So Love is in the Air is over and done with, and once again I’m left with a smattering of the achievements finished but not all of them. If you checked Zulfon’s world events achievements, you’d find they all tell pretty much the same story – 8/12 done in Winter Veil, 7/11 done in the Lunar Festival. 5/12 for Love is in the Air is a new low. I have bits and pieces of others done, but still… Sheesh. Zulfon the Love Fool I’m not, apparently.
I managed to get the ones any dope can do – Sweet Tooth, Nearest and Dearest, Nation of Adoration, Flirt with Disaster – but as for the rest, I simply had astoundingly bad luck.
Don’t get me wrong. I like achievements – they give me a reason to even participate in the world events, something I only did marginally up til this point. But even with taking one day out of this event (I spent Saturday with my girlfriend, completely away from WoW), I never got enough Love Rockets to complete The Rocket’s Pink Glare, I never received anywhere near enough bracelets to finish Heartmender, no one I know got a picnic, and as for me? I didn’t see a single bag of candy for Be Mine.
None.
Zero.
Nada.
Zilch.
This is disheartening. For an event this short, most of the people who could legitimately complete it fell into one of two groups:
- People who got astoundingly lucky.
- People who spent all weekend playing WoW, thus avoiding the real-life holiday it commemorates. Ironic, no?
I don’t even know what the point is here, it’s just… it’s sort of depressing to get screwed by the random number generator like this. Most of the other achievements I’ve missed for reasons I can chalk up to myself – I had no wish to repeatedly run back to Dalaran to get the gnome disguise for With a Little Helper From My Friends, and I hadn’t opened Ogri’la’s questlines; as for the Lunar Festival, I just got tired of running into dungeons I didn’t need. Maybe the titles aren’t just motivation enough. Maybe it’s the fact that no matter what I do, even if I completed everything, I wouldn’t see the violet drake until October 2010 because none of my characters have the Brew of the Month.
It’s just – in general, I feel that achievements should reward the time invested (and, in some cases, putting up with the horrible luck – like six cases of Heartbreak in a row in Undercity), and for the most part, the titles aren’t worth it. The mount’s not worth it. Holidays just aren’t worth it. I understand this probably marks me as a QQer, but you know what? This is my blog, and I’m going to QQ about what I feel is an unfair and arbitrary block from getting admittedly silly titles and achievements – random chance.
You can stick me in group 2 – I spent all weekend checking WoW every hour, and finally got the achievement at 5 am Sunday morning. And I’m still one of the lucky ones there – there’s pages upon pages on the forum of those who didn’t sleep at all and had no bags of candies at all to show for it.
@Grimtorn: Maybe it’s just me, but I feel that you shouldn’t have to do that. In my head, the titles like Battlemaster, Loremaster, Twilight whatchacallit, are the ones that should require REAL work. I feel the holiday titles should be titles you get “for fun.”
Staying up for hours on end to poke an NPC for a random chance at objects that you may stand no chance of getting is not “fun” – it’s a job you do on the weekends.
Oh, I agree wholeheartedly. My twitter and blog posts from the last few days reflect that frustration as well. It stopped being fun, and hasn’t yet started being fun again. At least we have several months before we have to deal with this nonsense again.
@Grimtorn Too true. Noblegarden is in April, but it’s only got two achievements and both are just “get the special item out of an egg.” Won’t be Children’s Week till May!
Incidentally, I think the sub-achievements for “For the Children” may be the best-designed out of the title-granting holiday achievements. 10 PvP kills and all you have to do is resummon an orphan? Find a bunch of easily-found food items and eat them? Hell, the hardest part is going to be remembering to do a daily quest 5 days in a row.
I was semi in group 2. Several friends and I rotated doing the adored buff. I was gone most of sunday, but I was covered. Others worked friday, and I got them. I was one of the lucky ones, got the Love Fool Thursday morning. Problem is, I’m an achievement whore so I stayed up Sunday night to continue to try to get the Perma-Peddle achievement. I opened approximately 95 gifts of adoration, got 12 picnic baskets, 9 lovely black dress and a million of others and I still have to wait til next year for another shot at it. GG Blizz.
@Sientina: And yet I have a guildie who got Perma-Peddle on her first Gift of Adoration. GG Blizz, indeed.
I’ve been going back and forth on my blog with some commenters over this issue as well. This last holiday more than others has made me question the who title, reward, and achievement process. I just don’t think they’ve found the right balance right now for rewarding where rewards are due. Its even hard to discuss the issue because a lot of people get heated about it too (what with all the frustration).
My whole response has been to avoid all the hustle and bustle (much like shopping on black friday), which is a shame because I like the whole idea of virtual holiday celebrations, it just seems like they should be more “fun centric” and not huge time sinks. Don’t we all have enough to do on most Holidays anyways?
Like you said, lets not miss the point and fail to spend some time with loved ones too
.
I’m guessing you haven’t looked at the School of Hard Knocks achievement within the Children’s Week one? It won’t be too bad for my achievementwhore (a Hunter), but I pity the clothies who are going to have to try and carry a flag in EotS, among other things.
I was going to mention what Grimtorn said. I am actually dreading the next Holiday because I honestly think it will be pretty difficult for those of us who aren’t exactly up to par with all that is pvp. ie: ME.
Though I am a healer, luckily I wear plate and I might be able to con some Pvp-friends to carry me through it, so we’ll see.
As far as Love is in the Air goes, I guess I did get very lucky. When I first started I had almost all of the achievements on the first day. I had some extra time to kill so I gathered up enough Horde Collections to turn in at every city as well, securing all the rose petals, arrows and rockets I needed for those achievements. I pretty much marveled at how easy it was and even wrote a blog about it. All I needed was one more bag of candy and a handful of bracelets.
The next day was a farm day for me so I just kept going back every hour. I would stand at the mailbox and just wait for people to show up broken hearted and got that one pretty early on. Later on in the evening I got my second bag of candy and finished it up. I kept going back just for haha’s to see if I could get the dress (and get every achievement for this event) and eventually I did.
I feel really bad for everyone who got screwed over though, thats really just too bad =/ I know I was kinda sad when I couldnt get the Hallowed title simply because I had just recently re-rolled on a new server and couldn’t kill the Horseman.
I don’t know what to say I guess. Hopefully they’ll take it out and also the Brewfest achievement as well. If not then there’s always next year I guess.
/end epic wall o’ text
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@Grimtorn Carrying the flag with my warlock was pretty much all I did in EotS and WSG, and that’s before we had demonic circle (or, really, much of anything survival-related). I can see where it’d be significantly harder as, say, a priest. I guess “most reasonable out of the PvP requirements” doesn’t say much, does it?
@BlogOfLight: So far they seem very satisfied with how the achievements are running; the general reaction to complaints is “well, then, you don’t have to do them.” The fact that people who WANT to do them can’t because of random bad luck or spending time with family/friends/loved ones seems to go right over Blizzard’s head.
I nearly killed myself from lack of sleep trying to get the Winterviel achievements on Aurdon and then realized I really didn’t even care about these as much as I thought…..I didn’t get any of the love fool achievements done and I’m proud to say that.