Completionist
Scarab Lord, the Insane, Madlax was the 4th players in the world to complete all achievements currently ingame. He also actively contributes to Elitist Jerks and raids with Lotto on Twisting Nether. With the expansion approaching he took the time to talk to me about his take on warlocks, achievements and Cataclysm. During the waiting period before Cataclysm, he took the time to talk with me about achievements, warlocks and how warcraft changed.
Warlock on Stormscale
As one of the old school players, he wasn’t on he original vanilla beta, but has been playing since the European release day. “I had only heard of the game from a few pals during their beta play and was “forced” to buy the game on the EU release 8 am. I installed the game, threw away the manual and played for 16 hours straight, leaving aside the food breaks.”
He is one of the oldest residents of Twisting Nether but originally started on Stormscale. “My first char was a rogue, whose name is kept a secret. Took him to level 60, played a few early 10man dungeons (Strat, Scholo, UBRS even). Rerolled very very quickly to warlock though seeing that everyone was playing rogue back in the days. And the main reason I rolled lock was “because it gives free mounts”. I have enjoyed playing my lock since that day. There have been hard and imbalanced times – but nothing one couldn’t live through.” So does his personality match that of a warlock? “”Sarcastic and evil” – I’d agree.”
“The combined utility, the class lore and the “being evil” part.”
If you play the same class for several years, I know many people that get bored with their class, but not Madlax “I like the combined utility, the class lore and the “being evil” part, and I still refer to my pets as “minions” and torture them on every occasion.” Also, aside from being DPS, Warlocks are one of those classes that had a significant role in some of the TBC fights when they had to tank bosses like Kael’thas and Illidan to name a few “I’ve tanked every possible encounter since it was an option – for the sheer fun and to take the responsibility.” That said, his favourite fights throughout WoW history are Ouro or Viscidus “They were probably the funniest ever.”
Scarab Lord
Madlax moved to Twisting Nether when there was a free transfer available from Stormscale. From that moment he’s been in Trigger, Vendetta, Remedy & Conspiracy. Then in 2007 he made a visit on a German realm during Illidan farming and obtained his Scarab Lord title and mount after which he went back to conspiracy. “When Conspiracy disbanded – and people spread over multiple guilds – I joined Lotto, this was in February during their first Lich King normal kill iirc. It’s an overall social and nice guild without egoists.” (And it has nothing to do with being in the guild myself, but I couldn’t agree more.)
“Can’t side with 2 pirates, that’s against piracy law.”
Achievements, Reputation & Mounts
“As for the reputations, I always felt a bit tempted to fill the bars up – for reasonable amounts of time spent. I never intended to do stuff like Darkmoon, Bloodsail or alike – but I simply did most of them for economic gain or a bit of off time fun. I had grinded DM for a while already for money and books – so that was rather easily done, including Shen’dralar.
Ravenholdt was a roughly 20 hour adventure for my rogue in BRS.” Darkmoon was the hardest part because of handing in 80+ darkmoon decks at that time and the trinkets were BoP. “So well, I gambled on Blizzard making those trinkets BoE anytime soon. Invested roughly 30k gold into single cards, and slowly made the decks one by one. BoE change came, sold 80 Northrend decks for 60k gold.”
The last grind was Bloodsail Buccaneers which took him 3 hours. “I might be Insane, but I do take my time to make reasonable decisions rather than banging my head into a wall :)” Since the requirements for insane changed he’s back to fully hated with Bloodsail. “Often I get asked “Do you ever intend to do the BB exalted grind?” And the answer to that is simple – I do love my goblin pirates of Booty Bay way more than I could ever love BB. Can’t side with 2 pirates, that’s against piracy law.”
Currently he has 47 feats of strength of which 11 are mounts mounts, but he considers himself the most unlucky dropluck person to be alive. He’s done Zul’Gurub almost every lockout ever since it was released, in all that time he only saw 1 Tiger drop before he got his own, which was only recently. But he says he has been lucky twice “The MGT strider – I cleared that place roughly 70 times after it opened – never dropped. I returned on an occasion of fun, got the drop. And the ZG tiger – which just happened to drop on my 2nd solo attempt ever there.”
He does still farm Karazhan and Anzu, but mostly the grind is on hold. He is thinking of maybe grinding for the Red Beetle and one of the Halaa mounts, but it’s no priority at the moment. “The Timewaste-Protodrake aside and a few rare drops aside, I got pretty much all. I’ll definitely pay Kael a visit at 85, but right now my luck is too terrible for getting my first ever Ashes drop. Which I have not seen drop in well, LOTS of level 70 kills.”
Gladiator
One of the last achievements missing was Gladiator, he played arena before this season but never with the intention to get the title “I did play Arena every single season up to a decent level – to sharpen my skills still. I’ve been up to 2200 in each season of WotLK, but after that it gets rather boring. S8 I finally decided to finish up this Achievement haunt and got myself a little help to Gladiator – I’m not terrible but I’m not a genius PvPer either.” The other PvP achievements came along the way during the expansion, some others needed planning and help. They are achievements after all and Blizzard somehow has a tendency to sometimes imply for us to do things which, instead of work for us, work against us.
“[Not In My House] for example. We did that in a guild group before it was nerfed. The original achievement required 10! kills. So you had to sit there, 10 man – waiting for a guy to pick the flag. Not funny at all.” But the most annoying PvP achievements of all were [Wintergrasp Ranger] and the tenacity achievement [Against All Odds], horrible horrible achievements on a horde dominated server. “Up until the Tenacity achievement was removed, there was a grand total of 3 times horde had a tenacity win on TN. Funny enough, one of those times was the release day of Ulduar – right after servers came up.”
Out of all the 1056 achievements the most annoying achievements were the ones that depend on RNG luck like the masks on Hallow’s End, which he only completed a few days before the interview. “I do tend to think positive, realistic and self-justified. Along the lines of “You earned it to get this sh*t done this year – so its gonna happen”. If it hadn’t happened – well shit happens :)”
Cataclysm
Now Cataclysm is approaching “Warlocks right now at 85 are a bit strangely implemented. Way too many buttons to press for a simple DPS rotation. But – awesome utility and survivability additions. I’m hoping to see more changes before this goes live.” He has levelled a character to 85 for some testing but he’s leaving the questing for when he’s going to level his Warlock. “I’m really not focused on leveling quickly, as I’ll likely only level through content once but thoroughly. I enjoy content to the max 🙂
“I’m hoping to see more changes”
I have never cared for realm first TBC or WoTLK titles right after release – all of them were totally useless anyway. I just looked at the option of leveling faster than the average, while getting a lot of benefit out of it.” He says he’s got his digital copy and is ready “might actually play on the opening day if I don’t have lectures”
[Zoï]: Any last thing you’d like to add?
[Madlax]: A Russian friend of mine used to say: “The first pancake is always fucked up”. Applies to so many things.
Update
Thanks to Madlax for a great interview and providing fantastic screenshots.
Interview from October 2010, origionally posted on IPlayDisc.
