3. World of Warcraft - The 1% Wipe (PC)
If you have ever known the joys of raiding in World of Warcraft then you are no doubt familiar with the never popular 1% raid wipe. To those lucky few who haven’t here is the scenario. 25 man raiding in WoW requires you and your closest buddies to hit a dungeon and down bosses of ever increasing difficulty in order to plunder them of their precious purple loot. These bosses normally have a rather steep learning curve that inevitably results in numerous attempts to conquer and of course a large player body count. Dying in WoW is a common occurrence and can easily be shrugged off, however the 1% wipe carries an extra special level of frustration.
After you and your fellow adventurers have taken enough attempts at a new “boss” and have become comfortable enough with the encounter, the raid leader gives the go ahead for everyone to get serious, slap on costly potions, and get the job done. What follows can often be a 15+ minute battle of epic proportions with the monster’s life slowly dwindling and things going as planned. Then it happens, your party starts dropping like flies. You watch the boss’ health sink further, 5%, 4%, 3%, more and more deaths pile up, 2%, everyone is screaming over their cheeto stained headsets, a couple of people are still alive, 1%....and the last player drops dead, the boss regenerates back to full life, and you are left with nothing but silence in your headsets and more time and soul sucking attempts in your future.
2. Mario Party – Losing to Losers (GameCube)
Mario Party is one game that can be fun when you have some friends over and they aren’t big into games. It’s a fun (for the most part) game that lets players square off in mini-games with a board game style layout while battling for the most amount of stars and coins. Throughout the game there are plenty of opportunities to win stars and unfortunately as it turns out, simply winning all the mini-games won’t ensure victory for you.
I used to play Mario Party with an old girlfriend and let me tell you, I would wipe the floor with her during the mini-games but after it was all said and done, she would still win. Why? Because the game has an end game feature where everything you did, squares landed on a certain amount of times, orbs collected, etc. would add extra stars for those who achieved the set goals. So needless to say, even though I would totally destroy her in the actual games, she would still win because of those @#&*! stars awarded at the end of the game. Come on, you even got one for being in last place!
(We’re thinking this has more to do with the game being tied to an ex-girlfriend than the game itself. Who gets mad at Mario Party?! Ha. – ed)
