So yesterday was Easter and I spent the majority of the day in a blissful state of a full belly and moderate drunkenness.  It was good.  Today I get bored so I say to myself "I'll log in and see what's shaking on WoW!"  I get on with the intention of playing my shaman and doing something fun and interesting when I see a Tauren female standing in front of me in a pink dress and bunny ears.  It takes me a moment to realize what this could mean, and then it hits me like a brick wall.  Noblegarden started yesterday. 

I knew it was coming, as there's a blogger event going on and it's on the calender and it's Easter.  I knocked it out last year on my hunter and she has a couple pretty RP dresses from it.  Mages can also get the Polymorph Bunny exclusively from this holiday so I'm going to have to suck it up and do it on Istolla.  And when I commit to part of a holiday, I just go ahead and do it all, sad as that is.  So another holiday is ahead of me.

I hate holiday dailies with a passion.  With Love is in the Air, they did it to make the holiday more accessible to people for the title, but it wasn't impossible last year was it?  And as much as I like holiday bosses, I'm glad not to have to farm vanity items this time around.  But still, the egg collecting wears on you fast.  Especially if you're on at peak times and everyone else is collecting there too.  It breeds animosity for your fellow player.  Fighting over stupid eggs for a stupid holiday so you can get another title you won't wear and tick off another set of achievements for a meta that gives you a dumb looking dragon mount that's slightly faster.

The first go around, the holidays are novel.  But they get old fast.  I took my mage down to Falconwing and started collecting, but logged out shortly after.  Holiday crap makes the burnout worse, not better.  It's just another set of tasks to do before you're bored again and when you have to fight others to finish that task, it's just not worth it.  It's like busywork your teacher used to give you in school when you had a sub, something to keep you quiet and occupied, but not necessarily something vital to your experience.

Despite my dislike for the holiday crap, I'll probably log in late tonight when everyone else is asleep and knock it out, just so I can get my Bunnymorph and my stupid meta.  Maybe that makes me a hypocrite.  Maybe it just means I'm trying to salvage something that's dying off slowly.

So it's Holiday time in Azeroth again and players on every server are laboring over achievements to try and win themselves a fabulous purple protodrake, by far the shiniest sparkliest flying mount in the game, inspired by Liberache and Elton John's love child. And the need for this mount has brought out the worst in Azeroth, pitting players against each other for spawns and drops to increase their numbers for MORE achievement points. It's kind of sad to see how people are dominating at the expense of others for gear that will only help minimally. Granted, some of it is quite fun (The Heartbreaker cracks me up and must be acquired for my mage) and cute (I love my Toxic Wasteling), but is it worth the trouble in the end?

Perhaps, but if you have multiple characters, it gets a bit old. I currently have my original main, an 80 hunter, who sits around and plays go fish with her pets most of the time. I simply don't enjoy the hunter that much anymore. However, I worked pretty hard at getting her all the metas of most of the other holidays and she's 3 metas away from the Violet Proto: The Love Fool, Elder, and Matron. Luckily Elder I require a single elder in a single dungeon I missed last year because she wasn't 80 yet and couldn't get into the heroic version. But The Love Fool is a long arduous achievement that requires dailies, one of my arch nemeses. Brewmaster was just as painful with it's token trade and dailies, but I managed. This one, I'm not so sure I will, simply because so much work is required. Perhaps if she was still my main, the story would be different, however I have taken up the mantle of the mage, on top of having a tanking DK, and a quickly rising Ele/Resto shaman. The DK I really have no plan to get metas on just because I'm not a melee fan. The Shaman can't achieve them yet because she isn't 80 yet and I don't think I have the time or energy to devote to that before Love is in the Air expires. But the mage has gotten several other metas and is closer than any other.

So I ask myself "what's so great about the purple proto?" and I find myself stumped. It's a faster mount, having the 310% speed upgrade, but it's butt ugly to put it simply and being the vain mage I am, I won't ride it. Even if I get it for the hunter, she's behind in gear and I don't enjoy her so she won't get much play time with it.

So all I can figure is that I really want the nerd points, that magic achievement point number that says "I spend way too much time playing WoW for no return!" I was discussing this very thing with guildies today and it kind of stumped us why the Red Proto that requires arduous amounts of time and SKILL to achieve doesn't have the speed bonus. The hard mode drakes do, but this little guy doesn't. Is it too easy to get? Surely not, as anyone whos attempted Less-Rabi 500 times can attest. Despite Blizzard nerfing a bunch of the achievements required for the Red Proto, it's still not completely attainable unless you get really lucky or have some friends with mad skillz. And it's a heck of a lot better looking than Violet by far.

Despite the logic behind letting these achievements go, I still pursue them with vigor, finding it necessary to finish what I've started and get an item that will rot in my mount list. Besides, the extra mount will help me get closer to the ugly Red Dragonhawk achievement...