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Breakfast Topic: What WoW title would you choose in real life?
The other day, I tried to come up with a title for Kelly Aarons. It was one of those fleeting moments where you have the opportunity to display your wit, and in doing so, show everyone that you're actually a funny, lighthearted, and interesting human being (as opposed to a boring, soulless low-life ... sigh). In those racing seconds, I grasped desperately at all the WoW titles floating aimlessly in my head. How about Kelly the Noble? Kelly the Light of Dawn, perhaps? No, that might seem self-absorbed or creepy. Kelly the Exalted? Salty Kelly? I was about to type out Merrymaker Kelly when I realized my window of time had expired and anything after that would just make me seem like some sort of desperate try-hard. "You'll never be witty, Dawn. Give it up already." Sighing internally, I held down the delete key and kept quiet. It made me wonder, though, if I were going to give myself my own title, what would it be? In game, I've only displayed a few titles on my characters over the years (Rival, Sergeant, Chef, and the Light of Dawn), but I don't think any of those titles suit me personally. Dawn the Patient seems fitting. Maybe Dawn the Explorer? I think I might have explored outside my house at some point -- that works. What about you?
"The Exalted" title requirement change reverted
Tensions on the forums have been pretty high since Blizzard made a change to the achievement that awarded players the title The Exalted without announcing it beforehand. Bashiok hit the forums tonight to address said drama, saying that while the community managers were disappointed that the saga resulted in so many forum code of conduct violations, they did have a long talk with the designers, who agreed to change the achievement back to its original form. In other words, if you qualified for The Exalted before 4.0.6 (40 exalted reputations), you'll soon be awarded your title again. Right now, the devs are unsure as to whether the change can be applied with a hotfix, but they're going to attempt one and see if it sticks. If a patch is necessary, they'll let us know. There's some additional interesting information in the blue post, including the technical reasons why Blizzard couldn't grandfather the title to those who achieved it prior to 4.0.6. Full text is after the cut.
The OverAchiever: Farewell to The Exalted
Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. Today, we find ourselves struggling to keep up with a forum thread of very angry players. I don't usually cover time-sensitive material in The OverAchiever -- achievements are a pretty static feature overall -- but sometimes you find yourself staring down a 64-page and growing thread on the forums and realizing that something of import has happened. That something would be Blizzard's decision to move The Exalted title from 40 Exalted Reputations to 50 Exalted Reputations. That's not a big deal on its own -- but everybody who already had the title without having 50 Exalted Reputations suddenly found themselves without The Exalted after this week's patch. Cue forum explosion.
Breakfast Topic: Should Blizzard take away earned titles and rewards?
This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages. When patch 4.0.6 hit, I logged into the game excited and eager to see all of the new changes. The first thing that I noticed was that I was no longer The Exalted, a title I'd worked hard to achieve, but had somehow been demoted to Chef. Strange. Maybe Blizzard just reset everyone's titles. I went through my title collection, intending to turn The Exalted back on, and saw that it had been removed entirely. I checked my achievements. I still had 40 exalted reputations, but it no longer conferred a title; nor did 45 exalted reputations, which I don't have yet. The Exalted was my favorite title and the one I wore at all times. What had Blizzard done with it? Turns out that unlike other achievements and rewards, which stay with you once you've earned them, Blizzard has made the decision to move this title, taking it away from those who had earned it previously. As I understand it, you can get your title back once you've hit 50 exalted reputations, which seems to be the new standard, but it sounds like Blizzard plans to take the title away again every time it adds a new batch of reputations. Personally, I think that's a terrible idea. Other rewards aren't rescinded when something new comes along. Stinker, the reward for collecting 50 companion pets, was not magically unlearned when the 75 pet achievement was released. Ulduar drakes did not vanish into smoke when ICC drakes came around. Yes, it's true that Blizzard picked the perfect title for The Exalted, and anything else would be inferior. That doesn't diminish the efforts of the people who already worked for it. What do you think? Was removing the title (and changing it to the 50 reputations achievement) the right thing to do? Or did Blizzard drop the ball on this one? %Poll-59908%
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.
