I play on a losing server, and I am at 14/15 less than two weeks into Season One, so the meta-achievement is pretty clearly doable. Not all the achievements are reasonable doable for all the servers, but I would guess most for most. The popularity of the Eternal Battlegrounds can be a barrier: players in some servers have long queues, servers without queues may not have much chance to take Stonemist Castle during hours you play (depending on opponents, say opponents who have a queue and are therefore at max pop in EB at most times).
When guildmates talk about the achievements, the main question is “225?!” You need to be either a regular WvWer or have big binges or both to get some of these. Pondering them, the numbers are individually reasonable, but then they are multiplied and added together in a way that makes the whole daunting. Some of us can knock it out in a week or two; others are too put off to bother even when they would certainly get it over 7 weeks.
once
There are four jumping puzzles, three of which are identical and quick, the fourth is longer but sometime someone will call “we have a mesmer in the Obsidian Sanctum, who wants the chest?” (twice so far for me in Season One). “Mists Invasion Defender” is “kill 10 enemies,” which is basically free if you WvW at all. That’s a daily, and you can get more than 10 in one good fight. These are basically free; even if you like jumping puzzles even less than I do, three in less than an hour (with achievement points, rewards, and more) is pretty trivial. I was attacked once in all of them combined. I would also count “Big Spender” (spend 250 badges of honor) here. You probably already have 250, and if you don’t, you will if you go after the other achievements. If you are at a loss, buy 50 rams for the destruction achievement below.
1/day
Gain 50 ranks, capture 50 mercenary camps, capture 50 ruins. Ruins are probably the easiest, especially with a daily to cap 5, but a lot of people are capping them for the achievement so there are a lot of ruin fights lately. Ranks just happen as you play, more quickly if you are new to this. Capturing 50 merc camps is EB-specific, there are only 3 of them, and there is a difference between defeating red ogres and turning ogres blue, so this one could be more tedious than most. Of these three, I have only completed ruins.
Towers are under 1/day at 30, which seems odd to me. That was one of the first ones that I finished. EB has more towers than camps, and capping towers is kind of what you do if you have at least a full group. Walls and doors are also at 30. If you bring your own rams along with the zerg, you can do this easily; if you have ram mastery, people will give you rams to do it. Ditto for catapults on certain towers. This must be a hoot for trebuchet aficionados.
2/day
Camp Crusher asks you to cap 100 supply camps. Camps and towers are the basic units of WvW, so this will be easy. If you run with the zerg a bit, you will cap 5-10 supply camps every time you play. A daily is 3 camps, so 33 dailies over 49 days seems sane to me.
5/day, 10/day
Here are your “225?!”s. Capture 225 sentry posts, kill 225 yaks. Kill 500 guards and 450 enemy players. The two bigger numbers are actually much easier. 450 is just under your daily 10, and a good assault or defense gives you dozens of kills. Drop an arrow cart, defend a tower or keep, and soak up some bags. If you attack anything in WvW, you probably kill guards 5 at a time, so 500 easily happens while you do other things.
The 225s are the real point where everything is individually reasonable but collectively gobsmacking. 5 yaks or sentry posts is a daily: no problem, often done while in WvW without thinking about it. Now do it every day for 7 weeks. Both of them. While doing most of those other things. Okay, THAT feels like a lot. One good harassing binge in the enemy borderlands can complete a week’s worth of progress, but it might mean something that I am halfway through those two while having completed 14 others. Either the others had their numbers to low or the “225?!” people have a point.
I think 225 is a great 7-week achievement just because it is 7 weeks of dailies. Given extreme reactions, however, it may discourage trying or encourage binging, neither of which is the goal, but they are foreseeable effects of big numbers on achievements.
big targets
5 castles, 10 keeps. 10 keeps I did, and those things flip unless you’re really evenly matched, and even then they’ll flip during off-hours. EB keeps flip less often, but big servers take little servers’ borderlands keeps and little servers take them back when the big servers get tired of defending (or get double-teamed). I have 0 Stonemist Castles on the Season. We do not seem to have much chance there unless Server A is sieging Server B’s keep for long enough for us to ninja. That one is probably easy on some servers, however, since two will be evenly matched and trade it all week. Also good for off-hours folks. If you can do it once, you can probably do it 10 or 20 times.
The numbers on the achievements are big, mostly save for 7 weeks, although perhaps too big in a few places and small in others.
: Zubon
I am sure achievements were invented to turn intelligent human beings into giant rats on treadmills. I find myself less and less interested in jumping on the achievement train in GW2 (and most MMO’s).
I play on Kodash, the weakest of all Gold League Servers, and as I played on the second day of the Season, we took Stonemist at least ten times. Towers on the other hand are much harder to crack open, often tier 3 and well defended by the respective server.
It is interesting to see how the different Servers play WvW on their lvl.
I haven’t been counting my hours in WvW during the first two matches but I’ve played every day, some days all day. I would guess I must have put in 60+ hours by now. I’m at 5/15 on the meta.
I’d have to question your assessment of the jumping puzzles. I have never successfully completed any of them by jumping. That’s not this Season. That’s since launch. And I have tried a few times. I got a port to the Obsidian one, so that’s done, but the others have always defeated me in the past and they are rarely ported on YB. If I do manage to work out how to do them I will have to do them all twice because Mrs Bhagpuss is near-phobic about jumping puzzles. Four times if, god forbid, we end up going for this meta on both our accounts.
The rest of them I think are doable, although as you say, 225 is a lot of Yaks, especially since they tend to die faster than i can target in a zerg. If I fail to complete this meta, and that’s not unlikely, I would bet it will be the jumping puzzles that are the cause, though. My only interest is to get the Dolyak Mini, and my only interest in that is because I suspect it will become the essential Yak’s Bend WvW fashion accessory and I don’t want to be the chump without one :P