An Immortal in Ulduar and other troublesome achievements
Here's an interesting Ulduar request from Hugner on Hyjal -- he wants to ask that there be no "Immortal"-style achievement in the new raid instance. He says getting the achievement has been super frustrating for his guild, not only because, you know, it's hard, but because with one simple disconnect at the wrong time, the whole week's attempt is wasted.Of course, an achievement like that isn't meant to be easy. Some people in the thread suggest making it more like The Dedicated Few (so that not all the bosses have to be flawless in one run), but Bornakk says it's an achievement -- it's not required and if you really want to get the meaningless points, you'll just have to work around the disconnects. He's also shoring up discontent on the other side of things -- people are complaining that the Gonna Go When the Volcano Blows achievement is messing up their Sarth runs, because they're dodging insignificant damage rather than actually downing the boss. In fact, the easiest way to do that one is just to suicide in the very beginning (because the AoE can't hit corpses), and lots of people are doing that. Bornakk says change isn't likely -- the achievement is designed to be separate from gaining loot from the boss.
Bottom line on both of these is that they're achievements -- if they're hard or random or waste time, that's kind of the point. Blizzard may have caved on a few of the holiday achievements, but these endgame achievements aren't meant to be gotten easily or even without a little RNG help.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Guilds, Blizzard, Raiding, Bosses, Buffs, Wrath of the Lich King, Achievements






Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
sephirah Mar 3rd 2009 2:10PM
So hardcore raiders are QQing about one of the few hard thing in WotLK?
Oh, the irony...
bundee Mar 3rd 2009 2:14PM
...after so many months of complaining about how Wrath Raids were easy mode and was catering to casuals....
Jason Mar 3rd 2009 2:19PM
I have to agree with you there. It's like Goldilocks and the Three Bears sometimes with those guys.
Also, we have a guy in my guild who's a regular raider and a good tank (when he's specced that way), but if we were going for The Undying/The Immortal I'd ask him to sit out our initial attempts because he disconnects at least 3-4 times a night due to his ISP and he can't afford to switch to someone more reliable. It's not his fault, but there's no reason to risk 8-9 others getting screwed out of an Achievement because of it.
steve Mar 3rd 2009 2:36PM
riffing on @Shevaresh's comment about lag: "many players have random spikes of lag at various times"
So in the raids I'm in, I hear people complaining about lag all the time... but it feels like they are using it as a blowoff excuse for making a mistake. I get that people have flaky broadband connections like the tank that @Jason mentions (I live more than 15,000 feet from the central office that serves my DSL, so I live this daily) and I'm sure we've all experienced the 1 frame-per-second lag thing across the whole raid. And you can see it on "frogger" when people who never make a mistake get killed by a slime. But it seems there are times when lag is *especially* likely to occur (I say with tongue in cheek):
- on polarity shifts in Thaddius fight
- the safety dance
- picking up MC students on Instructor (this is priest-only lag, apparently)
- dropping the poison in Grobbulus
- moving out of lava waves on Sarth
For the small number of guilds that are capable of completing Immortals, I have no doubt that lag is a very real issue, because they have selected for people who generally don't make mistakes and have great hand/eye coordination, so lag is about the only thing left they can't control for.
For the rest of us though, lag is something I get tired of hearing about because it feels like a convenient catch-all excuse. I'd really like to hear, "hey guys, I made a mistake", but apparently no one I raid with ever makes mistakes ;->
Tridus Mar 3rd 2009 2:39PM
The first person I ever saw get Gonna Go when the Volcano Blows was AFK for the entire Sarth kill, and dead after 30 seconds.
Yep, that's "hard" alright!
This achievement is completely idiotic. The best way to get it is to suicide as fast as possible. You wind up taking four weeks of not doing serious attempts on the boss because killing it with 17 people is still easy, and the rest get the achievement. That's time we could be doing The Twilight Zone instead, which IS actually difficult.
Achievements that are best completed by dying in 30 seconds and then going AFK for the rest of the fight are just retarded and shouldn't exist.
steve Mar 3rd 2009 2:40PM
arg! posted reply to wrong comment (you'll have to read down for the context). It was the lag ;->
Zul Mar 3rd 2009 4:24PM
It is not hard dumbass, i'm sure you wouldn't understand. Although it is very problematic to get a zone free/ dc free run w/e you want.
Drow Mar 3rd 2009 5:19PM
Haha! I'm laughing because that might be a joke. "Those hardcore guys"...LOL. How is basing a fight off not having any lag or DC's "to hard for the hardcore".
I guess, since it's the only way you get it, "casual won't understand".
Hard mode: Downing malygos in 6 minutes.
Hard mode: Keeping 3 drakes up.
RNG mode: Making sure you are in favor of the gods of randomness. Not Hard mode.
It's one thing to not be able to master a fight and meet requirments, it's a whole other thing to actually have everyone know exactly what to do, master the whole raid, but because of Blizzards lag or DC issues ruin an attempt for another week.
You wouldn't know because you obviously haven't tried. Keep LFG HEROICS.
Shevaresh Mar 3rd 2009 2:12PM
Here's the thing. Achievements should be based on skill (personal and/or group) or luck. Immortal is based on both; if they could guarantee uptime with no lag, that'd be one thing - but many players have random spikes of lag at various times, and it just destroys Immortal/Undying attempts.
Not to mention that for weeks Naxx was all but unplayable for the vast majority of raiders (on my server at least).
If they wanted us to get achievements for their own sake, they shouldn't have given them rewards that made people do things like say "Address me as TWILIGHT VANQUISHER _____", or "ooh look at our mounts!" (Three OS+3 25 drake mounts in a row on bank steps in Dalaran)
nbcaffeine Mar 3rd 2009 2:14PM
"You cannot use that here"
bundee Mar 3rd 2009 2:41PM
Not that I disagree with you on what achievements SHOULD be, but here's my take:
1) Its Blizzard's game, they decide what "Achievements" are
2) Achievements are not mandatory to progress
3) Other achievements require no skill yet give rewards nonetheless.
@nbcaffeine
you don't mount up at the bank steps
Shevaresh Mar 3rd 2009 2:25PM
There was a bug for a while, you could go there from outside the city and it wouldn't autodismount you.
Irshalthra Mar 3rd 2009 2:13PM
I'm getting tired of the whole achievement QQ. I LOVE achievements, but do not find blocks of time to raid. I do very few dungeon achievements and this "hurts" my achievement ratings. BUT, when I do get one it is more meaningful and makes me want to try harder.
We should NOT get all achievements without LOTS of hard work and time. This is a FACT OF the GAME. There are achievements that you need to be good at - and there are achievements that you need to be lucky at. If Blizzard keeps caving to these idiotic requests to nerf - achievements will not be any fun nor have any meaning.
I plead with Blizzard to stop the achievement nerf. They need to remember that achieves were placed here to keep people interested and PAYING. By making achieves equivalent to turning on a light switch it will have no meaning and no one will care about them. When no one cares then they do not pay to play.
Justin Mar 3rd 2009 2:15PM
I don't think there should be another Immortal style achievement, but I do think that there should be some just as hard.
Idain Mar 3rd 2009 2:19PM
The achivement I really don't like is denyin' the scion, that achivement is just so unfair towards healers and tanks to a lesser degree.
Hansbo Mar 3rd 2009 2:39PM
Agreed. While a kind guild would let you get a chance to do that as a healer, that is quite annoying having to do for every healer that want the achievement.
Raid achievements should either be group based (Immortal, Twillight Zone), or they should be about personal survival (Big black thing on the ground = bad). They should NOT favour any kind of role.
How fun would it be if the Patchwerk achievement would be about personal dps instead of raid dps?
Lemons Mar 3rd 2009 3:21PM
Just throw a hammer of wrath or holy fire at a scion when it's close to dead. That's probably all you can do. I have no idea how intense phase 2 is on heals (I know it's pretty bad on Heroic), but if you can work that in you at least have a chance at the achievement.
Ravenlock Mar 3rd 2009 6:36PM
Sorry, but Denyin' the Scion is very easy for everybody.
The key thing is that it doesn't need to be done on a successful kill of Malygos: you can get it on a kill, or you can get it on a wipe.
In my guild, we made a point of letting the healers get this achievement while chasing the You Don't Have An Eternity achievement. If we weren't going to make the 6 minute timer, we wiped, but first we let the healers all get a killing blow before we did so.
All Denyin' the Scion takes is a little teamwork and little common sense, et voila, achievement done.
epsilon343 Mar 3rd 2009 2:18PM
I suppose I can see where they're coming from. If I was doing a raid and on some boss we get hit by a Wintergrasp lag spike that kills one of us I'd be livid.
Achievements should be something that's under our control. Yes some should take an enormous amount of skill, and yes they should have some sweet rewards attached to them. But when that control is taken from us due to outside circumstances such as lag (how retarded would it be if you died on Frogger because of it?) then I think they are justified in saying that there should be some sort of leeway or modifications to the achievement so that that element of chance is removed.
As the PvP players always seem to saying when they're QQing about randomness, shouldn't it be a test of skill and not a roll of the dice?
bundee Mar 3rd 2009 2:41PM
Not sure if you've looked at the 100 mount achievement for the dragonhawk mount, but that Achievement not only requires you to spend an inordinate amount of gold, but it also requires you to farm rep with all sorts of outdated factions and farm instances for mount drops with minuscule chances to drop.
Those instance runs are all luck, and you could farm an instance for months at a time without ever seeing that mount.