All right, folks, we've got another sub-achievement needed for What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been (and thus the 310% speed Violet Proto-Drake) on our hands here. I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that most of the achievements for Children's Week are fairly straightforward, and should be easy (and even fun) to complete. Appropriately enough for a mini-holiday, most of the achievements are simple, amusing, and not too time-consuming. The bad news is that one of the achievements may be a huge headache to get done, and unlike Noblegarden, your character has to be at least 75 in order to get all of the achievements needed for the year-long meta.

Children's Week runs from Friday, May 1st at midnight through Thursday, May 7th at 11:59 PM. Got your kiddo? Let's get cracking.

EDIT: This article's been revised and updated to reflect new information and the hotfixes that have gone live since initial publication. All information herein should be accurate as of 11:30 AM EST Saturday May 2nd.

The meta-achievement is For The Children and rewards the title "Patron" or "Matron" (depending on your character's sex). As you can see, there are only 6 achievements required for this. Most are fairly simple, but one's a potential doozy.

Home Alone

Easy, and the tooltip speaks for itself. Some players are still having difficulty getting this achievement to "stick" as of Saturday (i.e. you'll get the achievement after hearthing with your orphan out, but the achievement will reset after you log out), but the number of complaints we've received has died down somewhat.

Daily Chores

Again, pretty easy, although less so before the achievement was hotfixed on Friday. The tooltip hasn't yet been updated, but right now you should be able to get this simply doing 5 daily quests with your orphan out, even on the same day. The previous form of the achievement required you to do at least one daily quest per day for 5 days with your orphan out but was rewarding credit inconsistently. This variation is, for obvious reasons, much easier. Which daily quest you do doesn't matter as long as your orphan's out for 5, and we've had people report getting credit for PvP, heroic/dungeon, and regular dailies.

Bad Example

This will require a little travel and money, but not too much of either:

Tigule and Foror's Strawberry Ice Cream -- During Children's Week two vendors will appear in Orgrimmar and Stormwind (Alowicious Czervik and Emmithue Smails respectively) selling this. Alowicious will be found between Orgrimmar's bank and auction house; Emmithue will be found next to Stormwind's inn. If, for some unaccountable reason, you don't find yourself anywhere near these cities, you can also buy the ice cream from Brivelthwerp at the Shimmering Flats racetrack, or from the Telaar innkeeper/Garadar innkeeper in Nagrand.

The Red Velvet Cupcake, Dalaran Brownie, Dalaran Doughnut, and Lovely Cake Slice are all sold in Dalaran by the NPC Aimee, who is located in front of Dalaran's north bank. Quick note; you don't actually buy the Lovely Cake Slice from her. What you buy is a Lovely Cake, which then becomes cake slices once you set it out and right-click it. As another note, the cake costs 18g (before reputation discounts).

The Tasty Cupcake and Delicious Chocolate Cake are both created by Cooking. The Cupcake recipe requires at least 350 Cooking and is a drop off early Northrend mobs; the Delicious Chocolate Cake is a rare drop from the Cooking dailies (either the ones from BC or the new ones given in Dalaran). The Cupcake is easy to make; the Delicious Chocolate Cake is somewhat more time-consuming. If you're not a cook, make friends with someone who is, or keep an eye on the auction house, although odds are good they'll be expensive.

Hail To The King, Baby

I foresee many Utgarde Pinnacle PuG's with small children in tow this week.

This should be doable on either normal or heroic mode, so if you're not 80 yet or your gear's not up to one of the more difficult heroics, don't sweat it. However, fair warning; your character has to be at least 75 in order to enter Utgarde Pinnacle on normal.

School of Hard Knocks

Nightmare.

This...is not going to be a lot of fun.

School of Hard Knocks requires you to enter the four pre-Wrath battlegrounds and capture/return flags or assault nodes with your orphan out. It may sound simple, but think about the length and frustration factor of the average pugged battleground, and then think about the length and frustration factor of a pugged battleground where your own team's sole concern is beating everyone else to an individual achievement.

This is going to work in one of two ways: either you get these achievements for being close to a captured/returned flag or a captured node, or you have to do it yourself. If it's the former, then this achievement is suddenly a lot less nightmarish. If it's the latter...I really don't know what to tell you that might help. Your best bet is to try to organize a premade (if your guild isn't doing one already), rotate people into flag and node captures, and hope everyone sticks around long enough for everyone to get their achievements done, although this is obviously going to be a tall order by the time you hit the 40-man AV.

I'm looking forward (well, not really) to seeing a series of Warsong Gulches where no one plays offense, Arathi Basins where no one plays defense, Alterac Valleys where no one plays defense, and EOTS where the entire game is a writhing, howling mass of players clustered around the center trying to be the first to click the flag. Oh, and to make things even better, with the huge decline in arena participation and the relative ease of raiding, few players at 80 have serious resilience gear, making it easy for burst DPS on the opposing team to annihilate people in the run for a flag or node.

I return to my previous statement; nightmare.

Aw, Isn't It Cute?

This should be the last achievement you do if you're a new player and don't have any of the previous Children's Week pets, because getting one requires you to hand in your Orphan Whistle.

Tags: ab, achievement, achievements, alterac-valley, arathi-basin, av, aw-isnt-it-cute, bad-example, childrens-week, childrens-week-2009, childrens-week-achievements, daily-chores, dalaran, dalaran-brownie, dalaran-doughnut, delicious-chocolate-cake, eots, eye-of-the-storm, featured, for-the-children, hail-to-the-king-baby, home-alone, joystiqfeatures, kaluak, lovely-cake, lovely-cake-slice, matron, overachiever, patron, red-velvet-cupcake, school-of-hard-knocks, tasty-cupcake, the-overachiever, the-way-to-his-heart, thrusting-hodirs-spear, tuskarr, warsong-gulch, wow-childrens-week, wsg

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