The addition of a whole new horde of Cataclysm requirements to the Loremaster achievement may have put a delay on my acquisition of that title, but an ongoing glitch (or at least, what I assume to be one) makes the related Seeker title easily within grasp for anyone who has not yet earned it.
I found out via fluke. Throughout my Loremaster-seeking adventures, you see, I had also been tracking the Seeker achievement. I knew that at some point on that journey as I worked my way through Outland, I would hit the 3,000 quests mark. So, I thought it’d be nice to see the number slowly creep toward the goal.
I was only a couple hundred quests away from that goal when the Shattering hit. I already had earned my Loremaster of Kalimdor and Loremaster of Eastern Kingdoms achievements, so thankfully I didn’t have to worry about those getting sidetracked by the hundreds of quests removed in that patch. But my Seeker questing record, on the other hand, plummeted by about 1,000 quests. Ouch.
But the pain was temporary. As I checked out the Shattered world and reveled in the new questing opportunities, an interesting thing happened. I happened to glance at the tracking sidebar, and noticed that it had gone back to its previous number, and was correctly increasing as I completed new quests.
The next time I logged in, the number had dropped again to the total that did not include quests removed from the game. But sure enough, as soon as I turned in a single quest, the number hiked back up again.
It wasn’t long before I was at 2,999 quest count while checking out the new Badlands, and I held my breath as I turned in my latest quest. I was in luck that day. The achievement flashed across my screen, words of congratulations went up in guild chat, and the tracking for that achievement automatically disappeared from the sidebar.
Was it a glitch, I wondered, so I looked into it a bit. Many commenters on WoWhead have experienced the same phenomenon. Whether it be intentional or not (I would guess not simply because of the number switching back and forth upon logout), it appears to still be in-game now.
So for anyone else who felt robbed of progress on their Loremaster of Eastern Kingdoms or Kalimdor achievements post-Shattering, at least here’s one achievement for which you still get the credit of previous questing. Let’s see if it sticks, or if this is something only temporary.