“Don’t take it so seriously. It’s just a game.”

Then it expands.

“It’s just a TPS report. I shouldn’t put so much thought into it.”

“It’s just a temporary job. I don’t need to give it that much effort.”

“It’s just my day job. I don’t need to stress out so much about it.”

“It’s just my career.”

“It’s just my family.”

Of course I’m exaggerating. But little things like to spread. Why not start at the bottom with “Instead of doing what I need to do to get by, I’m going to do what it takes to accomplish something I’m proud of?”

Once you apply that in-game, it’s hard to not apply it to the rest of your life. After all, you can do it in WOW, and that’s just a game.

(Largely copied from my comment on this WOW.com post.)

Yesterday, leading raid guild Ensidia claimed the world-first normal-mode 25-man kill of the Lich King. Last night, it was revealed that they’d used – knowingly or not – a bug that made one part of the encounter significantly easier. Early this morning, according to a blog post by raid member Muqq, they received 72-hour bans for using the exploit, and the achievements and items they gained from the encounter were stripped from the characters who participated in the kill.

Here’s the thing: It’s not about how easy the exploit is. It’s not even about whether Ensidia knew.

This is, to put it bluntly, almost universally a public relations coup for Blizzard. And Ensidia’s doing exactly what Blizzard wants them to do, whether they’re doing it consciously or not.

Consider:

Blizzard hasn’t publicly announced the ban. They know they don’t have to. They know that Ensidia’s going to rear up and complain about it. The people who care – the people who are gunning for firsts, the people who want to know about the fights ahead of time, the people who might exploit – now know that the top guild in the world isn’t immune from consequences; why should they think they will be?

Consider:

Blizzard says “We know about this bug and we’re fixing it as fast as we can.” hours before Ensidia says “They need to fix this bug!” All Ensidia’s doing is highlighting the fact that Blizzard’s on the job. Ensidia aren’t idiots. They know that an encounter that isn’t tested on the PTR is going to have bugs. There’s an in-game way to report bugs for a reason. In their rush to World First, they found a bug, and instead of being responsible as gamers and testing and reporting the bug, they were responsible to their sponsors and their egos and blew through the encounter anyway, and then downplayed the bug after they’d claimed World First.

Consider:

By saying “pull everybody off Cataclysm and put them on fixing this encounter”, Ensidia is saying two things: “the Lich King encounter is really important and everybody should want it to be right as soon as possible”, and “Cataclysm is huge, and its developers are the best at Blizzard”.

Ensidia isn’t even really taking heat – they just cool their heels for 72 hours and everybody rallies behind them for being underdogs. (Look at the comments here!) And Blizzard gets everything it wants – and all it took was a 72-hour ban. (Hell, I’m tempted to think that they knew about the bug and left it in on purpose.)

If you’d like to get the Winter Veil achievement but haven’t started the Skyguard/Ogri’la rep grind yet, good news: you don’t have to in order to get Fa-la-la-la-Ogri'la. You can go straight to Ogri’la and start a very brief chain there to open up “Bomb Them Again”, which is the quest you need for the achievement.

• At Ogri’la, pick up “The Crystals” from Chu’a'lor. (Gather 5 Apexis Shards and return to Chu’a'lor. Skip the follow-up.)
• Still at Ogri’la, pick up “Our Boy Wants To Be A Skyguard” from Torkus. (Gather 10 Shards, go to the Forge Camp to the south and trade them for an Unstable Flask of the Beast, return to Torkus. Don’t get the follow-up.)
• Still at Ogri’la, pick up “The Skyguard Outpost from Chu’a'lor. (Report to Sky Commander Keller at the Skyguard Outpost.)
• At the Skyguard Outpost, pick up “Bombing Run” from Sky Sergeant Vanderlip. (Use the provided bombs to destroy 15 stacks of Fel Cannonballs at the Forge Camps to the north or south, then return to Vanderlip.)
• At the Skyguard Outpost, pick up “Bomb Them Again” from Sky Sergeant Vanderlip. (Use the provided bombs to destroy 15 more cannonball stacks.) This is the quest you need for the achievement. The only time you need to have the Holly buff is when you are turning the quest in! There is no need to have it on when you pick the quest up or while you’re doing the bombing run itself.

Hope that’s helpful! My Death Knight went from never having set foot in Blade’s Edge to having the achievement in about half an hour this morning, and most of that was grinding for Apexis Shards.

Winter Veil is here
Happiness and cheer
Fun for all that players call
Their favorite time of year

Reindeer in the air
Fruitcakes everywhere
World-raid fun with BB guns
And Mistletoe to share

Metzen freed from bounds
Snowballs all around
Snowmen jive, and racers drive
while fake gnomes battleground

Winter Veil is here
Yetis drawing near
Oh, that we could always see
Such presents through the year
Oh, that we could always see
Such spirit through the year…

(If you’re Horde, that’s BB guns, Mistletoe, and Snowballs.)

(If you look closely, you can see the transformation that got me the achievement!)

And the result:

As I’m sure we all know at this point, torch juggling in WOW can be a pain in the ass. There are two components to it this year: the Torch Catching quest and the Torch Juggler achievement. Torch Juggler is largely dependent on your lag and finger speed for success; the faster your speed and the lower your lag, the more likely you are to get 40 torches in 15 seconds. (That’s a little faster than 3 torches per second.) Torch Catching makes you run all over the walkways near your chosen city’s bonfire, chasing shadows – and if you’re even a little off, the torch falls and you have to start over. It’s the real pain in the ass.

Fortunately, there are tricks to each.

Torch Juggler

Getting the Torch Juggler is a matter of clicking as fast as you can, in an area where you can avoid having lots of objects rendered on your screen. The best area that I’ve found for this (thanks to an Aetherial Circle guildmate for this tip) is the plaza commemorating Archmage Antonidas just to the northwest of the “Horde” bank, marked with a red star on the map to your right. Stand there, with your back to the bank, and your visual lag should be significantly reduced.

Once you’re in a good position, assign your Juggling Torch to one of your hotkeys (1,2,3…0,-,= in the default interface). It is almost impossible to get this achievement by right-clicking the torch’s icon to activate it. If you absolutely must click the icon instead of using hotkeys, the rest of this section will do you no good. Press the hotkey to activate the juggling torch; a green circle will appear under your cursor. Place the circle directly under your character and prepare to click like the wind. What you need to do is alternate between pressing the hotkey and clicking the mouse (without moving the mouse cursor at all) as fast as you possibly can; ideally you’ll be using one hand on the hotkey and the other on the mouse. The torches do not have a cooldown, and you need to get as many clicks into each second as you can, so speed is absolutely of the essence.

One thing to keep in mind: although you have to catch 40 torches, catching a torch replenishes your stock, so you actually only need about 10 torches to complete the achievement.

Torch Catching

Torch Catching is one quest where it pays to be sneaky. See, the trick to completing this quest with a minimum of effort is that you can catch the torches that other characters throw. Apparently, the quest is set up so that if you click on a torch to toss it, if that torch falls to the ground, your count resets. However, any torch that you catch counts toward the quest – and if you didn’t throw the torch initially, it doesn’t count against you if it lands on the ground after you’ve tossed it.

Let me illustrate: You right-click a torch to toss it, and catch it three times. Then the torch lands on me; I catch your torch and automatically toss it again. The torch hits the ground. Since you were the one who initially threw the torch, your count is reset to 0 when the torch hits the ground. However, my count stays at 1 torch in a row caught. If this happens again – you throw the torch, I catch it and re-toss it, it hits the ground – my count increases to 2 in a row.

You can see where I’m going with this, I think.

If you want to be sneaky about Torch Catching and not have to run around the city chasing torches, simply come to your chosen city when there are bunches of people there, get on your mount (you have a larger surface area, so you’re more likely to catch torches that land near you), stand near the bonfire, and go make a sandwich. Your character will accumulate torches on her own, and you won’t have to lift a finger.

Also, Aetherial Circle downed 25-man Malygos today for the first time. Grats, guys!

Edit: Here’s Stephi’s slightly more detailed write-up of the run. If I’d known you guys were short a healer…

Originally posted here on 8/24/08.

Today I finally managed to get my new vanity pet – and just in time, too.