Wednesday, September 16, 2009

It's About Time, Literally


Those of you who know me well know that I'm a pretty punctual guy. When I say that I'm going to get something done within a certain time frame, it usually gets done. But Father Time definitely throws me curveballs every now and then, as when I first began the Battlemaster grind in 1997 (it feels that way, anyway). Little did I know that 6 short minutes would equate to 3 MONTHS of pain, sweat, and agony on the fields of AV.

[The Alterac Blitz] Achievement, the LAST Achievement I needed for the [Battlemaster] meta, was supposed to be one of those easy, "cheesy" accomplishments. After all, it could be completed via having "Not Enough Players" at the start of an AV game, and indeed, I spent countless nights pissing off my wife and logging into WoW in hopes of finding a thin Alliance team that would sputter towards Galv as the timer ticked from 5 to 0 minutes. But those pesky Alliance players just kept signing in time after time, and to my disappointment, all of the AV games that I queued into continued on to a miserable completion, reminding me just how difficult this process was really going to be.

There was a point where I thought that I would never get the Blitz done. My Battlegroup was and is very much against the idea of rushing past Balinda, all bunkers, and flags on a straight shot to Vann "just for an Achievement," and players were very vocal and derogatory about the "Achievement whores" for sure. The resulting lack of coordination made the Blitz difficult enough in it's own right. And coupled with the flood of low level toons now taking advantage of Battleground XP and leveling in the Valley (read "/afking at the spawn point"), it seemed nearly impossible to find a mostly-empty game or a decent PuG to work with.

Completely frustrated with the process, I began putting together partial premades to help better my chances. But because of face-pulling lowbies (oh how I hate the AV level scale...), a complete disinterest in the Blitz Achievement amongst the well-geared PvE crowd, and even Horde teammates that would pull Vann early and towards the awaiting crowd to purposefully ruin our attempts (I saw this way too often), the string of disappointing attempts continued week after week, and month after month.

But thankfully, the cycle of complete and seemingly infinite fail had an end, and didn't continue beyond last night.

After spending several hours recruiting friends and acquaintances over the past few days, and convincing players to download and install Preform AV Enabler, we finally had a solid group of capable tanks, heals, and DPS to work with. We completed the Achievement on just our second attempt, and when the Battlemaster announcement was displayed to our BG group, most of the guys were just as surprised as I was.


Tonight, each of them is 100g richer (not a bad income for 6 minutes of work, right?) and for the first time, I'm displaying a title other than High Warlord. Battlemaster Jagoex just sounds too good to pass up, doesn't it?

Better late than never. ;)

22 comments:

Jon said...

Excellent work on an epic achievement.
/congrats

Anonymous said...

Well done :)

Anonymous said...

congrats!!!!!!!!

Jesika said...

gratz noobness. me and b did some AV on the warrior priest combo last night and I finally got him the 20 killing blows and no deaths achievement... easier said than done as I'm sure you know. Now to get the priesty that same thing... lol.

I did pretty good... 2 deaths and 6 HK's of my own. Could have had more if I wasn't letting B get them :D Lol.

Greg said...

How did you get your name to display like that?

Jagoex said...

Photoshop. :)

SN said...

Congratulations Jag.

Issa said...

Pvp much? Grats ^.^

Anonymous said...

Gratz! Way to provide some inspiration for my lock's battleground goals!

Zy said...

If only I had the patience to do this, I'd make it a point to get it faster than you ;)

muh said...

grats! :D

does this mean no more "zomg, my battlegroup sucks" QQ on twitter?

haha just kidding. :P

lolerlock said...

Congrats man!!!!!!! FINALLY lol

Anonymous said...

Great work there Jago. -Kyo

Rainewolf said...

Dang, I missed it huh Jag? :(

Jagoex said...

Thanks everyone! It's been nice not feeling the urge to join yet another AV. :)

@Rainewolf - Getting it done was great, but I felt so terribly bad about having you and a couple others who couldn't stay for the winning second attempt. Lets make a point of putting together another group for another run at it. You know that I'll be more than game. :)

Greg said...

Jag, what is your composition when running the battlegrounds? I have a rogue and shaman and we have a hard time with some achievements. Advice?

Jagoex said...

Actually, I pugged all of the Achievements for Battlemaster except The Alterac Blitz. It was the only one I had to work on getting a premade group/raid for... and that made it the most frustrating, imo.

Anonymous said...

ss or it didn't happen

~-,, Miesche ,,-~ said...

Supergrats ^_^

Anonymous said...

Get a life.

Jagoex said...

Sure, as long as it's not yours. Trolling blog writers just isn't my thing. :)

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