Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. This week, the phrase "low-hanging fruit" comes to mind.

While I collect suggestions for our next article on evil achievements, I thought it might be amusing to turn toward achievements that are considerably easier to get. The 17 achievements (and one Feat of Strength) in today's column are all things that you can do without any real preparation.

I'm going to ignore the super-obvious picks (Shave and a Haircut, anyone? You don't need me to tell you about that) and head straight for the more esoteric stuff. I'm also going to bypass extremely expensive achievements that, while quick, will bankrupt the average player, so nothing like Grand Ice Mammoth. (Looks like I need to update OverAchiever: Straight to the poorhouse, come to think of it.) I briefly considered including achievements that you can only get at the end of a long quest chain or reputation grind but canned that idea too. For example, Skyshattered is relatively easy these days with a 410% mount and a little practice, but you'll only be able to access it after a quest grind, so nuts to that. I also eliminated You'll Feel Right As Rain, Critter Gitter, and Fungal Frenzy for that reason. They're all easy, but you can't just toddle off to get them unless you've already put some work in.

These are all achievements that the average player -- assuming a friend or two, a tiny bit of luck, and a little time -- can just run out and get whenever he or she wants.

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Filed under: Achievements, The Overachiever

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This Tuesday, the claws come out.

In November 2010, before Cataclysm hit, I wrote a series of articles on why (or why not) to play a particular druidic race for theorycrafting, lore, and roleplay purposes. These articles turned out to be a really big hit with readers, and you can find them here:

• Shifting Perspectives: Why (or why not) to play a night elf druid
• Shifting Perspectives: Why (or why not) to play a tauren druid
• Shifting Perspectives: Why (or why not) to play a worgen druid
• Shifting Perspectives: Why (or why not) to play a troll druid

This week, we're going to tackle the worgen, the strangest and most predatory of the four druid races -- and the one with the least sense of responsibility to any bit of territory that doesn't fall under the appellation of Gilneas.

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Filed under: Druid, Analysis / Opinion, (Druid) Shifting Perspectives

One of the really nice things about being able to fly in Azeroth is the opportunity to discover little homes in the most unlikely places. On a recent archaeology trip through Feralas, I flew over a tauren tent hidden in the mountains at 88,32 (on the border between Feralas and Mulgore) that I'd never seen before. It's a beautiful spot on a small pond ringed by mountains and Feralas' giant trees, with a travois and a canoe nearby, and I thought to myself: This would be actually be a really nice place to live, if my main had to be concerned with such things.

And then there's the little house in the mountains northeast of Stormwind -- the dwarven farms in the mountains between Ironforge and Menethil Harbor (although players saw that for years on flight paths). And another collection of tauren tents, canoes, and a rather large cave on the southern shore of Silithus. (Man, the tauren really got around.) Since getting flight in Azeroth, have you seen any of these tucked-away places, and are there any you think others should see?

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Filed under: Breakfast Topics

Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. This week, the abyss stares back.

Almost two years ago, I wrote a series of articles for OverAchiever that turned out to be one of the most popular themes the column's ever visited: evil achievements. It turns out that a lot of folks care deeply about achievements that have been -- allow me to quote myself -- "milked from the angry teat of Satan himself."

Now, it has to be said that all achievements are technically optional. No one is forcing you to do anything, why do you play this game anyway if you aren't having fun, yadda yadda ... all true. But I assume you're reading The OverAchiever because you really like achievements and you think they add something to the game. (Either that, or you're just reading because you're bored, but that's fine too.) Personally, I don't think players really mind difficult achievements or even achievements that they have to peck away at over an extended period of time. But there's a line between an achievement that is genuinely difficult on its own merits and one that makes you privately think the developers want you dead.

So with that in mind, how would we reconstruct a list of evil achievements in 2012 during the Cataclysm era?

You can find the original series here if you're interested in a trip down Memory Lane, although I'll give you a quick rundown on them past the cut:

• Evil Achievements: Spotlight on Justicar/Conqueror, The Immortal, and Accomplished Angler
• Evil Achievements: The 25 most evil achievements, #25-16
• Evil Achievements: The 25 most evil achievements, #15-6
• Evil Achievements: The 25 most evil achievements, #5-1

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Achievements, The Overachiever

Azeroth is big. This is readily apparent to any new player who's confined to running around on foot or anyone too cheap to shell out for a mount. Even mounted, you're going to spend a lot of time getting from point A to point B unless you can somehow shorten the journey -- and you can usually shorten it in a number of interesting ways.

We all know about the zeppelins and the boats, the workhorse transportation system of Azeroth, but due to the eccentricity of the many transport options in the game, the shortest distance between two points is not necessarily a straight line. For example, an inventive Horde player without a Hearthstone up who wants to travel from Silithus to Orgrimmar can settle in for a long flight -- or she can simply chug a Potion of Deepholm and take the Orgrimmar portal from the Temple of Earth. No potion, but you've quested through Sholazar Basin? Take the Titan Waygate from northern Un'Goro Crater to Sholazar, then fly south to the Horde's zeppelin at Warsong Hold. You'll still beat a wyvern flying from Cenarion Hold.

With even a few of the following options, a max-level player with some imagination should be able to scrape together a few methods of considerably shortening a journey.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This Tuesday, there is a cow level.

In November 2010, before Cataclysm hit, I wrote a series of articles on why (or why not) to play a particular druidic race for theorycrafting, lore, and roleplay purposes. These articles turned out to be a really big hit with readers, and you can find them here:

• Shifting Perspectives: Why (or why not) to play a night elf druid
• Shifting Perspectives: Why (or why not) to play a tauren druid
• Shifting Perspectives: Why (or why not) to play a worgen druid
• Shifting Perspectives: Why (or why not) to play a troll druid

This week, we're going to revisit the tauren, who are in a truly unique position among the druids. They don't represent the class' old guard (exclusively night elves), but neither are they truly among the new.

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Filed under: Druid, Analysis / Opinion, (Druid) Shifting Perspectives

Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. This week, we discover that love is not free.

Hot on the heels of the Lunar Festival comes another WoW holiday! Love is in the Air returns this year from Sunday, Feb. 5 through Sunday, Feb. 19. Personally, I can't see too many players logging into the game on Super Bowl Sunday for the purpose of celebrating love and all its many-splendored things, but to each his own. After many tweaks to the holiday, it's definitely one of the less annoying and RNG-riddled outings from the What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been meta. Before you ask -- yep, it's required if you're still on the warpath for your Violet Proto-Drake. The finished holiday meta will also reward the title the Love Fool.

If you're completely new to Love Is In the Air, you'll probably want to read our FAQ on the holiday. Otherwise, we'll be dealing with the holiday achievements here. There are only two optional ones if you're going for the meta, so I've listed all the ones you'll need first.

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Filed under: Events, Achievements, The Overachiever

It's really the littlest (and on occasion, the dumbest) things that often make this game so much fun. Druids have long been used to abusing flight form for the purpose of dropping it and falling in a graceful arc over mountainsides or hills. Why? Because it was there. Because flying bears abusing the momentum from dropping a 451% speed form are funny. Because nobody else could do it without dying.

But when patch 4.3 hit, we were disappointed to discover that this marvelous little trick was no longer possible. No matter the angle in flight form, you'd drop straight down as soon as you'd left it, which resulted in an unexpected death for yours truly flying over the border to Un'Goro on an archaeology run. You never really appreciate the laws of physics until they're not there anymore.

But no longer! As of patch 4.3.2, the momentum after leaving flight form is back. Bears are once again able to soar majestically over mountainsides, and I am able to free fall over the Un'Goro rim without going splat on the border. Thank you, Blizzard!

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Filed under: Druid, Humor

Now, this is a forum post that I think merits a little more attention. We all know that developers weren't happy with the spamfest that healing often was in Wrath of the Lich King and that they looked to make it a far more cerebral activity in Cataclysm. Now that we're approaching the end of the expansion, Practical, one of the Blizzard forum MVPs, recently started a thread examining how healing turned out and what can be improved. Most of the people in the thread generally agree that healing started out pretty fun in tier 11 but declined afterwards. Reasons given range from boring boss mechanics to fights with random elements that made healers feel useless when they couldn't control or prevent player deaths.

Practical observes that a lot of the later problems with healing in Cataclysm might actually be the result of a surfeit of raid fights that required constant stacking, and the inevitable effect they had on certain healing spells' being too powerful. Having recently looked at healer numbers in Dragon Soul, I'd also venture that AoE healing spells that aren't numbers-restricted (for example, Circle of Healing versus Holy Radiance) on top of that raid stacking are making healer balance look worse than it actually is.

So what are your thoughts, healers? How did healing work out for you this expansion, and are you looking forward to the Cataclysm changes? And are the problems we're seeing really the result of healer mechanics or raid design?

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Filed under: Druid, Paladin, Priest, Shaman, Analysis / Opinion

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This Tuesday, we ponder each druidic race's prospects in Mists of Pandaria.

In November 2010, before Cataclysm hit, I wrote a series of articles on why (or why not) to play a particular druidic race for theorycrafting, lore, and roleplay purposes. They turned out to be a really big hit with readers, and you can find them here:

• Shifting Perspectives: Why (or why not) to play a night elf druid
• Shifting Perspectives: Why (or why not) to play a tauren druid
• Shifting Perspectives: Why (or why not) to play a worgen druid
• Shifting Perspectives: Why (or why not) to play a troll druid

While most of the information contained in these articles is still accurate, a few things have changed since then, and each race approaches the end of Cataclysm and the expansion's events from a different perspective. Because each race's background obviously hasn't changed, I thought that rather than write another comprehensive guide, it'd be useful to revisit each race briefly to see how they and their druids are handling the shift from this expansion to Mists of Pandaria. Of course, once I started writing, I got really into it, and the column started metastasizing in celebrated tumor fashion, so this week's outing is confined to the original druidic race.

Within the game, this is who you are as a night elf druid. This is what the world thinks of you, and this is what you think of the world -- or at least, it's one perspective on it.

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Filed under: Druid, Analysis / Opinion, (Druid) Shifting Perspectives