This has nothing to do with WoW, sorry, I just thought I’d share. I was giving exams today, which left me with free time on my hands and whiteboard to doodle on. I didn’t have a camera on hand, so here’s a few of my doodles reproduced with Paint. Don’t worry, I’ll be back this weekend with the usual AFR comic. See you then.
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That’s right, from September 19 to September 25, I’ll be posting a new short comic every day! It’s the AFR Cataclysm Retrospective, to look back at where we’ve been for the past two years as we get ready for Pandaria. Join me for a week of memories and merriment, one last chance to make bad jokes about a shattered world before it’s goodbye Cata, hello panda!
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According to the internet, World of Warcraft has been ruined and destroyed FOREVER by:
- 10-man raiding
- Giving mounts to level 30 characters
- Nerfing raid bosses at the end of Burning Crusade
- The Dungeon Finder
- Giving mounts to level 20 characters
- Raid buffs in Icecrown Citadel
- The Raid Finder
And you know, it must be true! The internet wouldn’t lie to us!
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As you may know, I am a big fan of the WoW Insider Show. I like to listen to old podcasts while playing and I often have the latest on in the background each week while making AFR. Now Mat McCurley, one of the three faces of the WoW Insider Show, has announced that he is leaving to take a job in the games industry. To this we cry “Huzzah!”, and also shed a tear. Good luck, Mat, go chase that star! Thank you for many years of awesomeness. You will be missed.
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Let’s face it: School of Hard Knocks is terrible achievement. I just got it on my fourth character in three years and I had to go walk around outside for an hour just to calm down from how angry and frustrated it made me. I didn’t enjoy doing it. I don’t feel a sense of accomplishment in getting it done. The only satisfaction that comes from it is the fact that I am just a little closer to getting free super-fast flying.
To those who say “I got SoHK really easily!”: that’s great. I’m happy for you. Really, I am. I’m glad you had a good experience. I didn’t. Neither did a whole heck of a lot of other people. We don’t have your advantages or your luck and the game should not punish us for it by making us waste hour after hour doing something that makes us miserable to get one of the major meta achievements.
To those who say: “Achievements are optional, so don’t complain”: it’s true, achievements are optional. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be well-designed and fun. An achievement as badly designed as this one has no business being in the game, even if it’s optional. No one says you have to go into the restaurant on the corner, but if you did and they put broken glass in your hamburger you’d be pretty annoyed about it, wouldn’t you?
To those who say: “Achievements are supposed to be hard”: wrong. Achievements are not meant to be hard. Achievements are meant to be fun. A lot of fun can come from overcoming a challenge, but the degree of the challenge has to be reasonable. Beating a dungeon or raid boss is a fun challenge because those encounters are tuned to make sure that, with good gear, skillful play, and coordination, appropriate-level characters can get it done. The rewards come from making an effort and solving a problem. SoHK is a mess of griefing, aggravation, and dumb luck. The rewards come not from your efforts and skill but from being in the right place at the right time with cooperative enemies.
Other achievements that were poorly thought out, unreasonably hard, or just not fun have been changed already. There’s no reason for School of Hard Knocks to still be in the game in its current form. None.
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