Explorer Achievement

[grantyr]

I've just started a new character (Pandaren Monk, of course) and when I try to use the guide for the Explorer Achievement it tells me that the Eastern Kingdoms, Kalimdor, Outland and Northrend have already been completed; even though I haven't been to most of these (can't even go to some of them as I'm only level 60).

Is there anyway to reset this so I can really explore all these zones?

[cabby]

Blizzard made almost all of the achievements account-wide. If you've done the exploration on another character for those zones then all of your characters have that achievement.

[grantyr]

Thanks Cabby!

It's weird that this toon does have the achievement even though he still gets "credit" for achieving it at the time he does too…thanks though!

[kreelor]

Blizzard made almost all of the achievements account-wide. If you've done the exploration on another character for those zones then all of your characters have that achievement.

NOTE: Not related to YOUR guide... just Blizzard in general.

Lately, I'm encountering "Achievements" issues which I don't understand. For instance, after clicking on the Achievements tab then opening the Exploration tab, it shows all the ones I have supposedly completed as indicated by their being colored yellow, and the ones I haven't completed are still greyed-out. But, even within the yellow ones, there are quests still not attained, such as "Kalimdor" has Ogrimmar unchecked (still needing to be completed). However, that's on one of my Alliance characters on the Malfurion realm. When I switch realms to the Uther realm and look at one of my Horde chars, its yellow Kalimdor quest section shows that Ogrimmar -has- been completed (with a green checkmark).

Finally, to my question...

Does Blizzard separate Exploration quests between Horde/Alliance and/or different realms? Mine are not matching up. In other words, completing all the quests for one faction character on a certain realm isn't being recorded as "account wide" for chars of a different faction on other realms.

How does it work? And, is Kalimdor/Ogrimmar one of those exceptions you mentioned in your quote, above?

Exploration_Quests.jpg

[cabby]

I honestly do not know the specifics for how Blizzard is doing things like this. They don't share that info with us so we have to go off of what other WoW players report for their personal findings. The best thing I could suggest is to check the Blizzard forums to see if you can find an answer to this specific achievement oddity you're seeing.

[kreelor]

You may not know why, but it seems to me that the Zygor developers of the Achievement Guide would almost have to know. It's highly unlikely that I'm the only person who has completed the quest to explore Kalimdor with a Horde char on one realm, then looked at the same quest on a different realm with an Alliance char. I give up.

[cabby]

What the Zygor team knows is that there is a Durotar exploration achievement with an ID# 728. The guides use the ID# to look to see if the achievement is completed, and if it isn't then directs you around so you can complete achievement #728. The Zygor team would not be able to explain why a Horde toon shows the achievement as completed and an Alliance toon does not show it as completed.

All we could do is come up with some possible explanations, but they would be hypothesis and the only way to confirm them would be via Blizzard.

[Cartman]

To get the capital cities and starting zones of the opposite faction explored you need to get there. I think they made it that way so that if you don't have explore Durotar complete with any char and normally play Alliance you can't just create an Orc and get difficult parts of it with him for the achievement.
However someone forgot about this when making the zone achievement accountwide. So if you can't explore Orgrimmar with an Alliance char simply make the whole explore Durotar with a Horde one.

I have Horde some Horde chars which have Dun Morogh and Loch Modan and other Alliance exclusive zones greyed out but still have the World Explorer.

[billyb3]

Is there anyway I can flag the explorer guide to make it so I have to explore on the toon I am on? I don't care if my level 90 has the explore hellfire sub-achievement i want to explore hellfire on the level 61 I am currently on.

[cabby]

What you'll want to do is go into the guide options and in the Step completion section check the Disable step progress box. That will keep the guide from auto-advancing and will allow you to get thru the guide but you will need to manually advance thru the steps. Do not forget to uncheck that box once you're done or other guides will not work as expected.

[billyb3]

I tried that. When I check that box it still goes from step 3 to step 23. I even tried reloading the UI after selecting that checkbox.

[cabby]

Try holding the Ctrl + Alt keys while manually stepping forward thru the guide to keep it from skipping like that.

[billyb3]

That worked. Thank you. Did I miss that somewhere in the documentation?

[cabby]

That's actually more of a troubleshooting thing but does work for things like this. You'll find problems with the achievement guides like this because of Blizzard making the achievements account wide. I personally don't bother with the Explorer stuff anymore because a lot of addons (including ours) have options to reveal the whole map and revealing the whole map was the original purpose of that achievement.