Filed under: Achievements

Update: This article is being heavily modified as of 3:00 am Eastern Standard Time on Sunday, February 7th. Please bear with us while our intrepid author runs around Azeroth getting information!

The 2010 Love Is In the Air holiday doesn't much resemble its 2009 version; Blizzard's eliminated much of the frustration surrounding RNG and item drops, and overall things are a lot more fun This FAQ covers all of the questions we think will be most helpful to readers concerning the holiday's mechanics. If you have any questions not answered here or in our OverAchiever guide to the holiday's achievements, please drop a comment below and I'll try to make sure it gets answered!

Help! Where do I go to get started?

Head for any of your faction's major cities in Azeroth (Stormwind, Ironforge, the Exodar, or Darnassus for Alliance, and Thunder Bluff, Orgrimmar, Undercity, or Silvermoon for Horde). New goblin NPCs (most from the Crown Chemical Company) will have popped up around the more heavily-trafficked areas (read: AH/bank) with quests and information.

Are you wondering what has caused all the ruckus in the raiding community the past few days? Have you been typing your fingers to the bone since Wednesday night, arguing for one side or the other in forums and chat channels? Whoever you are, or whatever side you're on, in the still-burning aftermath of Ensidia's ban, I feel some reflection is needed. Thus, I am going explain, to the best of my ability, what happened to cause such uproar in the raiding community this week. I am also going to, as the title implies, offer my speculations.

Update: This article is being heavily modified as of 3:00 am Eastern Standard Time on Sunday, February 7th. Please bear with us while our author makes her way through all the holiday changes!

The in-game holiday Love Is In the Air begins Sunday, running February 7th (3:00 am server time) through February 21st (3:00 am server time) this year. Doing most of the achievements related to the holiday will reward you with the meta Fool for Love, the title "the Love Fool," and one more notch in the long trek toward What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been.

Love Is In the Air has been markedly changed for 2010; Blizzard's eliminated much of the painful RNG that drove players up a wall in 2009, and right now you can expect a rather cool and fun little holiday that's not entirely unlike Brewfest in its approach to achievements. You can do dailies and other quests for Love Tokens, and buy holiday items from vendors in addition to enjoying some stuff that's just for fun.

But you're here for the meta, right? We all know you want that drake. Before we get started, I would advise reading our FAQ article on Love Is In the Air if you're not already familiar with the holiday.

GuildOx reports that Paragon, from the European Lightning's Blade realm, has defeated the Lich King and acquired the Frozen Throne achievement. While well-known guild Ensidia had defeated him yesterday on 25-man difficulty, they also employed some dubious techniques to win and later paid the price for it by having their loot and achievements removed.

Paragon, on the other hand, appears to have completed the encounter in an exploit-free manner and, according to MMO-Champion's Boubouille, did it on their first try. Congratulations go out to Paragon on their clean kill. Now let's see some of those heroic achievements!

The Colosseum takes us inside the world of the Gladiator (Relentless, Furious, Deadly, Brutal, Vengeful, Merciless, and otherwise), to interview some of the top Arena fighters on the battlegroups. Our goal is to bring a better understanding of the strategy, makeup, and work that goes into dueling it out for fame, fortune, and Frostwyrms. We're especially focused on the people who play these games, to further shed light on the world of the PvP player. If you'd like to be interviewed for The Colosseum, please feel free to contact us -- be sure to include your armory as a link!

Gladiator Bearzerk of US-Mannoroth won't be wearing his gladiator title much longer -- he'll be upgrading to Relentless Gladiator! Our rogue interviewee today is team captain of a rogue-mage-priest composition named A B C that was able to go on a victory streak and get the coveted title on the last day of the season.

Read on after the break to see what Bearzerk had to say!

Last week we discussed a set of achievements likely to drive the average player to the poorhouse. This week, in the spirit of consoling people who may not necessarily have a Traveler's Tundra Mammoth in their immediate future, I'd like to present a series of 5 achievements where at least one of the following is true:

• They're an unusual means of making gold in a way people wouldn't necessarily expect, or:
• It would be almost impossible not to make a pile of gold while doing them.

Now, a disclaimer; the most obvious picks here would be achievements like Got My Mind On My Money or The Bread Winner, but they're more a record of your previous looting and questing rather than being something you really have to go for consciously. I'm on the lookout for slightly more interesting ways to grow rich from achievements that are not so directly concerned with moneymaking:

The Colosseum takes us inside the world of the Gladiator (Relentless, Furious, Deadly, Brutal, Vengeful, Merciless, and otherwise), to interview some of the top Arena fighters on the battlegroups. Our goal is to bring a better understanding of the strategy, makeup, and work that goes into dueling it out for fame, fortune, and Frostwyrms. We're especially focused on the people who play these games, to further shed light on the world of the PvP player. If you'd like to be interviewed for The Colosseum, please feel free to contact us -- be sure to include your armory as a link!

We're in for a real treat this week. We interviewed Jhazy of Blackrock, one of the few players in arena history to achieve a 3,000 rating in 3v3. More impressive yet, he's done this on the very competitive Bloodlust battlegroup, and is currently holding that #1 spot by a margin of more than one hundred points. Jhazy's team STRAIGHT TO THE TOP is a protection warrior + marksman hunter + holy paladin composition. As a team, they are holding down the world's #1 3v3 spot!

Check out what Jhazy has to say after the break!

The Classifieds brings you weekly updates on guild recruiting, rankings, splits and merges, progression and more. Have guild news or a Random Act of Uberness to share? E-mail The Classifieds.

Welcome to our first installment of The Classifieds, an evolution of our former Guildwatch feature. As more and more players move into endgame raiding, we thought it fitting that our guild news should evolve, too. The Classifieds gives you more of the news you can use: who's progressing, who's marking milestones, who's recruiting. But it's not only about guilds. Because we're all down there in the trenches of Dungeon Finder groups at every opportunity, The Classifieds lets you send a shout-out to that player who made your last PUG a thing of real beauty (whether through pure technical finesse or a winning attitude). And if you're curious about how WoW intersects with the world at large, we'll be passing along links to academic research studies seeking participants, as well.

Editor's Note: One thing you might notice missing in Guildwatch's new incarnation is the "Drama" section. In the interest of fostering community growth and positive interaction, we're checking the drama and negativity at the door.

Let's open the Classifieds!

In a nod to the holiday classic A Christmas Story, this year's WoW in-game Christmas gift is your very own Red Rider Air Rifle. You get it from the Winter Veil Gift underneath the Winter Veil Tree.

You use it to cast the spell Pelted! which expands one of the 200 charges the Red Rider Air Rifle has. You'll want to fire off the gun to the faction leaders first to get your BB King achievement (Alliance version, Horde version). You can miss with the gun, so do the achievement before blowing the rest of the charges.

For additional information on all the Winter Veil achievements, check out our Over Achiever's Guide to Winter Veil. This gift is active on the EU servers, and as of 8:00 a.m. EST, the gift now appears active on the US/North American servers as well.

Want to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women? Blood Sport investigates the entirety of all-things arena for gladiators and challengers alike. C. Christian Moore, multiple rank 1 gladiator, examines the latest arena strategy, trends, compositions and more in WoW.com's arena column.

Listening Music: Modeselektor's Tetrispack. Allison Robert offered a challenge to our most beloved columnist last week. Ms. Roberts has chosen a clever and palatable piece with Richard Shindell's On-A-Sea-Of-Fleur-De-Lis. And now we come to my retaliation. My wife recommended our musical selection today -- it just happened to be on the absolute opposite end of the spectrum. How fitting. We love this song, albeit mostly for the intro. Upon your first listen, if you correctly predict the timing and type of shift in the first thirty seconds, serious e-props to you.

To wit, Robert: pan flute > no pan flute. Your move.

Last Week: part two of our beginner's arena guide. We featured the cute ukulele kid who pretty much controls the internet right now. After that, we discussed frequently asked questions from new arena players. We talked about how to spec and what team composition to choose, with two different types of answers (easy and long).

Today, we'll be talking some very basic class strategy. If you know your class inside and out, you'll know what I'm going to say when it comes to your class and arena. You can still learn about other classes here. I've written over 2500 words about individual class perspective inside arenas, that's a lot. Full article after the break.

Winter Veil is one of the more immersive and fun holidays that World of Warcraft offers over the course of the year; it grants you the chance to ride something a little "different," turn into a snowman with a cute /dance animation, and receive gifts containing noncombat pets if you've been good and Coal if Santa RNG thinks you've been bad.

Before anyone asks, Winter Veil runs from Tuesday, December 15th to Saturday, January 2nd in 2009/2010, and this is article is about what you'll need to do in that period to complete the meta (and earn the title) Merrymaker. Unlike November's holiday, Pilgrim's Bounty, Merrymaker is required for the yearlong meta What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been, so don't slack on this one if you want that violet protodrake!

On Metzen!

Saving Metzen for the achievement On Metzen! is a short but fun questline that starts with an NPC in front of the Ironforge bank (if you're Alliance) with Metzen the Reindeer, or an NPC in front of the Orgrimmar AH (if you're Horde) with Metzen the Reindeer. The quest ends in either Searing Gorge or Tanaris, whichever is more convenient to you.

Either zone you hit, try to do the Metzen quest first, as you'll need rewards from it for two of the following achievements.

Blizzard has added some nice new features to the World of Warcraft Armory, including a few players have been asking for in the past. The most exciting change is something that doesn't seem to be working quite correctly yet -- they're including a Flash-based model viewer for characters that will let you see what a toon looks like without ever logging into the game. So says their updates page, but as of this writing, the whole system is going up and down, and we couldn't get it to work correctly on any of our PCs. Should be done soon, though.

Other updates include character activity feeds -- there are now RSS buttons all over your profile that will let you track achievements, items, and other specific character information via RSS. And Blizzard has also built in calendar feeds that will let you output guild and player calendars to Outlook, Google Calendar, or other calendar applications. That means your out-of-game calendars will update automatically if your raidleader happens to change up the raiding schedule. And finally, character profiles have been redesigned and streamlined -- they look a little different with all of these new features. The date on all of these changes actually says January 1, 2010, so Blizzard may have implemented them a little early, but sooner or later we'll see these welcome changes all active on the Armory.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

Update: The Armory is offline for maintenance now. These changes were seen in action, so they're real, but as we say above, they're officially dated for January 1st. So they may not be in effect just yet.

Our podcast was live on the air as usual last Saturday, and the show is now up for your listening enjoyment. Artist Mary Varn was aboard to talk with us about her comic and her Warcraft career, and Matt Low of World of Matticus also jumped on to chat with Turpster and I about the latest WoW news, including the impending patch 3.3, the recent server outages, and the Taiwanese player who picked up all of the achievements in the game (which, probably not entirely concidentally, is the subject of Mary's comic today).

And of course we answered your emails as well. For those of you wondering about our Podcast Awards nomination, voting has ended, and the winners are supposed to be announced next Saturday in a ceremony online. We'll keep you updated -- remember, if we win, we'll be giving away any prizes we get to one lucky listener, and we'll be recording a Warcraft bedtime story for all of you to download. Cross your fingers for us!

Get the podcast:
[iTunes] Subscribe to the WoW Insider Show directly in iTunes.
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I don't care even remotely about achievements. Haven't since they came into the game, to be honest. When I heard that a player in Taiwan has actually done them all, I think I blinked a few times and was confused as to why anyone would. That being said, I actually have quite a few. I don't get them because I want them, I get them because other people want them and they ask me to come help them get them. And that I enjoy doing quite a lot, actually. I like helping my guildies out, and I like doing things that I wouldn't do for my own sake for others sake, as it costs me little and feels like it balances the karmic scales ever so slightly.

It's not just achievements: I'll tank a heroic that I have no interest in (I don't really need badges or loot from any of them at this point) or even a raid. In the past few weeks I've found myself tanking Naxx and Ulduar 10 to help people out with achievements, or to gear alts or grind badges for a specific reason. Doesn't really matter what it is, so much as there's someone getting something they need out of it. The best time was getting a friend the Malygos quest finished after months of having it rot in her logs. Part of the reason I do this is because I know they'd do it for me, and have: when I needed block rating drops from Uld 10 and 25 people deliberately skipped achievements they needed to make sure we got things done faster for my sake.

So how about you? Asked your friends for help lately, or given it back?