Prior to now I have focused on the varied and great achievements of groups of people for our feature interviews, but there are others……individuals who have taken this game to the next level and are pushing daily to accomplish something astonishing.

I speak to you of Prue, a level 80 purr/growl/miow Druid who has set their sights of gaining as many achievement points as possible and currently stands as 55th highest in the WORLD. That’s right my fellow Dreamers, we’re not just talking server or EU ratings but Prue is getting to bash some Yanks as well!

I caught up with Prue to discuss why the fascination with achievements and to share some stories about achievement……well…… achieving!

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your character?

Well, my character name is Prue, more commonly called Pwuebear by friends and foe, and she is a feral druid. I picked the name from a friend, who played a rogue on an old MUD I used to spend a lot of time on (read: too much), Prue Shimmergloom. I did not, but I am sure he did at the time, think of Prue Halliwell when creating it!

I have always been rather geeky about computer games ever since the first IBM computer where I played Digger and Leisure Suit Larry (which was solely text-command-based back then) and later on puzzle and adventure games like Under a Killing Moon, Day of the Tentacle, Secrets of Monkey Island, Myst, Goblins, Full Throttle etc. were the favourites. I do enjoy a good first-person shooter too though, but prefer sticking to one game because I know how “addicted” I get.

How long have you been playing WoW and what’s your /played?

I have been playing the game since the EU release (only played the Beta a single afternoon on a friend’s account). I was playing EverQuest to a great extend long before there was even talk of World of Warcraft, where I ended up raiding on my rogue Nell (the Cookie Muncher!) with the Arch Overseers on Bristlebane who, at that point, was the leading guild worldwide (during the Omens of War expansion). The WoW beta was catching people’s attention though and a lot of guild members migrated just before we broke through to the final stage of the expansion. Having over 400 days played on my rogue in EQ, but none of my friends to play with, I more or less made my peace with it and took a few months in limbo, having a hard time deciding whether or not I should give WoW a shot.

Release day came and I found myself standing in line at the gaming store to get my hands on the box. Prue was the first character I created, even though I made a side-kick rogue; I spend all of my time on the druid, loving the versatility that it brings. I guess you could say it has a lot of sentimental value to it as well. I get bored on alts very fast and only resort to playing them if it is absolutely needed.

So, in short, despite a few months away here and there, I have been playing the game since the European release in February uhmm, 2005? Geez, that is such a long time ago! Lots of fond memories though. Server first Onyxia being one that springs to mind every so often, more now that it will be revamped, but back then decked out in blues and quest greens, nerd-raging over ventrilo. Back on track – my played on Prue as I am writing this is 384 days, 14 hours, 10 minutes and 21 seconds.

Do you think there are any benefits of being your class when trying to attempt all the achievements WoW has to offer?

Perhaps not as much for the things that you can do at level 80 like grinding reputations or doing quests. In some ways though it’s easy to get yourself sorted so you are more accessible to do achievements within the confines of a group, like having gear setup for tanking and healing, but the only way that I have felt that my class have a few ups compared to others is going back to older instances to try your luck on a rare mount or other desirables (ie. Zul’Gurub, Karazhan or Magister’s Terrace). Beyond that you really need at least the effort of a five man group in order to be successful.

How many achievement points do you have right now, and how many points are left to reach your final goal?

Right now I am at 11140 achievement points and I still feel there are much more to do and as long as there are I doubt I will ever feel that I have reached my goal. Achievements – for me – serves as both an element of frustration but also as a motivational factor at the same time. The amount of achievements I can do single-handed is diminishing very rapidly, so I have to rely on group efforts a lot more, which adds a new dimension to it, as you have to inspire others to share your passion and goals for achievements within the raiding environment. That is not always an easy task, especially with new content, such as Icecrown, where the focus is more on getting to and beating the heroic modes rather than spending time setting up for the individual achievements during the normal clear. But I have no doubt that we will get it all done in good time.

For my part the addition of achievements has changed raiding to a huge degree. You no longer plow through an instance on auto-pilot to get that next “phat epixx”. It is a breath of fresh air compared to the old content in vanilla and The Burning Crusade and all the tedious trash clearing that inevitably got the best of you. They can also be seen as a stepping-stone from doing an encounter on normal mode to doing it on hard mode. It just keeps everyone at the edge of their seats, and hopefully brings out the a-game!

Something I had the most fun with during Wrath was running through the 5-man heroics with more or less the same group. That social feeling and team spirit just does not get any better than that and it is just more fun that way! Meeting up every day and scouting out, which achievements are on the agenda, and just keep cracking at it till it is done. Share The Love would have to be the one I remember the most because it took us forever to get everyone impaled, a good 10-15 minutes if I am not mistaken. I hope to see more of that  5-man heroic stuff in Cataclysm.

Do you have many achievements left to complete and which are you least looking forward to?

There are still a few fair achievements to do in the 25-man content, sadly a good chunk of them are in Ulduar, which we are not likely to revisit any time soon – so I fear that I have to set up some sort of “Let’s just go back and get this done already?!” kind of thing further down the line. It requires a bit of determination and mustering up the courage and will to gather 25 people can be quite the pain. If I had to single out any of the ones I am missing I fear that killing Algalon on the first pull with no deaths will be quite tricky. Looking at the achievements that requires less people I would say that getting the rank of Gladiator in the arena is of a similar difficulty – we have not been very lucky or spectacular in our game play to qualify and for each season that passes I get the feeling that we are even further from achieving that goal.

What achievement would you rate as the hardest and why?

The Master Angler of Stranglethorn was one of the most nerve-wrecking experiences and I must have tried out for it a good half a year or so before everything finally went my way. Coming close to it many a time really gets you going and the competition just seems to get harder and harder every week. The hearthstone also took longer to cast, mysteriously enough, and by the time the loading screen had faded I was chewing on my elbow. It is nice to have Sunday afternoons back to chillin’ on the couch again and not raging over yet another level 16 fishing out of my school of speckled tastyfish. Good riddance!

What achievement caused the most “air punching” for you?

I had nightmares about the We Had It All Along *cough* achievement for a long, long time. Mostly because it is impossible to find motivated PvP’ers, and even at that, you have to find fourteen that actually want to sit and wait for a match making to occur and then execute some kind of spur of the moment strategy to win by a small margin. Seems more reasonable to have an “At Least We Got The Stables Guys!” achievement – Get 10 points in an Arathi Basin match before you lose – it would be just as random as the other. I have mostly been doing all of the battleground stuff alone, so it has been a long, troublesome ride – fun at times, but I doubt I will be going back to Arathi Basin anytime soon. Five months and three days passed between the second last achievement was completed for Battlemaster and the last one was completed – was it worth it? Yes. Does it drive you crazy? Most definitely yes!

I would definitely say that I am pro PvP. I might not be great at it, but it is a new level of competition that I both hate and love at the same time. Especially arena games can lead to a mouse breaking or multiple keyboard digits flying about, and grinding to Marshal was just plain stupid and caused many a sleepless night. Been playing the arena with real life friends for a long time now too, and though we mostly find ourselves at the receiving end of the a**-whooping-bat, it is by far the most fun thing about PvP.

Which achievement took the longest to do?

If we are counting feats it would probably be a tossup between We Had it All Along *cough* and Insane in the Membrane. The latter actually being the more sane of the two if you ask me, simply because grinding reputation, farming materials and all that gives you a feeling of “this is actually going somewhere” even though it took a lot longer to complete – the sheer frustration connected with doing Arathi Basin that many times just made it the longest and biggest pain in the rear that I have had to endure. For the others you can more or less monitor your progress day by day, week by week or month by month, depending how serious you are about it.

Achievements that are based solely on the luck of a roll just annoys me – especially the Hallow’s End masks where I think I got a grand total of four new ones – woopie-doo, there is a mask in my bag … ohh wait, it’s troll male again. So I think in terms of asking “Which achievement took the longest to do?” you have to also consider how the process of getting the achievement is. I could have a fun time grinding a lot of reputations over a longer time and not feel that it actually took a long time to get there or on the other hand I could spend a few days trying to do the Wyrmrest Temple daily in two minutes or less and fail every time and just curse the fools who came up with the idea.

Has your high number of achievements influenced your World of Warcraft playing experience?

I have never been much for playing a game half-heartedly and for me getting achievements provides me with a feeling of completion for my character, kind of like if you would feel weird about not wearing your good luck speedos every day or brushing your teeth holding your tooth brush in the other hand. It just feels wrong! In a way adding achievements definitely changed my playing experience, because I knew the day it was announced that I would spend more time on it that I would probably want to. It was the same back when I played EverQuest and they introduced alternate advancement abilities (an experience gain converted into new character specific abilities system) and I would just find myself grinding these new points till 4 am every day. I just cannot help myself. And yes, I also think my gear looks weird if the socket bonus is greyed out.

What, if any, advice can you give other players in regards to accomplishing some of the harder achievements?

Steadfast determination if you are doing stuff single-handedly. If you are into the whole five-man heroic dungeon achievement stuff I would definitely recommend hooking up with a few friends, guildies or like-minded to make it a joyous occasion – forcing achievements on the puggers in the random dungeon finder tool just feels wrong, since not everyone is there for the same reasons you are. I already knew I would be farming for the Insane when it was added but it was also one of those that left me wondering “Why the heck didn’t I grind these reputations years ago?”. Vaticinium ex eventu, right? But this is definitely one of those achievements where grouping up can save you a lot of headaches, especially when you have to grind Bloodsail Buccaneers reputation and then redo all of your Steamwheedle Cartel reputations. Past that hunting for librams, pristine black diamonds, and darkmoon cards is just another very random element from server to server and from character to character. Farming dropped items was definitely not an option for me since I have the worst luck known to man and woman!

What is your plan to get the rest of the achievements?

The biggest concern would be the 25-man content achievements and I usually just keep bugging Celeus or Olog till they finally cave in, uhmm, or I mean, I ask them politely and they immediately go “Great idea, let’s do it!”  – but right now, with our focus on getting to heroic modes for Icecrown, I guess I will keep a lid on it till we get it more or less on farm status and be more on edge with the 10-man achievements instead.

After completing so many achievements, is there anyone you’d like to thank?

There are so many that have been very forgiving with my desperate and sad nature of getting more and more achievements, over nine thousand, but first and foremost Bridgeburners for being the guild that it is and been a huge aid for me personally. Secondly, without naming names, because I always forget someone in the mix, the many people whom I did five-man instances with, the dedicated people that did the 10-man runs week after week, my arena partners, the people who joined in for some random battlegrounds here and there, and the people crazy enough to help with late night reputation grinds, material farming and the likes. Thank you, everyone!

As a side note I can also say that doing achievements with others will, for the most part, always prove to be more satisfying than struggling with them alone – having farmed all the battlegrounds –mostly alone – I can vouch for that! It gets bitter sweet very fast!

If you ever come by a duck in a dungeon, you will lose a level if you pick it up

I want to thank Prue for taking the time out to answer my questions and wish you the best of luck in your achievement gathering for the future… You have the “Insane” title and I think we can all agree you have to be just a little bit crazy to go after a goal like Prue’s!

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