How to end an expansion on a high note

As of about 8 hours ago, hordes and alliances of WoW players (seewhatIdidthere?) ventured forth to begin the quest(s) to 85 for the first time on live servers. I happened to log on at 6:45AM, about 4 hours after launch here stateside, and at least half of the 23 people on from my guild were already 81, with 2 being 82. I only had enough time to train for Illustrious Grand Master in all of my professions and pick up Archaeology, for I did not have today off of work. That’s ok, though, because I have Mondays off for the remainder of the year. 🙂

Yesterday, I managed to accomplish 2 goals I had set before Cataclysm officially befell us. Despite the fact I had told my friends I was not going to do any of the new quests in Kalimdor or Eastern Kingdoms until I could fly, I found that even on a mere epic ground mount I was able to blaze through quests at lightning speed. I managed to complete all but 2 zones worth of quests in Kalimdor, which put me at a nice even 10000 achievement points. Had there not been a reduction of points with the Shattering 2 weeks ago, I would’ve had this number cleared sooner. Of course, said reduction in points was due to several achievements converting to feats of strength. I would have gotten all of Kalimdor’s quests done and probably a fair portion of EK had I not decided to beat my head against the RNG wall that is fishing achievements; I managed a new sea turtle mount but that was the only achievement I managed out of a good 15-20 hours fishing over the past week and a half.

Oh, did I mention there were 2 goals? During the last 2 weeks, there has been a flurry of people/groups gunning for Herald of the Titans, where you basically defeat Algalon in 10 man Ulduar using the proper level gear from the time. A trio of guildies got in a group that started working on the achievement several weeks ago, and they managed to get the title this past Wednesday. I had messaged the leader of that group (not a guildie of mine) to pull me in if there was room, which there wasn’t. Friday, one of my Real ID friends messages me while I’m on an alt, stating one of my guild’s officers was looking for me. I don’t get messages like that unless it something with a degree of seriousness, so I put my serious face on and hopped over to my main. Turns out said officer was in another Herald group that I was unaware of, and that group had a healer that had quit/transferred/etc., and they wanted to know if I still had my gear set. Despite the fact my Herald set was tailor made for elemental, I managed to bastardize it enough to make a half decent resto set of it. We then proceeded to make a couple of pulls, one of which we got to 25%, before my officer and I had to jet out for more attempts on HLK 25 (which we did not get mainly due to the Internet Monster devouring random people’s connections). We came in last night and by 10 PM server (a mere 5 hours before Cata went live here), we came through with the title. Sadly, in my haste and excitement, I didn’t get a screenshot although we did take a group pic. Oops. 😛

After weeks of wiping on HLK 25, ending WotLK with Herald and 10k achievement points feels pretty good. Now it’s on to 85 and all of the new and exciting events/raids/etc. that Cata has to offer. I’m looking forward to hopping on later today after work with a couple of my buddies as we smash face through Hyjal/Vashj’ir (thinking we will run Hyjal first) and have a great time in doing so. As much as I’m a sucker for achievements and feats of strength, I’m more than happy to concede all of the realm first shenanigans. To those seeking them, though, good luck and have fun, and see everyone at 85!