Loremaster achievement changes coming with Cataclysm
by Daniel Whitcomb 
Nov 22nd 2010 at 9:00AM
That said, it will be a little bit easier to get those Loremaster achievements come The Shattering. Instead of having one huge quest counter for each continent, patch 4.0.3a will introduce zone-specific quest achievements to the old world, similar to the ones that already exist for Outland and Northrend zones. Once you finish the zone-specific achievements for every zone on a given continent (minus the new Cataclysm zones, of course), you'll have the achievement. Even old-school Loremasters can get in on the action, as the zone quest achievements will still be available for them to complete.
While Zarhym didn't specifically outline it in his post, Loremaster of Cataclysm will be required for future Loremasters as well, although it's not clear whether that will start to be a requirement in patch 4.0.3a or at the launch of Cataclysm itself.
Filed under: News items, Achievements, Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Sagacyte Nov 21st 2010 11:38PM
I'm guessing it's a given, but will current Loremasters automatically get the zone achieves? If they have done the appropiate number, that is?
alpha5099 Nov 22nd 2010 12:08AM
"Even old-school Loremasters can get in on the action, as the zone quest achievements will still be available for them to complete."
Yeah, that's my question as well. I assume it probably depends on the zone. I don't think you're just going to automatically get all the zone achievements, so if you managed to avoid certain zones while doing Loremaster (I know I avoided the Badlands for instance), you'd still have those achievements to do.
And there are going to just be zones that are so overhauled that even though you did quest there extensively, so many of the quests you did before were removed that you'll still need to do quests to fill out the achievement.
And I know I used a fair amount of dungeon quests to finish up Loremaster, but dungeon quests don't count toward zone-specific achievements, so you may again find some gaps where you did a lot in Dire Maul but none of that counts toward Feralas, for instance.
thegatherer Nov 22nd 2010 9:20AM
I will try to answer your question with an educated guess..
I think what happened is that in vanilla, the quests were either tagged as being on either of the two continents or in a giant database of quests for each continent. When BC came out...for some reason, the developers decided to have the tags reference individual zones/have quest databases for all the zones, and the same for wrath.
It would have been too much work to make the quests tagged/be in a database for each zone without a huge revamp of all the quests in old azeroth.....which is what the cataclysm is all about...revamping azeroth.
TR;DL: I don't think you will automatically get the zone quest achievements because the quests you have completed were tagged for continents, not individual zones. You may have partial credit for zones, or complete credit for some zones, but you will not get all the achievements.
Kurash Nov 22nd 2010 10:14AM
Judging from how it is phrased, Loremasters who have already completed the pre-4.0 achievements will keep their titles, but will NOT automatically have the new zone-wide quest achievements.
That is, you will still be The Loremaster -- maybe even "of the Eastern Kingdoms" or "Kalimdor" -- but you will still be able to work toward, say, "Loremaster of Arathi Highlands" or whichever if you want to.
Starlin Nov 22nd 2010 10:49AM
I have a toon I transferred to the ptr that had over 3500 quests completed. Loremaster and then some. I'm totally OCD about doing quests. On the ptr he had just over 2200 completed. None of the zone achievements had more than 10 quests completed. There were yellow "!" everywhere. I did one quest and was awarded the Seeker title again.
Now I'm not sure all data transferred. Hopefully the quest tally that I worked on for so long isn't reduced, but it's not looking good.
(cutaia) Nov 22nd 2010 11:23AM
Yeah...Starlin has it right. You will have the meta-achievements earned and you will definitely keep your title, but you will seemingly need to go back into zones to "re-finish" them if you want their respective achievements.
You'll still have credit for any quest IDs that still exist, though. So, in Westfall, for example, you might have credit for all the Westfall Stews and Kill 10 Defias type quests that still exist...but you won't have credit for all the completely brand new quests. So, you'll likely start with 10/35 or something similar.
Thundrcrackr Nov 22nd 2010 12:07PM
But what if existing loremasters have done every quest in every zone already?
Will there be enough NEW quests in each zone for us to be able to go back and get the new zone-specific achievements?? Or will we be SoL?
For example, say a zone has 100 quests, i've already done them all, cataclysm removes 30 old ones and adds 30 new ones in their place, but the requirement for the zone-specific achieve is 50. I then wouldn't be able to get the new achieve unless old quests i already did there count toward it, because there would only be 30 new ones for me to do.
Sagacyte Nov 22nd 2010 12:28PM
This.
Maybe it's me but wouldn't a Loremaster already have probably completed the requirements for most "complete x quest in y zone"? I mean, I remember it was kind of a nightmare to find more quests.
Sure, old quests removed would lower our amount of "x quests completed", but... don't mind me, remembering the nightmare that was finding all those questss.
At least this new quest-hunting will give us something nice to do until cataclysm goes live. :)
Skarn Nov 22nd 2010 2:39PM
In short, when Cataclysm goes live (or 4.0.3a, probably) if you have done enough quests in a zone to get the zone achievement, you will be awarded it immediately. If you have not done enough quests, you won't get it, but you can go out and do quests to fix that.
The Loremaster meta does NOT automatically give you all the lower achievements. You'll have to go earn those yourself. I didn't get Loremaster and when I copied my hunter over to beta the only zone achievement I got was Silithus. I didn't have more than 5 quests done in any of the rest of the achievements. Pretty scary. Or on the other hand, pretty awesome! That's a lot of new quests to do! A Loremaster will certainly be better off, but you'll definitely need to do some questing to get all the new zone achievements.
"For example, say a zone has 100 quests, i've already done them all, cataclysm removes 30 old ones and adds 30 new ones in their place, but the requirement for the zone-specific achieve is 50. I then wouldn't be able to get the new achieve unless old quests i already did there count toward it, because there would only be 30 new ones for me to do."
Old quests that are still in the game count. In your example, since your total dropped to 70 and the achievement only requires 50, you would automatically get that zone achievement. Now if you'd lost 60 quests you would have to go out and do 10 of the new ones to get back up to 50.
Bamsen Nov 21st 2010 11:55PM
Requiring a minimum amount of quests in each zone does not make it easier. In fact, it probably makes it harder. Right now you are free to choose from all quests in each of Eastern Kingdom and Kalimdor. With the upcoming changes, you have less freedom in which quests you decide to do.
But it will probably not make a huge difference. That depends entirely on how many quests are required for each zone and how many "surplus" quests there are.
Psychologically, it may feel easier though since it's nice to know when you have completed a zone with respect to the achievement.
alpha5099 Nov 22nd 2010 12:15AM
That strikes me as largely an illusion of freedom though. I know for a fact that the Old World Loremaster achievements were quite a bit harder to do, and I think that has a lot to do with how much better it is in Outland and Northrend with their zone-specific sub-achievements.
If you have ten quests left in all of Kalimdor, you might need to look over the quest offerings for the whole continent to figure out what more you can do. If, however, you know for a fact it's ten quests in Felwood that are holding you back, that goes a very long way to making it easier to get the achievement done.
Add to that that in my experience that the number of quests needed for the zone achievements is usually set at a pretty reasonable level. You'll need to really dedicate yourself to questing in a zone, but you'll by no means need to track down every single quest in the whole zone to get the achievement. I generally finished up the Northrend and Outland achievements with several questlines still in progress.
Finally, I beloeve the total number of quests required for Loremaster of EK and Kalimdor are being lowered for both Alliance and Horde, so again, this will be easier to manage post-Cataclysm.
Nopunin10did Nov 22nd 2010 10:03AM
While it doesn't make it "easier" in the overall effort needed to complete the achievement (as we'll have to do more quests now), it certainly makes it more manageable.
Old Loremaster was hard for the wrong reasons, namely that it was a pain in the butt to keep track of which quests you might be missing where. Blizzard had to provide API support to make it even reasonable to complete (by allowing addons to query all quests you'd completed).
And don't kid yourself; having a certain number to do on a given continent did /not/ give more choice as to where you could quest. The number required still entailed doing nearly every single quest in every single zone.
I look forward to doing Loremaster post 4.0.3a. I would have hated making myself do it the old way.
Nopunin10did Nov 22nd 2010 10:04AM
correction:
We'll have to do more quests now overall, with the cataclysm zones now part of the achievement.
Aubrey Nov 22nd 2010 4:11PM
I feel like adding that I got Loremaster a while ago, and at the time I got loremaster of Eastern Kingdoms, as Alliance, I completely skipped Stranglethorn Vale, as I was hated with the goblins. Of course I had done the kill some pirates, kill some zombies and a bunch of animal quests while leveling, but I still skipped 20+ quests, and I had alot of quests left to choose from. Kalimdor was harder of course, but had the new system been in place, I wouldn't have gotten my achievement the way I did.
(I had to grind back goblin rep for Mudsprocket, Gadgetzan and Ratchet when I switched continent of course)
Marzim Nov 22nd 2010 9:20AM
Sweet! I was wondering if there would be anything for us old loremasters to do :D
Randy* Nov 22nd 2010 9:22AM
I spent most of the weekend playing time on the PTR looking around Desolace. There are some really cool quests there that help with Cenarion Circle rep and a nice chain that involves reuniting the centaur clans. Suddenly, I was given the Desolace Quest Achievement (55 quests completed). Cool. I was wearing my Loremaster Tabard at the time since my guild tabard was blank.
Later, I looked on MMO-Champion and found a list of the zones and the requirements.
I found Loremaster of Northrend and Outland to be so much easier. As stated above, if you were shy on something, you knew which zone by looking at your achievements. Even if I was halfway through a chain, as soon as I got that DING!, I could go on to the next zone (at this point, I was after the achievement, not leveling).
And as soon as I'm finished leveling to 85, I think I might go get those individual achievements.
Defoe Nov 22nd 2010 9:44AM
Id love to know if "The Seeker" achievement is going to be revised upwards in cataclysm for those who dont already have it. If the quest number stays at 3k then I can see it becoming a common as Jenkins a few weeks after Cataclysm has been released.
Im 2530/3000 towards it, and wont make it before the shattering unfortunately, but would like to get it at a later date.
hicks Nov 22nd 2010 10:04AM
I haven't seen any 4000 or 5000 quests completed on the beta, but I haven't been on in weeks, they may have patched it. As it is, 3000 completed still gets you The Seeker.
Sinthar Nov 22nd 2010 10:08AM
Aye this - or even if there is going to be an upgraded version 'Questor' or 'ODC sufferer' :)
As someone who has completed over 5.5k quests so far (according to the stats page) Im wondering if those of us who try to complete every quest will be thrown something - something similar to The insane - but quest related
Amak Nov 22nd 2010 10:23AM
It is OCD! They must be in the right order!