Posts with tag goals

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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The Midsummer Fire Festival begins today. Pyromaniacs, activate! The Fire Festival is a full-featured holiday complete with dailies that mostly involve torches, achievements that mostly involve setting fire to things, and a title that has the word Flame.

Ahune The Frost Lord is the boss to kill for this holiday (since he's not so big on fire). You have to ice him if you want to get the meta for the Fire Festival, which is part of What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been.

What the Midsummer Fire Festival also involves: traveling, more traveling, world PvP, and traveling. I highly recommend celebrating the holiday with friends, though maybe not quite so many as that one time.

My goal is for my druid to finally complete it, to be one step closer to the Violet Proto-Drake. The It came from the Blog family of guilds will also be hosting a Fire Festival event, like we do every year. Stay tuned for an announcement soon™.

What are your goals for the Midsummer Fire Festival? Are you going to go for the meta? Is there a particular item you are trying to get? Or are you going to ignore it completely? (Bah, humbug!)

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Many players going for What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been leave Children's Week until last -- often not by choice. It is a truth universally acknowledged that School of Hard Knocks is the worst achievement required for any holiday meta. Even if you like PvP, competing with your region-mates for the same objective is frustrating, to say the least. And then there are the funsuckers who do their best to obstruct everyone trying. Ugh.

I think that otherwise, Children's Week is rather fun. Being the minion of orphans who coax you into irresponsible actions is enjoyable, surprisingly. I love the scripted reactions of the NPCs, particularly Lady Sylvanas. (I'm so predictable.) I do miss taking Salandria to see M'uru, though. Having her rock out with the Elite Tauren Chieftains doesn't have the same impact.

The pets are fun to collect as well. Sleepy Willy is a long-time favorite of mine. I did not try to get all of the pets on alts in preparation for Mists of Pandaria, however. I do think it's a great idea because all companion pets will become account-wide in the expansion. I just didn't make the effort.

What did you enjoy most about Children's Week? Did you meet your goals? What pets did you get?

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Sport for arena enthusiasts and The Art of War(craft) for fans of battlegrounds and world PvP. Want to crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentation of their women? C. Christian Moore, multiple rank 1 Gladiator, examines the latest arena strategy, trends, compositions and more.

Last week, we discussed how to expect victory and be self-critical instead of blaming, as well as the importance of being lighthearted. This week, we'll be discussing a similar topic -- this could easily be part two in our series of successful PvP attitude.

Staying optimistic is much more relevant when "big things" happen. One of your teammates just quit your team after you've been pushing for gladiator for a month? You disconnect against a rival team? Patch notes say that you're being nerfed to the ground? If you've weathered the small storms that have passed by with a good attitude, you'll be much more prepared when tornadoes and hurricanes hit.

Looking at the world optimistically comes much easier for some than others. I've played with partners who can't be brought down, no matter what goes wrong. If we lose five straight, they're still eager to PvP because they believe something good will happen from it.

The Feast of Winter Veil ends today at midnight server time. So you have just a few hours left to get a Little Helper from your Friends or Bros. Before Ho Ho Hos or any of the rest of the huge list of achievements you can get during this holiday. We dressed up as gnomish helpers on Friday night to have some some last-minute PvP fun in miniature, but for the most part, we didn't see too many others getting the achievement along with us.

Usually, if you wait until the last day, anything you need cooperation for is hard to get as most people get their achievements done early on. But sometimes, it's easier if you are all fighting for the same greench. What has been your experience?

The Midsummer Fire Festival ended last night with a Fireworks Spectacular to send it off. We've had roughly two weeks (minus some server downtime) to achieve what we wanted to achieve.

I ran as many fires as were convenient and/or fun on as many alts as possible to take advantage of the obscene experience gains. There were also the Midsummer Flame Fest and Server Maintenance Party for <It came from the Blog>, which were an absolute blast. I did not get the title on my "main," but alas -- she has been sidelined for a bit while I play other characters.

What were your goals for the Midsummer holiday? Did you achieve them? What, if anything, would you like to see different for next year in the new cataclysmically changed Azeroth?

Happy New Year everyone! 2009 is behind us and we now have 2010 to look forward to. This year, we'll be anticipating Cataclysm to come out (but after we take down Arthas). Speaking of goals, were you able to fulfill the personal achievements you set out in 2009? Maybe it was to go after the Violet Proto-Drake. Or it could've been to join a raiding guild and see end game content. Perhaps it was to kill Arthas (which none of us have done yet, to be fair).

For myself, I set out a goal to exceed 7000 achievement points. I managed to score about 7400.

Oh, another important resolution? I'm still playing the game and having fun on my priest! I didn't think I had it in me to go another year but I did! I still have that Inner Fire burning within me, I suppose.

Here's my list of resolutions for 2010:

• Take down Arthas (on Heroic difficulty)
• Get the Loremaster achievement
• Earn (and hold onto) more than 10000 gold
• Finish getting my druid to 80
• Start a pure DPS class and at least get it to 40 (Mage? Warlock?)

What about you? What do you resolve to do in 2010?

I'd like to take a minute to address the concerns of one of our readers. Since my return to WoW Insider, I've been focusing on sanity, progression, and congruence.

Dear WoW Insider:

I need help, and I figure between me and that guy in the last Breakfast Topic, I'd have more than a good chance of you guys having suggestions to my current dilemma.

I'm fairly new to WoW, having started in December 2008, after a long stint on FFXI. I was glad I made the move, and I haven't looked back. I toyed with a few classes before settling on a blood elf rogue. I zoomed through classic, Burning Crusade and have now made Northrend my home.

I hit 80 a couple of months ago, and although many guilds have offered for me to join along the way, I always replied that my brother's guild was going to take me in as soon as I turned 80. I've been with them on a few heroics and even saw the inside of Sunwell as my first raid ever, although I must confess all that left me feeling a little bit bewildered as I didn't really know what was happening most of the time. I was constantly asking for help, asking where I should stand and what not. While most of the guild was really nice and understanding (and still are), I'm feeling a little bit out of my depth. Most of the guild members are very experienced, as you can imagine. Some of them are on their second or third alts clearing Naxxramas, and most of the guild are working on Ulduar progression.

Tipster Tomek sent us a note about his friend Zbijmnie of EU Vek'nilash, to see if, at level 49, he might be one of the lowest level players to every hit the goal of 100,000 honorable kills for the achievement, but after looking around for a bit, I've found the achievement is pretty commonplace. Because the count actually started way back when HKs were first added to the game (and not when achievements were), lots of people have picked up the seemingly gigantic number already. In fact, here's a level 19 who did it right when he logged into the expansion for the first time (which means he had killed 100,000 people even before patch 3.0.2.

Which is kind of a shame -- after Gears of War's "Seriously" achievement (to kill 10,000 enemies) was met, they added a "Seriously 2.0" to the sequel (to kill 100,000 enemies), and that one's been met as well.

So in retrospect, getting 100,000 HKs isn't too hard -- even if you got one every second, it'd really only take you about a day of playtime, which is probably a lot less than a month of realtime, depending on how long you play for and how good a player you are. Maybe in the next achievement update we'll see a really impossible goal for players to work on: 10 million mobs killed? 10,000 instances run? A million players looted in the battlegrounds? There's got to be something in the game that seems impossible for someone crazy out there to work on.

It's the weekend after Thanksgiving, the family has all left, there's nothing but turkey leftovers to eat, and you hit level 80 last week, and you're just waiting for your guild to level up so you can start the endgame. What is there to do on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon? Find all of the Well Read books -- WoWWiki has the guide I've been looking for ever since I first got excited about this achievement. I count 43 in total, and they've got a list of all the books you need and where you can find them for reading.

The vast majority of the books can be found in Scholomance and the Scarlet Monastery, so a run through both of those instances (you can easily solo both at 80) will get you many of the books you need. From there it's time to travel the world -- Brill, Southshore, the Eastvale Logging Camp, Duskwood, and Booty Bay, and a few other places, depending on your faction (Alliance seems to have a little bit of an advantage there, as Stormwind and Orgrimmar have nice libraries. There are a few good books in Undercity, but the Orcs and Tauren aren't much for book learning, apparently).

Seems totally doable in a quick afternoon, and while you won't really get anything but the 10 achievement points (and probably a nice chance to pick up some more of the old Azeroth explorer achievement), why else would you do this, other than to brag about it. Whenever anyone argues that you don't know your Azeroth lore, you can just point them to your Armory page, and tell them to check the part about you being Well Read.

When Wrath comes, I'm pretty much abandoning my Druid. He's served me well through Battlegrounds, Arenas, and 10,20, and 40 man raiding, but be it burn out on Druids in general or just the need for the change of pace, he's fallen by the wayside. My Hunter is my main now, and my Death Knight will be a co-main come Wrath of the Lich King.

Despite this, I'm actually playing my Druid quite a lot these days. Why? Because I just have to get the Guardian of Cenarius title for him, and I'm still a few thousand points shy of Exalted with Cenarion Circle reputation. It may seem to weird to be putting so much work into a character I'm not going to play for quite a while once Wrath comes out, but I feel like I owe it to him. He still has a rich, ongoing roleplaying backstory, and he's still been through a lot with me. So getting him to the pinnacle of Druidism is easily the best tribute I can think of. So he's in Silithus, slaughtering Twilight Cultists by the bucketload, looking for those Encrypted Twilight Texts.

In addition, of course, I'm preparing for the 3.0.2 patch and Wrath in other ways. I already have enough Bog Lord Tendrils and Unidentified Plant Parts for my Death Knight to get a foothold in Zangarmarsh, and I'm gathering Arrakoa Feathers as well. If I have time, I may also gather a bunch of herbs and let my DK powerlevel inscription.

Now that we're probably about 10 days away from 3.0.2, how are your preparations coming? I know a lot of you probably chimed in with your goals for pre-Wrath a few weeks back.. Are you making any progress on them, or are you like me, scrambling for those last few points of Cenarion Circle reputation before next Tuesday?

Back in June on my guild alliance's forums, one of our members posted a thread asking us a fairly simple question: What are your WoW goals? Being an alliance that covers a wide variety of playstyles, the posed goals were just as varied. The most common goal across everyone was to get an Amani War Bear, but these goals were everything from killing Illidan to getting their first epic flying mount to getting the Gladiator title.

The thread was bumped just the other day so we could all see our progress on the goals we posted oh-so-long ago (in internet time). It was pretty cool to see, since many of the people that posted completed most of their pre-Wrath goals. It's really fun to see everyone actually achieving the things they've wanted, no matter how big or small.

Personally, I still have a few goals I'd like to meet before the expansion rolls around.

• Kill Kil'jaeden. Almost there!
• Get an Amani Warbear for my Paladin alt
• Get an Orb of the Sin'dorei for my Priest.
  

The first one I want far, far more than the others. The mount and the trinket are pure vanity (especially since my Priest already has a bear), whereas the Kil'jaeden kill is something I'd really love to see my raid accomplish together. I'm going to go ahead and pass this question on to you guys: What are your pre-Wrath of the Lich King goals? How about goals that don't have a time limit on them? Do you just want an Ironfoe one day, like a certain Paladin friend of mine that shall remain nameless? I'm sure quite a few of you have your hearts set on a Deathcharger.

I've long said that once the game becomes more like a job than a diversion, it may be time to reconsider your choice of hobbies. True, to get to the top it takes lot of work, knowledge, and time. But when it comes down to it, what is the game really about? Vagh of Kil'jaeden sent out a shout out to those who aren't the best of the best, but are still enjoying the game. He tipped his hat to:

• A person who is happily running around a main city with greens and blues
  
• A person who is so happy to kill a boss in a 5 man instance
  
• A person who gets a blue off of a non-heroic mode boss for a badly needed upgrade and floods the party channel with "Woot!" or "I'm so happy!!!"
  
• A person whose arena rating hovers in the 1400s but still enjoys the game
  
• A person who doesn't complain endlessly on the forums about imbalance
  

Arrowd of the US Cairne server has a question: How do you keep leveling without getting bored, abandoning a character, or rerolling? She says that she's had around 14 characters, and she's never managed to stick with one past about level 45. She always gets bored, and she wonders if there is a way to avoid it.

Now as I've mentioned before, I've leveled a lot of characters myself, and have a few 70s, but even I can sometimes get a little bit tired of the grind, and sometimes even I need to make up goals to keep myself focused. Sometimes I even need it for my level 70s if I'm running low on gold or raiding supplies. In that way, I can definitely feel where she's coming from, but I do (usually) manage to keep myself motivated.

Sometimes, for me, the Motivation is pretty simple. For example, on that Shaman I'm leveling, what keeps me going is the prospect of getting some sweet Dual Wield action going. I'm actually having a lot of fun with her, so I don't need to focus on it too hard, but the idea of imagining her with 2 axes enchanted with Windfury is a mental picture that is too awesome to put into words. I mean, we're talking cover of a Dragonforce album awesome.

So now I turn the question over to the rest of you. Whether it be leveling on a lowbie or grinding on a 70, how do you keep yourself motivation when the going gets tough and you get tired out? Is it the promise of a new skill? A new piece of gear? What keeps you charged up and logged in?

Last week on the podcast (which will be posted later today, and is pretty good, if I say so myself), Turpster informed us that he's gotten up to level 61 on his Shadow Priest that he started a while ago. His goal is to make it all the way to 70 by Wrath of the Lich King, which means he and I are in an informal race at this point -- my Hunter is currently 64 and I'm aiming to hit 70 by the expansion as well.

Unfortunately, we have no idea when the expansion will drop. If you're the optimistic type, yesterday's BlizzCon announcement might have hinted to you that the expansion will come out before the big event in Anaheim, which means we'll be in Northrend before October. I'm not so optimistic -- I'm still thinking we won't see Wrath until right before the holidays, and Blizzard being Blizzard, probably delayed until January again.

But either way, you've got at least a few months, so what are your major goals before the expansion hits? Going to level a character, get a certain Arena rating, or do every Heroic? Aiming to get your mount, still, or have a goal with your guild to finish Sunwell before all the new content shows up? What are you aiming to do before going to see Arthas?