Children’s Week is over with, thankfully, and I can happily say I earned the achievement on two more characters, for a total of six Patrons on my account. Of course, it’s recently come to light that the account-wide achievements mounts will afford the violet proto-drake (and the flight mastery it bequeaths) to all characters on an account – or at least that’s how things currently work on beta (Ghostcrawler addressed the intent behind this in a blog entry today), which means my achievement hounding is for naught. Still, I learned a few things through the experience and it gave me something to focus on for last week’s article, so it can’t be all bad.

Of course, for many people the doldrums of the end of the expansion cycle have set in. I’ve been asked to raid again and while I do assume part of it is because of my sparkling personality and wondrous skill as a healer, I also assume part of it is to fill space – holes cleared by vacating players who are bored with the end of Cataclysm lasting so long or already enamored with the beta for Mists of Pandaria. My raid leader even told me that raiding is very casual in tone right now, which can sometimes frustrate me.

One of the benefits of being a casual player is that I’m never without something to do in game. It’s not uncommon for me to see content after its prime (I didn’t take down the Lich King until Cataclysm had been out for a few months), so I don’t get tired of grinding the same dungeons and raids as other people. Meanwhile,  I have a fair number of alts, so there’s always a character to level, and a decent number of those are level-capped, which means there are things those characters can do. This means the doldrums don’t hit me as hard as they hit other players.

Instead of being bummed by a few months of stagnant content, I’m working on a bucket list of goals to try and accomplish before Mists comes out and I start power leveling a mad monk. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

“Pony Up” my shaman characters. I’ve missed the ability to have my squire run errands for me. As a hoarder, I need access to my bank and the ability to sell things, but neither of my shamans made it through the process to have that happen. Grinding those old Crusade dailies is still monotonous, but it’s surprising how quickly most of those quests can be completed, except (of course) the mounted ones. I can handle tilting against Alliance and Horde forces pretty well, but having to go in front of Icecrown Citadel for more jousting is still tedious and frustrating at times.

Obtain the phoenix mount and pet I’ve wanted for my primary shaman for a while. This means familiarizing myself with Magister’s Terrace (never been there) and The Eye (or there) and figuring out how much of it I can solo. My understanding is the 5-man shouldn’t be a problem for a well-geared elementalist, but I suspect hitting the raid, even as above level as I am, will be a bigger challenge. Considering I’ve never been the type to grind a dungeon for a mount or pet, this will be a new experience for me and I expect to join many other frustrated players out there waiting for my damn mount to drop!

Level cap my rogue and work toward the legendary daggers. Something a little less attainable – while I had a rogue level capped during Wrath, he’s sat at 80 until recently, untouched and unused. Playing mostly ranged characters (hunter, elemental shaman, mage), I still find running dungeons where I have to be in close quarters to enemies a bit challenging. In short: I’m not a great rogue. Still, those daggers are just too appealing to not go after. Even if I don’t make it all the way to the legendaries, I think I’d learn quite a bit about the melee classes if I worked on this one.

Achieve the Loremaster title on my hunter. While I’ve moved into preferring shaman characters, my hunter was my main for quite a while. I’ve gotten him several achievements that I wouldn’t go after on other characters, just because they belong to my sense of him as a character (of course, account-wide achievements will override that, but still…). I like the idea of earning Loremaster on that one character, just to recognize his years of service and expertise. Honestly, I don’t have to play a hunter very well in order to move through the lower zones, and Cataclysm didn’t reset Outlands or Northrend, so most of my achievements there are complete. Mostly this is just a matter of sticking through the humdrum lower level zones, although most of those have at least had their stories spiced up by the recent expansion.

I particularly like that my goals spread the wealth among my more frequently played characters, ensuring I don’t get too burned out on one single task. What about you? What goals do you hope to finish before the Mists of Pandaria arrive?