Things to do before the Cataclysm

I tend to be a bit of an overachiever.  I'm more concerned with the standard achievements rather than the feats of strength, but feats can be nice too.  For example, Magincia recently obtained Hero of the Zandalar Tribe (which will be a feat soon) and also has The Fifth Element,which is no longer available.  But the former came from a desire to see all her rep bars turn blue on the armory rep page; and the latter was from a desire to try to complete every quest in the game.  Okay, I admit.  Now I'm beginning to sound a bit crazy.  But I already decided that I will not be Insane in the Membrane (though I may come close).

Fairly soon, a good number of these achievements will become unobtainable and many more quests will be gone for good once Deathwing reshapes the world.  So, I've been compiling a list of goals I wanted to achieve before the Cataclysm hits.



On the alliance side (Magincia):

• Acquire Dungeon Set 2 - What is Dungeon Set 2?  There is a quest King Magni's throne room called An Earnest Proposition that wants you to obtain a pair of bracers from somewhere in the game.  The quest then sends you to the far corners of the world and various dungeons to speak with ghosts and acquire the remaining pieces of the set.  The set you acquire is actually Dungeon Set 1.  The quest chain upgrades you to Dungeon Set 2 (sometimes known as Tier 0.5).  I'm currently on the very last quest in the chain and have all pieces except for the chest, which drops off of General Drakkisath in Upper Blackrock Spire.  I was fairly lucky up until this point that I could get the armor pieces to drop on my first run of each dungeon.  But after about 30 runs of Scholomance already for the helm, I'm just not too fond of doing the same thing in UBRS, especially with that damn gladiator event slowing down my runs.  They should really give an achievement for finishing this.
• Scepter of the Shifting Sands - Another insanely long quest chain, though arguably more challenging, fun and less prone to RNG.  The scepter is what was originally used to open the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj in patch 1.12 and offered the Scarab Lord title with a nifty Black Qiraji Battle Tank mount.  The gates can only be opened once per realm, and while the title and mount are no longer obtainable, the quest chain is still present and completable.  It first requires you to grind from hated to neutral with the Brood of Nozdormu so you can converse with Anachronos at the Caverns of Time, who then sends you to off to obtain the blue, green, and red scepter shards from dragons who were once their guardians.  While the initial grind is rather dull the quests afterwords are fairly epic, particularly a vision/cutscene outside the gates and a battle with the green dragon Eranikus who attacks Moonglade (yes the same boss at the end of Sunken Temple).  Until Cataclysm, this was the only way to see Malfurion Stormrage in game.  I managed to get the red and green shards, but for the blue shard I'm stuck at Dr Weavil because of his mind control ability that (if solo'd) drops aggro and resets him back to full health.  I do plan on drafting someone to help out though and completing this before it's gone forever.  They're also adding a feat of strength for this (finally).
• Acquire the Paragons of Power - With Zul'Gurub disappearing for good as a raid instance, so will all its loot rewards.  The paragons of power are a 5-piece Zul'Gurub item set.  I've gotten 4 of the 5 pieces.  The 5th piece (a trinket) requires running all four optional Edge of Madness bosses.  Not only do you need an alchemist to brew a potion to summon the boss, only one boss is summonable per raid instance and they only cycle every two weeks.  Since I'm not an alchemist and blood of heroes (used to make the potion) is a soulbound level 60 rare item, I don't think this is achievable before Cata.  I think I can live with that.

There's not much else to be done with Mag.  I've already completed nearly every quest available to alliance in the game, above and beyond the Loremaster achievements.

On the horde side (Syrennity):

• Level to 80 - Syrennity is only level 71 at this time, and I'd like to finally have one hordie at 80 when the expansion comes out.
• Experience quest lore from a Horde perspective - Most of the lore I've experienced has come from questing as alliance the past few years.  I already completed most of the Eastern Kingdom and Kalimdor zones and I hope to complete them before the zone revamps kick in and the quests change.  I was really quite surprised with how lore much I missed out on once I started leveling Syr.  The Silithid threat in particular was handled much more fluidly than it was on the alliance side where they're largely ignored until you hit Tanaris.  As a horde questing in Kalimdor you discover them first in the Barrens.
• Thrall Outlands quest - A pretty epic chain, it involves Thrall's return to his ancestral homeland in Outlands to meet with the Mag'har.  This will no longer be completable in Cataclysm since Thrall will no longer be in charge of the Horde or even in Orgrimmar.
• Battle for Undercity - This will also be going away come Cataclysm, for the same reasons as above.
• Polymorph: Turtle - Since Syr is a mage, this was high on my list until fairly recently.  It presently drops from the fishing boss in Zul'Gurub.  Thankfully, a blue post has admitted that this will be available by other means in Cataclysm.  So if I don't get it before then it's not as big of a deal.