Children’s Week started this weekend, and another holiday means yet another scramble to get all the achievements done. Nowhere was this chaos more evident on Friday night than in Battlegrounds, thanks to School of Hard Knocks. So many PvP novices, small children in tow, ignoring actually winning in favor of completing the achievements. I should know, I was one of them. And within hours of the holiday launch the official forums were littered with complaints about how unfair this achievement is and people were quitting immediately if it wasn’t removed from the meta-achievement.
You can probably guess by now that I think all the whining and moaning is silly. Don’t nerf Ulduar, and don’t nerf achievements. I realize that the Battlegrounds will be pretty borked for a few days, but such is the price of an even slightly dynamic online environment. Sometimes things change for a limited amount of time, and you just have to roll with the punches. And I also realize that some people don’t like PvP and resent having to do it for an achievement. However, again, not everything can be designed with your personal needs in mind. Think of the PvPers who are “forced” to do oodles of PvE every holiday for their chance at a violet proto-drake!
Anyway, with a DPS friend I managed to knock off this achievement in about 90 minutes and six Battlegrounds. Going in pairs (or a small group perhaps) definitely helps — it’s good to have an ally out there.
Assault a tower in Alterac Valley
This one is easy. Pick a tower a ways out — Tower Point is a good choice for Alliance — and make a beeline for it right out of the gate. If all the towers get captured before you can get there, hang around the final enemy towers (East and West Frostwolf for Alliance) and be ready to go kick some butt if the opposing side makes a break for them. If you’re in a group of two people, you’ll probably have to run AV twice.
Assault a flag in Arathi Basin
Assume that everyone is going to go for Stables. Pick something far away, like Mine, and head for it immediately. If all the flags are assaulted before you get there, just team up with the marauding band (there will be one, it’s AB) and see if you can’t snipe the flag while others are fighting. We got this in one AB run.
Return a fallen flag in Warsong Gulch
This one will be a LOT easier if your opponents are a little sympathetic to your plight. You might try softening them up by heading into their flag room, picking up the flag, and then dropping it so someone can return it. We also tried begging, dancing, and my friend ran around in his murloc suit for a bit. (Nothing says, “We come in peace,” like a hopping murloc.) Eventually you’re just going to have to camp your flag room, let people pick up the flag, and click like hell. We got this in a single WSG.
Capture the flag in Eye of the Storm
Ugh. This is the big pain in the bunch. Go help your side claim the middle, make sure SOMEONE has grabbed a tower, and then sit and click. And click. And click. We needed both of us to protect the other while flag carrying: I healed my friend when he had it, and he Death Gripped bad guys off of me when it was my turn. Apparently the other side loves killing the flag carrier. It took two EotS runs to get this achievement, and we were both ready to headbutt our monitors by the time all was said and done.
And don’t forget to have your orphan out! You can’t whistle for them while in combat, so you’ll want to do it ahead of time.
Good luck!
PS: Apparently you can do the Outland AND Azeroth orphan quests, giving you two new pets for collectors.
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I admit to being a cynical jerk who lacks imagination and usually looks askew at role playing posts, but the story of DangerMouse and her orphan made me smile. “I am a cheerful tour-directing abomination in the eyes of nature.” Hee hee.
Herding Cats is the blog of Liore, known in the real world as Jessica Cook. She writes mostly about MMOs and RPGs, and believes in 
I'm actually one of the people who did yell very loudly at this achievement. :( But not because it involves PvP (I don't mind PvP at all) or because it's hard (if I could change it, I would probably make it harder). It's just that this event is yet another event that encourages working against your team rather than with your team. PvP areas like the battlegrounds are designed for teams to work together against a common goal. This achievement does the completely opposite by pitting teammates against each other, in which the failure of your teammates would often benefit you in terms getting to the achievement.
I would've been so much happier if the achievement was, "win a BG in each of the following regions," or even have the 10-yard radius suggestion that people suggested.
For example, although I got the achievement yesterday after spending only about 5-6 hours (I was very, very unlucky on WSG), I spent the majority of that time shamefully turtling, stalking towers, flags, and/or ignoring my team and not healing. To be fair, whenever I realized that there was absolutely no chance of getting the achievement during that particular BG, I ran and did what I was supposed to: help and heal my team. And I healed whenever else I could — but my primary concern was the achievement. Why? Well, I tried to help the team as my first priority in the first BGs I went to, with the achievements being a hopeful, secondary objective that might fall automatically into place if I did the first. When that didn't happen, I asked for help; no one really responded. Although I understand why they didn't help — after all, concentrating on the achievement often doesn't lead to actually winning the BG (and in some cases, go counter to winning the BG), I still don't have THAT much time to sit around and wait for a sympathetic group to take pity on me. Consequently, I took things into my own hands: after a few hours, I cried, "FINE" and went into selfish mode.
It just makes for an extremely unpleasant experience overall when your own team members sabotage each other (BoP while capping, anyone?) and completely ignore the BG as the enemy rolls over you. People will act how they act, but as economists say, people are largely driven by incentives.
Give people an overwhelming incentive to be asshats, and unfortunately, very few will resist — especially when the violet proto-drake is such a coveted item. And in this case, I'm livid at Blizzard for giving a large segment of the population a huge incentive to be horrible, horrible human beings.
Hi Isiene,
First, sorry you had to deal with jerks — that's no fun! However, people who do things like BoP someone who is capping are clearly horrible with or without a holiday impetus. While Blizz DID create the situation that allowed you to be exposed to this, they didn't cause that guy to be a jerk.
I guess my concern is that if Blizz has the mandate of making all special events jerk-repellent, we are going to run out of events. :) They can't fight human nature. People camped eggs (or took camp spots), turned others into zombies, and so on. While I certainly don't condone poor behavior like that and I try to not ever engage in it myself, I would be sad if the very few instances of a dynamic world were wrapped in cotton to prevent idiots from being themselves.
I would rather put up with the occasional interaction with mean people than lose these events, personally. But that's just my opinion. :)
Liore, thanks for your reply. :) I love your blog, and I'm glad to hear your thoughts on this. I debated whether or not to post another reply — but since I do like hearing your views, I thought I might risk looking like a jerk and explain a bit more about why I came to my conclusion! :) My apologies in advance for the length.
I agree that people will be jerks, and that Blizzard isn't responsible for creating a world wrapped only in goodness. However, I also believe very strongly in incentives. It's probably my background — I'm surrounded by people who study teams, team interactions, group psychology, as well as economics — and this is a beautiful example of an incentive put into place that encourages a group of so-so people to shift their behavior and become far more prone to selfish mannerisms. In short, the selfishness is there (like I am selfish very often, I admit shamefully), but certain situations bring out the worst in me.
In short, I don't see human nature as immutable and unchanging (and I'm sure that you didn't mean it that way); although it's still debatable on how much situations can affect a person's personality and behavior, my opinion is that Blizzard, via this achievement, created a closed environment that inadvertently brought out the very worst in a huge proportion of its players.
I know the above is extremely obscure, abstract and boring, and I apologize. :)
I also have to explain that I pug disgustingly frequently, and I love it. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I've pugged at least 50 times in the last 2 months (I hated questing, and pugged constantly from 70-80, and then pugged avidly after 80) on one of the most populated US servers, and I've had the incredible fortune of never meeting anyone openly malicious or horrible. Some were bad at their class, true, (and a tad greedy sometimes) but there were never any true "bad apples." With the Easter event, however, and this event, people are acting like jerks, yes. But I strongly believe that the majority of them are not acting like jerks for the sake of being jerks, but because they placed the achievement temporarily above curtsey, or because they believe in the, "Eye for an eye" mentality, and are trying in their own ways to right a wrong by griefing those that they believe griefed them first (the poor PvPers who had their BGs ruined, for example).
To use a silly analogy, I see it as an Olympic soccer match in which the judges said, "The first person in each team to score a goal against the other team wins a gold medal — and ONLY that person. All other team members will be out/ignored/forgotten until the next match." If we really do believe that the non-winners definitely will be forgotten and will have no other consolation prize, what would we think? The team might take the noble route, and elevate one beloved member, or they might start to fight amongst themselves. If the later, do you blame the team members, and say that they were jerks? To me, if they started fighting amongst themselves, I would understand: after all, they all worked hard to get there. What's to say that one person is more worthy of that one prize?
In any case, if you don't blame the players, do you then blame the judge, and the mechanics of those rules for making an otherwise team effort petty, individual, and divisive?
Sadly, I would pick the later.
(Sorry again for the crazy essay length!)
Oh dear, and here again I forgot to include one more thing: I don't mean that Blizzard should remove it. On the contrary, I would be just as sad! Although I actually finished this achievement already, I really do wish that they changed it to something like, "Win a BG in each of the following regions." In any case, I entirely agree with you that losing holiday events would be a horrible thing!
Isiene,
Thanks for the follow-up! It is the end of my work day and my brain is quite dead, but I just wanted to quickly say that I didn't mean to imply that you wanted to remove Children's Week, although my post kind of sounds like that. I'm just antsy that .. Blizz has a history of lacking subtlety in their response to feedback. They seem to avoid the more interesting, nuanced solutions, and go right for the quick and cheap (literally) answer.
So it makes me nervous when I see lots of pushback about things like events on the official forums, because I'm not sure The Powers That Be can tell the difference between encouraging teamwork (or at least not forcing people to put their playtime at the mercy of jerkwads) and just axing things altogether. That's not to say that you're not right to take issue with their delivery of this content, just that .. it make me antsy.
For what it's worth, my opinion might also be tainted because I relatively enjoyed School of Hard Knocks. However, I was fortunate enough to be in the right time, in the right place, and with the right people to enjoy it. And, as a healer, I'm used to people yelling at me in Battlegrounds. ;) ("OMFG PRIEST Y NO HEALZ?")
What I did in EotS was noticed the the same ghost wolf was running the flag each time. I just plan out asked him to drop it for me to pick up since the base was secure and there was no risk of it getting taken by the enemy. He did, I /saluted and we went on to loose the match by 3 points. 3 points we probably would have had if we hadn't taken the time to switch carriers but what can you do?
http://wowenomics.wordpress.com/ did a similar write up of this acheivement last Friday. It's very similar to the information above but also includes tips about consumables and items that can help get the achievement done.
Ah yes, battlegrounds, where if not for Children's Week they would be a shining example of the elegance of perfectly coordinated teamwork.
This is war. Since when does the enemy remain entirely predictable?
Fegh. Why should anyone care if my post made you ssmile? The Shadow will take you all soon enough, and then none of thiss will matter!