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The OverAchiever: The 25 most entertaining achievements #5-3
Every so often, I get tired of the self-seriousness that infests some of (OK, most of) the other work I do here and get the urge to write something purely for fun. After our series on evil achievements and the relentless misery of School of Hard Knocks, I'd like to spend some time on achievements that are nothing but an absolute joy from beginning to end. Today we're going to get close to finishing our series on World of Warcraft's 25 most entertaining achievements. This was originally supposed to be #5 through #1, but ... well, I think the last five achievements are all complete knockouts, so I devoted a bit more time to each. This is the full series, if you're catching up: OverAchiever: Pure Win The 25 most entertaining achievements, #25-21 The 25 most entertaining achievements, #20-16 The 25 most entertaining achievements, #15-11 The 25 most entertaining achievements, #10-6 and today's post, the 25 most entertaining achievements finale, #5-3
Patch 3.3 PTR: Meeting Stones for all
Great news for players of all classes and levels (well, levels above 15)! In the latest official patch notes update for the Patch 3.3 PTR, Blizzard added the following line: Meeting Stones: To use any Meeting Stone, it is only required that the character's minimum level be 15. There is no maximum character level requirement for any Meeting Stone. Now that's a change that's been a long time coming. Ever tried to get your level 80 guildie to Deadmines to help you carve a bloody swath straight to Van Cleef? It's a pain! Ever tried to get your lowbie to a high-level zone without a portal? Also a pain! This completely removes the restrictions on using or activating summoning stones so long as you're above level 15. Now you'll be able to bring whoever you want to any dungeon summoning stone with just two people. A fantastic quality-of-life change, very likely added to ensure that interest in rerolling remains steady until Cataclysm comes out, but who cares? I'll take it! Who wants to run me through ZF? Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to the Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.
Traveling in patch 3.1
Patch 3.1 will be changing how we all get around. Travel is usually a bit of a touchy subject, but there are some huge improvements on the way. If you love Kirin'Tor bling, you'll be happy to note that their transportation rings are getting an upgrade. Should you purchase one, you get a free teleport to Dalaran once every hour. The Hearthstone that you've carried with you since you day one, unless you deleted it and had to bribe an Innkeeper for a new one, is changing radically. The cooldown is being reduced from one hour to half an hour. This was done partially to appease the whining over nerf to ghetto hearthing. Ghetto Hearthing is/was the process of dropping your group while in a dungeon and waiting one minute for a free hearth, provided your hearthstone was on a cooldown. In 3.1, you will no longer be able to do this. Fortunately, you can still use the method to get yourself out of a dungeon. Ghetto hearthing will be less of a hearth and more of a shifting of your virtual person to the nearest graveyard, alive and well. This will stop people from doing things like entering Ragefire Chasm while grouped, dropping, and getting a free hearth.
Meeting Stones broken in the EU
We received a couple of reports of meeting stones not working on EU realms earlier today, and it was later confirmed by Blizzard themselves. According to the EU login screen, meeting stones are not working and it'll require a maintenance period to get them up and running again.That's very, very interesting considering the stones are working just fine in the US (I just tested to make sure), and it might have something to do with the fact that the EU patch is roughly twice the size of its US counterpart, according to a couple of people following our Twitter feed. Knowing very little about how these things work, my initial assumption was that the size difference was due to extra weight on the patch for localization purposes, but that might not be the case. It's possible Europe just received a few changes that we hadn't yet, and that's what's causing this. Or maybe not. We don't really know, and anymore speculation on my part would just make me look pretty silly considering I know so little about the process.We may not know what caused the issue, but we do know one thing: Your party will need to hoof it to their dungeons for awhile, old school style.Update: It appears the meeting stones are now fixed, and didn't require a restart or maintenance period, either! Hooray!
