It's just bad design
2009-02-16
World of Warcraft has a system of Achievements, logging remarkable in-game activity and allowing you to show it off. These range from the mundane (getting levels) to the obscure (owning dozens of different mounts), the easy (complete a few quests) to the difficult (finish the main huge end-game raid without anyone in the raid being killed by any of the bosses).
One category of these achievements focuses on the seasonal events, temporary content that the game has for a week or two around a real-world holiday or other event. In particular, seven of the events each have a set of achievements that contribute to a huge meta-achievement that awards a fast new mount.
This morning marked the end of the Valentine's Day event. Besides a small quest, the event revolves around putting on perfume or cologne and giving tokens of love to the NPCs in the capital cities, then crossing your fingers. Unless [s]he decides to break your heart, the first person you so honour in each hour will give a box of random stuff.
This year I get the impression that something went a little wrong with the percentages. There was an achievement to find a Lovely Black Dress in a gift: they removed it as a requirement for the meta-achievement because it the drop chance was low, yet by the end of the event I had five (which is just as well, because I accidentally deleted one last night). That was a shame, because that always used to be considered hyper-rare and the one I gave my Better Half's mage is somehow less cool when you know that I've got another three in storage.
The main thing that was bugging people was the candy. One of the possible items was a bag of candies, each with one of eight random messages. The achievement was to find all the messages, and with 10 random candies in each bag the odds aren't good that you'd get it done in one or even two bags. Although I don't have a statistically significant study on which to base any accusations, Blizzard admitted that there was something wrong with the percentages and fixed it on Thursday or Friday, but lots of people were still unhappy with how low it was after that.
The point is this, I suppose:
Getting achievements by doing interesting things is fun. Getting them by doing difficult things, or unusual things, or various other things: fun. Getting an achievement by logging in once an hour, performing the same two-minute task and crossing your fingers, less so. Especially when even with the item you need to sit there for nine minutes churning out candies to see if you've found the ones you needed.
That's right, nine minutes: don't ask me why they decided to put a one-minute cooldown timer on taking candies out of the bag.
As of when I last spoke to them (about ten past one this morning: up to 5 gifts left in the event) several of my guildmates didn't have the achievement. I nearly didn't get it myself. And this painful lottery is part of the massive meta-achievement, the one that is supposed to show a real commitment to holiday events.
That said, it turns out I can't complete the big achievement this year: one of the tasks for the beer festival in the autumn is to join the beer-of-the-month club then drink the beer each month for a year. That I cant complete until roughly next September...
I shouldn't even be bothering with seasonal achievements; chances are by the time I get the mount I still won't have been able to afford to learn to ride it. At least now there isn't another one to worry about for a couple of months...
One category of these achievements focuses on the seasonal events, temporary content that the game has for a week or two around a real-world holiday or other event. In particular, seven of the events each have a set of achievements that contribute to a huge meta-achievement that awards a fast new mount.
This morning marked the end of the Valentine's Day event. Besides a small quest, the event revolves around putting on perfume or cologne and giving tokens of love to the NPCs in the capital cities, then crossing your fingers. Unless [s]he decides to break your heart, the first person you so honour in each hour will give a box of random stuff.
This year I get the impression that something went a little wrong with the percentages. There was an achievement to find a Lovely Black Dress in a gift: they removed it as a requirement for the meta-achievement because it the drop chance was low, yet by the end of the event I had five (which is just as well, because I accidentally deleted one last night). That was a shame, because that always used to be considered hyper-rare and the one I gave my Better Half's mage is somehow less cool when you know that I've got another three in storage.
The main thing that was bugging people was the candy. One of the possible items was a bag of candies, each with one of eight random messages. The achievement was to find all the messages, and with 10 random candies in each bag the odds aren't good that you'd get it done in one or even two bags. Although I don't have a statistically significant study on which to base any accusations, Blizzard admitted that there was something wrong with the percentages and fixed it on Thursday or Friday, but lots of people were still unhappy with how low it was after that.
The point is this, I suppose:
Getting achievements by doing interesting things is fun. Getting them by doing difficult things, or unusual things, or various other things: fun. Getting an achievement by logging in once an hour, performing the same two-minute task and crossing your fingers, less so. Especially when even with the item you need to sit there for nine minutes churning out candies to see if you've found the ones you needed.
That's right, nine minutes: don't ask me why they decided to put a one-minute cooldown timer on taking candies out of the bag.
As of when I last spoke to them (about ten past one this morning: up to 5 gifts left in the event) several of my guildmates didn't have the achievement. I nearly didn't get it myself. And this painful lottery is part of the massive meta-achievement, the one that is supposed to show a real commitment to holiday events.
That said, it turns out I can't complete the big achievement this year: one of the tasks for the beer festival in the autumn is to join the beer-of-the-month club then drink the beer each month for a year. That I cant complete until roughly next September...
I shouldn't even be bothering with seasonal achievements; chances are by the time I get the mount I still won't have been able to afford to learn to ride it. At least now there isn't another one to worry about for a couple of months...
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