gotta-go
Latest
The OverAchiever: The 25 most evil achievements, part 1
What are evil achievements? They're the soul-killing rep grinds, the raiding milestones that required sacrificing a farm animal to get, and even fun pasttimes like battlegrounds into which a sizable dose of misery has been added. Eventually you just want to grab the nearest developer and shake him back and forth, screaming, "What the hell were you thinking?" Last week I previewed three of the most evil achievements in the game, both to collect my own thoughts and to canvass commenters' opinions for a larger article. This week, I'd like to present the first set of evil achievements for your reading, wincing and antacid-chugging pleasure. A note on judging the "evil value" of achievements: I've been adding to this list for a while, and it's drawn from both the achievements we've covered in this column and some I've seen players complain about frequently in game. Obviously, there's no real way to quantify exactly how difficult or excruciating achievements are, so I'm going with the definition I gave above. Any incredibly difficult or RNG-saturated achievement made the short list, but I also tried to keep some unusual picks in mind. In this vein, there's an achievement in today's column that, while extremely easy by today's standards, was a screaming horror when it first debuted. I may wind up doing a list of honorable mentions as well. So, in no particular order, I am pleased to present World of Warcraft's 25 most evil achievements, starting with #25-16 this week.
The OverAchiever: Glory of the Hero, Continued
No one's kiling any folk here today, on account of we got a really tight schedule. -- Mal, "Trash." Seemed to have some good luck with a previous Firefly quote, so why not? We're all set in Ahn'kahet, so let's pop over to Azjol-Nerub and lay waste to some bosses there.AZJOL-NERUBEvery achievement here is, in one way or another, a DPS race. If you've had difficulty with previous achievements in that vein or your DPS is still gearing up, you'll probably want to steer clear of Azjol for a while.Watch Him DieThis is one of the few achievements in the game most efficiently done from a kamikaze perspective (Sarth-10 3D is the most notable of the other picks). Early attempts at this with two tanks, two DPS, and one healer failed miserably, mostly due to the combination of poisons, a Priest healer, and Watcher Narjil's Blinding Webs ability. I'll admit I tried that before anything good dropped from Naxx, so it may just have been a gear issue at the time, but:a). If you have very good DPS, and:b). If you're willing to suffer a repair bill -- you can probably get this achievement in one or two tries without worrying about keeping all three Watchers tanked, bringing an off-tank, or risking a DPS having to kite all three to the entrance.
"Gotta Go" getting easier
I like the heroic dungeon achievements a lot. They give you something to strive for if you're bored if the instance, or just want an extra challenge. I recently had a great time getting Zombiefest! in what would have otherwise been a pedestrian CoS clear (not enough DPS to try for the timed boss; we were running with some fresh 80s and a Holy paladin DPSing). However, some of the achievements are currently though to be near-impossible. One that is often talked about is Gotta Go!; typically, it's Anub'arak's burrowing that throws attempts off. Good news to those of you working towards your Red Proto-Drake: the time limit on Gotta Go! is being doubled to four minutes in 3.0.8. Many groups were getting quite close to two minutes before, so this change ought to make it relatively easy.
