Reflections on Foolish Love

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

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

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

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

RNG

Random Number Generator.

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

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

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

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

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

I even got two bags of candy.

Every single achievement associated with the event. Almost.

One silly piece of candy.

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

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

The Good

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

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

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

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

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

The Bad

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Ugly

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

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


The other ugly: Ganking Coconuts in Gurubashi

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

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

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

Bottom Line

Some fun random activities.

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

Too much dependence on random numbers.

Accessibility cut short due to short duration.

Maybe a 5 out of 10?

Reflections on the Elderly

Dumb and Dumber was on TBS yesterday...

See, the elderly, while slow and dangerous behind the wheel, can still serve a purpose


Welcome to part two of what now has become my ongoing reflections on the seasonal events: Lunar Festival, and the Elder title.

You'll recall that I was a big fan of Merrymaking. The biggest success factor was the inclusiveness of being able to enjoy the event with a girl friend, and the lack of dependence on daily 5-man runs and a random drop that might never appear.

So how did Lunar Festival stack up?

I'm not doing ratings as part of the ongoing series, but how about 7 out of 10?

Lets dive deeper:

Inclusion

I was out picking flowers and enjoying one-click mining, taking advantage of my early wake-up on the east coast, while the majority of the server is sleeping on the west coast.

Brass pops on and we figure we'll go become Elderly together.

Kinda busy work, running around the whole world getting coins. Became more fun when the gf got home and she jumped in.

I'm a big fan of inclusive stuff, and she was able to just jump in. Sure, she'll have to go back and do the ones she missed, but since its not a linear progression, she's able to jump in and enjoy the rest of the day with us.

/win

Invasion

Stripping naked, except for Sombrero and Tabard (Amava don't nakey dance), we make a mad dash into Orgrimar, talk to the coin NPC and gogogogogog quick like bunnies back out to safety.

This is just plain fun. We were giggling like school girls having a pillow fight the whole time.

The other guildies listening in on vent know that Hunters are a few cans short of a six pack to begin with, but this only reinforced the message!

Thunderbluff was equally fun, until I brainfarted and fell off the side of the cliff.

But that only made us laugh harder.

Phasing, FTL

One caveat to the "inclusion" and the "invasion".

If you are mid-way through the Battle for Undercity quest chain. The one with the cut-scene in Dragonblight, that's all the rage amongst the people who want to make a meaningful impact on the MMO world.

Yeah, if you're mid-way through that one, Tirisfal Glades and Durotar are totally phased out, so you cannot get the coins there.

It was classic. Me and the gf are riding the Mammoth, traveling from WPL into Tirisfal Glades.

I weep for forgetting to take a screenie, but all of a sudden, on her screen, the Mammoth is driver-less.

And when we found the coin NPC, he did not appear on the gf's screen.

Phasing, FTL.

So the coin NPC's in Tirisfal Glades and Durotar, including the ones in the Horde cities, were totally inaccessible.

/pout

Classic Dungeons

I dislike the need for daily 5-person dungeon runs, as seems to be required for Halloween seasonal event.

I like that they mixed in a variety of dungeon runs for Elder. Run a bunch of dungeons once, and not even a full run at that.

The classic dungeons were fun to visit, and avoid mobs and walk in and get the coin.

Except for Mauradon. That one is a maze that had the three of us hopelessly lost.

Putting critters to sleep with Wyvern Sting is pure win.

Northrend Dungeons

This was a little different.

Start with two level 80 Survival Hunters kitted out in full 213/226 ilevel gear, and a level 78 Shadow Priest who's never done a dungeon in her priesty career.

Pick up the GM's level 71 alt.

Head on into Nexus.

Much fun to be had, using the pets as tanks and just sorta limping through. Respec to BM for sturdier pet tank, FTW!

It got harder and harder as we went to higher and higher level dungeons (duh!!!!).

Utgarde Pinnacle was rough. Out with the 71 alt, in with the well-geared 80 Disc Priest.

Suffice it to say that the gauntlet was a challenge without a real tank. But we made it!

Bubbles the Gorilla successfully tanked the Gruul boss in Halls of [Stone? or Lightening?] Something, which was funny.

So, we do all the dungeons, and we're left with Gumdrop only....

The Roadblock

Gundrak must be run in Heroic mode.

/fail Blizzard.

What was originally a fun day of inclusive socialization and group play has now been buzz killed.

So the uber gf is left with either forcing herself to ding 80 within two weeks, or have to bow completely out of running for the Elder.

I don't like that. Seasonal Event was fun because the only prerequisite was that you needed to be of Northrend levels. I'm willing to accept that as the minimum barrier for entry, since Blizzard runs a business and they want you buying their xpac.

But to say a player needs to be 80 to enjoy a seasonal event, which IMO should be a relaxed social casual FUN event, rather than yet another grindy grind that forces people to maximize?

I'm rethinking that 7 of 10 i awarded above. More like 5 due to the kick in the nuts of requring Heroic mode Gumdrop.

Luckily the uber gf is a good sport (she'd have to be to stay with me raiding 3-4 nights a week, plus generally smelling bad and making strange noises), so she didn't get bent out of shape as I kicked her from the group and invited a Prot Pally so the level 80's could go run Heroic Gundrak.

The Elder

So Brass and I ding Elder, and I get yelled at for donning my brand new Chef title instead of the Elder.

The gf is finishing up the Battle for Undercity quest line. As a casual level 78 player, might be tricky getting to 80 before the event is over, but hopefully she'll have fun trying rather than feeling pressured to grind away like those of us who are unhealthily addicted.

Overall, a fun seasonal event, but quite irritating to hit the roadblock.

The Hallowed Quickies

Hallodween Seasonal Event. Fun or Stupid?

1) Riding around on a broomstick, on land in the air, even over water (bugged out and didnt dismount me)? Fun!

2) A bag full of so much candy that I'm not sure if I can eat or should I save it for an achievement? Stupid!

3) Eating that candy until you barf all over the graveyard? Fun!

4) People barking on /trade WTS [costume] only 15g? Stupid!

5) Killing the Headless Fella ten times with only Vampiric Embrace healing the group? Fun!

6) Getting your ass kicked on the Damage Meter by a Ret Pally all ten times? Stupid!

7) Raiding with 17 pumpkin heads? Fun!

8) A Ghost Costume that looks like a human school librarian? Stupid!

9) Throwing buckets of water over and over again to save Goldshire? Fun!

10) Saving Goldshire everyday for 2 weeks? Stupid!

Happy Hallodween!