School of Hard Knocks QQ
Have you completed School of Hard Knocks yet? It’s part of the Children’s Week meta achievement, so if you haven’t done it yet you’ve only got a couple of days. You may have also noticed the tremendous amount of QQing going on about this. What’s so bad about it? Let’s take a look.
First off, the achievement -
You know what? Achievement is too long of a word to type every time, and I always get stuck trying to remember whether the e or the i comes first. From now on I’m going to abbreviate achievement as “achy”. (Pronounced “atch-ee”, not ache-y.)
First off, the achy requires you to do some PvP, which is an unpopular thing with most of WoW’s player base. A pretty large section of WoW players don’t PvP at all, and a bunch more PvP occasionally but have a low tolerance for many of the frustrating things that happen in PvP (like, you know, losing =) ). Having to spend a relatively large amount of time in several BGs is more than a lot of WoW players were prepared to do.
The second problem with the achy is that it’s been decried as being “too hard”. It’s pretty easy to zoom through most of the other Children’s Week achies and quests, and then you get to this one and it may take a few tries.
So is it really as bad as people have made it out to be? Should it be removed from the meta? Should I knock off early from work and go get a margarita?
The answers are: Yes and no, no, and YES.
I do think that achy is a bad one, but not for the reasons that people have been saying. Here’s what’s *not* wrong with it:
1) Just because it’s a PvP achy doesn’t make it bad. Sure, you may not PvP much, and you may be used to zooming through a lot of other achies, but it’s OK for something to be different every now and then. Try some PvP, and who knows? Maybe you’ll enjoy it.
2) It’s not “too hard”. Trying to complete an achy in a PvP environment might take some getting used to, but that doesn’t make it too hard. It might take you a couple of tries to get it done, but that’s OK. It is, after all, something that has to be achieved. It’s certainly possible to get the achy done in the time frame given.
Here’s what *is* wrong: For the first time in WoW, people on the same team are forced to compete against each other to accomplish a goal. If you cap the tower in AV, then the guy next to you can’t. If you grab the flag in EoTS, then your guildie can’t (at least until it repops, but that’s another point).
Blizzard has always been careful to avoid this sort of intra-team competition in the past. Everyone gets the same amount of rep and honor for the same amount of work. It doesn’t matter if you cap the flag yourself or not. It doesn’t matter if you’re number one or number 20 on the DPS chart. You’re not competing against the people on your team for rewards. Even the old BG quests (like this one) just required you to be in the area when the action was completed. You didn’t have to take the mine yourself so long as you were close by when it was done.
That changed with this achy. Not only are people not concerned with winning the BG, they are only focused on getting the achy criteria completed. “Sorry I can’t help kill that Hordie, I have to cap this flag here and then /afk out.” “Sorry I can’t stop to help you there, I have to race all the way up to DBN tower and cap it before anyone else gets it.”
I think that Blizzard would defend this by saying that there are plenty of opportunities for you to get your stuff done. If you miss capping one tower because someone else grabbed it, you can hop into another BG soon and try again. But the fact remains that you’re still competing against your own teammates, and that’s never a good thing.
There are a couple of easy ways to fix this. 1) Change the criteria so that you can complete them by being in the area when it’s done, or 2) change the achy so that the criteria are team goals.
1) is probably the simpler of the two. Just make it so that everyone gets credit for being there when the tower is capped or the flag is returned. That way everyone is still doing the same things, but now they’re not competing against their teammates for the credit.
2) would take a bit more work, but would solve the problem just as well. Change the criteria of the achy to be team goals - for instance, winning one match of each of the BGs with your orphan out. This way everyone is working toward the same goal and the problem is solved.
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I agree with you (and by the way I have greatly enjoyed your blog, thanks!). I think the achievement is “too hard” because it asks for you, yourself, to return a flag or cap a tower, etc. I am not a pvper and actually being the one to do these things is a bit difficult and I don’t want to do something that’s going to make the team lose. So, if I as a healer pick up the flag, well, that’s probably not so good.
I do not mind having to do a bit of pvp though. Well, I might still gripe a bit but I’d much rather have team goals like you suggest.
But, what does QQ mean?
Glad you enjoy the blog, Julaya ^_^ The letters QQ look like eyes with tears coming out of them, so it’s usually used to denote crying or whining of some sort.