Children's Week Completed!
Posted by 
iTZKooPA on Monday, May 4, 2009 - 47 Comments Tags: Vanity pets, children's week, children's week achievements, egbert, fear of achievements, non-combat pets, ruining battlegrounds, school of hard knocks, sleeping willy
iTZKooPA on Monday, May 4, 2009 - 47 Comments Tags: Vanity pets, children's week, children's week achievements, egbert, fear of achievements, non-combat pets, ruining battlegrounds, school of hard knocks, sleeping willy 
Children's Week is only a few days old and I have already completed what I set out to do. I have said in the past that I am not a big Achievement person, so what I wanted to accomplish is far less than many other people. In fact, all I cared about was grabbing the pair of pets for escorting orphans all over Azeroth and Outlands. After some creative travelling, tiring flights and a bit of hoofing it, I turned in my whistles and snapped up Sleeping Willy and that cute-as-hell Turtle. I still think Egbert is the best pet ever though.I came across this little gem over on WoWInsider a scant few hours before I completed my mission. I read the headline and knew that my fear of Achievements was coming true, if just a little. One of them was ruining the gameplay experience for many players, while frustrating the others to no end. My GM was actually on both sides of the issue, trying to score the achievement but becoming incredibly frustrated by everyone sitting in their base, hoping to return a flag with their brat out. He was so irate that his wife had to leave the house to avoid the cursing, anger, frustration and likely the destruction of a perfectly good keyboard. I can attest to extensive use of the Caps Lock key, and a nice selection of four letter words. My poor virgin eyes.
To elaborate, the way I view the Achievement system is to promote extended play, while enabling players to show off their feats. In theory, its a very sound addition to any video game. Instead, this "controversial achievement" has created a firestorm in the Battlegrounds, leading to selfish play and highly unusual experiences. It wasn't since WSG was first released that I have been in a BG that was so long, unproductive and painful, and I wasn't even going for the achievement! I queued up solely to experience some of the pain that my GM was lamenting about. Sadly, all I ended up doing was helping the Horde players with their achievements. The greenskins allowed me to walk to the flag, unstealthed mind you, and cap it. At this point I was pummeled by ten angry players and their orphans as they spammed right click to pick-up the flag. What violence the young minds have been tainted with.
How have you found the Battlegrounds recently? Are they as frustrating as my GM would leave the guild to believe or is he just having bad luck? Has anyone become desperate enough to try to trade flag caps with the opposing faction? This is the first time that I have been happy to not care about achievements. What a terrible time to first experience a BG to boot.
Reader Comments (47)
Back @ Kagitaar
Depends what battlegroup your in though.
Was just trying to help though!
Best Regards
"school of hard knocks" is the worst holiday achievement since a mask for all occasions
Less than 2 hours and I did and I dont even like PvP that much
@churchill
*shudders at the memory*
Hmm, Fizzcrank didn't really have that problem, they just continued sucking. That achievement was so simple and I would of had Patron in the first day if I didn't realize you could do "Daily Chores" in one day ... which Blizz will prolly fix, but I will yell at them if they take my title away.
I haven't been able to even start on this world event, and pretty much have decided against it for now, at least until I'm level 80. We'll see if it's tweaked at all for next year, I guess.
But I have heard some neat stories from RL friends about cross-faction cooperation in the BG from both sides hoping to get the achievement. I don't know if that's necessarily Blizzard's intentions since you should have to actually DO something to get an achievement. But it still makes for interesting stories.
Aww. I can see why people are getting so frustrated over it, but when you're playing with 5 other guildies all on vent it becomes a whole different story. The BG "grinds", so to speak, was actually quite fun, wracking up all the kills, capping flags/returning them, and just hearing over vent how my GM Metamorphed and slammed Immo Aura up to see people barbecue around him (aaaand the girly laugh that comes with it).
Personally, had I tried to do that on my own I would've been bald by now, what with the hair-tearingly frustrated anger you build up. However, making a premade with your guildies can get the job done somewhat faster and you can have a bit more fun (as well as the extra honor you get with it ;))
Remember: It's always more fun when your friends are coming along as well.
Put it like this; I've given up on "What a Long Strange Trip It's Been".
Didn't bother and I'm not going to.Got the pets and left it at that.
Enough people have complained they will likely remove it from the meta.And if they don't it's just one more achievement I'll never complete.
I haven't managed one single holiday title yet and I'm not going to intentionally bust my balls getting this one.
I gave up on What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been during the Brewfest debacle.
Screw them and the horse they rode in on.
i got most of the hard knocks done except two wsg and AV. i'm not a pvp person at all, and i was not looking forward to this at all. there was one nice person who asked if anyone needed to cap a flag in Eots so that one was easy and thanx to him i forgot his name any ways after 7 AV's later screw it i give up everyone was gettin pissy and i just couldn't take it all the kids cussin and talkin crap grow up. any ways yes Blizzard needs to get rid of the pvp achieves. and to everyone who got all gratz on there part :)
lol oh ya the pets were the only thing that made everything better ;)
It took around 20 AV for my Assault to Tower :D
Thx to that I have now lots of AV Marks for PVP mounts
I hate PVP with a passion unmatch by anything in this world. I was dreading it for the longest time and it was pretty much like I expected
WSG was easy, first try. We had a undead warlock come in and take the flag over and over and drop it for the alliance to take it back.
EOTS was worse, there were a few try where I didn't really know what to do. Finaly we got in one time and were vastly overpowering the horde in there and I was able to get it
AB took a few trying aswell. I did it right a few times and nothing, in the end I think I got it by just rushing the first flag.
AV was a horrorshow. I was swearing and crazy over that one. SO many times I got so close thanks to nice horde oly to miss it befor of jerk alliance! Three different time I was in ans a horde was taking and giving back the towers and I messed it. Once beacuse the BG ended to soon with so many people waiting, once because of a group off alliance comeing in and killing the horde helping. The third time was was the worst. Bloodelf was taking it and giving it back, I was one the last there, but a human warlock came and won't let the horde help me. Everytime the Bloodelf came in he would attack him and drive him off. And, bless his heart, the elf kept trying! I beg and pleaded with the human to just let him in ONE more time to let me get it, but he won't.
But I was finally able to get it, and so far I"m still on my way to getting the drake
I spent all day doing battlegrounds, which I hate and still only have 1/4 of the achievement. Ruin pvpers refuse to let us non-pvpers get our achievements and get out of their precious playgrounds. I formerly liked doing EOTS and AB when I just felt the need to kill Allies but now it'll be a cold day in Burning Steppes when I go back again.
I got lucky on all my BG trips with this event AV came into the battle late rode down to the tower went up and three horde were camping the flag i pulled my orphan out walked in waved, saluted and they let me cap the flag i then gave it back to them (less than 100 renforcements left on ally they lost anyways). AB did the out the gate stables boogie first one there. WSG horde came in and just kept picking up the flag and dropping it for all to get the achivement i then did the same for them. EoTs horde 4 capped us, everyone cried and whined that blizz hates the alliance i ran out picked up the flag walked to a base and the other 1 person that was still going for it just turned it over cap and done. Honestly Blizz needs to make the pvp stuff for world events world pvp keep it out of the BG's on that note i'm WAY looking forward to Midsummer Fire Festival!
-Mvprat
-Commander Tsunami Ysera
-Always looking for great players
-http://tsunamiysera.guildomatic.com <--apply here!
I love this achievement. I don't understand the controversy. You have to fight in BGs for a week and do what you're supposed to do in BGs anyway, cap flags.
I suppose I understand the point of the whole BG thing for this achievement was to get people to work together, but getting 11 million users to do that is kind of difficult. We did a spur of the moment guild group for WSG, but only got 8 people, which should have been okay, but the other two people who joined were invariably hardcore PvP douchebags. We'd explain what we were doing, but they refused to cooperate. Only three of the 8 got the achievement. AB was a little better, but everyone was frustrated after WSG and we kind of gave up.
Overall, I HATE Bgs, but I really want the Long Strange Trip mount and I've put a lot of work into doing everything else, so I sucked it up. I personally found AB to be easy. The others were just luck (WSG early in the morning, people willing to cooperate in EotS and I did AV during WG so no one was there).
Beyond the usual complaints, because the line for the BGs was so bad on Sunday, everytime it would start to port you in, you would get DCed. I got back at Blizz by spamming them with tickets. I have since returned 10 poor Customer Service surveys (sorry Blizz, deleting your cache, WTF and interface will not solve every problem!).
Oh yeah, and I also slapped, punched, yelled at and spit on my orphan.
As a hard core pvp-er, I purposefully ran to the towers in AV first to keep all the achievement whores from getting it first. The problem in BGs has been, that once the achievement goers have gotten what they needed, they jump the BG, thus making it difficult to win with a constant stream of new people coming into and out of the BG. I try like hell in every BG to ruin the achievement seekers. Most world achievements don't mess with world events in PVE, but the hard knocks crap ruins every BG.
It's a horrible achievement to get, i i fail to see why blizzard would implement anoying pvp activity to to be one of the needed achivement. They should really put it under the "Player vs Player" achievemt page instead. Or lose it intirely. Anyway, i maneged to get the hard knock achievement in 4-6 hours, but a mate of mine got it in 2. Being a better player than me, he'd still had a consideralbel amount of luck to get it that fast.
Anyway, forgive my english, and forgive me for my pissed off attitude, dear ProjectLore devotes.
i got mine (thank god that's over) there are raiders... there are pvpers, there are achievement hounds, but i myself am a lore guy. Blizz's writers do a good job of mixing other medias in with enough original stuff to make for an epic backstory. that brings me to the topic at hand. other than being unbelievably frustrating, and a huge p.i.t.a. to everyone involved, from a lore p.o.v. it makes no sense. the purpose of children's week is to mentor the innocent ones whose lives were torn apart by conflict. the "school of hard knocks" is something they would certainly be familiar enough with already. dragging an orphaned child around a BG seems quite counter productive to the lore purpose of this event. for soooo many reasons: swing and a miss, Blizz
I did get my achievement btw, but no more BGs till the holiday is over that's for sure.
If anyone is still going for AV or AB, some friends and I found a good way to all score the achievement.
It doesn't actually mater if you cap the flag in the sense that you are the one who changes its status from belonging to the other faction to contested. It matters solely that you right-click it while it belongs to the other faction, then allow the action to complete. 5 of us did this at once at one AV tower, and we all got the achievement.
Hope it helps.