This last weekend during the Canthan New Year for Guild Wars I made it to multiple celestial summonings (where I got goody bags for our district feeding the beast things like half-digested boot consomme) and completed the festival quests on multiple characters (netting more goodies). I tore apart countless fortunes in the hopes that one would contain the elusive – elusive to the tune of 0.3% chance – celestial tiger mini. I would’ve been out of luck if not for a sultan of a man in my alliance who had some extra.
Still it was a productive weekend in terms of gaining wealth. I received boxes and boxes of fireworks and some shiny new celestial summoning stones. Between this festival and last week’s Wintersday redux, I advanced some titles by possibly up to 10%. These titles are paramount achievements filled in the vein of the purest grind. That is, unless one takes in to account festivals. The titles/achievements are, for example, the Drunkard title, which requires the character to be drunk for 10,000 minutes (you know, almost 7 days). There is also a Sweet Tooth title or the Party Animal title, each which require 10,000 points. The average item gives 1-3 points/minutes, 5 for good ones. Any way I cut it, that is a lot of time and energy to max out one of the titles.
But, if I plug away and get 10-15% of the title every Festival, it does not seem that bad. It becomes a weird sort-of “backburner” achievement. It requires focus and attention, but it is achievable to casual players. They are thousand-year achievements.
Another one that immediately came to mind was Warhammer Online’s Bestiary achievements. They start out, like any good achievement-based drug, and give a sampling when a player kills 25 of a mob type, like a Bandit. Then players get another hit at 100 kills, and every power of 10 thereafter, up to a whopping 100,000 kills. If I could kill 5-10 Bandits a minute it would take me 1-2 weeks of game time to kill enough Bandits.
I’d be surprised if the average Warhammer Online player has much more than a couple weeks of active game time in a whole year of subscribing to the MMO. A week is 168 hours long, for your convenience. I’d be more surprised if any but the most determined of players spent the bulk of that time killing one type of mob.
Still, the carrot exists in these two MMOs and others. I’m just not sure what it tastes like.
–Ravious
everything is a pretext for a good dinner
The fact that you can work on those achievements every Festival makes it a lot more casual-friendly than something like the meta-achievements in WoW, where you only get one shot per year. I literally felt sick after spending hours trying to get my Noblegarden stuff out of the way.
Out of all the MMOs I’ve sampled or played in earnest, Guild Wars seems to be the easiest on the grind. Yeah, it’s grind, but these titles are achievable, even for people with jobs.
Yeah, as Ryan said. Guild Wars is the best at titles and achievements because it’s a “casual-MMO”. Allowing people to acquire higher-tier achievements, without gushing their eyes out for hours on end consecutively.
I just think it is great so many guilds sponsor a district to make things easier on everyone. Gives one a chance to do the holiday quests on multiple characters, get some Nine Rings time in, and still get the goodies for each appearance of the Celestial. So a big “Thank You” to those that do that!
LOTRO has the “Kindred with the Inn League” achievement that is accessible to non-hardcore players ;)
Starting with Volume 3 getting Kindred with the Eldgang won’t be impossible for non-raiders.
I’ve found a way to bobble along on the Drunken title that I enjoy. Yes, ENJOY! … You see, a month ago, for the first time, I was able to turn on post-process effects, because I bought me a nice new PC laptop.
Before that, I was running GW either using Crossover Games on a Mac (no post pro support), or on a 6 year old WinXP lappy that creaked with horror when I turned up the graphics.
…I call it… DRUNKQUISHING!
And it is wondrous indeed. I am only afraid I may not have enough areas left to vanquish on my monk main to even reach the first tier of Drunkenness. :(
If only I had thought of it before vanquishing Tyria. *swoon* Imagine vqing all three continents while blind drunk. DRUNK MASTER TITLE! *mad giggles*
As it is, I definitely advise getting L5 drunk in Rhea’s Crater, especially. It looks like the Jade Sea has turned back into water… it’s great. XD
The carrot tastes like dusty ashes, or, all that’s left of life and civilization once the grind is finally complete, a dry mouthful cleansed only by a sip of the next grind.
Ravious, if you like watching slowly increasing bars in GW, you are going to love ProgressQuest