For the first time, I’ve worked towards an achievement, and now have a title: ‘The Hallowed”.   I’ve known for a long time that completing a series of holiday achievements led to a special award of a mount, but it’s only recently that I’ve even looked at the achievement list to see what was required.

For those that don’t play or that didn’t know, achievements were brought into World of Warcraft a couple of years ago.   When you complete certain things (such as reaching level 6o, or falling a certain distance without dying, or learning lots of recipes) there’s a noise and a sign comes up, and your achievement can be seen in guild chat and by the people around you.  I heap scorn on these pointless “achievements”.  And yet, I feel a slight thrill when I hear that noise and the sign comes up, as if I’d just won my 10p back on a fruit machine.

A few of the achievements do actually lead to a bigger reward than that, such a title.  There are some meta-achievements, which involved completing a series of other series of achievements (yes, I did mean to say that, but couldn’t think of a better way to do it).  A biggie is achievement “What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been”, which is awarded once you’ve completed a series of holiday achievements (which are themselves made up of lesser achievements.  Phew).  It’s a biggie, because you get an actual sooper dooper mount as a reward, and according to what I’ve read, ownership of that mount will now grant the riding skill for it (meaning that you get free uber riding skill, instead of paying thousands of gold).

I was edging myself mentally towards doing this achievement at Brewfest, but didn’t really set my mind to it and ended up completing all but the “Brew of the month” achievement.  So the earliest I could finish the Long Strange Trip achievement would be by next September.  And meanwhile, I’ll have to log in and get the achievements for all the festivals in between.

Which means, of course, that I will have to pay a sub every time a festival comes up.  Clever, eh?  I’ve always been a very casual player, sometimes subscribing for months at a time, but more often just purchasing the odd month here and there.  Now that I’ve started working towards the mount, I know that any time I miss a festival I’ll be extending the time until I get it.   Now that I think of it, it’s a fiendishly clever marketing strategy.

Actually getting the achievement this month was a bit of a grind – something I was trying to avoid.   I had to log in to my “main” character every hour when I could, to talk to an innkeeper.   I queued for the Headless Horseman every day.  I did the quests up in Southshore and Tirisfal.  I went round a list of inns, collecting sweeties from candy pumpkins.

That was the part that I thought would be the most boring.  But it wasn’t.  For a start, I could do other things while flying between inns.  But most of all, I know that Azeroth is going to change, come Cataclysm, and there was something nostalgic and bittersweet about revisiting my old haunts – this time with good graphics!   I think I had forgotten just how big the world is.   My warlock was one of my very first characters, all those years ago, and I found that some of the world had changed even since my last visit.  The butcher, Dirk, in Gadgetzan seemed pleased to see me again and had a quest for me.  I found that I’d explored all of Stonetalon mountains except the part with the Alliance inn.   It was early days back then and I had no idea how to get there, so had approached from the Barrens, trying to avoid a horde outpost.   Theramore was no longer the scary, questless bleakness that I had run through with my level 20 warlock on one of her class quests (another thing of the past).  Oh, how I remember arriving in the Barrens and seeing huge dinosaurs for the first time!  Then later, looking for the flight path in Ratchet, without success (there wasn’t one).   Then sneaking past a horde outpost (as per usual) to get to Ashenvale, not realising that it could be approached from Darkshore.    It was a pain travelling in those days, and I never had any money, and was clueless.  But the sense of adventure and exploration was unbeatable.

Of course, I’ve been levelling a shaman so have been returning to old haunts anyway.  But somehow it was different going back with my little warlock, the first of my characters to explore those dangerous, difficult areas.  Goodbye Old Azeroth.  You will be remembered fondly.