Of Add-ons and Achievements

Now that spring break is here, I can spend even more time doing achievements! I, for one, am really glad they implemented the achievement system. While I do hate the "e-peen enhancing" aspect it came with, it actually gives me more reasons to spend time on my main character.

However, being somewhat of a completionist, it can be more of a detriment to my sanity than anything else. An example would be the 'Ambassador' achievement. I already had both Orgrimmar and Darkspear Trolls at exalted (I love the mounts), and my reputation for Thunderbluff was around 1-2k from exalted. Undercity and Silvermoon City were both sitting around 8/21k to exalted.

Being somewhat OCD, I decided to spend the weekend completing all of the lowbie quests for Blood Elves and Undead:

For now my little green chicken will have to do. For the past seven days I've consistently been soloing Anzu in Heroic Sethekk Halls for the Reigns of the Raven Lord (thanks to Myze of 'Leader of the Pack' for the awesome guide on how to solo this boss!). No luck thus far, but a guildy of mine got TWO to drop within 49 consecutive runs, so I'm a bit hopeful. The worst that could happen is that it'll take me a full 100 runs to get it to drop...

Three months isn't SO bad... right?

Along with my Ambassador title, I've been working on the 'Loremaster' (or as I call it 'Lolmaster') title. I've finished 'Loremaster of Outland', and I've done every zone in Northrend except for Icecrown (currently 9/140 quests). As far as Azeroth goes:

Eastern Kingdoms: 310/550
Kalimdor: 430/685

I've still got a ways to go... but what's pretty nice is that I've also got my 'Seeker' achievement up to 2,332/3,000 quests completed! So I figure after I do the Loremaster achievement I'll be nearly done with 'The Seeker'. I know, I'm crazy. But I actually have a lot of fun just running around doing all these quests. It's also much easier when you have buddies in vent to chat with or some good music to listen to. I recommend listening to a radio station called 'After Hours'; for those of you who like techno/progressive trance and similar musical genres, it's awesome!

Aside from random achievement whoring, I've finally (I think...) added the finishing touches to my UI:

I keybind pretty heavily, but I do have bars that appear when moused over. I use a lot of mouseover macros as well to make healing with grid even easier. My grid is configured out the @$$ to track HoTs, debuffs, and other things. Overall I'm quite satisfied with how it looks. I particularly love the add-on that I just got the other day, Forte X...something. It's on WoWinterface if you want to look it up. It's technically a Warlock mod but it comes in a zip file with addons for every class.

I used to have HoT/Cooldown Timers that would track my cooldowns, but I would never really be able to easily see which cooldowns were ending when. But thanks to Forte, they're displayed clearly in a very nice, compact area. The skill icon makes its way down the bar and pulses into a large icon before fading out once it has become available for use once more.

If you're like me and keybind heavily this is really helpful. With no bars shown you can't exactly see all of your skill buttons and so having a sleek cooldown monitor is very, VERY helpful!