TYI 4&5: greatest accomplishment & favorite title

Saz said we could do her “Through Your Interface” topics out of order, if we so desired, and these are the ones that popped out at me today.

4. Greatest Accomplishment
Proud of a boss kill? Excited about taming that rare? Over the moon about getting a title? Show us your greatest in game accomplishment!

5. Title of Choice
Show us an image of you pimping your favorite title and give us a reason why you dig it so much.

For me, these two things go together. They also dovetail quite nicely with this week’s Blog Azeroth Shared Topic from Ringo Flinthammer about “what keeps you coming back to Azeroth?”

One of the things I love about WoW, one of the things that keeps me logging in and playing with characters old and new, is the wealth of stories to explore and discover. Well, maybe not so much “discover” in the post-Shattering streamlined questing paradigm, but there are still all kinds of little out-of-the-way places (without related quests) to stumble upon while wandering about the world.

Although the Loremaster achievement debuted with Wrath of the Lich King, I didn’t start seriously thinking about doing it until Cataclysm was announced. Then, I realized that my time to experience Azeroth as it currently existed was limited. I cleaned up what I had left in Northrend and Outland first, then started working through Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms starting with the lowest level zones and progressing through them, as much as I was able, in the order that a leveling character might. Because I had leveled Kamalia mostly in Kalimdor, I had less to do there than in Eastern Kingdoms. I tried to read all the quest text carefully and thoughtfully, and I tried to stop and smell the roses along the way, but even so I would sometimes get to the end of a zone and feel like it had gone by in a blur.

I worked on Loremaster with Kamalia as a form of relaxation/distraction/procrastination from writing my dissertation. After I defended my thesis in early January of 2010, I gave myself a week off to complete my Loremaster achievement. My dissertation required serious, major revisions after my defense, and my committee didn’t finalize their approval of the document — and officially grant my degree — until May of 2010. The Real Life accomplishment of me earning my PhD and the Azeroth accomplishment of Kamalia earning her Loremaster title are therefore closely linked in my memories.

One of my current in-game goals is to experience the story of each post-Shattering zone with an at-level character. I’ve made an outline of different characters to play through different groups of zones — for example, playing through the Alliance experience of Kalimdor with a Night Elf but playing through the Alliance experience of Eastern Kingdoms with a Human for some zones and a Dwarf for others. Playing through all the zones with the same character, as I would need to do to get Loremaster again, would require frequent visits to Behsten or Slahtz to stay “at level” for each tier of zones. Doing Loremaster again would also require me to quest exhaustively through both Outland and Northrend again, and even with an Alliance character there’s only so much content that would actually be new to me. Becoming Loremaster, therefore, is probably something I will only ever do once.

Through Your Interface

1. Favorite Hangout
2. Player Housing
3. Representing You
4. Greatest Accomplishment
5. Title of Choice
6. Favorite Line of Poetry/Lyric
7. Screenshot of the Year
8. Vacation Spot
9. Your Character’s Hometown
10. Your WoW Crew
11. Profession of Choice
12. Inspiring Imagery
13. A Fond Memory
14. Place Swap
15. A Fairy-Tale Image