Well then, this article is insanely overdue.  I mean seriously past self, what the hell were you doing for two weeks?  Oh that’s right, I was farming achievements like there was no tomorrow. Wait a second… there is no tomorrow!

If you’ve been stuck under a rock without internet connection for the past few weeks it may have slipped by you that today (Writing at 3:40 AM ftw!) is supposedly the day Azeroth gets a facelift. With the Shattering comes a plethora of changes, some good, and some.. debated upon. Many a raider could be seen today clearing as many instances as possible for titles, mounts, achievements, and anything else they could get their paranoid hands on before the entire world changed before them. These people of course knew about The Shattering and its imminent forthcoming….  I was not one of these people, and it has just now dawned upon me that my dormitory is in fact under a rock without internet connection. Seriously though, I FLIPPED OUT when one of my guildies casually talked about how patch 4.0.3 is supposedly being released today. Maybe not to this extent but damn near close.

The reason being is I had a plan, this Thanksgiving Break I was going to rock out all of the goals I had set for myself before the expansion, a sort of Pre-Cata Bucket List, if you will.  That plan was shortened down to one day’s worth of gaming, and man was it NUTS.  Here’s a short version of what my goals were:

• Obtain Exalted Reputation with the Zandalar Tribe – Zul’Gurub will no longer exist come Cataclysm, so this Achievement will become a Feat of Strength.
• Acquire A Mount from Zul’Gurub – ZG drops two extremely rare mounts, a Tiger and Raptor, from each boss based upon that animal.  People from Vanilla WoW still to this day don’t have these.
• Gain the “Champion of the Frozen Wastes” Title – Earned by defeating every WoWLK Boss (Pre-Ulduar Patch) including Malygos, Kel’Thuzzad, all of the Heroic Instances, and more.
• Earn “Glory of the Hero” Achievement and Red Proto Drake Reward – Acquired via completing an assortment of Heroic Achievements, some of which are just based upon sheer luck.
• Defeat Both 10 Man and 25 Man Triple Drake Runs in Obsidian Sanctum –  Done by killing Sartharion with all 3 of his cohorts still alive, earning players “Of the Nightfall” and “Twilight Vanquisher” titles depending on if it is the 10 or 25 man version of the raid.
• Kill Arthas and Obtain the Title “The Kingslayer” – Taking down the Big Man on Northrend is going to require a big time investment in gaining gear and knowledge of the encounters within Icecrown Citadel.  Time being something I clearly don’t have a lot of.

Well, as you can probably guess with just one day left, finishing all of these goals would be impossible.  At first I was depressed, legitimately down that I had failed to finish nearly all of my self-imposed goals.  Then, not just one, but two miracles occurred. To begin, as it turned out I only needed to complete one more Achievement to obtain “Glory of the Hero”.  All I had to do was kill one last boss in Heroic Violet Hold, an instance where the bosses you face are chosen at total random.  For the past 3 weeks I had completed the instance almost every single day possible and never once even fought this final obstacle.  Then today, on this final day, I faced him and was victorious!  I had obtained Glory of the Hero!

Afterwards, to make things even better I managed to form up a group to take down Kel’Thuzzad, the only thing standing between myself and “Champion of the Frozen Wastes”.  Even better was the addition of an orb that can warp your raid almost straight to him, saving hours of time!  I’m still not sure if some blessed GM overheard my obnoxious QQing in guild chat or if my “Kendal Luck” (TM) just so happened to show itself today but I must say I got damn lucky.

Taking a look back at my list and comparing it with what I have done now, all that remains are three things.

• Acquire One of the Mounts from Zul’Gurub
• Defeat 25 Man Triple Drake Run in Obsidian Sanctum
• Kill Arthas and Obtain the Title “The Kingslayer”

As it turns out, from a reliable source who shall remain anonymous (yes I realize those two adjectives tend to be mutually exclusive), both of the titles “Twilight Vanquisher” and “The Kingslayer” will in fact remain in the game Post-Cataclysm.  The only titles being removed are “The Undying”, “The Immortal”, “Champion of Ulduar”, and “Conqueror of Ulduar”, all of which require that at no point during any of the boss encounters in each raid, 10 man or 25 man depending, can anyone die.

So, it appears the only thing I’ll never be able to accomplish is getting one of the Zul’Gurub mounts.  Still, given everything I’ve gotten done in the past month, going from a mere 1000 Achievement points to almost 4000, I really can’t complain.  That, and I certainly can’t take all of the credit.  I know a lot of people, far too many to name in one blog post, put their own goals and interests on the backburner to help me accomplish mine.  So to those people I say thank you, you’ve truly made my return to WoW one of the most fun, if not a little bit insane, months of gaming I’ve ever had.

Quick Update: Its official, The Shattering has come!