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The OverAchiever: The 25 most evil achievements, part 1
What are evil achievements? They're the soul-killing rep grinds, the raiding milestones that required sacrificing a farm animal to get, and even fun pasttimes like battlegrounds into which a sizable dose of misery has been added. Eventually you just want to grab the nearest developer and shake him back and forth, screaming, "What the hell were you thinking?" Last week I previewed three of the most evil achievements in the game, both to collect my own thoughts and to canvass commenters' opinions for a larger article. This week, I'd like to present the first set of evil achievements for your reading, wincing and antacid-chugging pleasure. A note on judging the "evil value" of achievements: I've been adding to this list for a while, and it's drawn from both the achievements we've covered in this column and some I've seen players complain about frequently in game. Obviously, there's no real way to quantify exactly how difficult or excruciating achievements are, so I'm going with the definition I gave above. Any incredibly difficult or RNG-saturated achievement made the short list, but I also tried to keep some unusual picks in mind. In this vein, there's an achievement in today's column that, while extremely easy by today's standards, was a screaming horror when it first debuted. I may wind up doing a list of honorable mentions as well. So, in no particular order, I am pleased to present World of Warcraft's 25 most evil achievements, starting with #25-16 this week.
Breakfast Topic: How did Winter Veil 2009 go for you?
Ah, Winter Veil -- the sights, the sounds, the jingling bells from the reindeer mounts, the curses emanating from players trying to tag the Abominable Greench mob, and the massively inflated prices for Small Eggs on the auction house. While this may not rank on the level of Great Auntie Marge's annual fruitcake for the family party, WoW has its own set of holiday traditions -- some more respected than others -- and all of them were out in full force over Winter Veil. Moreover, this is only the second year that the achievement system has been active for the holiday, and lots of people are still putting time in on What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been for both mains and alts. This year, a new achievement popped up to take advantage of the 2009 Winter Veil gift (a genuine Red Rider Air Rifle!), although players seemed unenthusiastic about the rifle's inaccuracy and cast time. So how did the holiday go for you? Did you finish the Merrymaker meta if you still needed it? Were you suicidally foolish enough to go for BB King? Did you shoot your eye out, kid?
The best of WoW.com: December 22-29, 2009
There have been widespread reports of earthquakes happening around Azeroth, seemingly at random. People believe that these earthquake are the beginning of a very large world event that will usher in WoW's third expansion, Cataclysm. After a bit of digging, WoW.com speculates that they might be coming form invisible mobs roaming around the virtual world. Blizzard has since come out and started slyly commenting on the in-game earthquake, neither denying nor supporting the conclusions drawn. Of course, there's other things going on in the WoW universe as well, and after the cut we'll take a look at the top stories of the week.
Winter Veil Gift 2009: The Red Rider Air Rifle
Ah! There it is... the holy grail of Christmas gifts! The Red Ryder 200 shot ranged model air rifle... What I want for Christmas is a Red Ryder BB Gun. In a nod to the holiday classic A Christmas Story, this year's WoW in-game Christmas gift is your very own Red Rider Air Rifle. You get it from the Winter Veil Gift underneath the Winter Veil Tree. You use it to cast the spell Pelted! which expands one of the 200 charges the Red Rider Air Rifle has. You'll want to fire off the gun to the faction leaders first to get your BB King achievement (Alliance version, Horde version). You can miss with the gun, so do the achievement before blowing the rest of the charges. For additional information on all the Winter Veil achievements, check out our Over Achiever's Guide to Winter Veil. This gift is active on the EU servers, and as of 8:00 a.m. EST, the gift now appears active on the US/North American servers as well. A+++++++++++++!
