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The OverAchiever: In which Alliance has it much worse than Horde
Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. This week, we are grateful to play Horde. This past week, I was tabbed out of the game writing an OverAchiever on Bloody Rare as a follow-up to our guide on Northern Exposure when something interesting started happening in the background. In the sliver of laptop screen dedicated to WoW, the chat channels exploded with warnings that the Alliance was attacking Orgrimmar. Given that the Midsummer Fire Festival is still going on with lots of players busy stealing enemy fires, this isn't particularly unusual. I shrugged and went back to work. And yet, the warnings just kept coming. Curious, I tabbed back into the game to discover that a full 40-man Alliance raid was fighting its way to Garrosh Hellscream. Other players said that none of the other Horde leaders had been attacked, so I can only assume the raid was starting For the Alliance! with the toughest foe among them. Now, Garrosh is by no stretch of the imagination anywhere near as popular as Thrall was, but lots of Horde players are still willing to defend him from attack because, well, he's got his moments. Orgrimmar's central district quickly became a lagfest of epic proportions as dozens of players who'd been gossiping in trade or loitering around the Auction House rushed to defend Garrosh. The Alliance raid was ultimately defeated, but they rallied and tried again -- unsuccessfully -- an hour later. This was the first of three days that I saw the same Alliance raid desperately trying to kill Garrosh, and something started to niggle at me by day two. Namely, For the Alliance! and For the Horde! are among the very few achievements that are significantly tougher if you play one faction over the other.
The OverAchiever: Mountain O' Mounts from achievements
Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. This week, 10 little points are all that stand between us and a new ... something. Many of the mounts this week be familiar to you if you've read The OverAchiever: Pimp Thy Ride, which I wrote before the Cataclysm content patch with an eye toward the number of people who wanted to slap a 310% mount on their toons before it had to be trained. Sadly, none of the mounts described in that article, barring one, will grant Master Riding for free now. Also read: Combining The Ambassador and Mountain O' Mounts Mountain O' Mounts in Outland Mountain O' Mounts in Northrend Mountain O' Mounts in 5-man dungeons Mountain O' Mounts in raids
Bat mounts? Blizzard, please make it so.
An interesting post popped up on the forums, mourning the passing of racial mounts, which apparently nobody uses anymore. The poster pointed out that most people now using bears or mammoths, every Death Knight using their cool Deathchargers, and a rare few actually still using their faction mounts. This sparked a flurry of responses and even had Eyonix chime in with his thoughts (and enviable epeen stroking when he casually dropped his Spectral Tiger in the conversation).I'm actually guilty of not riding my faction mount, the closest I ever got being the Swift Warstrider. I currently use the very awesome but all-too-common Black War Bear (every day, it's like 40 more people pop up with the mount), and for flying I use the not-so-common but also not-very-awesome Albino Drake. On my engineer I'm enjoying the Turbo-Charged Flying Machine and I plan to get a motorcycle when he dings 80. If I could afford Salvaged Iron Golem Parts and everything else, that is. There are really quite a lot of mounts to choose from, which is probably why the easily acquired, 'vanilla' mounts aren't as popular.
Achievement junkie
Achievements are like crack. I didn't expect to go for any of them, really. When Achievements were first announced and we got a sneak peek at what kind of Achievements were in the game, all I was really interested in was racking up PvP Achievements and ignore the rest. But when I completed For The Horde! sometime ago, and Thrall sent me a nice little letter and a bear, learning the Black War Bear inadvertently resulted in unlocking Stable Keeper. When that happened, something inside me clicked and the next thing I knew, I was doing quests in Sen'jin and Bloodhoof Villages to get those last few reputation points to get to Exalted with the respective factions. My initial idea was simply to allow myself to purchase all the racial mounts, but when I finally hit Exalted with all the Horde factions, I unlocked Ambassador of the Horde. Oh, and while we were raiding the Alliance cities, I took time off to explore the Alliance starting zones, too, and turned into a Dora. It's kind of an unstoppable snowball of Achievements that get you hooked even when you're not pursuing them.I ventured into Dire Maul North to raise my weapon skills, ending up getting Did Somebody Order a Kunckle Sandwich? and Master of Arms. Since I had, in my epic fail of an attempt to get Merrymaker, gone into Dire Maul East to get the recipe for Run Tumm Tuber Surprise, I also cleared Dire Maul East. This meant I just had to go into Dire Maul West to get King of Dire Maul. So much for ignoring Achievements. Even if you don't look for them, they kind of have a way of finding you. I mean, most people get Going Down? entirely by accident, don't they? Like it or not (and I, for one, actually like it more than I thought I would), Achievements look like a success to me. We like it so much, in fact, that Dan's kicked off a weekly Achievements column called The Overachiever. How're you doing with your Achievements lately? Have you gotten hooked?
New achievements and mount rewards in beta build 8962
Like most Wrath beta patches, build 8962 comes packing new achievements. This patch doesn't have a massive list like some previous builds, but what it does have is pretty cool: Leading the Cavalry - Obtain 75 mounts, be rewarded with an Albino Drake. For the Alliance! - Slay the leaders of the Horde, be rewarded with a Black War Bear. For the Horde! - Slay the leaders of the Alliance, be rewarded with a Black War Bear. Glory of the Hero - Complete all of the Heroic Dungeon achievements, be rewarded with a Red Proto-Drake. Glory of the Raider - Complete the Normal Difficulty raid achievements, be rewarded with a Plagued Proto-Drake. Heroic: Glory of the Raider - Complete the Heroic Difficulty raid achievements, be rewarded wtih a Black Proto-Drake. What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been - Complete the World Event achievements, be rewarded with a Violet Proto-Drake. (Note: World events means holidays here, like Brewfest, not things like the Ahn'qiraj gate event.) The rewards are definitely the most noteworthy part of this. Wrath of the Lich King is introducing a ton of new mounts, so it won't surprise me to see massive diversity in what people are using after the expansion has been out for awhile. There are plenty that come from things other than Achievements as well, but we'll get to those later.[ via MMO-Champion ]
Ask a Beta Tester: Flying in the snow, etc
FoSho asked.... Maybe I'm in the dark here, but how does one get to Dalaran since its floating in mid air. Is there a portal in a town, or do you have to be 67 to get there? I keep on hearing its "dangerous" to get to Dalaran, how so? I wouldn't call it dangerous, but you aren't going to be able to get there at level 70 without the help of a Mage or Warlock. Because Dalaran is floating high above Northrend, you need a flying mounto reach it, and when you first arrive in Northrend, your flying mount simply doesn't know how to handle the cold weather. You'll need to complete a level 77 quest chain to obtain Cold Weather Flying and reach Dalaran on your own. Alternatively, there's a quest at level 74 you can seek out in certain inns that will take you there.For more of your beta questions -- and our beta answers -- read on! But if you're the sort who wants to avoid spoilers, turn back now. We're aiming to avoid major story spoilers, but this feature is all about beta content and we can't talk about the beta without giving a few things away.
New PvP title and mount
Tigole announced a slight change to PvP Achievements and excited more than a few people -- myself included -- by noting that players who complete the Achievements For The Horde! and For The Alliance! will be rewarded a Black War Bear. Players who manage to reach the respectable 100,000 Honorable Kill plateau will unlock the 'of the Horde' and 'of the Alliance' titles. Currently in Beta, slaying four enemy faction leaders award the title while getting 100k HK gave no rewards.While the Amani War Bear will be unattainable when Patch 3.0 hits, but it seems like there might just be a replacement -- will guilds be organizing these new 'bear runs'? I certainly hope so. I was never a fan of the Amani War Bear, or bears as mounts in general, but a PvP mount that rewards killing all four of the opposing faction's leaders? Oh man. Where do I sign up? I certainly hope that the mount will sport a different, non-troll armor model as well as faction insignias and the requisite reds or blues. These new bear mounts might just be incentive enough to get players to raid enemy cities and, hopefully, get to 100k HK along the way.
