Monthly Archive for October, 2009

A very long trip

Published
by
Yashima
on October 31, 2009
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Since achievements came out they have been a major focus for my in-game activities. Oh yes this is a whine post.

I am whining. Because I have spent a lot of time this year on getting “Yashima The Hallowed” – I finished everything but the stinkbomb quest and the Sinister Squashling last year. I made the Brewmaster, the Flame Warden … the Love Fool. And now I was hoping I could finish the Long Strange Trip next year when it’s Children’s Week.

I guess not. I finished my final event boss run – it was the first time I ever saw the Squashling drop there. Actually it dropped twice and I didn’t win – both times. I made time for the eventboss as often as was possible and I trick or treated like I had no life – I even did it at times when I should not. 2 of my alts got the Squashling. My main still doesn’t have it and I am angry now. I am angry that this big huge meta achievement contains pieces that are so random that with all the effort I made it was not possible to get the stupid pet.

Remove the pet from the Meta-Achievement like you did with the Love Fool!

I have lots of pets and I would like one more. It is not the pet that makes me act like an idiot: it is the stupid Meta-Achievement that makes me do this. I hate randomness.

People complain about the “GNERD Rage” or the “With a Little Help from my Friends” being hard on people because they involve doing PvP. But you can try, recruit friends and give your best … all I could give for this one was time and more time and still more time.

This drop rate messes with people so they have to log on every hour for two weeks … ? What kind of fucked up design is that? I know I do not have to do achievements but what is the design goal behind this? What does this accomplish for anyone? It just makes the Meta-Achievement random …

I am pissed and I will probably still try to get the pet because I am scared that next year around this time I will try again and have 2 fucked up weeks trying to get a couple of pixels to do this.

I am actually thinking about taking a nice long break from the game and canceling my account and be childish about all this. I like the game. I hate this Meta-Achievement and I still cannot let go of it.

And that is the reason why I go off on people talking about the addictive nature of the game. Because deep down I know it is very much so.

PS: I wrote a ticket demanding to take the pet out of the trip!

Dragon Slayer Day

Published
by
Yashima
on October 19, 2009
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( Note: when talking about any raid instances I always mean the 10-man version. We don’t do 25-mans as guild runs. )


When Wrath was young I never thought I could obtain the “Champion of the Frozen Wastes” title. I am not much into instances or raiding or whatever. A couple months ago I commented on a guildmate having the title and he said “What are you missing? It is not that hard!” I was still missing the final bosses of Naxxramas at that point, heroic Oculus, Sartharion and Malygos. I still didn’t think the title would be mine because I thought that I would never complete Naxx. We did – actually I did it twice so far.

After we finished that he asked again “So what are you missing for the title?” I had also completed the Oculus by then – just barely however which shows that I am not that “skilled” ;) I think I learned a couple of things along the way and could now manage the Oculus more easily. So my answer was “Just Sartharion and Malygos”.

Mysteriously – not at all – guild events for Sartharion and Malygos started appearing on our event planer ;) We managed to down Sartharion easily – with some weird randoms along the way – the first time I was there for such an event. Malygos however we tried and tried. We managed to get the first phase after a couple of tries. Then we managed to learn the second phase easily … the third … I was to be a healer and I just died all the time.

We gave up after getting to the 3rd phase about 3 times and failing miserably. Another night another Malygos event. More failure.

This Saturday some ambitious guildie had scheduled “Ony, Sartharion and Malygos – let’s kill all the dragons!” Tenobaal and I had no other plans so we joined in the raid. So far I had not been to the “new Onyxia” and I was rather curious if we could down her as a guild since I remembered the guild failing on the first night after the patch.

We managed to invite a random and a couple of guild-friends to fill the raid – Saturday rarely is a day with lots of guildies online and on to Onyxia we went. We wiped – due to some chaotic assignments and several people not knowing the new encounter yet (including Tenobaal and me). We wiped again I think and then on the third try we downed her easily. I have no idea why I survived the Deep Breath – must have gotten lucky. She dropped us 2 priest helmets and there was only one priest there … I was impressed with us, I had thought we might get stuck here.

Next up was Sartharion. After a short discussion we said to try him with one of his cronies up. Luckily there were 3 druids in the raid lots of battlerezzes were needed but we made the “Twilight Assist”. (I can’t remember if we wiped, I was too excited we made it).

Somebody noticed that the Alliance was controlling Wintergrasp and suggested we go down the 3 bosses there. First up: Archavon (the one with the Meteor Fists, don’t know if the name is right). After a really lame wipe – due to several people not knowing the encounter yet – someone relogged to another healer character and we downed him. The other two were quite easy.

Then it was Malygos time, finally. We had already spent two hours raiding and I was sure we would fail again on Malygos just like the last two times. It started out quite nicely on our first try we easily got to the third phase where we failed as usual. After that however we had a couple of awful tries with bad pulls in the beginning and people were starting to bash the tank in teamspeak. I think I figured out the first two phases as a druid healer quite nicely and concentrated on getting to try the third but we never got there. Wipe in phase one, wipe in phase two. Phase three with several people dead at start. I think we wiped at least 5 times on Malygos without getting to phase 3.

I was already thinking about calling it quits for the night when we manage a clean try until phase 3. Everybody alive and still some time to go before enrage hit. I targeted the one person supposed to be good at this encounter and hit /follow and then I hit the heal buttons as fast as I could. The trick really is to follow someone so you don’t have to worry about managing the skills and staying in range. A couple people died but we downed him!

It felt really wonderful knowing I will not have to down him again to get that achievement ;) Now I might go there again to try and perfect phase 3 without much pressure.

So we downed them all and in good time: just over 3 hours for Ony, Sartharion, the Wintergrasp bosses and Malygos. For us that is pretty awesome.

Back to Glyph selling

Published
by
Yashima
on October 12, 2009
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Actually we are just back from vacation. Before vacation I had started into the Glyph business inspired by the Greedy Goblin. I only had a couple of days of course I did however manage to make the chief glyph seller angry it seems because when I logged onto my AH alt this evening I was immediately greeted by him and a longish discussion about undercutting followed. He tried to – politely – convince me to undercut by less. I really had not expected this to happen before a week or more of posting.

I did finish empty-ing my post box and if I felt like telling him I could tell him I made more than 1000gold of that last batch I posted before vacation. Which simply rocks. <3 undercutting :D and I am only undercutting by 10g so far. He tried to convince me to go to 50s. Cute.

But I have to give him this: he stayed very polite – so far. He has been in the business for some time now and seemed to be a nice person all in all. I am not the greedy goblin, I wonder what I will do when this guy gets really annoyed at me.

Need another Brew

Published
by
Yashima
on October 2, 2009
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I am back in the game with a shiny new computer on which to play. After finally remembering to install the latest wine-beta everything is running quite smoothly now.

Except right now I am standing here in the middle of the night hoping against hope – yes we failed – that I will manage to defend the brewfest against the dark iron for another ten coins! I just found out that I need to rejoin the brewclub to get the 12th brew because for some reason or other I didn’t get it.

I did open a ticket and now I am hoping that I will either manage another 150 coins until Sunday afternoon – after that I will have no more access to the game due to vacation – or that my ticket will result in a single bottle of acorn ale finding itself into my mailbox … I find it really well – mean – to have this membership last exactly a year and then have the first beer not count just because I either handed in the brew club membership form late and never got the first one in the mail or because I just drank the first one before the achievement system hit the shelves :(

Either way I am disappointed I didn’t get the achievement and will maybe have to wait another year to get another few coins … which I could easily have gotten if I had found out a couple of days BEFORE October 1st.

Update October 2nd ca. 9:30 p.m.: I just went online to check the state of my ticket concerning the Brew of the Year. I am one happy little druid now. I found a very nice answer in my mailbox including a bottle of the missing Acorn Ale :) This is the solution I hoped for. One more happy customer!