• Equipping x pieces of superior quality armor
• Killing a raid boss.
• Getting all the Brewfest Regalia

… and so forth. Pretty much anything you can conceivably DO in the game has an achievement attached to it.

As I was browsing the PTR forums earlier today, I noticed Maaven has set up a new theme in his/her signature.

Fake Achievements Pt. 2:
The One: Dodge 100 Projectiles.
Banhammah’d: Earn the ire of Maaven.
My Milkshake: Buff 500 different characters without moving.

This reminded me of a conversation I had with some friends of mine when the achievements system was first announced about some additions we thought they should make. Our list included a ton of stupid stuff like…

“Achievement earned: You’ve cast your first spell!”
“Achievement earned: This is your first spirit run!”
“Achievement earned: You fell to your death!”

Our list eventually would up ending with “Achievement earned: You took a joke too far!” >.>

What silly, stupid, and awesome additions would you make to the achievement system?

Well, the other day I logged on to Etsi and noticed that she had mail from an alt that I never play. Now when I say never, I mean never. Never as in my last time logging into this alt was prior to the launch of the Burning Crusade. Never as in I can’t even remember his guild, spec, or professions. I think you get the idea that it’s been a while.

I was understandably concerned that I’d been keylogged again.

I quickly hoofed Etsi over to a mailbox, not really having any idea what to expect, and opened it to discover a full page of mail from this alt. Things like a crapload of engineering materials, about 40 repair bots… sound familiar? It’s all the stuff that was removed from Etsi. Apparently the keylogger was in the process of mailing everything of hers to the first character on the character select screen (the unplayed alt) when I interrupted them and reset the password.

It also explains why Blizzard didn’t restore a lot of my stuff – it wasn’t really gone. The only thing that I didn’t get back are my Badges of Justice (obviously, since they’re soulbound), instead I have 9 nice shiny Nether Vortices.

So, lesson to be learned – make sure you check ALL of your characters periodically, especially if you suspect your account has been broken into.

It does raise an interesting question though – I thought mail ingame bounced after 30 days. Why am I getting the stuff back after 60?

That’s right, your loveable favorite nekkid cow has been (in addition to lazy, busy, moving, un-creative, etc) in Boston for the Red Hat Summit! ZOMG!

The cool part of this is… well, Botson! The bad part is that my hotel’s internet connection has the latency of a gummy worm, and I can just barely browse the web and chat, let alone play WoW. So I’ve been off doing other things.

I return Sunday! Look for me to get back into regular posting then!

Before I go, though, I’d like to take a moment and answer my first reader question!

Rod says…

Hey I was wondering where you got your Realm Status gizmo on your front page?

We’d love to have one like that on our web page.

Rod, that’s a teeny little PHP script I found here. It’s fairly easy to configure, and pretty damn nifty if I do say so myself.

“Unfortunately, the Account Investigator has recovered all the items and money that they were able to in the course of the investigation.”

/crytime

Oh well. At least they didn’t unlearn my professions or anything crappy like that.

Guess it’s time to go farm more repair bot materials.

Last Wednesday I get home and happen to spy an email in my mailbox titled “World of Warcraft Account NEKKIDCOW* – Account Change Notice”. Hmm, I say to myself, that can’t be good. Opening the email shows that my password had been changed. Double ungood!

Quickly I do the “Halp I forgot my password” option on the WoW website, get my temporary password, and quickly run through my characters. Max, looks okay. Mal, looks okay. Etsi… well, crap. Etsi had nothing on her except her hearthstone and whatever gear couldn’t be vendored. Not cool! I made a quick check of the rest of my characters to make sure everything was okay (in true keylogger fashion they went straight for the 70 – they probably would have gotten more money from Max, but whatever), and opened a ticket, and was talking with a GM not five minutes later.

I think that’s probably the single fastest response time I’ve ever gotten. I was shocked.

Not long after my conversation with the GM, I received a ton of items as part of something they called a preliminary restoration, the intent being that my character would at least be playable while waiting for the rest of the equipment to be restore. All my DPS gear, resto gear, and whatever misc. bank stuff they were able to quickly put back. Pretty nifty, no?

Anywho, I changed my passwords from the laptop, cleaned the stupid virus off of my computer, and went to that evening’s raid.

The following evening I get another email from Blizzard in my inbox. Opening it reveals the text “After a thorough investigation, we have found this account to be eligible for restoration.”.

Woohoo! I’m getting my stuff back!

Continuing down the email, I read this:

Account: NEKKIDCOW*
Character: Etsi
Realm: Feathermoon
Money Restored: 207g 27s 73c
Item(s) Restored:

… wtf? Sure enough I get ~200 gold ingame, and no items.

No 70+ Field Repair Bot 110G‘s. No 130 Badges of Justice. No engineering materials, no ores, no potions/elixirs/water… nothing. A quick chat with a GM only gets me the instruction to reply to the email I originally received (which I had already done), and other than that I’ve gotten no other information from Blizz.

I’m hearing from other people that have had their accounts hijacked that none of their Badges of Justice were able to be restored, so I’m not holding my breath. I guess it’s a small blessing that it was only one character, and that they didn’t make it to the guild bank before I changed the passwords.

*NEKKIDCOW is not my real account name, sillies.

I was running around on Grizz in the Netherwing mines, sinking my claws into the flayers, doing that entirely awesome druid thing… and suddenly I hear a Bloodlust go off.

“That’s odd,” I say to myself. “I didn’t pop Bloodlust.”

Then it occurs to me I’m not on my shaman. WTF?

A little careful observation later and I notice that every time the Nethermine Ravagers enrage, the Bloodlust sound can be heard. That’s kinda unusual, to say the least, so I hop over to the bug report forum to toss up a post. While I’m over there, I find the below gem.

Although this wasn’t originally an intended change, the developers felt it was “too awesome” and decided to keep it.

Note that this appears to be tied any ability considered an enrage – Bloodlust, Bloodrage, mob enrages, trinkets and so forth.

What the hell, Blizz? You make a mistake and think it’s awesome? You do realize that sound actually means something to DPS – well, used to, at any rate – right?

Can I at least have my clearcasting sound back?

There’s also a few other changes that seem to have been snuck in. There’s some fuss about rogue animations floating around ( I can’t really verify any of these since I don’t really play a rogue), and one of my friends said something about parts of the orc model being redone.

Anyone else notice any other stealth changes?

See, I have not-so-fond memories of getting completely destroyed by those damn demon pigs. I hate them with a firey passion, so it gave me great delight to absolutely destroy them with my leet feral awesomeness.

She’s also Grizz’s girlfriend as far as RP goes, so that was handy too! They really haven’t spent much time together since most of her characters are A-side, and her and Grizz are questing on different continents.

Well, were. Not any more!

After about an hour or two running around chatting, destroying pigs, and avoiding Fel Reavers, we grabbed a few more level 70 friends and smashed our way through Hellfire Ramparts.

25 minutes. Good times!

The whispering process normally starts about an hour before the first pull, leaving raiders an abundant amount of time to wrap up their quests, repair, and head for the instance. It usually only takes me a few minutes to get ready and get to the instance, so I often just hang out by the summoning stone and chat to kill time.

Unless we’re doing SSC.

On SSC nights I am almost always the last person in the instance (although I’m ready to go by pull time, I swear). Instead of chilling by the portal, I usually go kill mobs on the islands directly north of the lake drain. A very specific type of mob.

Last night, I finally got what I’ve been looking for – a Firefly!

\o/

If you’ve come here looking for theorycrafting… heh.

Heh heh heh.

I really hate math, just so you know.

However! If you’ve come here looking for funny tales from a casual raider, RP related musings, or just whatever random stuff I feel like posting – welcome! I hope you enjoy the site.

I should get a real post up here fairly shortly. See you guys soon!