Posts with tag achievements

Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. This week, get off our lawn.

One of the things I think about while revising and updating the holiday guides is that the audience for them is doomed to get smaller over time. It's reasonable to expect that, because people don't need the guides after they finish doing the events on characters they care about, and there's generally a few years between Blizzard's major updates. However, with the introduction of account-wide achievements, pets, and mounts, the replayability of holidays has probably suffered a bit. That doesn't mean that the content's not enjoyable, just that each successive character derives less reward from it.

This is a particularly acute problem with the approaching Lunar Festival and how one element gets a lot more onerous as the game continues to expand.

Account-wide achievements bug me. I get that it's nice to be able to see when players have some real history and effort in their game. What I'm not OK with is how linking that experience to characters that haven't earned it makes every character feel like a tool of game mechanics instead of a character that's part of a story and fictional world.

I value the unique histories of each of my characters. Each one of them has played in entirely different ways: different guilds, different playstyles, different content in different eras of the game. While I'm proud of their achievements, I believe they are inextricably linked with the characters that achieved them. If I need to prove to a RBG leader that I've slaughtered hordes of the Horde, I'd appreciate a verified link to the character that did it -- but I have no desire to have that achievement linked to my little Cataclysm-era PvE bunny. It just doesn't fit.

I still feel odd that my characters share pets and mounts. I recognize that most people adore having everything available everywhere. To me, though, the things my characters have and don't have are part of what makes them unique, giving me different reasons to play (and not to play) each. It's perfectly OK not to have it all! Until recently, I'd been running about with my trademark Captured Firefly on characters such as my bankers that hadn't farmed it themselves. I've quit doing that now. It just didn't seem to fit.

To be sure, none of this makes me angry or resentful. I don't get pissy about a newer character running around with a title or mount he obviously didn't earn. I recognize how useful it is to have shared pets available for battling. And yes, like choosing not to summon my firefly, I realize that I can simply choose not take advantage of certain account-wide features. But after a bit of time under the new system, I find it still feels a little too glib. When characters become interchangeable, we lose our sense of investment in them.

Are you inseparable from your account-wide pets and mounts? Have shared achievements or titles helped you earn a spot in raids or join a guild? Have you started playing a different character based on gaining (or keeping) access to something you earned on another character? Have account-wide features made your characters feel more freely interchangeable -- and if so, is that a good thing?

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It took until patch 5.1, but we got it. The most perfect reputation grind in the game to date. I don't say these words lightly, because let's face it, I have pretty high standards for what I like and what I don't like with daily quests. But the Dominance Offensive appears to have taken the best out of all previous reputation grinds and wrapped it all together in a delightful ball of compelling story and quests that barely feels like a grind at all.

Please note that this is a review for the Dominance Offensive, which is the Horde side of the 5.1 reputation. At this point in time, I don't have an Alliance character at level 90, so I'm unable to play through the Operation Shieldwall quests. However, I have been assured that not only are the Operation Shieldwall quests just as good, in some ways they are even better than the Dominance Offensive material. I'm not even sure how this is possible, because these dailies are just that good.

But enough gushing. Let's get into the nuts and bolts of what makes this reputation grind so different from everything before it.

'Tis the season! Winter Veil 2012 runs from Saturday, Dec. 15 through Tuesday, Jan. 2 this year. As with most of the WoW holidays, the Merrymaker meta is required for What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been. Those of you who are still on the lookout for your Violet Proto-Drakes will want to keep an eye out for any achievements you still need.

Even if you don't want or don't need any achievements, Winter Veil also gives you the opportunity to turn your mount into a reindeer, become a snowman with a unique dance animation, and get noncombat pets and unique holiday items. This is also the only time of year where pets like Father Winter's Helper won't disappear with an excuse over how busy they are making toys, so if you want to run around for an extended time with gnomes dressed in Santa outfits, seize the day.

As always, I'll be up as the holiday goes live to make necessary additions or corrections to the guide, but we're not anticipating any major changes to Winter Veil this year.

If you're reading WoW Insider today, it's a slam dunk that you've discovered something in Mists of Pandaria intriguing enough to keep you coming back for more. My morning coffee question for you this morning: Where does that motivation come from? Do you reach for achievements built into WoW's gameplay, or do you strive to accomplish internally set goals?

Part of the reason today's WoW is enjoyable at so many levels is because the game itself is increasingly designed to reward players no matter what their playstyle might be. Leveling up, gearing up, and downing the big bads is only one slice of WoW life in 2012. My own game goals, for example, are divided between PvE/Alliance character goals and PvP/Horde character goals, and then subdivided further between things I want to do for my own enjoyment and things I want to be sure are covered for work here at WoW Insider. My lists by far exceed my available time.

What I'm curious about today is what sets the pace for your in-game goals. Do you prefer to slave over accomplishments set by the game -- achievements, points, titles, items, or content downed -- or do you tend to follow your own muse? By the latter, I mean goals such as maxing out all the available professions among your stable of characters, leveling one character of each class or race, or building and maintaining a collection of something -- maybe even some relatively useless somethings. Are you munching along on one of WoW's many feasts of satisfying gameplay, or are you blazing your own path through Azeroth?

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Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. This week, we advise you to stay away from the bathroom scale.

While Pilgrim's Bounty isn't part of the meta What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been, a lot of players still find it one of most helpful yearly events. Yes, you can rack up some points with the Pilgrim meta and get a plump turkey pet, but the holiday has an absolutely unbeatable side benefit -- it's an incredibly fast, easy, and cheap way to level cooking to 350. Pilgrim's Bounty is tailor-made for anyone who wants to get cooking leveled on a bunch of alts, or anyone who never got around to doing it on his or her main. As with Hallow's End, there's an additional benefit for all those of us slaving away on Mists of Pandaria reputation grinds: The Spirit of Sharing from the feast tables grants an additional 10% to reputation gains.

As far as we know, the holiday hasn't changed from previous incarnations, but as always, I'll be around as it goes live to update or clarify any portion of this guide. This year, Pilgrim's Bounty runs from Sunday, Nov. 18 through Saturday, Nov. 24.

I love Wowhead to death, but what I don't love is tabbing in and out of the game in an endless search for information on any achievements I'm working on. This is where the wonderful world of addons makes its entrance, and we're blessed with an abundant supply of good ones in the early days of Mists of Pandaria.

These addons have made a significant difference to the ease and enjoyability of our achievement hunts lately. By my count, these will help you with two Pandaria rep grinds, all of the new dungeons and raids, the endlessly fascinating Glorious!, pet battles, and some oldies but goodies. If you have any additional suggestions, drop them in the comments and I'd be happy to add them to the article.

Oh, and while this has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with achievements, if you can't wait for Blizzard to add a mount search function to the default UI, download Mount Search. Congratulations, you can now stop going crazy trying to find all the new cats, serpents, cranes, and goats you trained up.

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