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Warring perspectives on account-wide achievements
Yesterday, with a speculative post on twitter, I unwittingly started a bit of an argument between a few of my friends about the 5.0.4 changes to achievements. I didn't mean to, I had been reading the comments on The Queue and was not hugely surprised to note that I was not the only person who wasn't jubilant at the changes. I am ever the partisan, and try to consider both sides of every argument when making a decision, but at this point I can't quite decide whether I like the new achievement system or not. Why? Well, let's see. Making the meaningless less meaningful I was kind of upset at the changeover from Wrath to Cataclysm at the disappearance of the Wrath and earlier talent trees. If you weren't around for those, they were gigantic behemoths of talent trees, far larger than the Cataclysm ones, and featuring far more talents that addes 1% damage onto something, or reduced a cast time or cooldown by some insignificant amount. I didn't miss them because I mourned the loss of any particular aspect of them, or felt they were more complicated or clever, but because getting a talent every level made going from 23 to 24 feel like something meaningful.
Breakfast Topic: What's your favorite part of 5.0.4?
Patch 5.0.4 has arrived, laden with goodies like account-wide pets, mounts and achievements. But oddly enough, none of these things were my favorites from this patch. AoE looting is fantastic and was easily at the top of my favorites list before I logged in, but it paled in comparison to something else, something far quieter that I hadn't really considered a huge part of the patch. My realm is a terribly small realm off in the corner of nowhere. I have my character's hearthstone set to Dalaran, partially for the easy access to the Caverns of Time and partially because I like Dalaran. It's a little lonely, but quiet. There are maybe a half-dozen people there, usually. I logged into Dalaran yesterday and was abruptly taken aback because the place was packed. In my excitement over everything else, I'd forgotten all about the cross-realm zones that were being introduced. It turns out my quiet little corner of nowhere was now populated by tons of people from another realm altogether. And it turns out that realm is the home of a friend of mine from Twitter, a fellow blogger. For the first time ever, I got to say hello to her character and pose for screenshots and generally be a silly idiot. I'd forgotten how it felt to be in the midst of a bustling city. I'd forgotten how it felt to have activity at all hours, and I'd forgotten how nice it was to just run into someone I knew out of nowhere. And in that moment of giddy, silly screenshot frenzy, cross-realm zones abruptly shot from something I hadn't even considered to the top of my favorites list. So what's your favorite part of 5.0.4? Is it having all your achievements on all of your characters? Is it finally being able to ride around on all of your mounts? Is your pet collection completely amazing? Or is it the sudden discovery that in the great big World of Warcraft, you're not quite as isolated as you used to be?
What to expect from patch 5.0.4
Patch 5.0.4 will be here on Tuesday, Aug. 28. As with other pre-expansion patches, 5.0.4 will include some important changes that will reflect gameplay in Mists of Pandaria. To be perfectly clear, while this is a pre-patch for Mists, it is not Mists itself and shouldn't be confused with the game we'll all be nabbing on Sept. 25. While there are some features from the beta that we'll see go live with this patch, others will not be released until the new expansion goes live in September. This is a confusing time for some players, because they're not quite sure what to expect when it comes to the pre-expansion patch. Will new features be rolled out? Will we see new instances or profession changes or playable pandaren? To avoid confusion, here's a short primer on what you will and will not see in patch 5.0.4.
Account-wide pet duplicates clarified
While account-wide pets and mounts will be going live with patch 5.0.4, the exact process involved has still been somewhat muddled. Game Designer Cory "Mumper" Stockton clarified the process somewhat in a post about battle pets yesterday. While pets that are unique, such as achievement, pet store, promotional and guild pets, will be combined into one pet in your UI, others will have duplicates available. Because of the nature of the merge, these duplicates will bypass the rule that only three pets of one type can be had with the new pet system. Any duplicates you have that can be caged will be tradeable, or you can simply release anything you don't wish to keep. This news should be a welcome relief to pet collectors who have multiples of the same pet on many different characters. Mumper Pets will still be merged on MoP launch, but instead of placing them in your bags or mail they will be placed directly in your pet journal. You will be allowed to have more than 500 and 3x per pet during this process. Any pets that are flagged as unique will be merged into one and also placed in your journal. (Unique pets are from Achievements, Pet Store, Promotions and Guild) You will be able to cage any pets that are tradeable and you can release anything that you have more than one of. A few examples: A B.net account has a total of 6 Wolvar Pups across all of it's characters. On merge the B.net account would have 6 Wolvar Pups. This would be the only time an account is allowed to have more than 3x of a single pet. A B.net account has a total of 3 Murky's from BlizzCon 2005 and 4 Nuts from the pet collection achievements across all of it's characters. (both unique pets) On merge the B.net account will have 1 Murky and 1 Nuts. Hope that helps clear things up. source It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
How flexible is too flexible when it comes to gameplay?
Way back in the days of vanilla WoW, your character was something you were stuck with, as well as your talents. If you wanted to unlearn your talents, you were certainly welcome to do so, as long as you didn't mind paying a lot of gold to do so. Once you made a character on that server, it stayed there. Once you chose your gender, hair and facial features, you were stuck with them. If you chose Alliance, that character remained Alliance for good. Over the years, we've had a lot of small things introduced that allowed us a little more flexibility with the characters we love to play. You can change realms, factions, hair, gender, race -- you can completely change who your character is at the drop of a hat. Mists of Pandaria is introducing a host of new features intended to give the game some added flexibility by allowing characters to share achievements, mounts and pets across an entire account. This means that players are no longer limited to what character they play. You can switch between characters and still have the same benefits. There's just one thing that Blizzard has never, ever wavered on, one last point of rigid inflexibility when it comes to the characters we play: class.
The OverAchiever: Are pet achievements disappearing in Mists of Pandaria?
Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. This week, it's myth-explodin' time. Last week in the comment thread for OverAchiever: Achievements to do before it's too late, there were a few notes from readers who were worried that noncombat pet achievements were going to disappear in Mists of Pandaria. This shocked me, because I could have sworn I saw pet achievements flash across the screen during the spam I always get when I copy my main to a beta or PTR, and I hadn't been aware that these achievements were actually missing from the General category. I was also sure there would have been some pretty high-profile news about it if developers were planning to axe them. Especially with the introduction of Pet Battles, it seemed like a very strange time for Blizzard to get rid of related achievements. Then again, these are also the people who put the Aldor Rise elevator and Warsong Gulch rep in the game, so we already know they're capable of real cruelty. OverAchiever's pretty much pointless if I don't use it to investigate stuff that I could have warned readers about well in advance, and pets are serious business. So, another character copy onto the beta later, I have an answer for you about what's going on.
The OverAchiever: Q&A on account-wide achievements
Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. This week, things are about to get a little easier. Between Ghostcrawler's blog post and Zarhym's additional notes on the forums yesterday, we now know a lot more about how account-wide achievements are going to work. No preamble this week, folks -- let's get right to it. A lot of questions were answered, but there are still a few unknowns. Question: Will all of my achievement titles be accessible from every toon? Answer: Probably, but there may be restrictions on their use. I've been looking to farm some nice titles out to alts that have done absolutely nothing to deserve them (who isn't?), and what we do know is that Blizzard's looking for a way to do this. From how GC's written about it, I'm wondering if this might actualy go live after Mists of Pandaria has already shipped, because Blizzard's talked about the technical limitations previously, and it's apparently still at work on it. We also don't know when these titles will become universally accessible. For example, your level 1 monk may not get access to Kingslayer until level 80 or Defender of a Shattered World until level 85, which is sensible insofar as my level 1 monk was not in much of a position to save anyone with Jab as the full extent of her repertoire. For now, put this firmly in the category of "Probably going to happen, but don't expect a firm date."
Are account-wide achievements a blessing or a curse?
I remember the day achievements went live. I spent a good portion of that first day just before Wrath's release hunting down and completing the few achievements I could definitely complete. Well Read? Done. To All the Squirrels I've Loved Before? Well, I couldn't quite complete that, but I did dutifully go /love every animal I could, aside from the few in Northrend I couldn't get to yet. When Wrath was in its waning days and I was bored, I'd work on obscure achievements I didn't have. Bloody Rare and Frostbitten were both completed during this time. I haven't really focused so much on achievements this expansion. However, my guild is on the brink of finishing heroic content, which means from that point out, we'll just be farming various content, I'm guessing. And that sounds like it's just about time for my achievement obsession to kick in again -- as well as finishing off tracking down and nabbing those few pesky mounts and pets in game that I haven't gotten yet. In Mists, all these achievements I've got on my main will automatically be granted to my alts, which I was pretty pleased about. But then I started to think about it.
How to get all the Children's Week pets in one year
User CJGibson over on Reddit's /r/wow community made an excellent point earlier today concerning the Children's Week pets that are only available while the holiday is running. Ordinarily, it's only possible for one character to get three pets each year: one from the classic Azeroth quests (Piglet's Collar, the Rat Cage, the Turtle Box, or the Snail Shell), one from the Outland quests (Elekk Training Collar, Egbert's Egg, Sleepy Willy, or Legs), and one from the Northrend quests (the Curious Wolvar Pup or the Curious Oracle Hatchling). But you know how in Mists of Pandaria all of the non-combat pets on your account will be shared amongst your characters? If you run a series of alts through the quests and pick different pets on each one, you'll have all the pets on all your characters once the Mists of Pandaria content patch hits (or, at the latest, once Mists itself does). The tip was so brilliant that I slapped myself for not thinking of it, so I wanted to draw some attention to it here as quickly as possible. Pet hunters? Save yourselves four years' worth of waiting, and get cracking. If this is your first year with the holiday and you need any help with the achievements, you can find our guide to Children's Week here.
