Back in June, with the summer hiatus of the instance group looming, I embarked on a project. I was going to finish up quests in Azeroth in pursuit of the Loremaster achievement. And I was going to attempt to do it with characters that were at the appropriate level for the zones being run.
The first big effort for the achievement was the 1-60 game in Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms. That meant getting the quests achievement from all the zones in the old world, which includes some content from The Burning Crusade as well as the whole Cataclysm revamp.
Azeroth – The Burning Crusade time frame
I had a few zones done already, thanks to the alts we rolled up when Cataclysm hit, but a lot of the zones were still there waiting for me. So I rolled up a couple of new characters, as well as reviving a couple more old ones who had been languishing, and set out. The results were covered in a series of posts charting my progress across Azeroth.
- Ashenvale and the Stonetalon Mountains
- Desolace, Feralas, and Thousand Needles
- Felwood and Un’goro Crater
- Winterspring, Swamp of Sorrows, and The Blasted Lands
- The Cape of Stranglethorn
- Wrapping Up the Eastern Kingdoms
- Bloodmyst Isle – The Worst Zone in WoW
The old world took from mid-June until early August to complete. It also left me with three characters (out of the five I used for various parts of the achievement) set up to head into the meat of the content from The Burning Crusade, Outland.
Here I had a couple of zones finished off. I only ran bits of Hellfire Peninsula with my rogue Trianis in order to gear up a bit because I already had the achievement. I was also able to skip Zangarmarsh, having wrapped that zone up ages ago. That left me with five zones and 434 quests to finish off Outland.
- Terokkar Forest 62-65 – 63 quests
- Nagrand 64-67 – 75 quests
- Blade’s Edge Mountains 65-68 – 86 quests
- Netherstorm 66-70 – 120 quests
- Shadowmoon Valley 67-70 – 90 quests
First up was Terokkar Forest, which went smoothly enough up until about 50 quests, when they dried up rapidly. I sat for a while just two quests shy of the achievement before finally finding a couple of Shattrath related quest chains to finish off the zone. But then came Nagrand. To finish that up meant doing a set of group quests, then getting to level 70 and following a quest chain in from Shadowmoon Valley to wrap up the achievement.
So I left Nagrand empty handed and headed to the next zone on the list, the Blade’s Edge Mountains. There I found myself wondering how we did some of these zones back in the day. Doing the quests, at level, with a flying mount turned into a considerable chore, so the idea of doing them all with a ground mount seemed insane. Eventually the zone ground me down and I left it unfinished.
But I got to kill a lot of ogres
That was about the end of things. It was September by that point and I found other distractions. I binged on Pokemon for a while, finishing up Pokemon Y, Pokemon White, and Pokemon White Version 2, which got me set for the upcoming release of Pokemon Alpha Ruby & Omega Sapphire.
In Azeroth I finally got my nether ray mounts and worked on pet battles a bit. Then WoW 6.0 dropped and it was time to start thinking about that and the expansion, with Brewfest and Hallow’s End in there along the way.
And I did not totally give up on the Loremaster achievement. Having played my rogue through to level 68 or so in a short period of time, I started to like the class. I sent him out to Shadowmoon Valley for a while, but then decided to see if I could run him up into Pandaria before Warlords of Draenor hit. He is now level 76, running quests in the Grizzly Hills, and using Dungeon Finder to speed things up.
So I did not make it to Loremaster, and there is little chance I will do so before the expansion drops. I just don’t have the inclination at the moment and there are other things to do now. But I made some headway, and after we have returned to Draenor and fought the Iron Horde, I may once again pick up the task. This is what I have remaining on the list of zones I started with, plus whatever Warlords of Draenor brings us.
Outland Achievements
- Nagrand 64-67 – 75 quests
- Blade’s Edge Mountains 65-68 – 86 quests
- Netherstorm 66-70 – 120 quests
- Shadowmoon Valley 67-70 – 90 quests
Northrend Achievements
- Grizzly Hills 73-75 – 85 quests
- Zul’Drak 73-77 – 100 quests
- Sholazar Basin* 75-80 – 75 quests
- Icecrown 77-80 – 140 quests
- The Storm Peaks 77-80 – 100 quests
Cataclysm Achievements
- Mount Hyjal 80-82 – 115 quests
- Vashj’ir 80-82 – 130 quests
- Deepholm 82-83 – 110 quests
- Uldum 83-84 – 105 quests
- Twilight Highlands 84-85 – 120 quests
The Ancient Gaming Noob 