achievement
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UPDATED: Bag of candies working as intended
[UPDATE: It seems that Blizzard bent over to much QQ (again?) and decided to raise the drop rate of the Bag of Candies in a hotfix applied last night, according to Kisirani. So you shouldn't complain about it anymore, really. Oh, and Kon Yelloweyes does not have a higher drop rate than other NPCs. Stop it.]Some people are crying foul over the apparently horrendous drop rate of the Bag of Candies, which produce the various candies needed to complete the Be Mine! Achievement. This, in turn, is required for the Fool for Love meta-Achievement. On average, players will need to get two of these bags of candies to produce all of the eight possible messages, as each bag has ten charges.Many players haven't had much luck picking up the Achievement, including our own Liz Harper, who claims to have gotten one bag in two days of trying. One guildie swears that a specific NPC in Thunder Bluff hands it out, dismissing the fact that it is actually... completely random. This random drop rate has gotten some players up in arms. Blizzard poster Zarhym comes over to the forums to pronounce that the Bag of Candies drop rate is, in fact, working as intended.
New Xbox achievement site looks to standardize accomplishments
The team behind a new achievement tracking website called TrueAchievements is very, very angry. The reason: Achievements and their respective Gamerscores aren't really standardized, meaning that Gamerscore often fails to be a true depiction of a person's gaming talent.Based on the idea that the harder an achievement is to unlock (no matter its Gamerscore value) the more points it should be worth, TrueAchievements uses a formula that takes into account how many players unlocked a specific achievement. Compared to the game's total population, a difficulty multiplier is calculated. The multiplier is figured into the game's Gamerscore and -- presto! -- a new, more accurate way to calculate a person's skill ensues.Those who earned all the Avatar achievements will be humbled to know that it's the game with the lowest TrueAchievement value.
Love is in the Air begins tomorrow
Love is in the Air everywhere I look around.Love is in the Air every sight and every sound.And I don't know if I'm being foolish, don't know if I'm being wise. But it's something I must believe in, and it's there when I look in your eyes.Tomorrow will mark the start of the Love is in the Air season event. Theoretically, from past events, it should start around 4:00 a.m. sever time. But whether or not that ends up being true, you'll have to check for yourself.You'll need to get finish the achievement Fool for Love in order to get the ultimate seasonal achievement What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been. The thing is... you only have a few days to get Fool For Love, so hurry up. The seasonal event ends early next Monday morning.Ideally you'll want to set aside some time tomorrow night; you don't want to be waiting until Saturday evening to do this. Unless, you know, you and your significant other are into that sort of thing. (I'm talking about playing WoW together. Jeeze... get your mind out of the gutter. You don't think I'm just going to sit here and make gratuitous Valentine's Day jokes for the rest of the week, do you?)So what are you waiting for?"AFK honey, need to become a fool for love." %Gallery-15723%
Dough, a deer: engineering a Little Fawn
Given my history as one, you'd imagine that I have a fondness for ungulates. You'd be right! And by introducing a baby deer pet as an achievement reward for collecting 75 pets, Blizzard has effectively doomed me to a life of waaaant. I mean, I like achievements well enough -- I'm not as crazy about them as some of my guildies are, mind you-- but I seriously hate farming, and a lot of pets require rep grinding or luck of the RNG. No thanks. I'll admire from afar. I'm not the only person who wants a deer anyway, though (who wouldn't!), and that desire's resulted in some creative tinkering by those under the recently-lowered achievement cap and still fawning over the, ah, fawn. Some have even been kind enough to share their tricks of the trade for grabbing Baby Deerest. Foreverdarkness over on the venerable wow_ladies LiveJournal community relayed her admittedly creative way of grabbing that final pet -- dropping her beloved Skinning and picking up Engineering to farm herself up a Bombling. The pet's only available to engineers, as it's BoP, but you can still summon it even if you're no longer an engineer, so she set to work grinding through the skill points necessary. There was another problem, though--you can only get the pet as a random reward when you renew your membership as a Goblin Engineer. So, she repeatedly renewed her license at 2 gold a pop, which, given the history of RNG, could have resulted in a lot of dough for a little doe. She was lucky, though, and (achievement in hand) was soon able to bring her diminutive deer along for a trip to scenic Naxxramas. I was hoping she'd keep her engineering skill, as skinning is hardly a skill that our Little Fawn would approve of, but alas! The appeal of Master of Anatomy is too high. Can't win 'em all!
The Queue: Wear shoulder pads like it's 1989 and get The Immortal title
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today.Salutations and fond wishes everyone. Today in the queue we'll spend a moment looking at shoulders you can get for your alts. Shoulder padding, if you will... Remember shoulder pads? I hear they were popular in the '80s. Along with Ghostbusters. And Ghostcrawler is popular now. So therefore Ghostcrawler is only two steps removed from the fads of the '80s.Bet ya' didn't see that one coming.Be sure to submit your questions about patch 3.1 in the comments. We'll try to answer as many as possible in the next few days.Jared Daniels asks..."Would you recommend getting the inherited plate shoulder pads solely for the purpose of leveling my Death Knight and Warrior from 70-80? My main is a Mage and I am coming close to being able to buy the ones from using Stone Keeper Shards. If no, then what would you recommend I do with the shards?"
A comprehensive look at WoW's Lunar Festival achievements
Holiday festivals in MMOs aren't limited to Christmas events. The Lunar Festival in World of Warcraft began this weekend, and is timed to coincide with the real world Chinese Lunar New Year (January 26th). WoW celebrates the holiday with quests to find Elders, unique items like season clothing, fireworks, and seasonal decor splashed all around WoW's major cities, Booty Bay, and Moonglade. Our sister site WoW Insider has put together a comprehensive guide to all of the Lunar Festival achievements, and explains how to complete the meta-achievement "To Honor One's Elders." The WoW Insider guide is well worth a look if you want to get the most out of the annual event, this year being the fourth time around for WoW's Lunar Festival. The event runs from January 24th to February 12th, so there's still plenty of time to get in on the fun. One of Azeroth's millions of citizens? Check out our ongoing coverage of the World of Warcraft, and be sure to touch base with our sister site WoW Insider for all your Lich King needs!
Breakfast Topics: 37! In a row?
Yesterday I was out tromping around Nagrand with my Shaman leveling her up, killing mob after mob. There was a point that when I killed about 10 mobs in a row, and I thought to myself "Killing Spree!" Harking back to the days of yore and Quake 3.This got me thinking. There is one critical achievement that is missing in the game. A killing spree achievement, ideally reached when you kill 37 mobs in a row without stopping. In fact, there's a great title for it featured as the name of this article. Go ahead Blizzard, take this one idea for free. To you, from me; your friend Adam.But oh wait, there's more. I was twittering last night about this, and there were some good suggestions that came across the feed. More after the break!
New Gears of War 2 Achievements appear on Xbox.com
In spite of the immense popularity enjoyed by its predecessor, Gears of War 2 hasn't been able to climb atop the Xbox Live activity charts. Perhaps a few more Achievement points will change things up. Xbox.com has an updated list of Achievements for the game, bumping up the available Gamerscore to 1175. All of the new Achievements require a title update and both the Flashback and Combustible Map Packs. Skeletons in your Closet (20G) - Complete waves 1 through 10 on all Flashback Map Pack maps in Horde (any difficulty) More Mystery, Less History (15G) - Win a multiplayer match on each of the 5 Flashback Map Pack maps (any mode except Wingman) Bound by a Shared Past (15G) - Win a Wingman match on each of the 5 Flashback Map Pack maps Trial by, and on, Fire (20G) - Survive first 10 Horde waves on Combustible Map Pack maps as a team The Roof! The Roof! The Roof... (15G) - Win a multiplayer match on each of the 3 Combustible Map Pack maps (any mode except Wingman) Forged in the Fire (15G) - Win a Wingman match on each of the 3 Combustible Map Pack maps Annex: Now With Execution Rules (75G) - Win an Annex match on each Flashback and Combustible Map Pack map (public matches only) [Via X3F]
Winds of the North achievement getting fixed
When you log in the day after patch 3.0.8 goes live, odds are that if you've hit 80, you'll be picking up a relatively free achievement. Winds of the North is an achievement that's been more or less impossible to get since Wrath was released -- it requires you to get Exalted with all three of the "starter" reputations for your faction, depending on whether you're Horde or Alliance. But while it's relatively easy to get Exalted with the overall reputaiton for your faction (Horde Expedition or Alliance Vanguard), it's very tough to get Exalted with the reputations within that faction (Explorer's League, Valiance Expedition, Frostborn and the Silver Covenant for the Alliance, and Hand of Vengeance, Taunka, Warsong Offensive and the Sunreavers for the Horde -- whew). There are almost no daily quests for any of those factions, and even just doing all of the quests is designed to get you Exalted with the major faction, not the minor ones. Patch 3.0.8 will fix this, and only require you to get Exalted with the overall faction. Which you probably already are, since if you don't wear a Champion tabard during the endgame instances, you'll instead earn rep with the starter reputation for your faction. (Not to mention that even before you get there, the mini-factions all add up to the major faction, so if you get Revered with two of the mini-factions, you'll be Exalted with the overall faction.) Got all that? In short, Blizzard built an achievement into the game without realizing how hard it really was to get. And in the next patch, they're going to change it so that even if you haven't been paying attentention, you've probably already gotten it. So enjoy the free points.
Meeting the goal of 100,000 honorable kills
Tipster Tomek sent us a note about his friend Zbijmnie of EU Vek'nilash, to see if, at level 49, he might be one of the lowest level players to every hit the goal of 100,000 honorable kills for the achievement, but after looking around for a bit, I've found the achievement is pretty commonplace. Because the count actually started way back when HKs were first added to the game (and not when achievements were), lots of people have picked up the seemingly gigantic number already. In fact, here's a level 19 who did it right when he logged into the expansion for the first time (which means he had killed 100,000 people even before patch 3.0.2.Which is kind of a shame -- after Gears of War's "Seriously" achievement (to kill 10,000 enemies) was met, they added a "Seriously 2.0" to the sequel (to kill 100,000 enemies), and that one's been met as well.So in retrospect, getting 100,000 HKs isn't too hard -- even if you got one every second, it'd really only take you about a day of playtime, which is probably a lot less than a month of realtime, depending on how long you play for and how good a player you are. Maybe in the next achievement update we'll see a really impossible goal for players to work on: 10 million mobs killed? 10,000 instances run? A million players looted in the battlegrounds? There's got to be something in the game that seems impossible for someone crazy out there to work on.
AchievementTracker tracks achievements across the realms
Reader Jeffrey R. was kind enough to send us his achievement tracking site, named (conveniently) AchievementTracker.com. We've seen quite a few sites for tracking achievements on your own character out there already (especially since the Armory opened up the information to the web), but unlike the others, AchievementTracker seems to be focusing on ranking only -- instead of browsing over your own information, all the site really presents is a list of the top players in the world, US, EU, or by the various realms.There are a few caveats, the first being that they're only tracking characters above level 70, and the second being that they're not tracking everyone -- I had to put my own character into the system (though that won't matter if you're just looking for the top players, since I would never even rank on any lists anyone was watching). And while WoW-Achievements has Beelsebub of EU Darksorrow at number one and Minipuff of EU Stormscale in second place so far, AchievementTracker has them backwards (and their point totals are lower -- maybe Armory lag?).And of course we don't know for sure if there's someone on the realms that neither of these sites are tracking with more achievement points (it may be worth noting, too, that beyond Armory links, neither site tells us much about the characters -- is there a class or spec that's better for achievement point earning?). It'll probably take a little while until we can get a standard for tracking these, but until then, looks like we'll have a few different lists to watch.
Ghostcrawler on dual specs and loot tied to achievements
So sayeth the Ghostcrawler and so we shall listen. He spoke today regarding a few issues that are of prime importance to many players. However instead of long rants or detailed analysis on the issues of raiding difficulty, dual specs, and achievements he presented them in bullet points.First dual specs, a topic hot on everyone's mind. He provided some new insight into how things will work. In particular he said that "It will be trivial to do in town. You will also be able to do it out of towns, but not as trivially." This is new information and should make everyone tingle with gleeful anticipation at how trivial it might be to switch specs while in Dalaran.He also makes mention of things we already knew. They are aiming to allow people to swap glyphs and action bars with the dual spec feature, and that it should be along ideally in the next major content patch.That patch cannot come soon enough.In addition to the dual spec information, Ghostcrawler went into some points on raid difficulty. While there isn't any really new in terms of how difficult the raiding environment is (or isn't) and what may lie in store for the future (a harder Ulduar raid zone), there is some new news about loot tied to achievements.
WoW armory revamped to show achievements and more
World of Warcraft players finally have the moment they've been waiting for. Well, okay, one of the many moments they've been waiting for. The armory has finally been revamped into the updated form Blizzard promised some months ago that will allow players to off the achievements they've earned. The armory version of achievements also contains the same tracking bars and lists for in-progress achievements as are on the in-game interface. For the World of Warcraft player who really likes achievments, this armory update should prove to be a gold mine of things to poke around and plan during lunchtime. (You'd never consider wasting company or class time reading about MMOs, we're sure.) Also added in this pipin' hot armory update is a series of statistics tracked on accounts since the 3.0.2 Echoes of Doom patch. Everything from how much gold your character has made to how many times you've wound up spending special cuddly time with the floor due to overaggro is there in black and white for you (and anyone else) to read. Additionally, there seems to be additional information in regards to overall World of Warcraft guilds. Whether or not any of this new information - like say, the achievements showing you've cleared certain endgame raid instances - will play into other things like guild recruitment or choosing guilds to join is unknown. With so much information openly available, we're going to hear more about this, we'd bet.
Log into World of Warcraft tomorrow for free achievement and pet!
We've got a hot tip directly from WoW Insider for you this morning. If you've got a currently active World of Warcraft account, and there's any way at all you can spare the time tomorrow to log in, do it! Tomorrow is WoW's fourth birthday, and Blizzard is handing out some presents for all the players logging in on this auspicious occasion! Simply logging your character into World of Warcraft tomorrow will net you an achievement and an in-game pet. The pet is the cutie-patootie shown above, a "Baby Blizzard Bear".The achievement is a one-of-a-kind can't-get-it-any-other-way feat of strength achievement. Other achievements handed out for this include other date-based events, things players will never be able to get again. So, if you want to add another one of these once-in-a-lifetime notches to your belt, make sure to log in tomorrow! Oh, and Happy Birthday World of Warcraft!
Breakfast topic: Boast your titles
A lot of WoW folks seem to be collectors: Pets, Mounts, even hats. Collecting titles is the next big thing. It's kind of fun to display some hard earned achievement proudly to other players. Rágnaros of Duskwood asked in general chat. He's interested in knowing which titles are most popular and most rare. It also adds some flavor to the game. Several responders reported having five or six titles.I'm not much of a title hunter. A friend of mine was running UBRS for the Jenkins title so I was happy to come along. It was relatively easy to get with a handful of 70s and was fun to get. My job was to sprint about and aggro as many dragons as I could, then I dropped a Hurricane to join in quick AOE attack which easily killed at least fifty of them instantly.
Some statistics to be removed from achievement tracking
Over the weekend Thundgot on the EU forums came out and said that the attributes section of the achievements tab will be removed from the game. You can find the attributes section right now by pressing "y" on your keyboard to open up the achievement window, then going to the "Statistics" tab located at the bottom of the window, then the "Character" heading on the left hand side of the window, and finally clicking on the "Attributes" section. Your attributes will look something like the ones above, but much more uber than my priest alt has.Thundgot makes a point of saying this will improve performance. If you think about it, many of these statistics revolve around "best" or "top" attributes from a character's dataset. Collecting this much information for each character will take a few extra process cycles each time an attribute changes, or each time damage is doled out (since many spells / enchants / procs change these numbers). Multiply this by a few thousand times for a character in a given night (due to potential changes via combat), and then multiply it by around 11 million people playing the game... and you get the picture.
Hallow's End 2008 guide (updated)
>>Click here for WoW.com's Guide to Hallow's End 2009<< Hallow's End is scheduled to begin in a few hours, and you know we loves us some candy. There's been a big change to the Achievement needed to get the "Hallowed" title (it's actually gotten a lot easier), the Headless Horseman has a new loot table, and -- well, it's been a year since we've seen it anyway, so here's a round-up of WoW Insider's articles on Hallow's End. As an FYI, we're also expecting patch 3.03 to hit alongside Hallow's End, and it should contain a number of bug fixes for problems that have cropped up since 3.02 hit Tuesday and some class tweaks. With that said, nobody's 100% certain of what's actually going to go live, so check back; we should have more information this weekend.Read on for a guide to the holiday quests, the new Achievement related to the holiday, and some fun stuff you can do ingame til November 1st!EDIT (11:50 pm EST): we've confirmed a few changes to the holiday with some readers on the EU realms, and I've updated the post.
Ask a Beta Tester: Leveling, the Taunka, and mounts
All of us here at WoW Insider are staggering around somewhat zombie-like in the wake of BlizzCon with the patch (probably) coming tomorrow and the amount of information we're hoping to get out in the next 24 hours. So in all truth I don't know whether the answers to today's questions are completely factual or just stuff that started swimming in front of my eyes at 1:00 this morning. Arthas is actually a girl underneath all that armor, just like Samus Aran. The zone music to Icecrown is "Won't Get Fooled Again" by The Who. The Hateful Gladiator cloth belt is a pink tutu. Flying bunnies will be available in the next expan-(Sound of a short scuffle in the background, followed by a whip crack)Thank you, Dan, a little perspective is always useful in these difficult times.Jason asks...Will Northrend be accessible at 68 like Outland was accessible at 58? Or do I need to be a solid 70 to quest and instance in Northrend?Technically, Northrend will be accessible to anyone with the Wrath of the Lich King expansion installed; you can hop a boat or zeppelin on any character of any level. There's no "You must be THIS HIGH to cross through the portal to Outland" restriction, but you won't be able to pick up any of the quests available in Northrend until level 68. Could you grind your way to 68 in Northrend from the mid-60's? Maybe, but I wouldn't recommend it.
Planning for the Hallow's End title
A lot of folks found the article on planning for the Brewmaster title helpful, so we thought we'd put one together for the upcoming Hallow's End holiday as well. Getting all of the sub-Achievements for the Hallowed Be Thy Name Achievement will reward the title "The Hallowed," but frankly I think this one is going to be a little tougher than the Brewfest one. As with Brewfest, part of the Achievement is going to depend on getting very lucky with a drop, but it's also going to depend on getting lucky with a few other things.This, however, is going to be the first holiday after patch 3.02 hits with the Achievement system firmly in place, so you'll be able to track Achievements ingame for the first time (by the way, "Y" is the default hotkey for pulling up your Achievement screen). Even if you're not interested in the Achievement, you have another reason to participate, at least for the Headless Horseman kills: we're pretty sure his loot table's been updated and expanded, and you'll have a chance at a permanent mount drop (his horse, not the temporary broomsticks from last year).But if you want to be (Your Name Here) The Hallowed?
Ask a Beta Tester: Dalaran coins, environment effects, and AoE tanking
I ran into two common questions last night on the Dalaran coin post, so I thought I'd start off by answering those here. I apologize if we haven't yet gotten to everyone's questions; most of them, like Gurluas' question concerning The Missing Diplomat and the high elves in Northrend, we're just not 100% sure of the answer to yet, but I'll keep trying. Keyra asks...Just curious...the gold coins all have "Use: Throw this coin back into the Dalaran fountain", yet I've seen people commenting (as well as the author) that they'll carry the coin in their packs. What happens when/if you throw the coin back in?When you toss a gold coin back into the fountain, you gain the "Lucky" buff for 2 minutes, increasing your chance to fish up any and all coins from the fountain (rather than fishing hooks or goldfish). You don't have to toss them back in if you don't want to, in which case they'll just occupy a bag slot like anything else, or you can sell them to a vendor (not for much). But most people throw the coin/s back in because fishing the coin up is enough to give you the Achievement for getting it. Particular coins would be carried solely for personal or sentimental reasons, i.e. I can definitely appreciate the irony and RP value of grimly hunting Arthas down like a dog while carrying a symbol of Sylvanas' wasted hopes.Rexigar asks...Question though, do we have to keep the coins for the achievement or does it count when we throw it back in?It counts as of the moment you've fished it up. No matter what you do with it afterwards, the Achievement's yours. The same mechanic is true of everything else; once the game "knows" you've done something and an Achievement's gained, nothing can take it away.
