Saturday, October 12, 2013

My Cloak is Not Oprah's Car

So, I finished the legendary questline grind last week. I am now the proud owner of Fen-Yu, Fury of Xuen. First, let me say to hunters still working on it, keep going! It really is worth the grind. This thing in combination with my 2-piece bonus and Assurance of Consequence is just crazy. When I log into my daily scenario now, the bosses just surrender. Quick aside: Once you have that trinket and the 2-piece, keep a close eye on your weapon's durability. You're going to be doing a lot more Rapid Fires. So many more that I just made a macro so it casts automagically whenever it's up.

Ok, but back to what I really want to talk about. I mean it when I say "proud owner." The legendary cloak is something every WoW player who earns one should be proud of. It's the culmination of a long-term goal many of us set for ourselves before Mists even launched. And in a sense, each of us did it all on our own. We ran the raids we had to run (usually way more times than we wanted to), did those challenging solo scenarios (healers-you guys had it rough), collected our valor and trillium, ran BGs until we got a win, etc. It was a grind and a constant prayer to RNGeesus. Probably the best testament to this is the fact that a lot of talented raiders are still finishing up. I know I was surprised that I finished slightly ahead of friends that do a lot more raiding than I do. Getting this thing takes work and some luck, which is no different from any other legendary this game has ever had. And yet, people dismiss it as some sort of charity from Blizzard.

We've all heard the snaky remarks. "All you have to do is run enough LFRs and you get one." First, this discounts all of the other parts of the overall quest I mentioned above. Second, have you run LFR on the weekend or since Flex came out? Getting kills there is not automatic. I've heard tales lately of groups needing 5 or more stacks of Determination to get a kill! Anybody who got their cloak using only LFR is very patient, to say the least. "If everybody can get one it doesn't mean anything." This argument is just the latest iteration of players wanting exclusivity in content. These are the same folks who were against LFG, LFR, and nerfs to outdated raids. They want to feel that what they do in the game is special because others don't have access to it. I don't share that feeling myself, but let's just look at what they literally said. Lots of things that everyone can have mean something. Virtually anyone can get a driver's license. Is yours meaningless? I know when I got mine on my 16th birthday it most certainly had meaning. We throw graduation parties to celebrate the end of High School, even though any student who works hard enough can have a diploma, because we all acknowledge and celebrate said hard work.

Ironically, the dismissal of the legendary cloak that irks me the most comes from my favorite WoW podcast, Convert to Raid (if you're not listening to them every week you should be). They have had a lot of entertaining fun with terms such as "the people's legendary," insinuating that there is a cloak just waiting in you mailbox like a WoW Anniversary pet. They have repeatedly compared it to the famous Oprah episode where she gave everyone in the audience a car. This just couldn't be further from the truth. Those people in Oprah's audience fell ass backwards into a car they didn't know existed. They went to see a TV show, and were surprised to get a free car. We all worked for our cloaks. When I was in the home stretch of collecting Titan Runestones, Seige of Ogrimmar had been out for a few weeks. Very few skilled raiders were running Throne of Thunder at that point, so I was trying to avoid doing it. I would have rather run a Flex Siege with friends where I could get upgrades, learn fights, etc. Pretty much anything to avoid LFR, as I don't care for it myself. I ran both Flex wings of SoO and was at 10 runestones. So I ran ToT 3 and disappointingly I only got 1 more. So I ran ToT 4 with the hope that I could get one on the first boss, hearth out and turn-in the quest with time to get back for Lei Shen. No such luck. After wiping on Lei Shen twice, I took it upon myself to make sure everyone knew what to do (I never try to "lead" an LFR group) because I was getting that damn guaranteed last runestone. We got him down and I was done with that part of the chain. But now I needed the heart. It was getting late, but now I was within striking distance! So I sucked it up, and cued again for a dungeon I just did and wouldn't get useable loot from. It was so late by the time we were done I can't say how many wipes we had, but there were at least a few. But at long last I was done collecting crap for Wrathion.

The point of me telling you the play-by-play of my quest for the cloak is that nobody just handed it to me as if I were in Oprah's audience. I did some things I would have done anyway, and a lot of things I wouldn't have done if I didn't have to. It is an accomplishment. It's arguably more of an accomplishment than the only other hunter legendary, which was a simple random drop. Remember that thing? It was the bee's knees-you didn't need to carry ammo anymore! But it just dropped like any other item on the boss' loot table. Getting it took no extra personal effort. One just had to be in the right place at the right time, even if they weren't a hunter! I earned my legendary cloak and I'm proud of it. If and when you get yours, I hope you feel the same.