wow-achievements
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Guide to the Midsummer Fire Festival 2014
The Midsummer Fire Festival will run from Saturday, June 21 to Saturday, July 5 this year. As always, check your ingame calendar to determine the exact start and stop times for your server. While there aren't actually a lot of achievements associated with the Festival (the meta consists of only six), three of them require serious travel time, and one also requires a set of dangerous trips to enemy capitals. For the trouble, Alliance players are awarded the Flame Warden title, and Horde players Flame Keeper. If you're starting from scratch, this is definitely one of the more work-intensive holidays necessary for the completion of What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been. However, even a fresh character can afford to get all the rewards from holiday vendors if you're diligent about hitting all the holiday's fires, quests, and dailies. The basics of the holiday involve "honoring" or "desecrating" a series of fires across Azeroth and Outland. For convenience, we've listed all of the fires on each continent in a specific direction so you can reach them as efficiently as possible.
Get started collecting titles in WoW
In World of Warcraft's current content lull, you may find yourself wondering what to do once you finally hit level 90. You can, of course, quest, raid, or PvP to your heart's content, but what do you do when you get tired of running the same dungeons and battlegrounds? While you could -- and many do -- wander off to explore other games, a common answer to slow content times in WoW is to pick up collecting. While collecting isn't a primary game element, the game is full of things to collect -- and some of them even have achievements to be earned or special in-game collection interfaces. Sound like an interesting use of your WoW downtime? We're going to start off with some of our favorite time-consuming achievements -- all with cool titles to adorn your character -- that will definitely help you fill up the hours while waiting for Warlords of Draenor. And, of course, you get to customize your character with some awesome titles to boot.
Russian player unlocks every WoW achievement
Russian player Хируко has become the very first person to earn all 21,995 total achievement points possible in World of Warcraft. This human priest has filled out every single bar in every achievement category and has racked up 205 Feats of Strength along the way, as well. According to his own post on MMO-Champion, he managed to get the Realm First achievement for every single class to 90 on the same day by multi-boxing on a low-population PvP server while his guildies killed other players trying to out-level him. Perhaps not the kindest or most ethical manner of getting to the top but it certainly worked. In addition, he had to build a special PC rig in order to be able to run all 12 open screens simultaneously. Over at WoWProgress you can check out the achievement point leaderboards--currently Хируко is the only one to have all 21,995 points, however as of this writing there are five other players who are only 10 achievement points behind, and even more trailing only a few more achievements behind that. For serious achievement point collectors, the gauntlet has been thrown.
This dude unlocked all 2,057 WoW achievements
Think you're an MMO achievement master? Maybe so, but you could probably learn a thing or two about World of Warcraft from Хируко, a Russian player who has unlocked all of the game's currently achievable... achievements.
The most obscure Alliance Achievement in WoW
While most achievements in game are available to both factions, there are a few here and there that are limited to one faction only. Of these few, one is so obscure, so out of the way that most Alliance players don't even know of its existence, unless of course they've spent a lot of time carefully looking through their Achievements tab. But even then, there's no real direction or quest to discover this particular achievement. It's just there, hidden out of sight in the northern reaches of Darkshore. It's not often I tell people to go jump in a lake. But you're going to want to go jump in a lake for this one. Specifically, the Maw of the Void -- a swirling vortex of water unearthed with the Cataclysm. Upon discarding all sense of self-preservation and leaping forthwith into the water, you'll be treated to a short cutscene as your character is abruptly sucked under the water, the screen doing dark. And that's when things get really weird.
Wowhead Profiler tool updated with talents, glyphs
The Wowhead Profiler tool has now been updated to list talents and glyphs for characters, both in main and secondary specs. This is in addition to the massive amounts of information it already provides -- mount and pet tracking, transmog information, quest information and much more. I have to admit I hadn't given the Profiler much of a look until today, and I'm shocked at what I've found. Wowhead is known for its massive database of everything under the sun available to be found in World of Warcraft. Quests, achievements, items, NPCs, armor, pets, mounts, you name it -- if it exists in game, Wowhead has it listed. But the Profiler is a little different from Wowhead's usual style of database tracking. Players can look up their character, or other characters, and load them into the Profiler for an in-depth look at what that character has done, and what they've yet to accomplish. So how exactly is that useful? What makes the Profiler, in some cases, a better alternative than the armory?
To all the squirrels I've loved for achievement points
World of Warcraft certainly has a dizzying array of achievements in all shapes and sizes, covering quests, raids, and PvP. But some of the best achievements are the ones shuffled innocently away in the General section. You know, the ones that don't really fall into any category at all -- they simply involve general topics of interest. Things like mount or tabard collecting, getting a haircut, sampling different types of food and drink, or leveling several different classes to 90. Or, in one frankly bizarre case, chasing down dozens upon dozens of fuzzy little critters and hugging the daylights out of the little buggers. Azeroth is just full of critters wandering around -- some are collectable as Battle Pets, some are not. But while you're waiting for Warlords to come out, it might be time to dust off that Achievement pane and take a look at completing some of the more ... unique of Azeroth's general achievements.
Guide to the Midsummer Fire Festival 2013
The Midsummer Fire Festival will run from Friday, June 21 to Friday, July 5 this year. As always, check your ingame calendar to determine the exact start and stop times for your server. While there aren't actually a lot of achievements associated with the Festival (the meta consists of only six), three of them require serious travel time, and one also requires a set of dangerous trips to enemy capitals. For the trouble, Alliance players are awarded the Flame Warden title, and Horde players Flame Keeper. If you're starting from scratch, this is definitely one of the more work-intensive holidays necessary for the completion of What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been. However, even a fresh character can afford to get all the rewards from holiday vendors if you're diligent about hitting all the holiday's fires, quests, and dailies. The basics of the holiday involve "honoring" or "desecrating" a series of fires across Azeroth and Outland. For convenience, we've listed all of the fires on each continent in a specific direction so you can reach them as efficiently as possible. This year, Blizzard has updated the holiday boss' loot list with ilevel 480 cloaks and weapons and added a set of fires to Pandaria, but there aren't that many; you'll only have an additional 7 fires to honor and one to desecrate on the continent.
Patch 5.3 PTR: Collectors' achievements galore
Wowhead's Perculia has been as busy as ever cataloging the new achievements currently on the patch 5.3 PTR, putting together a comprehensive guide over at Wowhead. Do head over to check that out, but we're going to pull some of the more exciting ones out, with a focus on pets and mounts. WoW Insider also recently covered the new Gorgeous title, which comes from completing all the achievements in the new battleground, Deepwind Gorge. First up, for completing Raiding with Leashes II: Attunement Edition, collecting all 10 of the new pets which have been dropped into the old raids listed on the achievement, players are awarded yet another pet, Tito's Basket! In the same vein of pet-related achievements awarding yet more pets, the Brutal Pet Brawler achievement awards a Stunted Direhorn. Lastly, in the pet battles category, there's an achievement called The Longest Day, which, when you look at the tooltip, you'll realise is aptly named. Carrying out that mammoth task will award you a Marked Flawless Battle Stone, which can be used to boost any pet to Rare quality. What's more, mount collectors rejoice, because there's a new benchmark, 200 mounts, for which Mount Parade awards yet another mount, the Armored Dragonhawk, in blue for the Alliance and a fetching red for the Horde.
The OverAchiever: Guide to Children's Week 2013
Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. This week, the children are our future, and oh, how we hate them. In the aggregate, Children's Week is one of the most entertaining annual holidays. Dragging a small child with you around Azeroth's grand vistas and dangerous places is surprisingly fun ("I want to go to the Dark Portal." "Sure, why not?"), and it's a fairly immersive reminder that the planet's constant wars have almost certainly left a large population of orphans for each faction to rear. Also, getting a pet or the aptly-named Curmudgeon's Payoff is pretty cool too. But. (You knew the "but" was coming.) Unfortunately for all of you poor sods who still don't have School of Hard Knocks, that achievement still exists. I hated it so much that it was the sole remaining achievement between me and What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been for a year. With account-wide achievements, you no longer have to do it on multiple characters (and the whole system was worth it if for no other reason than that), but you'll still need it on one. Sorry, folks. Anyway, Children's Week 2013 runs from April 29 to May 6, and, as always, the achievements and the meta For The Children are part of the year-long What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been.
15 easy (and not so easy) achievements to work on while leveling
If you've played WoW for more than a half hour or so, chances are you've noticed the game's achievement system, which rewards you with (meaningless) points and sometimes more tangible rewards (like unique tabards or special titles) for doing certain things in the game. You'll find you get achievements for leveling, achievements for completing quests, achievements for picking up gold, achievements for leveling professions, there's even an achievement for visiting the barber's shop. We've gathered some achievements that are a bit more out of the way, but all of which you can either pick up or work on while you're leveling. They aren't all easy, but none of them require you to be level 90 and epiced out. So if you're leveling but are interested in upping your achievement game, give these a try. We've ranked them in what we think of as order of difficulty. If nothing else, they're a distraction from the leveling grind! 1. Duel-icious All you have to do here is duel another player and win. Any player -- even if they're much lower level than you are -- will do. We recommend asking a friend to duel with you, but you can request duels from anyone. Just remember to be polite about it rather than just going around challenging everyone in an area to duels!
The OverAchiever: Time zones, battle pets, and an achievement you probably don't know about
Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. This week, Allison desperately wishes to return to the days of "server time." Confession: This article was originally going to be about achievements you could get from unexpected places, because I thought it would be cool to run a column on the areas you pass by a lot without necessarily realizing there are points there for the taking. I'd worked all the way up to Wanderers, Dreamers, and You, which I've been meaning to do for a while but never got around to ... and then I hit a giant road block. Why? This achievement was one of those unintentionally affected by changes in patch 5.1 that altered event times for a lot of servers. Most players will probably remember when the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza disappeared for a few months while Blizzard tried to figure out a way to square it with Cross-Realm Zones. The Fishing Extravaganza returned alongside a new system that standardized most event times across servers in an effort to simplify what was happening and when. The Wanderer's Festival was one of the affected events. After spending hours trying to track down and confirm the event time schedule for servers across the European, North American, and Oceanic servers, I decided it probably merits an article all to itself because the Wowhead thread is a giant rat's nest of conflicting and outdated information. Also, it's not enough to be there while the festival is actually happening, and if you don't get there early, you probably won't have a shot at a battle pet you can't get anywhere else. I am not too proud to admit I need help with this one.
The OverAchiever: Guide to Noblegarden 2013
Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. This week, bunnies take over the world. Time to get sick on candy again, folks! That seems to be a running theme with WoW holidays. Noblegarden will run this year from Monday, April 1 until Monday, April 8. As always, check your server's in-game calendar for the exact start and stop times. If you've never done Noblegarden before, or only done its pre-2009 version, be aware that Noble Gardener (the holiday's meta) is part of the year-long What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been achievement. Last year, the Swift Springstrider was added to holiday vendors at the fairly steep cost of 500 Noblegarden chocolate. This year, we haven't seen anything new datamined, but Noblegarden did hit the patch 5.2 PTR in mid-February, so you never know.
The OverAchiever: The game's 13 vanished titles
Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. This week, we rue the lack of High Poobah among the game's honorifics. An interesting question in the Tanking forum about a month back spurred an article for readers here about which title they find most reassuring on a fellow player. The discussion that ensued was a reminder that you can't get some of the more popular picks anymore, and just why they meant -- and continue to mean -- something in the first place. Sad to say, these titles are no longer accessible, unless you manage to find some far-flung server at the end of the universe where no one's bothered to kill Sartharion at all.
Breakfast Topic: What really feels like an achievement?
Achievements are everywhere in WoW these days. There are achievements for collecting mounts, achievements for doing quests, achievements for exploring zones, achievements for completing dungeons... and that's only scratching the surface. How many of you remember the good (or not so good) old days before achievements popped on to our screens to let us know we'd done something noteworthy? Back then it was up to us to decide what was considered a noteworthy achievement and instead of doing them for rewards, we did them just to prove we could. Though it's a lot of fun to work towards achievements, I've got to wonder if we're missing out on deciding for ourselves what's important in the game -- what really constitutes an achievement. Accidentally stumbling into an achievement for exploring a zone, for example, doesn't really feel like I've accomplished anything important. But still, I've got the achievement, just like I'd get if I killed the baddest beast in the land. And sometimes when I do things that I think are really epic, like soloing a dungeon or keeping a raid alive when I'm the only healer left, there's no achievement to mark my accomplishment. So I put the question to you, dear readers: what World of Warcraft achievements really feel like achievements? And what non-achievements really ought to be achievements?
Guildox ranks achievements and titles
GuildOx just launched a new feature on their website: Popular Achievements and Popular Titles Rankings. This feature does exactly what it says on the tin -- provides information on the game's most popular achievements and titles. This feature makes really interesting reading, and GuildOx have gone to some length to ensure the data is accurate, saying that they have used their Character Database and filtered out alts using their alt detection. WoW Insider could spend all day drawing interesting conclusions from the database, for example, the highest ranked holiday achievement title is The Hallowed, so that could mean the requirements make it the easiest to get, or that people just really love Hallow's End. In a similar vein, more players have the Arathi Basin Victory achievement and the Alterac Valley Victory achievement than have the Warsong Gulch Victory one. Why is that? Of course, this feature can't answer that question, but it's fun to speculate! And while you're over at GuildOx, don't forget to check out their popular mounts and pets databases -- see where yours rank!
Guide to Love is in the Air 2013
Love is in the Air returns this year from Sunday, Feb. 10 through Saturday, Feb. 23. As always, check your game calendar for your server's specific start and end times. After many tweaks over the years, the holiday's become one of the less annoying and RNG-riddled outings from the What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been meta. However, last year's version added a pretty grind-intensive mount to the holiday rewards, so if you're starting fresh and want the meta and the mount, be prepared for a lot of work. Before you ask -- yep, it's required if you're still on the warpath for your Violet Proto-Drake. The finished holiday meta will also reward the title the Love Fool. If you're completely new to Love Is In the Air, you'll probably want to read our FAQ on the holiday. Otherwise, we'll be dealing with the holiday achievements here. There are only two optional ones if you're going for the meta, so I've listed all the ones you'll need first.
The OverAchiever: Guide to Lunar Festival 2013 achievements
Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. This week, the Fed-Ex quest from hell. This year, the Lunar Festival runs from Sunday, Jan. 27 to Saturday, Feb. 9. (As always, check your game calendar for specific start and stop times for your server.) On a very important note, this year cuts the length of the holiday from three to two weeks, so if you're a new player or you're starting a fresh character, you won't have as much time as you usually do to get everything done. I think Blizzard limited it so as not to clash with Love Is In the Air, which begins Sunday, Feb. 10. If you're new to the Lunar Festival, the holiday mostly revolves around involve talking to a number of elders in order to honor them, receiving Coins of Ancestry in return, and then using the coins to purchase holiday items, including clothing and pets. The To Honor One's Elders meta-achievement is also a requirement for What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been, so if you're still after a Violet Proto-Drake, make sure you get this done. The Lunar Festival is definitely not one of Azeroth's more difficult holidays, but it's time-consuming if you need all the NPCs. However, it's also a good time to do other travel-intensive achievements like World Explorer.
Holiday replayability and the Fed-Ex quests from hell
Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. This week, get off our lawn. One of the things I think about while revising and updating the holiday guides is that the audience for them is doomed to get smaller over time. It's reasonable to expect that, because people don't need the guides after they finish doing the events on characters they care about, and there's generally a few years between Blizzard's major updates. However, with the introduction of account-wide achievements, pets, and mounts, the replayability of holidays has probably suffered a bit. That doesn't mean that the content's not enjoyable, just that each successive character derives less reward from it. This is a particularly acute problem with the approaching Lunar Festival and how one element gets a lot more onerous as the game continues to expand.
The OverAchiever: Guide to Winter Veil 2012
'Tis the season! Winter Veil 2012 runs from Saturday, Dec. 15 through Tuesday, Jan. 2 this year. As with most of the WoW holidays, the Merrymaker meta is required for What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been. Those of you who are still on the lookout for your Violet Proto-Drakes will want to keep an eye out for any achievements you still need. Even if you don't want or don't need any achievements, Winter Veil also gives you the opportunity to turn your mount into a reindeer, become a snowman with a unique dance animation, and get noncombat pets and unique holiday items. This is also the only time of year where pets like Father Winter's Helper won't disappear with an excuse over how busy they are making toys, so if you want to run around for an extended time with gnomes dressed in Santa outfits, seize the day. As always, I'll be up as the holiday goes live to make necessary additions or corrections to the guide, but we're not anticipating any major changes to Winter Veil this year.
