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Holiday replayability and the Fed-Ex quests from hell
Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. This week, get off our lawn. One of the things I think about while revising and updating the holiday guides is that the audience for them is doomed to get smaller over time. It's reasonable to expect that, because people don't need the guides after they finish doing the events on characters they care about, and there's generally a few years between Blizzard's major updates. However, with the introduction of account-wide achievements, pets, and mounts, the replayability of holidays has probably suffered a bit. That doesn't mean that the content's not enjoyable, just that each successive character derives less reward from it. This is a particularly acute problem with the approaching Lunar Festival and how one element gets a lot more onerous as the game continues to expand.
Time Is Money: Frost Lotus prices and farming
Time Is Money, so I won't keep you long. Frost Lotus is a component of raiding flasks, and it is gathered as a very rare chance from regular herb nodes, as well as Frost Lotus nodes that appear in Wintergrasp and Freya's room in Ulduar. The price of Frost Lotus has skyrocketed since patch 3.3 on many servers. This is partly due to the large increase in demand for flasks that the new content brought us, but I believe partly because of a reduction in supply. The supply of Frost Lotus is and always has been low, however as I mentioned in my last column, there are ways to farm it. The most popular one was to get saved to an Ulduar raid ID where Freya's Elders (Brightleaf, Ironbranch, and Stonebark) have been killed, but Freya herself hasn't, allowing the herb nodes to respawn. Getting the nodes to respawn simply requires a "soft reset" of the instance, which means nobody zones in for 30 minutes.
How is Lunar Festival going for you?
Lunar Festival has been ongoing for awhile now, and still has about a week left. It's one of the longer holidays in Azeroth, so there's ample time to complete all of your achievements or just experience the seasonal content. Despite that... well, I haven't done any of it yet. All the time in the world, and I'll probably be running around trying to get it done the night before everything disappears until next year, just for completion's sake.Achievements are all fine and good, but I'm having a hard time getting up and doing things with this holiday. It's unusual, because it was one of the first holidays that I was genuinely interested in back when they implemented it. It was fun hunting down all of the coins and getting the cool clothes and vanity items, but now? Not really diggin' it. Sure, the first time was fun, but the holiday hasn't really changed since then. There are some new Elders in Northrend, but that doesn't really count, does it?How is the holiday going for all of you guys, though? I suspect some of you are in the same spot as me, but I know a lot of people are super excited about doing all of it as well. Have you finished your achievements? Working on them slow and steady? Not going to bother?
[1.Local]: Of Baby Spice and free stuff from guys
Reader comments – ahh, yes, the juicy goodness following a meaty post. [1.Local] ducks past the swinging doors to see what readers have been chatting about in the back room over the past week. (Baby) Spice, spice, babyReaders seem to have cooked up a satisfying solution to the problem of thoughtless creeps who park their mounts atop summoning stones, flight masters and other necessities, blocking them from use. "LOL, whenever I see a giant Tauren on his Humongous Impressive War Mammoth parked on the Dalaran flight master, it's Baby Spice to the rescue," giggles Euphronius. "Nothing more hilarious than seeing him reduced to the size of a Great Dane." Woof.
Breakfast Topic: Are you going for Elder?
So with the Lunar Festival finally upon us, many people are probably turning their eyes toward the "To Honor One's Elders" achievement. Even if they don't plan to wear the shiny new title, they'll probably want it if only for a shot at the Violet Proto-Drake. I myself am certainly no exception, and am currently running through Azeroth, paying my respects to the elders and getting those coins. One thing I did notice is that this holiday does have a few high level intensive requirements in the form of the Elders of the Dungeons. Not only do you have to be level 80, but you're going to have to delve into multiple high level dungeons to get all the credit you need for that title.
WRUP: Lunar Festival edition
The Lunar Festival will be starting tomorrow and though the WoW Insider team is doing all of their usual leveling and raiding and PvPing and whatever else they do... but with the achievement system and its associated swanky titles (and the long-term promise of a Violet Proto-Drake), everyone's going to be interested in hunting down Elders. (Hunting, at least, in the friendliest possible way.)And our resident Priest, Matticus? He's clearly fallen to the dark side.Matt Low: Whipping out Jin Rock. Time to level the Ret Pally of Doom. For the rest of the team -- and to chime in with what you're doing this weekend -- read on!
The Lunar Festival's greatest prize: Rep!
If you're a human after a saber, troll after a kodo, or any other combination like that, don't let this opportunity pass you by!As most of you know, during the Lunar Festival there are 50 Elders scattered across Azeroth that hand out Coins of Ancestry which you can turn in for prizes in Moonglade. There is another prize, however: Reputation! For every elder you speak to, you earn 75 reputation toward your entire faction. Yes, all five races.If you put the time in to talk to every single elder, some of which might be a pain to reach, you'll net just shy of 4,000 reputation. 3,750 to be exact. For humans, this will come out to about 4,125 rep, give or take a bit. Nerf Diplomacy!This won't drastically lessen a rep grind, especially after the reputation gain changes they put in awhile back, but its certainly more interesting than tearing apart low level quests or farming endless amounts of Runecloth.
The Lunar Festival is underway in Azeroth!
World of Warcraft has a ton of special holiday events all year 'round, most of them in homage to real-world events. The Lunar Festival is no exception. Coinciding with Chinese New Year, the Lunar Festival has more to offer players than just eye candy. Inhabiting every major city in Azeroth, on both sides of the fence, stand elders of each race, ready to provide special Coins of Ancestry to those who show respect. These Coins may be redeemed for various novelty items.And don't forget to check out the fireworks celebration in each city that begins after sunset and runs each hour. This event will run until February 23rd, and today, which marks the actual Lunar New Year, there will be festivities Stormwind, Thunder Bluff, Booty Bay, and Moonglade. For a complete listing of elder locations and rewards, check out this link. Kung Hei Fat Choi, warriors!
Blood Pact: The real Lunar Festival
Between Arenas, V'Ming spends his time as a lock laughing ominously in AV, tanking Olm with his own minions and pondering troll fashion from Zul'Aman. He's recently started to plumb the depths of SSC with his 0/21/40 build and bragging about 8k shadow bolts.Today being the first day of the lunar new year (for the eastern hemisphere at least), I shall lay my shadow bolts down and talk about something close to my roots: the Lunar Festival. Hey, even evil warlocks come from somewhere, you know.WoW's Lunar Festival is based pretty closely on the real life Lunar New Year that millions celebrate all around the world. It's a really nice gesture on Blizzard's part to move in-game festivities each year to match the real life celebrations, as Lunar New Year doesn't fall on the same day each year on the 'normal' or Gregorian calendar. In fact the 15-day festival is determined by the lunisolar calendar, and it begins on the first day with a new moon of the new lunar year. This is the third year we're having the Lunar Festival in WoW: 2006 – The Lunar New Year was on Jan 29; WoW's Lunar Festival was held Jan 27 to Feb 14. 2007 – The Lunar New Year was on Feb 18; WoW's Lunar Festival was held Feb 16 to Mar 8. 2008 – The Lunar New Year is on Feb 7; WoW's Lunar Festival started yesterday and will continue till February 23rd. What happens during WoW's Lunar Festival, besides Asian-style outfits, fireworks and funky red decor around towns?
The Lunar Festival begins today in Azeroth
This annual in-game holiday is scheduled to coincide with real life Chinese New Years. Asian style outfits, ceremonial fireworks, delicious dumplings and a once-a-year raid boss are all part of the celebration. Quests send you to find 50 coins and turn them in for various goodies as well. It's a fun RP event taking place across player cities throughout Azeroth, but mostly centered in the Druid village of Moonglade.The real question this year is if this holiday is going to upgrade the event like they did for Hallow's End. Will there be fireworks in Shattrath? Elders in Arcatraz? Revelers in Zul'Aman? Shouldn't a major celebration like this have Omen dropping some welfare epics, too? Recently they promised an older holiday would get a make over. Is this the one? We'll have until February 23 to find out.%Gallery-15360%
