Congratulations to everyone on this trivial, but still pretty cool, accomplishment.  We’re even beating out the folks at Sleepless Knights!  Is this because they can’t be bothered to run Wailing Caverns because they’re too busy killing raid bosses?  Almost certainly!  But fuck it…we’ll take our victory how we can get it.

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Tags: /cheer, Achievements, Number 1, Rankings

In honor of our first Wednesday raid, which happens to include the Obsidian Sanctum (among other things), I’ve decided to post one of our famous Linguist’s Guides for OS-10.  The guide includes both the regular fight, as well as strategies for fighting Sartharion with 1, 2 or all 3 drakes up.

As always, please inform me of any mistakes I may have included and enjoy!

A Linguist’s Guide to the Obsidian Sanctum!

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Tags: Achievements, Raiding, Strategy

Sometimes having an obsessive compulsive guild leader who loves making lists can pay off in some tiny way.  Today’s jackpot?  I went through and checked out the completion rates worldwide of all the various ICC-10 and RS-10 achievements.  What it left me with was a very unscientific ranking of which remaining achievements will be “easiest” for us to complete.

To be clear, this is more of an informational post than any kind of plan of action.  We’ll still be using guild input and informal polling to determine what challenges to take on each week.  I just thought the results here were kind of cool.  From easiest to hardest:

1. The Orb Whisperer
2. Frostwing Halls
3. I’m on a Boat
4. The Frozen Throne
5. Heroic: Storming the Citadel
6. The Twilight Destroyer
7. Heroic: The Crimson Halls
8. Portal Jockey
9. Flu Shot Shortage
10. Nausea, Heartburn, Indigestion…
11. Dances with Oozes
12. Heroic: The Plagueworks
13. Full House
14. Heroic: The Frostwing Halls
15. Been Waiting a Long Time For This
16. All You Can Eat
17. Heroic: The Twilight Destroyer
18. Heroic: Bane of the Fallen King
19. Neck Deep in Vile

Once Bitten, Twice Shy isn’t ranked due to it being more of a personal achievement of sorts.  With only a couple exceptions, the fun achievement versions of fights are easier than the regular ol’ Heroic modes.  Also, it appears that people have had an easier time finishing off The Crimson Halls than they have with The Plagueworks.  I can only assume Heroic Putricide has played a big role in this.  Neck Deep in Vile, which is no longer needed for the Glory meta, appears to have been removed for a reason:  Apparently, it’s really fucking hard.

So there you have it.

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Tags: Achievements, Patch 3.3.0, Strategy

Since we are doing this grand Naxx experiment tomorrow, I thought it would be a perfect time to do a writeup on the entire raid for newcomers and forgetful old-timers alike.  The guide itself covers every single boss and every single achievement in the instance.  It’s written in traditional Linguist’s Guide style, split into 4 role-specific versions and designed to be as clear and concise as possible.  It assumes an overgeared group, but still mentions the more important mechanics that make Naxx a wonderful place to learn the basics of raiding.

So, feel free to peruse the guides and prepare for tomorrow (or any other Naxx run for that matter).

A Linguist’s Guide to Naxxramas!

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Tags: Achievements, Mother Fuckin' Naxx!, Raiding, Strategy

Achievemental is our newest regular column, focusing on the various achievements found in World of Warcraft.

Having finally received my Patron title this week, I’d now like to join the chorus of voices rallying against School of Hard Knocks.  Now, there’s not a lot that I can say about this achievement that hasn’t already been said.  However, I do think it’s an interesting controversy to look at, mainly because it seems that one side of the debate has a monopoly on sensible arguments.

Let’s face it…the achievement is broken.  This isn’t an issue of it being too difficult (although, you can’t deny that it’s been one of the harder ones for many people).  No, the true problem is that it’s counter-productive and badly executed.  It’s my view that the achievement should be changed to simply winning each battleground with an orphan out.

In order to get this point across, I thought I’d respond specifically to the arguments I’ve seen in favor of the School of Hard Knocks.

1) “Stop being such a bad.  L2P.  QQ More.  Yadda, yadda, yadda.”

No…this isn’t an exaggeration.  This was actually someone’s real response to a thread about SoHK.  This type of bullying is pointless and avoids the real issue.  Even blue poster, Bornakk, is guilty of making this non-argument, albeit in a much more diplomatic way:  “The School of Hard Knocks, while a bit more challenging of an achievement, has proven to be very doable by a lot of players.”

Again, the issue isn’t whether people have been “able” to complete this.  The issue is that the achievement was not very well thought out and ends up negatively affecting game play for a large percentage of players.

2) “For What A Long, Strange Trip It’s Been, you’re asked to participate in all the aspects of the game:  Exploration, questing, PvE and yes…even PvP.  They want people who otherwise might not have tried battlegrounds, to give it a shot.”

This is actually one of the better points, but it shows a lack of understanding of how far from normal PvP this achievement is.  I agree that Blizzard should encourage players to try all the parts of their game.  Why wouldn’t they?  But to the uninitiated, simply going into a battleground for the first time is already kind of confusing and chaotic.  This achievement makes it even worse by asking people to run before they can crawl, so to speak.

These additional objectives only serve to make the battlegrounds an even more hectic experience for non-PvPers, which helps cement the thought in their minds that PvP is something they want to stay far, far away from.

3) “These objectives are all things you do in a normal battleground.”

Yes and no.  The objectives are all things that “someone” would do in a battleground.  However, healers would rarely be standing right next to the Wrathful geared warrior, waiting to desperately click the flag when it drops.  Nah…they’d leave that up to the melee DPS they were healing, because in a battleground, teamwork is key.

Changing the achievement to simply winning each battleground would allow people to be introduced to battlegrounds in a fun way, while still allowing them to play it in a way that makes sense.

Asking a clothie to capture the flag in Eye of the Storm, is akin to asking them to tank Ymiron for Hail to the King.  Which brings me to the next argument…

4) “It is perfectly reasonable to require you to PvP to get this stuff.  The PvPers have to run dungeons in order to get it.”

This is my favorite argument.  Quite frankly, it’s a purely specious claim.  Start to think about it logically and it just doesn’t hold water.

First off, as touched on above…PvPers are still able to fill their proper roles upon setting foot in a dungeon.  Not only that, but current level PvP gear will most certainly get the job done in a heroic dungeon, whereas current PvE gear will still be somewhat useless in a battleground.

Look at the difference in the objectives and this argument falls apart even more.  There is a considerable difference between running a dungeon and attempting to cap a flag.  You’d be hard pressed to find a PvPer saying, “I’ve run Utgarde Pinnacle 20 times now and I still haven’t come close to beating the boss.”

The PvP objectives being asked are already achievements on their own…indicating that they are intended to be of an additional difficulty even for the PvP crowd.  Simply winning a battleground then, would be the truly appropriate analogous experience to beating a dungeon.  Capping a flag is more akin to doing a bosses hard-mode. 

But the real kicker here?  The reward being discussed is a fast flying mount.  If someone is honestly interested in PvP and only in PvP, they literally have zero use for this reward.  So their participation in the Long, Strange Trip meta is, in and of itself, proof that their interests go further than PvP.  So, this is an eye-for-an-eye argument that is completely out of place.

5) “Nobody’s forcing you to do it.”

The semantics police absolutely love pointing this out.  This is an argument for people who don’t have anything logical to say.  Instead of responding to specific concerns, they target a bad word choice.  All that’s required is to replace the word “forced” with “encouraged” whenever you see it.  Chances are the argument still stands (i.e. I hate that Blizzard forces encourages me to play selfishly in a battleground).

6) “Achievements are supposed to be hard.  That’s why they’re called achievements.”

No, they’re called achievements because some marketing genius knew that people like you would take it literally.  Seriously…just because this particular part of the game has an ultimately meaningless word attached to it, doesn’t mean we can’t notice and discuss its negative qualities.  Defending it simply because it’s called an achievement is just begging the question.

7) “This achievement is easy to do.  I got it in 20 minutes.”

Ironically, this is often said by the same people who spout number 6.  Usually, this one gets brought up just so they can feel superior to “nubs” who haven’t yet completed it.  Occasionally, they really think it was easy.

Either way, this isn’t an argument.  It’s an opinion.  In fact, people seem to fall into two camps:  Those who hate this achievement and those who claim it was easy.

So, dear amazing players, do tell…if it was so damned easy, then why do you care if it gets changed or even removed?  It’s not like you had to try very hard, right?  And since it’s so easy, might I assume that having this achivement on your record is nothing to be proud of anyway?

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The deeper I look, the more I realize that every argument for keeping School of Hard Knocks in its current state comes down to the following basic premise.  “It might suck a lot, but it’s technically possible to do and no one’s forcing you to anyway.”

The same could be said about breaking your own finger to win a hundred dollars.  That still doesn’t make it a good idea.

Meanwhile, the folks against it keep on bringing up reasonable points about how it negatively affects the battlegrounds (which, by the way, hurts the gameplay experience for players who aren’t even attempting to do this achievement), was implemented in a non-sensical way and gives PvE players a skewed perception of PvP.

I’ve never once heard someone refute any of these arguments.  Instead, they ignore them, bully people with insults and jabs at their supposed lack of skill and go about their business.  Until these people can actually respond directly to legitimate complaints, instead of sidestepping the issues, it’s clear that they don’t have a leg to stand on.

In the future, I hope the developers will see the error of their ways.  For now, though, I’d just like to congratulate everyone who was able to complete this.  To everyone else:  Sorry.  There’s always next year?

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Tags: /cry, Achievements, Holiday, PvP, Rant