Diverting!
This past weekend, I finally completed the Loremaster achievement.
The real challenge was, of course, Loremaster of Kalimdor. I have to say that, despite some issues, the EveryQuest addon was really helpful in tracking down quests I still needed to do.
In the course of this achievement, I naturally earned the Seeker title for 3000 quests complete. That happened somewhere in Tanaris, I think; it's all a blur to me now.
The final leg of my journey was Loremaster of Eastern Kingdoms. I actually started with a higher EK total than Kalimdor, which is natural for a human character who avoided night elf zones back in the original game, but I figured it'd be easier to complete the whole achievement if I finished off the harder part first. It also really, really helped that I was earning the achievement on a mage who is also an Engineer; being able to teleport all over the world, including to Everlook, was a blessing.
Ascanius's final quest turn-in to earn the achievement was for killing Araj the Summoner, which I dimly and possibly inaccurately recall was a Raid quest back in the day when I first encountered it while levelling in the Plaguelands. I could never find a group to help me back then, especially since I was playing in my original California-based guild; naturally, at level 80 in Icecrown Citadel raid gear it wasn't much of a challenge.
The reason I chose Araj the Summoner actually relates to another personal feeling about the game. As I mentioned, I levelled to 60 in the Plaguelands back in the pre-Burning Crusade days. This was around the time that the original Naxxramas preparation grind was patched into the game, and Light's Hope Chapel was suddenly surrounded by dozens of NPCs from the Argent Dawn and even the Scarlet Crusade. I became very interested in the Argent Dawn and its anti-undead mission; I remember discussing how cool it would be if you could actually join in-game factions in a meaningful way, leading to exclusive quest chains and the like.
That never quite happened, although in a way the Argent Tournament works by unlocking extra daily quests once you've achieved the Crusader title is kind of like a pale shadow of it. Still, I never lost my fondness for the Argent Dawn, so a couple of months ago I went through Stratholme over and over, farming reputation with them, until I finally earned the Argent Champion title (Ascanius and my paladin Concepción have been Crusaders for a long time).
The same day that I earned Loremaster, I looked over my achievements, and realised that I was one heroic Oculus run away from earning five achievements: The Oculus, Heroic: The Oculus, Northrend Dungeonmaster, Northrend Dungeon Hero, and Champion of the Frozen Wastes. Yes, it turned out that I had never even run The Oculus on normal mode, let alone heroic, despite earning all sorts of raid achievements.
I queued myself up, and surprisingly only had to wait about three minutes. As it turned out, I earned six achievements with that single run, because my group also got the Make It Count! speed-run achievement. I did have to endure a comment of "eBay IMO" from one of my group members when I announced at the beginning of the run that I'd never been to the dungeon, given my Icecrown Citadel-10-level gear score.
Finally, after a bout of sickness yesterday, I managed to finish another achievement on my orc shaman this morning:
Yes, Mithridates is now the proud owner and rider of a Venomhide Ravasaur. The twenty-day daily quest process to earn the mount took me about a month, since I kept missing days here and there, but in the end I'm happy to have done it - and, once I inevitably transfer Mithridates to the Alliance and turn him into a dwarf or draenei, he'll have a Wintersaber without having gone through that much more tedious grind. Of course, I expect Blizzard to replace the Wintersaber grind with something much more palatable in Cataclysm, but still.
Future achievements I'm planning to earn are mostly related to raiding. Last night our guild attempted Algalon the Observer for the second time; we didn't really come close to success, but I feel like we'll get it either next time or the time after that. Starcaller Ascanius has a nice ring to it.
Once he's done, we're planning to finish off Glory of the Ulduar Raider; Ascanius only needs I Love The Smell Of Saronite In The Morning and One Light In The Darkness to earn his lovely Rusted Proto-Drake. I actually think it's the best-looking of all the raid reward mounts in the game, so I'm delighted that my preferred raid size matches up with my preferred reward in this instance! Of course, not everyone has earned the same achievements as I have; unfortunately our guild leader wasn't there when we finally earned Firefighter, so getting him that will be painful.
Then, of course, there's the Lich King. I honestly have no sense of how long it will take us to finally knock him down; even once they patch in the final 30% Strength of Wrynn buff, I expect we have a lot of work to do to nail the execution. Still, again, Ascanius the Kingslayer has a nice ring to it too!
I guess I'm fortunate that I have plenty of things left to do in the game. I still haven't been to the Ruby Sanctum, since I didn't raid last week. I'm really looking forward to the Operation: Gnomeregan and Zalazane's Fall events, whenever they become active (and I hope to have Mithridates to level 80 by that time). Then, of course, there's also the actual pre-Cataclysm events, which promise to outdo the excellent zombie plague event that preceded Wrath of the Lich King. I have my alts to work on - Mithridates is at level 74, my gnome warlock Burnadotte is at level 42, and I have my dwarf hunter Sigehelm at level 74 waiting for my wife to feel like playing her human mage again. I even have a dumbass night elf death knight bank alt, Khasemekhwy, if I feel like fucking around with a death knight some more.
Next time I post, I hope to have more to say about the information coming from Cataclysm testers. Let's hope Blizzard pushes some updates for mages or Engineering in the next beta patch!
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