Friday, August 14, 2009

My New Favorite Addon

Cho'gall is notorious for demanding achieves to get invites to anything. Want to join a VOA10 that you need no gear from, want to do just out of boredom, and are probably more interested in the badge drop than anything else that may drop? Well you better LINK ACHIEVE OR IGNORED! Interested in a sleepwalking of Naxx25 for one trinket that isn't even very good, but might come in handy during certain encounters (maybe)? Well, you best get ready to LINK ACHIEVE OR NO RESPONSE.

I just accepted it as part of Cho'gall (which I'm not horribly thrilled with in the first place), and assumed it happened on every other server as well. I'm not horribly fond of the integrated xbox live score in WoW, and spent precisely one half of one day "/hug"-ing squirrels and crap before just rolling my eyes and not caring anymore.

My priest and warlock have been around the block, and will get invites, because I ran all that crap. But my tank, who knows every single fight my priest and warlock do (hint: they're all ME), but is still in Naxx10-ish gear, can't get invites to some crap because I can't link the achieves. Nevermind that half of everything has been nerfed into the ground, and the other half isn't really worth running when farming Heroic Utgarde Keep each day can get you into Uld25 gear, but when I want to tank a Naxx run I get shit on.

Enter a glorious little gem that popped up in vent last night during Naxx25 with my priest (hi Leetosaurus, good run!). Someone mentioned that you could fake achievements, but that of course they didn't use that addon, and I remembered it this morning when confronted with trade chat:

So, I exit game, and go looking, just to see what I can find. Google turns up a wow forum post, which points me to Allene's Fake Achievements Addon.

JOY.

I log back in and follow the direction... let's see... open xbox live window in WoW (Press the WHY -- oops, I mean "Y" key), navigate to the achievement desired... hmmm... Ulduar hard modes...

type afa, shift click the achieve, and tack a date on the end in YYYY-MM-DD format. Your chat box spits out a link, similar to how the wowhead 'link this item' button works on thier pages.

Next, send a tell, shift clicking said link...

Oops! Did I forget to mention I was on my bank alt?

GLEEEE.

Now, a few things I need to get out of the way:

1) I think the achievement system is silly. To anyone eho enjoys it, power to you. I'm happy you enjoy running around the old world clicking books and whatever. I'm dead serious on this point. If you enjoy it, then I'm happy for you. I hate that it became some cockblock way to easily dismiss someone LFG. It used to be that you had to suffer through a few wipes before you dismissed someone out of hand and booted them specifically from a 40 man raid. I miss that. Plus, this system doesn't eliminate that. This same Naxx25 I ran last night had some retard priest named Smitez that cried the ENTIRE run about a healing trinket he won the roll for when he was shadow. He then went Disc, and demanded the trinket, spending two other boss fights doing nothing but spamming chat and opening trade with the priest that won it. I'm surprised he wasn't kicked at that point, but we were all kind of having a laugh about it in vent. He became that run's mascot, and we secretly hoped another trink would drop so we could ML it to a rogue. Smitez HAD all the right achievements, he was just an idiot.

2) This doesn't actually GIVE you any achievements. When you link an acheievement, it's client side information that we're basically tampering with. It's the same as the old 'roll hacks' that would show you rolling 99 everytime, but only on your screen. Anything done server side can't be haxxored (well, in theory). So you can happily link your fake achievement, which will show up when they click it too, but if they actually INSPECT your acheivements they'll see a discrepancy. Also, during the run, you'll be setting off achievements when bosses are downed (but at that point, for something like VOA or EoE, it's too late). Plus, unless only ONE person is doing invites, they will probably have forgotten if you linked the acheieve, or if they just checked out your gear, or whatever. At that point, if you aren't a retard, then it's probably fine to just keep you in the group.

So, this won't really stop the Nazis. If someone demands an achieve, and then armories that achieve you linked, then they'll see you're 'lying' and can call you on it. Big deal. I think most people are inherently lazy, though, and a lot of the time I just make up random numbers to see if they even know what the hell they're asking for. A rogue forming a PUG demanding stats will get something like 'geared priest heals, 2343, 17, 36, 405, 323' sent to them. If they ask me, I'd tell them that was spellpower, hit, crit, haste, regen, and they'll send the invite, even though I never even opened my character pane, and really don't care. I know I'm geared, and I know I can heal.

All this addon will force people to do is to demand the achieve, and then have the willingness to follow up on it.

Which they probably won't.

So whatever.

...right?




8 comments:

Leetosaurus said...

Lol, smitez... he's so good! also, I don't use the addon, I just heard about it! Gosh >.<

Rich said...

i din't say you used it, just saying hello : /

Saritor said...

Achievement demands are probably the biggest reason end-game WoW annoys the hell out of me. If I had not given up in frustration I would 100% be using this addon.

*vlad* said...

Plus even if you have the achievement, it doesn't prove shit about you, you could have died in the first 5 secinds of the encounter, and lain as a corpse the whole way through it.

Kensai said...

I just ended up putting in my LFG comment "hitcapped, non-retarded".

Antigen said...

I can safely say that I've never had to link an achievement to get into anything... even when I had just hit 80. Being intelligent enough to think your way out of a plastic bag seems to suffice on Thunderlord.

Silver Flame said...

Same here - never had to commit an achievement link to get into anything. In fact, I just talked to a raid leader to trial a new raid group, and while I told them about my raid work, I never had to link achievements. Never even seen that in LFG, or anywhere else.

But then, I still play on an RP server. *shrug*

Anonymous said...

OMG I was ther that run lol i remember smitez i should have joined you guys on vent