PvP-Achievements
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The Daily Quest: This is madness
Here at WoW.com, we're on a Daily Quest (which we try to do every day, honest) to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. Is there a story out there we ought to link or a blog we should be following? Just leave us a comment and you may see it here tomorrow! Take a look at the links below, and be sure to check out our WoW Resources Guide for more WoW-related sites. Another week, another weekend, another round of arenas played on the tournament realms. I finished the 50 games needed for the pet pictured above, did you? Oddly, while I normally stay away from arena PvP due to the fact that I am tremendously ... bad at it, I found the tournament games fun. Sure, I lost slightly more games than I won, but I had a good time doing it, and shouldn't that be the point? Still, I think I'll stick to battlegrounds and leave the arenas to the experts -- and today's Daily Quest has several bloggers chiming in about battlegrounds and PVP: Cynwise's Battlefield Manual shares some thoughts on healers and battleground roles. Roxton at Great Balls of Fire has an analysis of Arathi Basin and how to win it. Gnomeaggedon.net has several helpful tips for Strand of the Ancients. Spicytuna gives us a frost mage guide to spell penetration and resilience. The Wanted Priest asks the question, is it possible to end-game raid and play competitive PvP simultaneously?
The OverAchiever: Evil achievements
I love achievements, but sometimes you look at them and realize that somewhere on the development team lurks a sadist of the highest order -- and not just any sadist, but one with a business plan and an unwitting audience of 12 million players. 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?" Below are three of my top picks as the most evil achievements in the game, chosen via the scientific rationale of hating life and myself while doing them. They're selections from a lengthier OverAchiever I've been slowly assembling on the 25 most evil achievements in the game. While my main's a hair's breadth from the It's Over Nine Thousand! feat of strength, there are still quite a few achievements (many of them PvP-related) that she's missed, and I think it's pretty easy to underestimate the agony-value of achievements you haven't personally done. So, rather than simply ignore them, I'd love to get some commenting feedback on the worst, most annoying and most soul-destroying achievements of which you've been a part. Some may disagree on the ultimate difficulty of the following three achievements, but I remain undeterred from my belief that every single one has been milked from the angry teat of Satan himself.
Officers' Quarters: We PvP
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.PvP is a controversial topic in the Warcraft community. For some, it's the only reason they play. With so little PvP content in the game compared to patch after patch of mostly PvE content, they can sometimes feel neglected. Others have zero interest in PvP and resent when their class gets nerfed in the name of competitive balance. As for me, I enjoy PvE far more overall, but I want PvP to be just as fun and rewarding. I'm hopeful that Blizzard will be able to achieve a tighter class balance this time around, even though historical evidence and even Blizzard's own words point to the contrary. So what about PvP guilds? Why aren't there more of them? This week, one reader wants to know if a PvP guild can survive despite Warcraft's raid-focused endgame.Dear Scott, I recently went looking through your past articles, and I'm in need of some help. I'm looking to start my own guild -- specifically, a PvP guild. I know, that seems quite contrary to the majority of guild related issues you discuss, but a guild is a guild, right?
New PvP title and mount
Tigole announced a slight change to PvP Achievements and excited more than a few people -- myself included -- by noting that players who complete the Achievements For The Horde! and For The Alliance! will be rewarded a Black War Bear. Players who manage to reach the respectable 100,000 Honorable Kill plateau will unlock the 'of the Horde' and 'of the Alliance' titles. Currently in Beta, slaying four enemy faction leaders award the title while getting 100k HK gave no rewards.While the Amani War Bear will be unattainable when Patch 3.0 hits, but it seems like there might just be a replacement -- will guilds be organizing these new 'bear runs'? I certainly hope so. I was never a fan of the Amani War Bear, or bears as mounts in general, but a PvP mount that rewards killing all four of the opposing faction's leaders? Oh man. Where do I sign up? I certainly hope that the mount will sport a different, non-troll armor model as well as faction insignias and the requisite reds or blues. These new bear mounts might just be incentive enough to get players to raid enemy cities and, hopefully, get to 100k HK along the way.
The Art of War(craft): World PvP Achievements
Ah, world PvP. In many ways, world PvP can be considered the purest form of PvP because when it happens -- if it's not done in association with a quest or other form of reward -- it is PvP for the sake of PvP. Some of the best times I've ever had doing PvP was in Hillsbrad Foothills, defending Tarren Mill and attacking Southshore. I miss the times when the World Defense channel would be flooded by calls to defend the Crossroads. There's also something very pure about coming to the aid of a faction leader under assault. And when Wrath of the Lich King finally arrives, I have a good feeling it's going to happen a lot more often.I wrote about the many Achievements related to PvP, such as the retroactive Achievements that you can work on before Patch 3.0 hits, as well as the numerous Battlegrounds Achievements. Although PvP for the sake of PvP is extremely fun, Achievements will actually reward something that previously never got anything more than bragging rights and a silly grin. Today we'll look at the numerous Achievements that work to encourage world PvP.
The Art of War(craft): Battleground Achievements part II
Last week we took a look at some of the Battlegrounds Achievements that can be unlocked in Wrath of the Lich King and examined how they could change the game for the better. Goal-oriented Battlegrounds PvP is certainly something to look forward to in this age of mindless fighting in the mid-field or roads. Having Achievements certainly make it prone to the glory hounds, but it also helps to keep everyone's eyes on the prize.Eye of the StormBecause it's a new Battleground not associated with any faction (which makes me feel like I'm not fighting for anything worthy), there's no reputation to be gained and no associated gear to be obtained. This means that there are virtually no retroactive Achievements for the Eye of the Storm. There is the basic Achievement of Eye of the Storm Victory, which all but the most hapless and luckless of combatants will get. There is the Eye of the Storm Veteran iteration, which requires 100 wins in the Battleground. Not quite as easy to get, but most of us will get there eventually.
The Art of War(craft): Battleground Achievements part I
You've seen it happen. Players fighting on the road or midfield, ignoring the Battleground's objective. Or sometimes the opposite, such as Alterac Valley races where players ignore each other in a mad rush to the opposing army's General. In Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard will introduce Achievements, a system that measures a player's... well, achievements in the game. There's a category that tracks PvP Achievements, as well, including some interesting goals for the Battlegrounds. The question is, will these Achievements actually improve the Battlegrounds PvP experience or ruin it? On the surface, it looks as though the various Battlegrounds Achievements are designed to improve World of Warcraft PvP. Achievements like Frenzied Defender, which requires players to return the flag five times in a single Warsong Gulch battle, seem like the perfect solution to get players to actually try and win the game. The Achievements also add a little spice to every game, where players can pursue personal goals which contribute to the overall objective.
Alterac Valley, the Battle-less Battleground
So much for Alterac Valley. With the Battleground Holiday this weekend, it was expected that a lot of players would be queuing up to farm their Honor points. I had looked forward to a lot of combat and hopefully rack up those Honorable Kills in the hopes of inching closer to the magic 100,000 number for a future Achievement. I know I said Alterac Valley was the place to farm HKs. Well, I was wrong.Alterac Valley is the Battleground to join if you want to avoid PvP. I've been part of countless Alterac Valley races before, but these past few days have been ridiculous. Not only do players ride past each other -- that's expected in races -- but in the times I have engaged, players even run away. If they had Achievements already in the game, I would have unlocked The Sickly Gazelle over and over.
