by Rebella

Some days you play wow you feel surrounded by idiots in every PuG you go to and you ask yourself, why am I bothering? Or you’ve had a crap day and wonder if it’s even worth logging on. If you only get annoyed, end up not enjoying it when playing, what is it that keeps you coming back? It could be addiction, a lot of people suffer from it, unfortunately. It could be the lack of something else to do and the will to do something about it or it could be that you enjoy seeing yourself as better than others and need the confidence boost it might give you. There are plenty of reasons.

I personally play this game for a different reason: the people I play with who makes the experience so much better. I’ve gotten some good friends in the game, some of them I knew before I ventured into the world that is computer games and some of them I’ve gotten to know via the game. I think what happened this week proves as a good example why it’s the people that make it worth while.

Broken again

Last weekend my laptop was running remarkably quiet, too quiet in fact. It was getting increasingly hotter without any change to the fan speed. Regardless how hot it was getting, it was insisting on running at its absolute lowest settings and I could only take it back to the shop for them to look at it again. It’s only been a little over a month since I had it back the first time the fan went bust, so I’m not overly happy. Of course, with my awesome timing, it had to clash with the Children’s Week event…

I have been working on the seasonal event achievements on my warlock for the past year, and the Children’s Week event was the last one I had to complete. Having to take the laptop away for repairs made it look impossible, but I decided to see if my PC would, against all odds, run WoW. Somehow, it does work! It is very old and hasn’t even got a graphics card, but that didn’t stop it. However, barely breaking 15fps in the abandoned Exodar didn’t look very promising. Yet, I was going to give this event a go, knowing full well that the worst event achievement through the whole year had to be completed for the meta, the school of hard knocks.

Friends and guildies

Struggling my way through the orphan quests was slow work, but doable. With every setting on its absolute lowest it was challenging trying to complete the dailies, which I did in Outland, but that too worked. I was getting there, slowly. However, there were two achievements I didn’t think my PC would handle at all. Utgarde Pinnacle and the battlegrounds. After a cry for help in the guild, they lined up ready to help me complete UP, willing to drag me through while I possibly had to wait until the end to teleport in. It was nice to see so many willing help with this and I felt less stupid for asking when so many had volunteered. So to Utgarde Pinnacle we went. Surprisingly the PC coped enough to let me DPS my way through, at between 6 and 10 fps. Slowly the hope of completing the PvP achievement grew…

Giving up

After Utgarde Pinnacle was completed, four guildies went with me to Eye of the Storm, which I predicted would prove most difficult on a non-PvP geared squishy little warlock trying to run in a straight line with 4 fps. It was terrible. We went up against well geared PvPers and even holding onto the towers proved too difficult a challenge, at which point my four guilies (who all dislike PvP) gave up. Before they gave up I had already determined this would be nearly impossible and logged off quite gutted knowing it would take yet another year for my pretty 310% flight speed Violet Proto-Drake.

I’m stubborn though… Next day I went back into the battlegrounds and fluked getting the Arathi Basin flag at the stables! That’s all it took for me to decide to spend all the time I possibly could to try to struggle myself through this. And then I got into WSG… I didn’t even stand half a chance of keeping alive, let alone trying to kill the flag carrier, hah! There wasn’t much hope left, the achievement would have to be done next year.

More friends

I whined about the achievement at some friends who happened to be online at a time. One of them, Sil the fearless (or annoying as the Horde would say, I’m sure ), said ‘I’ll help you’. I thought great, but my lag would still be an issue. If I can’t do much at all with that kind of lag I thought surely I would only waste his time, but a accepted the offer and decided to at least give it a shot. He is a pretty good PvPer after all so if he thought it was possible, who was I to argue, eh?

Another friend, Paralorian the Noble (he’s going to laugh at that, I just know it…) chipped in and together they dragged a third one, Finaldo the brave, along with the goal of getting me the three remaining obstacles. A cunning plan was in the making!

First we went to EotS. Before I’d even managed to get to the right tower, Sil was running towards me with the flag! After dropping it at my feet I lagged over to the base and placed the flag. Score! Two down, two to go! They fought on trying to seize victory, but to no avail, we lost the battle ground and without further ado we went on to the next one, the awful Warsong Gulch *shudder*.

The plan was simple, the flag carrier was going to die and I was going to get the flag back. As we got in, more and more orphans appeared and it was obvious I was going to have competition getting this one completed. Sil and Finaldo were having a go at the flag carrier who miraculously made it out into the open and almost the whole way to the horde base before he died, which was right as I got feared miles away from the flag. Before I got to where the flag carrier (or carriers by that time) the flag had been dropped 4 times before the last flag was picked up by alliance. I got deserved abuse for being slow while they were fighting their instincts of clicking the bloody flag. So back to the base we went, waiting for the next horde to show up wanting our flag. It didn’t take very long. While they were fighting the flag carrier, Paralorian was doing his absolute best to keep my squishy lock alive while dispelling the near constant freezes I was put in by the mage who had me focused. Despite his efforts I couldn’t make it to the flag carrier before he died and someone else had returned the flag.

This happened once more and I was getting more deserved abuse for being slow, until a couple of tries later I was in range of the flag carrier and was clicking like mad randomly on my screen hoping the flag would pop up somewhere nearby. I couldn’t see a thing, but it worked. I got the flag! Much cheer followed before they decided to win this battle ground. Sil capped the flag 3 times, being kept alive by Paralorian, while Finaldo made it his own mission of returning as many flags as possible. I was just happy being able to take on first a hunter and then a shadow priest and come out winning both times!

One to go, Alterac Valley.

So yeah, in order to cap a tower in Alterac Valley it would be very beneficial if you get there first. With my lag I couldn’t see how this was even going to be half possible until Paralorian suggested I caught a ride with him on his mammoth! The cunning plan looked like it was working until we got all the way down to Frostwolf! Yey!

Bugger! The mammoth was too tall!

Running from  the entrance before the towers was too long for the laggy PC and I got caught up and stood no chance of getting the flag. As we were losing another tower up north we went for that, but others were closer, it was not looking good. Soon afterwards the horde won the battleground and we were in the queue for another.

This time Finaldo and his chopper was going to take me down to Frostwolf, but without Crusader Aura to help us it was going to be difficult. However, Finaldo’s mad racing skills proved superior and we got there first by a good margin. Now the biggest challenge remained; getting to the top of the tower. After falling off the slope once and while having Finaldo yelling ‘come on come on’ I finally made it to the top. The tower got capped and achievements were spammed. Yey! Mission accomplished!

Thank yous

Have you ever tried running around a spiralled slope at 4 fps after feeling motion sickness being driven down through Alterac Valley on a jumping and zig zagging bike after already been through it on a mammoth? I don’t recommend it, I felt sick for the rest of the day, hah.

There were several reasons why attempting this was essentially not a good idea. Other people did all the work and helped me get an achievement which should have been impossible. It makes this mount worth something other than just plodding through events. They all deserve a big thank you, first my guildies for taking me through UP and trying PvP with me despite hating it. And then Sil, Paralorian and Finaldo for their kindness in helping me get the PvP achievements. You guys rock <3 . I guess I owe you big now heh.

To everybody else, both friends and completely random people, who makes the game an enjoyable experience for others by helping and generally being nice and friendly to those who they play with: thank you.

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On a side note

The laptop being away for repair again means (as illustrated above ) that I can’t carry on playing as I’d like. My next posts regarding healing in ICC are likely to be put on hold for a bit longer as I wanted to take another character through healing it first and there is no chance of that on this PC, but I might change my mind and get them up anyway. Sylvaine is currently working on the next post in the healing series and I am working on the continuation of those which too, unfortunately, may be slowed by the general inability to play WoW.

Tags: achievement, event, friends, help, lag, laptop

This entry was posted on Friday, May 7th, 2010 at 11:52 and is filed under Achievements, Daily. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.