I always get asked for my Sartharion 3D achievement!

So after happily prancing along and telling the world (and my seven okay three readers not including myself) how great achievements are: The Downside (with a capital downside!). Pick up things.

It doesn't matter any more if I'm any good at playing my class - I will get asked to prove my knowledge of tactics, positioning, optimal movement patterns, spell rotations, tanking priorities and healing assignments along with a general grasp of equipping and correctly enchanting and gemming my class before I am allowed to join a PUG. The words are usually "LF1M VoA25, tank, pref. warrior or paladin, link achievement and stats" (possibly with a few creative spelling errors).

Not to complain or anything, but those demands are most often made by those who do not, in fact, have the achievement - and by lazy raid leader who do not want to put in the 30 seconds before each fight having to explain what to actually do. Not entirely surprising either - to get into any PUGs themselves, they need the achievement.

Or not.

Originally posted in April there are two script commands that allow the creative player to fake any achievement into a chat link.

/script ChatFrame1:AddMessage(UnitGUID("PLAYER"))

This is the first one and practically a neccessity. It grants the enterprising bank alt the player ID as a chat line. Looks something like this, then:

That last line, written in fine white print on the carpet of the weapontrainers in Stormwind is the unique player-ID of my bank alt. I presume it's serverspecific - after all the same name cannot occur on the same server but quite happily on a number of other servers. Oh look - there are apparently 77 people with my name. And that's only counting those above level 10, it seems. Wheee.

The second script command is the real deal:

/script
ChatFrame1:AddMessage("\124cffffff00\124Hachievement:2054:00000000004488AE:1:4:5:8:4294967295:4294967295:4294967295:4294967295\124h[The Twilight Zone (25 Player)]\124h\124r")

Now this is a tad more complex. Let me see if I can break it down.

"/script Chatframe1:AddMessage" <-- This tells your script to post a clickable link into your chatframe 1. If you are a lazy person like me, you probably only have chatframe 1. Might want it somewhere else, if you insist.

":AddMessage("\124cffffff00\124H" <-- Weird stuff that I don't understand, but it seems to be required.

"achievement:2054" <-- This is the number of the achievement you want to fake. Straight as taken from WoWhead. Click on the achievement you want, check your webbrowser and take the number from there.

":0000000004488AE" <-- This is the player ID I rambled on about earlier. It seems important to get the number of zeroes right. Or so I am told - never tried entering the wrong one for fear of creating 10.000 gold in my inventory by accident. Hmmmmm. Be right back.

...

...

No .. just doesn't work then.

":1:4:5:8:" This is the date the achievement was completed on. Well.. the first 1 means you completed it. The 4 is the day of the month, the 5 is the month and the 8 is the year. So apparently my bank alt became a twilight vanquisher on the 4th of May 2008. Not bad for a level 32.

"4294967295:4294967295:4294967295:4294967295\124h" <-- More stuff I don't understand. I'm sure it means something. Oh yes. Like Fnord.

"[The Twilight Zone (25 Player)]\124h\124r")" <-- The title displayed in your clickable link and more weird stuff. The title has to match the real name of the achievement you are about to fake, or the link will be clickable by you, but not by anyone else you link it to. In my case: the old "Heroic: The Twilight Zone" does no longer work, as the achievement is now called "The Twilight Zone (25 player)".

So there you go. Easy peasy. A little bit of clicking and /macro editing and anyone can be a scarab lord.

/script ChatFrame1:AddMessage("\124cffffff00\124Hachievement:2054:00000000004488AE:1:4:5:8:4294967295:4294967295:4294967295:4294967295\124h[The Twilight Zone (25 Player)]\124h\124r")

Achievement Number from WoWhead

Player ID

Date

Name of the Achievement

And this is so much more precise than just using Underachiever - an addon that does the same thing, but assigns a random date to your achievement. Eep! I might have been on holiday that time!

Edit: Erm. Of course this only links an achievement into chat. It does not actually change your armoury profile. Or even the "Compare Achievement" results when someone is standing next to you. Your new achievement will pop up in all it's glory after you really kill Sartharion 3D. I suppose it would be best to be alive and at the top of the damage meters at that time. Even - or rather especially - when you are a healer!