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An Immortal in Ulduar and other troublesome achievements
Here's an interesting Ulduar request from Hugner on Hyjal -- he wants to ask that there be no "Immortal"-style achievement in the new raid instance. He says getting the achievement has been super frustrating for his guild, not only because, you know, it's hard, but because with one simple disconnect at the wrong time, the whole week's attempt is wasted.Of course, an achievement like that isn't meant to be easy. Some people in the thread suggest making it more like The Dedicated Few (so that not all the bosses have to be flawless in one run), but Bornakk says it's an achievement -- it's not required and if you really want to get the meaningless points, you'll just have to work around the disconnects. He's also shoring up discontent on the other side of things -- people are complaining that the Gonna Go When the Volcano Blows achievement is messing up their Sarth runs, because they're dodging insignificant damage rather than actually downing the boss. In fact, the easiest way to do that one is just to suicide in the very beginning (because the AoE can't hit corpses), and lots of people are doing that. Bornakk says change isn't likely -- the achievement is designed to be separate from gaining loot from the boss.Bottom line on both of these is that they're achievements -- if they're hard or random or waste time, that's kind of the point. Blizzard may have caved on a few of the holiday achievements, but these endgame achievements aren't meant to be gotten easily or even without a little RNG help.
Grinding: The world's newest hobby?
Kill Ten Rats just put up an interesting, if not verging on controversial, take on some of the more repetitive and mundane parts of our MMO experiences. The main point of the article looks at MMOs not from the standpoint of a game, but rather that of a hobby.Ravious, the article's author, defines a hobby element of an MMO as something we may do in our gameplay that's not fun, but aids you having fun in future gameplay. Things like grinding to get that awesome new sword, all the looting you do to make potions for that next big raid, or perhaps just sitting in battlegrounds and getting all the honor points you can take.Ravious makes one important part at the end of the article -- too much "hobby element" in your game just makes for a sour game. He uses salt for his metaphor in this context. Salt makes food taste better, but too much salt or salting the wrong thing leads to ghastly consequences.
You can has Recon ... in fan made Spartan creator that is
Looking for a good time waster? HaloTech Gee-MC is a fun, flash-based mini-game that allows you to build your own Spartan soldier from the Halo universe. Fulfill your wildest dreams by adding Recon or even the Bungie Employee-exclusive Flaming head to your creation. Set the stage by adding downed soldiers, vehicles and weapons to your designs (spot my creation above!) and even throw your creation to into screenshot gallery. There really isn't a point to it all but it's fun and you might as well get used to creating Avatars, no? Give it a spin!
Personalize your own Zelda "take this" scene
var digg_url = 'http://www.digg.com/gaming_news/Personalize_your_own_Zelda_take_this_scene'; No doubt inspired by mega-popular Phoenix Wright personalizer Objection!, the folks over at PhantomHourglass.org have put together a little Flash application that lets you create your own "You got an item" scene from The Legend of Zelda (or Link to the Past). Not only can you personalize what the old man tells you, but you can also change the item Link picks up from a boring old sword to any 35 x 35 pixel image (might we suggest this charming Joystiq logo). Despite the crack about free time in the image above, we can't get enough of these little, customizable internet time wasters. The first flash coder out there to make an "Our princess is in another castle" version of this will have our eternal gratitude (and maybe even a Joystiq T-shirt). And no, this doesn't count.
