in the corner!
After eating a spore, I return to my spot to make the 3 seconds my healers get just a little bit easier.
I hide behind ice blocks and I mouse-turn to run out of the snow.
I know how to target the proper Soul Weaver and kill her from range. I know how to spread out to limit ice cube chains. I know how to NOT mana explode my healers. I'm ready to Wyvern Sting and Frozen Arrow any MC'd teammates.
I will not die in the fire.
I will not die in the fire!
Butterflies
Geeky or not, I've got butterflies in my stomach.
And I love it.
Thinking it over, this is exactly what I want out of Achievements. Immortal is pushing us to do something we should be doing anyway. Not like the silly 20-man ones, where Blizz is asking you to tell 5 of your teammates to sit out for no real reason. Stupid. Immortal is spot on. We raid naxx each week, and this achievement is making us do it better.
Anxiety. Tension. Build Up.
The team is depending on eachother to deliver flawless execution.
We might get it, we might not. Obviously I want to nail it, but if it doesn't happen, not the end of the world. Just exciting to be trying, and if we fail, I hope we come back and keep trying.
Tonight, before WoW time, everything will be peaceful and zen. When I get home, with a little help from the uber gf, I'll make some dinner, take the dog for a walk, do some coloring books and some bedtime stories, and then I'll tuck the little one in for the night, sing Twinkle Little Star, kiss her peaceful lil' sleeping forehead as I turn out the light.
Then, keeping with the calm meditative tone, I'll get tomorrow's breakfast and lunch prepared and packed and ready to go, make sure the dog has gone outside and he's curled up in a little ball all snug on his dog bed or the couch, that little rascal, and make sure everything is right with the world, because once I log in....
...its time for Daddy to kick some ass!
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
[Amava] has earned the achievement [Totally Wasted Sunday]!
This sunday was awesome.
Massively in need of some down time and relaxation, I got bit by the achievement bug.
Do the daily in Dalaran. Accrue 3 awards. Buy next recipe.
Not a dinger, but brings me one step closer to Northrend Gourmet (45).
Only three purchasable recipes left.
Cross fingers for patch 3.0.8 this week which will make the currently unavailable last four recipes actually attainable in-game.
The chain reaction started with such a simple desire.
Back when Amava was a lil girl, she never did the Nessingwary Big Game Hunter quest line in Strangelthorn Vale. So I wanted to close that one out and finish off the achievement for the Classic, Burning Crusade and Lich King trio.
Easy enough to saunter around STV one shotting stuff. (And picking goldthorn which is selling for a wonderful 4g per herb).
All was well at this point, just a simple achievement.
Picture yourself sitting in STV.
And you take a look at your achievements interface.
And you see the Explorer one.
And your un-explored items make an absolutely perfect path north through Eastern Kingdoms, and then south through Kalimdor.
I couldnt' resist!
Up north through Duskwood to Redridge.
Still further north to the Burning Steppes.
Through Black Rock Mountain to gain passage over to Badlands.
Keep going north to Loch Modan.
Would be reasonable to fly from here to Southshore, but I'm feeling poetic and exploring on foot (well, Aspect of the Pack improved Traveler's Tundra Mammoth, but foot none-the-less) I ran through the already-explored zones of Wetlands, Arathi, and Hillsbrad.
Into some enemy territory in Silverpine Forrest and Tirisfal Glades.
Eastern Plague Lands, which is much more fun to visit now that I've finished off the Death Knight starting quest line.
And deeper into Horde country in Ghostlands and Eversong Woods.
Lets keep with the perfect path through the whole world. I did cheat and hearth'ed here, so sue me.
Portal to Exodar.
Agonizing awful exploration of Bloodmyst (truly, this one sucked) and Azuremyst Isle.
Take a boat and then cheated on a birdy to Azshara to ding the one and only explorable chunk in that Thorium-rich zone.
Cut through Ashenvale and Barrens to get to Durotar to scare some low-level orcs (no, I didn't shoot them, but I did shoot two hordies on a titanium node earlier that day :-)
Back through Barrens to Mulgore to go cow tipping.
And back into Barrens to get to Thousand Needles for the one and only explorable chunk in this baby. Aside: you can just jump off the elevator on the Mammoth and she dies, but you don't. Resummon and off you are.
Cut south through Tanaris and Un'goro to gain access to Silithus.
Ding Silithus.
Ding Kalimdor.
Ding Explorer!
Sporting my new title, Amava the Explorer, I took a look over the achievements, I see just a couple quests left in Outlands, so its time for some fun.
This was rough. ish.
With only two or three quests to complete for a zone, it is hard as hell to find what you need to do.
All I can recommend is the following two tidbits:
1) WoW Head. Search for the exact name of the achievement you're going for. The comments have some excellent advice for typical quests that members of each faction might miss. I could not have done these without WoW Head. Make sure you're looking at the achievement for your faction, as each one is listed separately for each side but with the same name.
2) If you're a gatherer, you might like a macro to swap between finding nodes and finding low level quests:
You'll need to change the 3 and the 25 to the actual number that matches your tracking mode. Just click your mini-map tracker icon and count to figure out your unique numbers. 3 & 25 happen to be Mining and Low Level Quests for me.
The hardest one was just one single quest left in Terokkar Forrest, but luckily finishing off a quest line in Nagrand took me back to Shatt City and that gave me credit for a Terokkar one.
Ding Hellfire, Nagrand, Shadowmoon Valley, and Terokkar. BEM and Zang were done already. Netherstorm, you remain two short of the ding.
To finish off the evening, I did the last couple quests in Nagrand via the Ring of Blood, which came with its own achievement for doing this and also the Amphitheater of Anguish in Zul'Drak.
Horde who kept showing up to gank during RoB, kiss my tush.
But they left...and other horde showed up.
But they left also...and other horde showed up.
Annoying because they weren't staying around to do the quest, but rather just flying by to say "hi", presumably due to the zone-wide announcements that somebody is in action. Who knew there were multiple groups of 2 or more level 80 hordies in Nagrand, because it was never just one player, and never the same players more than once. /shrug
Eventually got em done.
And went to sleep with only two quests left in Outlands (didn't want to fly all the way up to Netherstorm, but that'll be soon !!!!)
Massively in need of some down time and relaxation, I got bit by the achievement bug.
Cook Cook Cook
Do the daily in Dalaran. Accrue 3 awards. Buy next recipe.
Not a dinger, but brings me one step closer to Northrend Gourmet (45).
Only three purchasable recipes left.
Cross fingers for patch 3.0.8 this week which will make the currently unavailable last four recipes actually attainable in-game.
Off to Stranglethorn Vale
The chain reaction started with such a simple desire.
Back when Amava was a lil girl, she never did the Nessingwary Big Game Hunter quest line in Strangelthorn Vale. So I wanted to close that one out and finish off the achievement for the Classic, Burning Crusade and Lich King trio.
Easy enough to saunter around STV one shotting stuff. (And picking goldthorn which is selling for a wonderful 4g per herb).
All was well at this point, just a simple achievement.
Time to Explore the Eastern Kingdoms
Picture yourself sitting in STV.
And you take a look at your achievements interface.
And you see the Explorer one.
And your un-explored items make an absolutely perfect path north through Eastern Kingdoms, and then south through Kalimdor.
I couldnt' resist!
Up north through Duskwood to Redridge.
Still further north to the Burning Steppes.
Through Black Rock Mountain to gain passage over to Badlands.
Keep going north to Loch Modan.
Would be reasonable to fly from here to Southshore, but I'm feeling poetic and exploring on foot (well, Aspect of the Pack improved Traveler's Tundra Mammoth, but foot none-the-less) I ran through the already-explored zones of Wetlands, Arathi, and Hillsbrad.
Into some enemy territory in Silverpine Forrest and Tirisfal Glades.
Eastern Plague Lands, which is much more fun to visit now that I've finished off the Death Knight starting quest line.
And deeper into Horde country in Ghostlands and Eversong Woods.
Kalimdor, oh Kalimdor
Lets keep with the perfect path through the whole world. I did cheat and hearth'ed here, so sue me.
Portal to Exodar.
Agonizing awful exploration of Bloodmyst (truly, this one sucked) and Azuremyst Isle.
Take a boat and then cheated on a birdy to Azshara to ding the one and only explorable chunk in that Thorium-rich zone.
Cut through Ashenvale and Barrens to get to Durotar to scare some low-level orcs (no, I didn't shoot them, but I did shoot two hordies on a titanium node earlier that day :-)
Back through Barrens to Mulgore to go cow tipping.
And back into Barrens to get to Thousand Needles for the one and only explorable chunk in this baby. Aside: you can just jump off the elevator on the Mammoth and she dies, but you don't. Resummon and off you are.
Cut south through Tanaris and Un'goro to gain access to Silithus.
Ding Silithus.
Ding Kalimdor.
Ding Explorer!
One damn quest left
Sporting my new title, Amava the Explorer, I took a look over the achievements, I see just a couple quests left in Outlands, so its time for some fun.
This was rough. ish.
With only two or three quests to complete for a zone, it is hard as hell to find what you need to do.
All I can recommend is the following two tidbits:
1) WoW Head. Search for the exact name of the achievement you're going for. The comments have some excellent advice for typical quests that members of each faction might miss. I could not have done these without WoW Head. Make sure you're looking at the achievement for your faction, as each one is listed separately for each side but with the same name.
2) If you're a gatherer, you might like a macro to swap between finding nodes and finding low level quests:
/run local t=1; _,_,a=GetTrackingInfo(t);if (a) then t=2 end; SetTracking(t)
You'll need to change the 3 and the 25 to the actual number that matches your tracking mode. Just click your mini-map tracker icon and count to figure out your unique numbers. 3 & 25 happen to be Mining and Low Level Quests for me.
The hardest one was just one single quest left in Terokkar Forrest, but luckily finishing off a quest line in Nagrand took me back to Shatt City and that gave me credit for a Terokkar one.
Ding Hellfire, Nagrand, Shadowmoon Valley, and Terokkar. BEM and Zang were done already. Netherstorm, you remain two short of the ding.
Horde Griefing at the Ring of Blood
To finish off the evening, I did the last couple quests in Nagrand via the Ring of Blood, which came with its own achievement for doing this and also the Amphitheater of Anguish in Zul'Drak.
Horde who kept showing up to gank during RoB, kiss my tush.
But they left...and other horde showed up.
But they left also...and other horde showed up.
Annoying because they weren't staying around to do the quest, but rather just flying by to say "hi", presumably due to the zone-wide announcements that somebody is in action. Who knew there were multiple groups of 2 or more level 80 hordies in Nagrand, because it was never just one player, and never the same players more than once. /shrug
Eventually got em done.
And went to sleep with only two quests left in Outlands (didn't want to fly all the way up to Netherstorm, but that'll be soon !!!!)
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
To Achieve or not to Achieve, zees ees zee qvestion
When you're raiding in WoW, you've got a primary goal that is typically shared amongst the whole team: FUN Dead Bosses
Historically, you could assess the success of your raid by howMUCH FUN many dead bosses it leaves in its wake.
To improve success either kill more bosses, or if you're already killing them all, try to do it faster or try to do it with fewer incidental deaths.
But in WotLK, there's two new ways to look at raid success: Achievements and Drakes.
It becomes tricky for a team to decide what to go after, since the basic criteria of dead bosses might be ez-mode for your raid, however the additional success factors might provide substantial challenge, wipes, and repair bills.
In my mind, raid achievements fall into three categories: Inevitable, Challenge, and Awful
Inevitable ones
Kill this boss. Clear that wing.
Dance with Heigan Safely. Well, hopefully thats inevitable. I mean, you don't really need an achievement to tell you to try to survive a fight. But the DDR dance can be an issue for all 25 people to get it right at the same time. But, do this fight enough times and there's a chance the sun will be shining on all of you on the same night.
So these types of achievements sort of come with the turf and you don't need to go out of your way or do anything special (besides be non-fail raiders who dont die in the fire).
Challenge Ones
Then there's the achievements that the raid needs to go out of its way to ding.
Perfect example is 100 Club. Kill Sapphiron with no raid member having a frost resist value greater than 100.
We've been farming Sapphiron for weeks now. The baseline is for all raiders to have at least 300 frost resist, which comes easily via Mark of the Wild, Frost Resist Aura, and each person bringing two pieces of crafted resist gear.
Did it add challenge? Absolutely. I'm sure the healers had a much tougher job than in the past, with a much smaller room for error. As a DPS player, I paid heightened attention to staying out of the chill or blizzard or whatever. With high frost resist, you can cut some corners and stand there and absorb a tick or two without too much fuss.
Did we kill Sapphiron? Hell's yeah. Strong DPS, good tank positioning, and stellar healing led to a one-shot of the dragon.
Did we ding the achievement? Nope. We think there's a mage armor effect that can boost their FR above 100, and consequently we didn't ding.
But its all good. We proved we can do it, and we built confidence in our team. Hopefully next week, the Officers will give the green light to do it again, and I'm sure we'll nail the sunnofabitch.
Do we get anything for it? I think 10 Achievement points, and a ticky mark to check the item off our list.
But it does build team pride, confidence, and esprit de corps.
Awful
How about getting a killing blow in Malygos while on a Hover Disc?
For a melee class, this might be inevitable.
For a ranged class? How about a healer?
To get this Achievement, I'd have to (A) stop doing my normal job of pew-pew at flying Scions which has proven successful for us, and (B) bump one of our melee guys from a disc, so he might be just standing there doing nothing since he can't reach the Scions.
Achievements like these, or similar ones for doing what I consider to be absurd or counter-intuitive things in battlegrounds, seem tailored to specific roles and classes, and I'm not a big fan. Might as well make an achievement "shoot 100 bullets and 100 arrows at Malygos in the same fight". Good luck getting that one, Ms. Shadow Priest. Awful. But I digress.
Do you go for these? How many wipes before your team says "F it" and does the kill like normal?
I use the word "drakes" both in the literal sense of the number of Drakes you keep alive at the onset of the Sartharion encounter, but more as a metaphor for "tunable difficulty".
Blizz has indicated that the first T8 dungeon Ulduar will follow a similar model to Sartharion. The raid will get to decide what difficulty level they want to tackle, and can take actions in the instance that will alter how the encounter plays out.
Sartharion with zero drakes is relatively easy as long as the raid can maneuver to avoid walls of fire and control elemental adds.
Sartharion with one drake. Conquest has only officially done this once. We did one-shot it, however I won't call it a cake walk. The difficulty level went up considerably over zero drakes.
Looking forward to the new raid week, we're going after at least two drakes, and maybe even three.
Personally, I like the thought of easing into it and gradually adding drakes each week, but at the same time, if we spend 3 hours wiping on 3 Drakes, I'll be happy as a clam as long as the team doesn't degrade into finger pointing or blaming or anger.
Some Achievements are inevitable. Whether you specifically are aiming to do them or not, you very likely will if you keep raiding the content.
Some Achievements offer increased challenge without any valuable reward besides a few Achievement points (do those redeem for anything?) and some soothing of the OCD impulse in all us list-completers.
Some encounters allow for heightened challenge while dangling the carrot of additional epics or maybe epics that're only on the loot table in the higher difficulty settings.
Which ones does your raid go for and why?
If you have "walk in the park / farm status" on the ez-mode, and "massive wipefest" on the harder modes, how do your leaders manage the team's expectations, morale, performance problems, and unity?
Historically, you could assess the success of your raid by how
To improve success either kill more bosses, or if you're already killing them all, try to do it faster or try to do it with fewer incidental deaths.
But in WotLK, there's two new ways to look at raid success: Achievements and Drakes.
It becomes tricky for a team to decide what to go after, since the basic criteria of dead bosses might be ez-mode for your raid, however the additional success factors might provide substantial challenge, wipes, and repair bills.
Achievements
In my mind, raid achievements fall into three categories: Inevitable, Challenge, and Awful
Inevitable ones
Kill this boss. Clear that wing.
Dance with Heigan Safely. Well, hopefully thats inevitable. I mean, you don't really need an achievement to tell you to try to survive a fight. But the DDR dance can be an issue for all 25 people to get it right at the same time. But, do this fight enough times and there's a chance the sun will be shining on all of you on the same night.
So these types of achievements sort of come with the turf and you don't need to go out of your way or do anything special (besides be non-fail raiders who dont die in the fire).
Challenge Ones
Then there's the achievements that the raid needs to go out of its way to ding.
Perfect example is 100 Club. Kill Sapphiron with no raid member having a frost resist value greater than 100.
We've been farming Sapphiron for weeks now. The baseline is for all raiders to have at least 300 frost resist, which comes easily via Mark of the Wild, Frost Resist Aura, and each person bringing two pieces of crafted resist gear.
Did it add challenge? Absolutely. I'm sure the healers had a much tougher job than in the past, with a much smaller room for error. As a DPS player, I paid heightened attention to staying out of the chill or blizzard or whatever. With high frost resist, you can cut some corners and stand there and absorb a tick or two without too much fuss.
Did we kill Sapphiron? Hell's yeah. Strong DPS, good tank positioning, and stellar healing led to a one-shot of the dragon.
Did we ding the achievement? Nope. We think there's a mage armor effect that can boost their FR above 100, and consequently we didn't ding.
But its all good. We proved we can do it, and we built confidence in our team. Hopefully next week, the Officers will give the green light to do it again, and I'm sure we'll nail the sunnofabitch.
Do we get anything for it? I think 10 Achievement points, and a ticky mark to check the item off our list.
But it does build team pride, confidence, and esprit de corps.
Awful
How about getting a killing blow in Malygos while on a Hover Disc?
For a melee class, this might be inevitable.
For a ranged class? How about a healer?
To get this Achievement, I'd have to (A) stop doing my normal job of pew-pew at flying Scions which has proven successful for us, and (B) bump one of our melee guys from a disc, so he might be just standing there doing nothing since he can't reach the Scions.
Achievements like these, or similar ones for doing what I consider to be absurd or counter-intuitive things in battlegrounds, seem tailored to specific roles and classes, and I'm not a big fan. Might as well make an achievement "shoot 100 bullets and 100 arrows at Malygos in the same fight". Good luck getting that one, Ms. Shadow Priest. Awful. But I digress.
Do you go for these? How many wipes before your team says "F it" and does the kill like normal?
Drakes
I use the word "drakes" both in the literal sense of the number of Drakes you keep alive at the onset of the Sartharion encounter, but more as a metaphor for "tunable difficulty".
Blizz has indicated that the first T8 dungeon Ulduar will follow a similar model to Sartharion. The raid will get to decide what difficulty level they want to tackle, and can take actions in the instance that will alter how the encounter plays out.
Sartharion with zero drakes is relatively easy as long as the raid can maneuver to avoid walls of fire and control elemental adds.
Sartharion with one drake. Conquest has only officially done this once. We did one-shot it, however I won't call it a cake walk. The difficulty level went up considerably over zero drakes.
Looking forward to the new raid week, we're going after at least two drakes, and maybe even three.
Personally, I like the thought of easing into it and gradually adding drakes each week, but at the same time, if we spend 3 hours wiping on 3 Drakes, I'll be happy as a clam as long as the team doesn't degrade into finger pointing or blaming or anger.
Which do you go for?
Some Achievements are inevitable. Whether you specifically are aiming to do them or not, you very likely will if you keep raiding the content.
Some Achievements offer increased challenge without any valuable reward besides a few Achievement points (do those redeem for anything?) and some soothing of the OCD impulse in all us list-completers.
Some encounters allow for heightened challenge while dangling the carrot of additional epics or maybe epics that're only on the loot table in the higher difficulty settings.
Which ones does your raid go for and why?
If you have "walk in the park / farm status" on the ez-mode, and "massive wipefest" on the harder modes, how do your leaders manage the team's expectations, morale, performance problems, and unity?
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Wannabe Salty Chef
Sorry about the previous post, but I had to get it out of my system. Those two pups are sorely missed.
So, like any good addict, lets avoid facing pain by indulging in our addiction of choice, in this case, WoW and Achievements.
After fiddling with the recent holiday event and the achievements system, I got to thinking.
Do I really want to be Merrymaker all year long?
Probably not. What options do I have?
Jenkins is a fun name to wear.
Champion of the Naaru is more or less laughed at on my new server. If you're not a Hand, you're nuttin. So no go here.
So I scan through the Achievements interface and see some nifty tidbits on the Professions menu item.
Let me start off by saying...there's three secondary professions. There's a cooking achievement to become Chef. There's a fishing achievement to become Salty. There's no First Aid title.
I want to be Nurse Amava, or Amava EMT, or even Dr. Amava, but that'd only be to compete with Dr. Denis Leary.
I think the absence of a First Aid title is cuz Blizzard is hating on Male Nurses and Female Doctors and so chose to avoid the concept all together.
/shakes-fist
Chef Amava. Has a nice ring to it. Perhaps it'll be worth going after this one.
As per usual on this site, what follows isn't really a guide on how to accomplish it, but rather, my thoughts as I am in progress to achieving it.
Before I even start, from what I understand, the title Chef is currently unattainable. Until patch 3.0.8, it is physically impossible to obtain the required 45 Northrend recipes due to bugs or perhaps the recipes not even existing at all. WoW Head leads me to believe that this is being fixed in 3.0.8. So my plan is to get everything that is actually do-able do-ed before the patch hits, whenever that is.
A) - If you weren't playing and cooking during TBC, this one will probably be annoying.
B) - If you aren't interested in doing the Dalaran Daily Cooking quest frequently, this one will probably be annoying.
C) - If you do not qualify for either (A) or (B), then this might be pretty cool for you.
Some of the more challenging sub-achievements that I've come across. Ok, challenging is the wrong word. Tedious?
1) - Cook a wide variety of Outlands foods. I already had all the recipes. Just a matter of a couple hours flying around to get a random piece of meat or fish here or there. Went very nicely with the Fishing Achievements of fishing from a variety of pools.
2) - Cook a wide variety of Northrend foods. This one tricked me. They list 46 recipes. But the text says "cook 15 of these". So I cooked 15. And dinged the achievement. Only to see a new achievement with an identical name, only this time requiring 30. Likewise when I cooked all 30 and now its 45. I know its small and nitpicky, but Blizz, give them three different names. I like incremental "rewards" as I progress a goal. But thinking I'm done, only to have the finish line moved on me, that's yucky. I think I'm at 37 as of this writing.
3) - Complete all the Shattrath daily cooking quests. And all the Dalaran ones. This is annoying in that you need to check the quest giver each day until you get the one you need. In Dalaran, do the quest anyways, because cooking awards and northern spices are things you'll need to be Chef. In Shat, just leave (or go visit the fishing guy while you're there, since you'll need all his quests eventually to be Salty).
4) - Serve a Great Feast in each BG. This one is kinda neat, I like the spirit. Serve food to "friends". Quickly farmed mats for some feasts and then plodded through BG.
WSG. I zone in and see that somebody already served a feast. So, I could drop one and get the achievement. But I didn't like the spirit of that, doing it just for the sake of doing it. So I eat his and then we play. Awful awful awful band of coconuts grinding it out in midfield. 25 minutes later, I've died 10 times with the damn flag in my hands due to nobody joining me in the retrieval. So I rez one last time and spitefully drop my feast and desert the battle.
5) - Now I'm into the home stretch. I've got 5 remaining recipes for the quest that I need to purchase via Dalaran Cooking Awards. I currently have zero DCA in my currency tab. Takes three DCA to buy one recipe.
If my calculations are correct, it'll take 15 days to finish off all the attainable recipes. Sometimes you get a bonus DCA when you do the daily, so might go a day or two quicker, but I'm thinking Jan 20th is when I'll be as close to Chef Amava as is possible in the current version of the game. Will 3.0.8 hit before then? /cross-fingers
Let the QQ begin.....
This one is (A) gonna suck (B) not gonna happen.
Start with a lighter side...coming into yesterday, I only needed the Baby Crocolisk and the Helfire fishing quests to be done with Old Fart Barlow. Of course, these are the two least frequent quests in my experience.
So I've been checking, nearly every day for the last two.
Sunday, got the Helfire one. Caught the quest fish on the first cast.
Sweet.
Monday morning. Quick check with the old fart. Wouldn't you know it. Baby Crocolisk.
I'm pretty damn close to being done with Outlands entirely. Just need to farm up a tad bit (read: 10,000 stacks) of Fel Iron and Adamantite to level alt JC, ENG, and BS through the Outlands levels.
Back to the QQ....
1) - Fishing up all the coins from Dalaran fountain? Meh. Until I'm maxed at 450, I'll consider this a fruitful pursuit. Once maxed, I'm going to have a very hard time finding the motivation to whip out the rod in the city.
2) - Do something in Zul'Grub? Never been there. Maybe this won't be that bad, will need to read up on it and maybe join a random ZG pug late some saturday night.
3) - Lurker in SSC. If 3 ppl throw a line into the mix and Lurker pops up, do we all get the achievement? Or does exactly one player get credit? Might be possible to find some random SSC pug here or there, but to have to try and try and try to fish him out will suck balls.
4) - Fish up some rare guy in Ironforge. B..o..r..i..n..g! And same as Dalaran coins, once maxed out skill, will be even less interesting.
5) - Fish up one fish in Orgrimar. Ok, this is amusing. Maybe join a world PvP raid and while in the city, fish up a fish. Cute, I like this one.
6) - Fish up some rare guy in Orgrimar. That sux. If this one doesn't completely convince me to remain Un-Salty, then .....
7) - The icing on the cake...Win the Stranglethorn Fishing Contest. Yeah. I've never tried this, but I'm assuming its pretty damn hard. Plus, is it only one winner per week? Meaning you could at most have only one Salty dinger on the server each week? F.U. Blizz.
Chef is actually impossible (for now).
Salty is practically impossible.
Time will tell.
So, like any good addict, lets avoid facing pain by indulging in our addiction of choice, in this case, WoW and Achievements.
After fiddling with the recent holiday event and the achievements system, I got to thinking.
Do I really want to be Merrymaker all year long?
Probably not. What options do I have?
Jenkins is a fun name to wear.
Champion of the Naaru is more or less laughed at on my new server. If you're not a Hand, you're nuttin. So no go here.
So I scan through the Achievements interface and see some nifty tidbits on the Professions menu item.
Discrimination against Male Nurses
Let me start off by saying...there's three secondary professions. There's a cooking achievement to become Chef. There's a fishing achievement to become Salty. There's no First Aid title.
I want to be Nurse Amava, or Amava EMT, or even Dr. Amava, but that'd only be to compete with Dr. Denis Leary.
I think the absence of a First Aid title is cuz Blizzard is hating on Male Nurses and Female Doctors and so chose to avoid the concept all together.
/shakes-fist
Chef
Chef Amava. Has a nice ring to it. Perhaps it'll be worth going after this one.
As per usual on this site, what follows isn't really a guide on how to accomplish it, but rather, my thoughts as I am in progress to achieving it.
Before I even start, from what I understand, the title Chef is currently unattainable. Until patch 3.0.8, it is physically impossible to obtain the required 45 Northrend recipes due to bugs or perhaps the recipes not even existing at all. WoW Head leads me to believe that this is being fixed in 3.0.8. So my plan is to get everything that is actually do-able do-ed before the patch hits, whenever that is.
A) - If you weren't playing and cooking during TBC, this one will probably be annoying.
B) - If you aren't interested in doing the Dalaran Daily Cooking quest frequently, this one will probably be annoying.
C) - If you do not qualify for either (A) or (B), then this might be pretty cool for you.
Some of the more challenging sub-achievements that I've come across. Ok, challenging is the wrong word. Tedious?
1) - Cook a wide variety of Outlands foods. I already had all the recipes. Just a matter of a couple hours flying around to get a random piece of meat or fish here or there. Went very nicely with the Fishing Achievements of fishing from a variety of pools.
2) - Cook a wide variety of Northrend foods. This one tricked me. They list 46 recipes. But the text says "cook 15 of these". So I cooked 15. And dinged the achievement. Only to see a new achievement with an identical name, only this time requiring 30. Likewise when I cooked all 30 and now its 45. I know its small and nitpicky, but Blizz, give them three different names. I like incremental "rewards" as I progress a goal. But thinking I'm done, only to have the finish line moved on me, that's yucky. I think I'm at 37 as of this writing.
3) - Complete all the Shattrath daily cooking quests. And all the Dalaran ones. This is annoying in that you need to check the quest giver each day until you get the one you need. In Dalaran, do the quest anyways, because cooking awards and northern spices are things you'll need to be Chef. In Shat, just leave (or go visit the fishing guy while you're there, since you'll need all his quests eventually to be Salty).
4) - Serve a Great Feast in each BG. This one is kinda neat, I like the spirit. Serve food to "friends". Quickly farmed mats for some feasts and then plodded through BG.
WSG. I zone in and see that somebody already served a feast. So, I could drop one and get the achievement. But I didn't like the spirit of that, doing it just for the sake of doing it. So I eat his and then we play. Awful awful awful band of coconuts grinding it out in midfield. 25 minutes later, I've died 10 times with the damn flag in my hands due to nobody joining me in the retrieval. So I rez one last time and spitefully drop my feast and desert the battle.
5) - Now I'm into the home stretch. I've got 5 remaining recipes for the quest that I need to purchase via Dalaran Cooking Awards. I currently have zero DCA in my currency tab. Takes three DCA to buy one recipe.
If my calculations are correct, it'll take 15 days to finish off all the attainable recipes. Sometimes you get a bonus DCA when you do the daily, so might go a day or two quicker, but I'm thinking Jan 20th is when I'll be as close to Chef Amava as is possible in the current version of the game. Will 3.0.8 hit before then? /cross-fingers
Salty
Let the QQ begin.....
This one is (A) gonna suck (B) not gonna happen.
Start with a lighter side...coming into yesterday, I only needed the Baby Crocolisk and the Helfire fishing quests to be done with Old Fart Barlow. Of course, these are the two least frequent quests in my experience.
So I've been checking, nearly every day for the last two.
Sunday, got the Helfire one. Caught the quest fish on the first cast.
Sweet.
Monday morning. Quick check with the old fart. Wouldn't you know it. Baby Crocolisk.
I'm pretty damn close to being done with Outlands entirely. Just need to farm up a tad bit (read: 10,000 stacks) of Fel Iron and Adamantite to level alt JC, ENG, and BS through the Outlands levels.
Back to the QQ....
1) - Fishing up all the coins from Dalaran fountain? Meh. Until I'm maxed at 450, I'll consider this a fruitful pursuit. Once maxed, I'm going to have a very hard time finding the motivation to whip out the rod in the city.
2) - Do something in Zul'Grub? Never been there. Maybe this won't be that bad, will need to read up on it and maybe join a random ZG pug late some saturday night.
3) - Lurker in SSC. If 3 ppl throw a line into the mix and Lurker pops up, do we all get the achievement? Or does exactly one player get credit? Might be possible to find some random SSC pug here or there, but to have to try and try and try to fish him out will suck balls.
4) - Fish up some rare guy in Ironforge. B..o..r..i..n..g! And same as Dalaran coins, once maxed out skill, will be even less interesting.
5) - Fish up one fish in Orgrimar. Ok, this is amusing. Maybe join a world PvP raid and while in the city, fish up a fish. Cute, I like this one.
6) - Fish up some rare guy in Orgrimar. That sux. If this one doesn't completely convince me to remain Un-Salty, then .....
7) - The icing on the cake...Win the Stranglethorn Fishing Contest. Yeah. I've never tried this, but I'm assuming its pretty damn hard. Plus, is it only one winner per week? Meaning you could at most have only one Salty dinger on the server each week? F.U. Blizz.
Will I ever be a Salty Chef?
Chef is actually impossible (for now).
Salty is practically impossible.
Time will tell.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Reflections on Merrymaking
I've long been a hold out from seasonal events. Not from the entire event, but rather a holdout from trying to do everything the event has to offer, or in the age of Achievements, try to compete all the feats of strength.
Generally, I've got my plan and I'm sticking to it, and the seasonal stuff just sits off to the side.
But the bug bit me for Winter's Veil this year and me and the gf decided to become Merrymakers.
Two reasons....
1) Having dinged exalted with Hodirs and Argent and revered with Ebon Blade, I'm pretty much done with what I view as "required" rep grinds. The remaining grinds are for vanity items, cheeper vendor rates, or other such frivolity.
2) Blizzard did Christmas right as compared with their doing Halloween and Octoberfest wrong. Getting "the hallowed" required you to run that stupid horseman boss 5 times a day, pretty much every day, and then cross your fingers for RNG to drop the right items and then cross your fingers again and hope RNG will give you top roll. /disgust
Christmas was done with, IMO, a perfect blend of solo-ability and some social aspects mixed in.
Lets take a deeper look....
Most of the Winter Veil achievements are soloable.
Fly to here, here, and here and kiss people or throw snowballs or whatever. Fun for veteran players to nostalgic visit the old world. Fun for new players to get a taste of a few different locations.
Cook some stuff with easy-to-locate ingredients.
Run out to rescue Rudolph. Maybe not solo-able if you're lower level, but generally I'll say its safe to call this one a solo run.
/kiss a bunch of revelers at inns to get the items you need for other quests. Although the rate with which they drop Handful of Flakes for me was rather stingy.
WoW is an MMO afterall. Cant make it exclusively solo game.
So you could go to one extreme and require players to find 5-person teams every day for two weeks. /yuck
Or you could make them play bumper cars on the plaza in Ironforge. Fun as hell, for just a little while, to ram and chase other players crashin thrashin robot.
Or you could make them run around Dalaran, mousing over every player they come across, looking for that damn Blood Elf Warlock to sprinkle some snowflakes on.
Or you could make them go to BG's and kill stuff. While all cute wearing costumes and such.
And if you're going after the title with a friend, what fun to get to dance as snowman together. Simple, stupid, frivolous. Definitely not game changing. But totally worth the few minutes of laughing together and taking a break from the hardcore grind.
For my $15, Merrymaker involved just the right blend of solo stuff and social stuff.
Having spent nearly a year at level 70, with high level cooking, an entry-level set of resiliance gear, and exalted with Ogrila, Merrymaker was pretty straigh forward for Amava.
How about for the gf who, for all intents and purposes, joined wow with the release of WotLK?
Cooking: Ok, so getting cooking from 1-325 in a weekend was a little bit of a bear.
Endless piles of Clam-dropping Nagas and Egg-dropping Owlbeasts were crushed in the process. But, her cooking is now up to Northrend levels and she's happily earning Dalaran cooking awards and the highly lucrative Norther Spices like all the cool kids. Wanted to get this done anyway, so all the merrier that Blizz gave some motivation to stop putting it off.
Ogrila: Kinda took the Ogrila bombs for granted. On Amava, I just flew up there and bombed away like I've always done. Still haven't gotten it done in under 2 minutes, but whatever. /fail
How about for a player who (A) never had a flying mount and therefore must haul ass out to SMV to buy one and also learn to control the flyer, and (B) never did Ogrila dailies and therefore must do the attunement chain and learn how to actually complete the quest.
Luckily, at level 80, the attunement chain is easy for a gorilla-toting Hunter. However there is one abominable step that requires 5 players to summon the boss. This took some tapdancing on /general, a kind helping hand from a guildie, plus taking one of my alts and running her all the way up to northeast BEM since she's not 70 yet and cannot fly.
But we got the attunement done.
And the gf's got good hands and quickly learned how to get the bombing quest done.
Only to discover that the very first time you do it, its not considered a daily quest. So she had to do it again.
Running short on Mount-Transforming Holly, it was getting a bit scary, yadda yadda yadda, she's a full-on Ogrila Bomber!
Battle Grounds: This one probably deserves its own post, but suffice it to say, a level 75 Shadow Priest with 0 resil makes for a fantastic target in a battleground full of 80's.
I offered to farm it for her, but more or less was told where I can stick it. So we went into AV together and after 6 or 7 complete fail jobs at getting HK while dressed as Santa Helper, finally got into what's actually an awful AV match, but perfect for what we needed. All out grind fest, blood bath in no-mans land. Neither side going after anything strategic, just kill kill kill.
And at 75, she did a miraculous job of staying behind the front line, dressed as a little helper elf, darting between hiding in the trees and joining battle.
She single-handedly healed me through killing 4 level 80 hordies that jumped the two of us in isolation, and I suck, so her keeping us alive is actually saying something!!!
We both got like 6 achievements each in that one AV for killing anything and everything.
Outstanding time had by all. Well, I bet "all" in the BG hated it, but the two of us loved it ;-)
So we both wear Merrymaker title above our heads. Had a blast.
Leaves me hoping more seasonal events follow the pattern of Winter Veil and escape the awful randomness of Brewfest and Halloween.
Generally, I've got my plan and I'm sticking to it, and the seasonal stuff just sits off to the side.
But the bug bit me for Winter's Veil this year and me and the gf decided to become Merrymakers.
Why the change of heart?
Two reasons....
1) Having dinged exalted with Hodirs and Argent and revered with Ebon Blade, I'm pretty much done with what I view as "required" rep grinds. The remaining grinds are for vanity items, cheeper vendor rates, or other such frivolity.
2) Blizzard did Christmas right as compared with their doing Halloween and Octoberfest wrong. Getting "the hallowed" required you to run that stupid horseman boss 5 times a day, pretty much every day, and then cross your fingers for RNG to drop the right items and then cross your fingers again and hope RNG will give you top roll. /disgust
Christmas was done with, IMO, a perfect blend of solo-ability and some social aspects mixed in.
Lets take a deeper look....
Solo-Ability
Most of the Winter Veil achievements are soloable.
Fly to here, here, and here and kiss people or throw snowballs or whatever. Fun for veteran players to nostalgic visit the old world. Fun for new players to get a taste of a few different locations.
Cook some stuff with easy-to-locate ingredients.
Run out to rescue Rudolph. Maybe not solo-able if you're lower level, but generally I'll say its safe to call this one a solo run.
/kiss a bunch of revelers at inns to get the items you need for other quests. Although the rate with which they drop Handful of Flakes for me was rather stingy.
Social Aspects
WoW is an MMO afterall. Cant make it exclusively solo game.
So you could go to one extreme and require players to find 5-person teams every day for two weeks. /yuck
Or you could make them play bumper cars on the plaza in Ironforge. Fun as hell, for just a little while, to ram and chase other players crashin thrashin robot.
Or you could make them run around Dalaran, mousing over every player they come across, looking for that damn Blood Elf Warlock to sprinkle some snowflakes on.
Or you could make them go to BG's and kill stuff. While all cute wearing costumes and such.
And if you're going after the title with a friend, what fun to get to dance as snowman together. Simple, stupid, frivolous. Definitely not game changing. But totally worth the few minutes of laughing together and taking a break from the hardcore grind.
For my $15, Merrymaker involved just the right blend of solo stuff and social stuff.
How about for the newer players?
Having spent nearly a year at level 70, with high level cooking, an entry-level set of resiliance gear, and exalted with Ogrila, Merrymaker was pretty straigh forward for Amava.
How about for the gf who, for all intents and purposes, joined wow with the release of WotLK?
Cooking: Ok, so getting cooking from 1-325 in a weekend was a little bit of a bear.
Endless piles of Clam-dropping Nagas and Egg-dropping Owlbeasts were crushed in the process. But, her cooking is now up to Northrend levels and she's happily earning Dalaran cooking awards and the highly lucrative Norther Spices like all the cool kids. Wanted to get this done anyway, so all the merrier that Blizz gave some motivation to stop putting it off.
Ogrila: Kinda took the Ogrila bombs for granted. On Amava, I just flew up there and bombed away like I've always done. Still haven't gotten it done in under 2 minutes, but whatever. /fail
How about for a player who (A) never had a flying mount and therefore must haul ass out to SMV to buy one and also learn to control the flyer, and (B) never did Ogrila dailies and therefore must do the attunement chain and learn how to actually complete the quest.
Luckily, at level 80, the attunement chain is easy for a gorilla-toting Hunter. However there is one abominable step that requires 5 players to summon the boss. This took some tapdancing on /general, a kind helping hand from a guildie, plus taking one of my alts and running her all the way up to northeast BEM since she's not 70 yet and cannot fly.
But we got the attunement done.
And the gf's got good hands and quickly learned how to get the bombing quest done.
Only to discover that the very first time you do it, its not considered a daily quest. So she had to do it again.
Running short on Mount-Transforming Holly, it was getting a bit scary, yadda yadda yadda, she's a full-on Ogrila Bomber!
Battle Grounds: This one probably deserves its own post, but suffice it to say, a level 75 Shadow Priest with 0 resil makes for a fantastic target in a battleground full of 80's.
I offered to farm it for her, but more or less was told where I can stick it. So we went into AV together and after 6 or 7 complete fail jobs at getting HK while dressed as Santa Helper, finally got into what's actually an awful AV match, but perfect for what we needed. All out grind fest, blood bath in no-mans land. Neither side going after anything strategic, just kill kill kill.
And at 75, she did a miraculous job of staying behind the front line, dressed as a little helper elf, darting between hiding in the trees and joining battle.
She single-handedly healed me through killing 4 level 80 hordies that jumped the two of us in isolation, and I suck, so her keeping us alive is actually saying something!!!
We both got like 6 achievements each in that one AV for killing anything and everything.
Outstanding time had by all. Well, I bet "all" in the BG hated it, but the two of us loved it ;-)
Merriment times two
So we both wear Merrymaker title above our heads. Had a blast.
Leaves me hoping more seasonal events follow the pattern of Winter Veil and escape the awful randomness of Brewfest and Halloween.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Falling Down With Grace
Last week, I gave you a gem of a story about the Scryer's Tier path to the Going Down achievement. Cute, cute, you jump off the building, land on a canvas tent, get an achievement. If you've got a big enough monitor and a weak enough inner ear, the visual effect can actually make you experience a falling sensation.
But for the truly adventurous people, my guild found the perfect way to accomplish this little cherry.
BLOW UP YOUR RAID
Tempest Keep, High Astromancer Solarian
Periodically during the fight a random player will get a Wrath of the Somesuch debuff which turns them into a ticking time bomb. That player needs to run quick like a bunny away from their teammates, blow up in a secluded location, and then rejoin the group. If you blow up near your team, they fly high in the air in a spectacular fashion, and then die when they land. So be kind to your team and run away when you become the bomb.
Pretty simple mechanism.
As it would turn out, not quite so simple for e'rebody, because midway through the fight, the whole tightly packed clump of ranged DPS plus healers is flying high up into the air in spectacular fashion.
During the lengthy journey up into the sky and back down again, I take a gander at my BigWigs warning that shows me who blew us up (you know who you are !!!!), as any good Raid Leader would.
And, as all of us are plummeting back down to the ground and going splat upon impact, all of a sudden, an accomplishment dingy gets thrown up on the screen.
Yep, you got it. The guy who blew us up survived the fall and dinged the Going Down achievement in the process, while simultaneously wiping the raid.
The entertainment factor of the achievement more than overcame the sense of let down that comes with a silly wipe.
Of course, on the next attempt, when the same guy blew us up again, the entertainment factor was a smidge less, what with there being no achievement available to him. So he was asked to "stand in the corner" for our final attempt, which ended up being a beauty, with a dead High Astromancer.
Oh, and just for the record, Al'ar finally met his end by our hand in a one-shot progression kill. Too bad its a nerfed Al'ar, because he wiped us quite effectively during many'a pre-nerf attempt, but either way, revenge is ours.
But for the truly adventurous people, my guild found the perfect way to accomplish this little cherry.
BLOW UP YOUR RAID
Tempest Keep, High Astromancer Solarian
Periodically during the fight a random player will get a Wrath of the Somesuch debuff which turns them into a ticking time bomb. That player needs to run quick like a bunny away from their teammates, blow up in a secluded location, and then rejoin the group. If you blow up near your team, they fly high in the air in a spectacular fashion, and then die when they land. So be kind to your team and run away when you become the bomb.
Pretty simple mechanism.
As it would turn out, not quite so simple for e'rebody, because midway through the fight, the whole tightly packed clump of ranged DPS plus healers is flying high up into the air in spectacular fashion.
During the lengthy journey up into the sky and back down again, I take a gander at my BigWigs warning that shows me who blew us up (you know who you are !!!!), as any good Raid Leader would.
And, as all of us are plummeting back down to the ground and going splat upon impact, all of a sudden, an accomplishment dingy gets thrown up on the screen.
Yep, you got it. The guy who blew us up survived the fall and dinged the Going Down achievement in the process, while simultaneously wiping the raid.
The entertainment factor of the achievement more than overcame the sense of let down that comes with a silly wipe.
Of course, on the next attempt, when the same guy blew us up again, the entertainment factor was a smidge less, what with there being no achievement available to him. So he was asked to "stand in the corner" for our final attempt, which ended up being a beauty, with a dead High Astromancer.
Oh, and just for the record, Al'ar finally met his end by our hand in a one-shot progression kill. Too bad its a nerfed Al'ar, because he wiped us quite effectively during many'a pre-nerf attempt, but either way, revenge is ours.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Falling Down With Style
Have you been near the Aldor Elevator lately?
The bones are piled up like the base of an Aztec sacrificial temple.
Everybody's been trying to fall 65 feet without dying.
Everyone's twitterpated with Achievements.
Although I have contributed a few bones to the pile, that was only because I got confused by three different views of the elevator across three different multi-boxing screens, so I'd hardly call it an attempt at an achievement.
I'd heard that you could have a Paladin bubble you and then just jump off to complete the thing. Haven't tried it, and it doesn't seem to be very much fun.
After a recent raid, a couple people were talking about it and figured we'd give it a try.
Scryer's Tier.
There's a little red jewel statue thing right on the edge, overlooking the southwest-most part of Lower City.
If you're in the right spot, you can look down and see a little tent/cloth roof thing down below you in LC.
They tell me to jump, so I run off the edge.
No accomplishment, near death.
So they tell me to "jump" off the edge.
/doh
Gotta actually jump, because I guess the Tier is only 64 feet tall. Jump and you clear the 65 foot mark.
Ding!
Im' not sure how falling damage is calculated. Is it a % of your health, or is it a raw number? I started the jump with about 10,500 health, when I landed I had about 900 health. At the same time, a squishy caster was also completing the achievement. Not sure how the health amounts compare, but I'm pretty sure they had less than 9000 health, which would lead me to believe its a % and not a raw number since the feat was complete.
Fun, frivolous achievement. I like 'em that way. No real stress, no daily pain (curse you, blade's edge bombing), just a couple minutes of entertainment tacked on to the end of the day.
The bones are piled up like the base of an Aztec sacrificial temple.
Everybody's been trying to fall 65 feet without dying.
Everyone's twitterpated with Achievements.
Although I have contributed a few bones to the pile, that was only because I got confused by three different views of the elevator across three different multi-boxing screens, so I'd hardly call it an attempt at an achievement.
I'd heard that you could have a Paladin bubble you and then just jump off to complete the thing. Haven't tried it, and it doesn't seem to be very much fun.
After a recent raid, a couple people were talking about it and figured we'd give it a try.
Scryer's Tier.
There's a little red jewel statue thing right on the edge, overlooking the southwest-most part of Lower City.
If you're in the right spot, you can look down and see a little tent/cloth roof thing down below you in LC.
They tell me to jump, so I run off the edge.
No accomplishment, near death.
So they tell me to "jump" off the edge.
/doh
Gotta actually jump, because I guess the Tier is only 64 feet tall. Jump and you clear the 65 foot mark.
Ding!
Im' not sure how falling damage is calculated. Is it a % of your health, or is it a raw number? I started the jump with about 10,500 health, when I landed I had about 900 health. At the same time, a squishy caster was also completing the achievement. Not sure how the health amounts compare, but I'm pretty sure they had less than 9000 health, which would lead me to believe its a % and not a raw number since the feat was complete.
Fun, frivolous achievement. I like 'em that way. No real stress, no daily pain (curse you, blade's edge bombing), just a couple minutes of entertainment tacked on to the end of the day.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Not so fast there, buddy!
Bombing daily quests.
Two achievements available. One for skettis and one for blades edge mountains. Both with a timer of 2:15.
T'other day, flew on normal daily quest circuit, hit up skettis. Flubbed one bomb (ie, flew to a normally egg-covered perch, only to find it egg-free), but generally no mess ups. Figured that the flubb had ruled out the achievement. Never give up, cuz as I turned it in...dingo.
The one up north is a little tiny bit harder. Sure, monsterous kaliri are mean sunzabitches, but they're avoidable enough.
Those gunners in Blades Edge? They're down right nasty.
But the gunners are not really the problem.
No, its the damn stacks of.....whatever the hell we're trying to blow up. The little piles of Fel Something that have the Hunter's Mark bouncing over the top.
I don't know about you, but for me, its pretty random how the visual effect will work.
Sometimes you fly up, see a nice crisp Hunter's Mark in the distance, as you approach, very clearly and smoothly, the target below appears, and you have a very nice reference point to aim your little bombing reticle at.
But, more often than not, the visual effect is quite delayed for me. You can see the hunter's mark in the distance, but as you approach, the actual target only appears after a delay.
Other times, I don't even see the Hunter's Marks until I'm right on top of the damn things.
Makes it very hard to accurately target the damn bomb.
This seems to be independent of lag or other players in the area.
Felt pretty close to getting the BEM achievement done yesterday, when I totally missed one bomb because the stupid stack didn't show up until after a delay, and I fired my bomb at the point below the Hunter's Mark that I was estimating was the target.
/frustrated
But, based on the Skettis experience, I figure I won't let one little flubb stop me from trying. Never Give Up The Ship!
Scoot scoot scoot bomb bomb bomb.
Fly quick like a bunny down to the quest turn in.
Struggle for a second or two to click the NPC, then click through the dialogues to the "complete" button.
Waoooommmm, achievement dingy on the screen.
/excited
Who wouldathunk missing an entire bomb would still leave me time to finish up?
A fool, that's who!
Upon further review, the call on the field has been overturned. Video review shows that the receiver did not have possession while his feet were inbounds. Closer inspection of the video also shows the receiver to be stuffing his trousers, but that's not relevant to the call, just worthy of pointing out.
Yeah, so that dingy? Yeah, that was for 50 Daily Quests completed. Pure coincidence that it happened right at the moment I was hoping for a speed bombing dingy.
/shame
Two achievements available. One for skettis and one for blades edge mountains. Both with a timer of 2:15.
T'other day, flew on normal daily quest circuit, hit up skettis. Flubbed one bomb (ie, flew to a normally egg-covered perch, only to find it egg-free), but generally no mess ups. Figured that the flubb had ruled out the achievement. Never give up, cuz as I turned it in...dingo.
The one up north is a little tiny bit harder. Sure, monsterous kaliri are mean sunzabitches, but they're avoidable enough.
Those gunners in Blades Edge? They're down right nasty.
But the gunners are not really the problem.
No, its the damn stacks of.....whatever the hell we're trying to blow up. The little piles of Fel Something that have the Hunter's Mark bouncing over the top.
I don't know about you, but for me, its pretty random how the visual effect will work.
Sometimes you fly up, see a nice crisp Hunter's Mark in the distance, as you approach, very clearly and smoothly, the target below appears, and you have a very nice reference point to aim your little bombing reticle at.
But, more often than not, the visual effect is quite delayed for me. You can see the hunter's mark in the distance, but as you approach, the actual target only appears after a delay.
Other times, I don't even see the Hunter's Marks until I'm right on top of the damn things.
Makes it very hard to accurately target the damn bomb.
This seems to be independent of lag or other players in the area.
Felt pretty close to getting the BEM achievement done yesterday, when I totally missed one bomb because the stupid stack didn't show up until after a delay, and I fired my bomb at the point below the Hunter's Mark that I was estimating was the target.
/frustrated
But, based on the Skettis experience, I figure I won't let one little flubb stop me from trying. Never Give Up The Ship!
Scoot scoot scoot bomb bomb bomb.
Fly quick like a bunny down to the quest turn in.
Struggle for a second or two to click the NPC, then click through the dialogues to the "complete" button.
Waoooommmm, achievement dingy on the screen.
/excited
Who wouldathunk missing an entire bomb would still leave me time to finish up?
A fool, that's who!
Upon further review, the call on the field has been overturned. Video review shows that the receiver did not have possession while his feet were inbounds. Closer inspection of the video also shows the receiver to be stuffing his trousers, but that's not relevant to the call, just worthy of pointing out.
Yeah, so that dingy? Yeah, that was for 50 Daily Quests completed. Pure coincidence that it happened right at the moment I was hoping for a speed bombing dingy.
/shame
Thursday, October 16, 2008
My First Achievement
One of the very first things I did upon logging in was to explore the Achievements interface.
Confusing to navigate at first, but generally its a nice thing. Note to blizzard: Let me move the achievements window. Where it sits now, it blocks my chat window so I can't peruse my achievements and also monitor guild chat/whispers at the same time. On second thought, it blocks the uterly awful /general and /trade chat that's going on, so maybe dont fix this until a couple weeks pass.
I think I'm liking it overall.
Watching 5 guildies all get a heroic completion spit out into gchat at the same time, kinda fun.
Watching as ppl go fishing or daily questing or mounting or petting, all fun.
Watching people get announced as they log in with "XYZ has achieved the Champion of the Naaru" is fun-ish.
Its actually a little bit much right now, but that'll settle down once everybody's mounted up, done a couple battlegrounds, shaved, and gotten the basics out of the way.
Over time it'll be much less frequent, and actually be a fun thing to see when a guildie dings something.
And when a big group clears a big raid instance for the first time, it'll be a wall of dings, which I think will be lots of fun. Another note, Blizzard, since you're still reading me for your exclusive channel of new changes, maybe make it aggregate the list of names if several guildies complete an accomplishment simultaneously. That might help build a stronger sense of team unity.
So, faced with all this stuff, what's the first thing I went for?
I suppose the Champion one was my first accomplishment, but that's by default.
Then mounting, but I'm not sure if that was an achievement for my 7 mounts, or do you not get one till 10?
Then getting my pets out of my bag was an achievement.
But all those were sort of defaults, not really things I did.
Nope, for me, I found out I'm an Explorer.
Looking through the exploration accomplishments, I see Outlands.
Every single discoverable node in Outlands had been discovered...EXCEPT for one.
One single little chunk of map, this little floating island in northwest Netherstorm.
I couldn't resist!!!
Flew up there, discovered the island.
Dinged Netherstorm!
Dinged Outlands!
Completely frivolous, without any value what-so-ever, but made me smile, and I'll call that my $15 for the month.
Confusing to navigate at first, but generally its a nice thing. Note to blizzard: Let me move the achievements window. Where it sits now, it blocks my chat window so I can't peruse my achievements and also monitor guild chat/whispers at the same time. On second thought, it blocks the uterly awful /general and /trade chat that's going on, so maybe dont fix this until a couple weeks pass.
I think I'm liking it overall.
Watching 5 guildies all get a heroic completion spit out into gchat at the same time, kinda fun.
Watching as ppl go fishing or daily questing or mounting or petting, all fun.
Watching people get announced as they log in with "XYZ has achieved the Champion of the Naaru" is fun-ish.
Its actually a little bit much right now, but that'll settle down once everybody's mounted up, done a couple battlegrounds, shaved, and gotten the basics out of the way.
Over time it'll be much less frequent, and actually be a fun thing to see when a guildie dings something.
And when a big group clears a big raid instance for the first time, it'll be a wall of dings, which I think will be lots of fun. Another note, Blizzard, since you're still reading me for your exclusive channel of new changes, maybe make it aggregate the list of names if several guildies complete an accomplishment simultaneously. That might help build a stronger sense of team unity.
So, faced with all this stuff, what's the first thing I went for?
I suppose the Champion one was my first accomplishment, but that's by default.
Then mounting, but I'm not sure if that was an achievement for my 7 mounts, or do you not get one till 10?
Then getting my pets out of my bag was an achievement.
But all those were sort of defaults, not really things I did.
Nope, for me, I found out I'm an Explorer.
Looking through the exploration accomplishments, I see Outlands.
Every single discoverable node in Outlands had been discovered...EXCEPT for one.
One single little chunk of map, this little floating island in northwest Netherstorm.
I couldn't resist!!!
Flew up there, discovered the island.
Dinged Netherstorm!
Dinged Outlands!
Completely frivolous, without any value what-so-ever, but made me smile, and I'll call that my $15 for the month.
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