World of WoWcohol
Building World of War craft’ s most impressive booze collection.
It all started in Zul’Gurub, in 2005… wait a second, strike that. It started with World of Warcraft’s launch in 2004.
WoW is a game with so much content that it’s impossible to have everything, and collecting achievements, mounts, pets, or armor is not rare. I ended up taking a different route: Since the old days of WoW, I have collected alcohol.
When the game launched, alcohol was included simply for whimsy. Upon drinking, your screen blurred a bit, typed speech would slur, and walking in a straight line was nigh impossible. This was completely useless, yet tons of fun. Getting drunk was a money sink and a pastime you shared with friends, but the habit was also surprisingly cost-prohibitive. It’s difficult to get loaded on 40-silver bourbon all the time when you had to save up for that expensive mount. Regardless, my friends and I imbibed with impunity, spending our time being social and ridiculous instead of grinding for cash.
There was an unobtrusive island in the Zul’Gurub dungeon which nonstop-spawned Darkmoon Special Reserve, the most potent alcohol in the game, and it could be looted for free. As a Druid, I would stealth around, dodging the murderous mobs, and fill my packs with a bounty of booze to share with friends. For a time, I was the guild drunk, my chat messages all punctuated by a “…hic!” Over time the prices of this habit became trivial, but I still had appearances to keep up. When achievements were released, guess which I got first?
Tipsy
One thing I’d noticed is that although the achievement ‘It’s Happy Hour Somewhere’ required 25 beverages, the progress bar kept count of every unique drink above that amount, and since I was the guild drinker I took pride in raising that number. With some finagling, the game could show you a list of the drinks you had not yet consumed for further credit, and this is when the true obsession began.
I started to appreciate how varied and difficult it could be to attain these drinks. Some were obscure quest rewards, others required a special dungeon run or killing certain mobs. I got Alliance friends to sell Rhapsody Malt on the black market, or gathered pals to do a Dire Maul tribute run so Stomper Kreeg would sell me Gordok Green Grog. Mostly, these drinks functioned in the typical way, but Sulfuron Slammer actually set your character on fire. Suddenly, I was hooked: I needed to try as much of this liquor as I could get, and the collection began in earnest.