Achievements, Part II

Rohan shared his thoughts on the subject already, but I thought I'd chime in as well. I absolutely hate the "World First" feats. At least they're not achievements, but I don't think anyone should be rewarded for these feats.

First gnome to 80? Who cares. First tailor to 425? Whoop-de-do. First player on the server to 80? Way to prove you can either a) take a week off work or b) take a week off school or even worse, c) share your account with others and power level.

If I see anyone running around sporting one of the "server first" titles, I'll just laugh a little on the inside. All the other achievements I have no problem with. Exalted with the Timbermaw? Sure, it takes time (a lot of time), but you can do a little here, a little there, but it doesn't take a week of straight playing.

Also, what does happen if someone gets seriously injured from sleep deprivation or too many energy drinks? I have an energy drink here or there, and when seeing the latest Batman film, I drank too many in a short period of time and I swear I thought my heart was going to explode (why I still continue to drink even a single one is a mystery...). So what does happen if someone drinks too many, goes into cardiac arrest, and dies - while trying to accomplish a feat that Blizzard set up in game? Could they be sued? Maybe. They are officially sanctioning the race to 80. They are saying - go for it - we know you'll play 24x7, but we don't care. You want to be the server first, congrats.

I doubt they'll change their mind about this, but in my opinion, it's probably one of the stupidest things they've done in a while. Let's hope they do go back and realize the mistake they've made.

Achievements

Earlier today, Matticus talked about achievements that will soon occupy my time. As of press time, there are 694 listed achievements and I look forward to completing as many as I can. I have no more reputations to grind (though I have a few left I can complete through some instance runs) and I only have one pet left to grind (that damn Emerald Whelp will probably never be mine), and there's just not much to do these days.

I've been spending much of my time helping out my friendly backstabber, Tockett (yes, I couldn't get Tiddlywinks.com, but I did get Tockett.com). Tockett was the first of us gnomes to reach level 60 and also was able to obtain the rank of Knight Captain back in the day. He also heavily raided ZG, MC, and AQ20. Oh, the good ol' days. So while there's not much to do with Tiddly, Tockett is going strong. However, once he reaches 70, I fear there will be little left. What's the point of gearing up as it will all be obsolete in a few scant months?

Back to achievements though, some are insane...

40 Exalted Factions - I'm at 22...could probably hit 25 to 26 if I tried, there will be some added in the expansion, but 40!? Dang! Luckily I'm already past the levels of 10, 15 & 20.

100,000 Honorable Kills - Wow...I've got 2,200. I plan on getting up to maybe 5,000 by the time the expansion comes out as I want to stockpile some honor points so I can get some nice honor rewards at level 80. So maybe I'll stay on defense more in AV rather than going to the front like I enjoy.

Complete 3,000 Quests - I love this one. I'm pretty sure I'm already over half way there as grinding all my faction reps (including the Goblin reputations) has had me go all over to quest. Add in the fact that I plan on exploring more locations prior to Wrath, I should probably focus on picking up any quests I see. Luckily, they are thinking about adding in grey ? so we can more easily find quests we have not completed. In fact, I did two quests last night from the Area 52 wanted board. Nice to have that section clear.

Master of Alterac Valley - This one should be fun! Some of the individual achievements within this grouping seem tough, but it will be a challenge. I'm not sure how you can assault & defend a graveyard and assault & defend a tower in the same game.

Shop Smart, Shop Pet...Smart - Already done! (Obtain 50 pets) Yay, pet skunk, here I come.

World Explorer - I've been working on this one already. I hope to have every place explored. Sometimes though, there's areas on a map that you don't know you haven't explored as they aren't "shaded" on the world map. Not quite sure how they'll handle that.

My Sack is "Gigantique" - Great, I have to spend 1200g on a bag. Guess I should buy it soon so I can actually get some usage out of my 1200g...

Twenty-Five Tabards - If only I had room to start collecting them now, I would. But once I can stable my pets in Wrath, I will have room to collect tabards and since I'm exalted with 22 factions and have some unique tabards as well, 25 should be no problem.

Skills to Pay the Bills - Easy! I'm already 375 of fishing, cooking, and first aid. No problem to level them come Wrath.

The Cake Is Not A Lie - HAHA. Love it. Need to go bake me a cake. Already have the recipe.

The Diplomat - Reach exalted with Timbermaw, Kurenai & Sporeggar. Done and done!

The Justicar - Wow, this will be tough. Granted, I would love to get those three reputations to exalted as it is, but AB and WSG are just so painful to grind. I think I just need to put more time into them during their respective weekends. Plus I can rack up some HKs while doing so.

Well Read - This should be tons of fun. I've read a few, but there's a lot more I have to go find.

Enjoying the Spirit of Competition!

Well, the "Competitions" started today and I was off to the battlegrounds. I teamed up with some guildmates and we headed into Alterac Valley. After losing the first game due to our team's inability to hold the Relief Hut, my party and I decided we'd take that first rather than Iceblood Tower. So the next two games, we quickly went down, capped the hut, took the towers, and with that we were able to quickly win both games. After the second game, I got my Competitor's Tabard and after the third game, I got my Spirit of Competition. This is my 72nd pet and here's a picture of me with the tabard and the pet as I farm Dreaming Whelps as I look for a Tiny Emerald Whelp.

Unprepared

As stated previously, we went back to 10 man raiding this week and I'm ashamed to admit it, but I was unprepared. I had no Wizard Oil. I had one flask and I ran out of mana pots. I had to ration my food. I was not ready at all. So this weekend will be spent getting back to raid-ready status. I will be doing the cooking dailies, grinding mats for pots, flasks, and oils. I will not be caught off-guard again. It really was pretty sad when a friendly warlock came up to me to bum a hit of Wizard Oil, only to find I had none...at the beginning of the raid...I had none!

We did manage to take down Halazzi, Akil'zon and Nalorakk, almost getting the third chest (probably needed 5-8 more minutes). Jan'alai continues to frustrate us, but we had a few new people with us this week and I'm sure when everyone gets the fight down, we'll do just fine. Last night, it was an alt run through Kara. I showed up late, so I subbed in at Curator and we almost cleared the place by the time we had to call it. Unfortunately, Aran continues to withhold Sunfire from me.

On a completely unrelated note, I bought an enchanting pattern yesterday for 1500g. Enchant Boots - Vitality are mine. However, with the purchase of the formula and the firefly, I'm very low on cash, so it's back to doing dailies. I thought 5kg would last me for a while. I guess not.

Zul'Aman...We're Back!

Trolls, you're on notice. Tonight, after a very long absence, the Gold Team 10 Man group will be heading back to Zul'Aman. We're going to aim for 3 timed bosses and try and progress as we have not yet cleared the instance. Time to die trolls, time to die.

Back...

((Well, I'm back from Comic-Con. Got a chance to sit in on the World of Warcraft panel and hear all about the comic books, the manga, the card game, the figurines, everything except...the game. But that's what I expected. It was a talk about the merchandise. Only when they opened it up for Q&A did the game get discussed, and even then, questions like..."Why no legendary for hybrid druids" came up and just frustrated all those involved.

Alas, no pet was handed out and the "special gift" mentioned in the description of the panel was a lame WoW trading card game pin. We did get a very nice exclusive Comic-Con issue of the comic book which we got signed by the artist, so that's a nice bonus. But the panel was pretty...blah. Except of course meeting up with Vetarra and Narina from my guild. Always nice to meet guildies outside of the game and especially ones who are as nice as they were.))

So after my vacation, I was amped to get out and start killing things again, especially with my new Ethereal Soul-Trader following me around collecting Soul Credits. I made room for my Firefly in the bank and now just carry my Soul-Trader and my Rocket Chicken.

Oh yeah, I'm currently carrying Don Carlos' Famous Hat with me as the aforementioned wonderful Vetarra, Aracely, and Khyras helped me obtain it yesterday. Don Carlos is a pushover really and we killed him a few times in heroic with just 4 people (probably could be done with 3 or even 2 if you could get enough DPS) and we all got our hats. I also obtained my pattern for Dress Shoes as it was sold out the first time I tried to buy it. Together with the Haliscan items, I could make a nice little outfit. Though I'll probably go for the Soul-Trader outfit first.

With the addition of my Soul-Trader and Ghost Wolf, I sit at 71 of 83 pets collected. An impressive feat and I cannot wait until I can free up 71 bag spaces with the expansion.

Big Changes!

As you know, I'm a pet collector. With my two recent additions (Firefly and Ethereal Soul-Trader), I'm at 70 pets! With nothing but Imbued Netherweave Bags in my bank, that's almost 4 bags filled with pets! But, announced today, pets will no longer take bag slots (neither will mounts in that case).

Pets will now be learned as "spells" which you can then summon rather than having to carry around the item with you. While I'm pretty pleased with this change, I will miss carrying around my firefly cage or my worg carrier. But, summoning them will be much easier (truly random pets every time!) and I'll also get to have random mounts as well.

I shall be absent this weekend, but I have been tooling around in Azeroth more and more over the past week. Yesterday was the crocolisk fishing quest, but I was not rewarded with another pet. We shall keep up the good work.

An Update

((While I'm assuming readership of this blog, I figured I'd update it quickly. The move went off pretty well and I'm almost settled in. I'm figuring that once I finally get my computer set up in my room rather than it being in the spare room, I'll be playing more, but as it stands, I really haven't much time to play - it's been split between general household chores and fixing the house up.

In game, our Gold Team 25 man raids have been canceled permanently I believe as we had too many people saying they'd show up and then never make it. We also had a hacking issue which held us up and I'm not sure the group will get back together. From what I've heard we're going to go back to 10 mans and hopefully I'll be kept apprised of that move as I would love to be in a competent 10 man group once Wrath comes out.

From what I've been hearing, the good news is that when Wrath comes out, mages will return to their former glory days as the glass cannons, putting out the highest amount of damage on multiple targets (rogues supposedly can do the most damage to any single target foe).

On the pet front, I did not achieve my goal of getting the pet from Ahune. I was just too busy to have time to kill Ahune five times a day (I barely made it on more than a couple times over the past few weeks). New testing is now going on for the Hallow's Eve event and hopefully this year I can pick up my Siniter Squashling. Also, the pet from the World Wide Invitational in France is simply amazing - a pet Tyreal! Unfortunately, it's going for a bit too much on eBay. But now is my only chance if I want one. Murky and Gurky have passed me by...but how can I justify the cost??

Stay tuned, I'm hoping to get back into the game prior to Wrath, but it's just tough to find any reason to play. My gear cannot be upgraded outside of 25-mans, there are few recipes available to purchase on auction and only a couple pets I could grind and no faction rep to grind. Hopefully something will come along before Wrath to keep me interested. I've got thousands of gold and other than checking the daily fishing quest, there's just not much to do.))