This is something that I don’t think most people pay attention to. Although I think they probably should. As of patch 2.1.2, (June 19, 2007), there is no longer an attunement process needed to enter Serpentspine Cavern and The Eye at Tempest Keep. The quest line for the original attunements remains however, and upon completion of both, the player receives the title, “Champion of the Naaru.” The unique thing about this title verses other titles, is this one comes after the players name. Titles were originally introduced as a PvP status pre-BC. There were problems in some countries with this, so the ability to gain these titles was stripped from the game even though players were able to keep what they earned. Therefore from time to time you will see players with names such as Sergeant Benedykt. The title, “Champion of the Naaru” comes after the name and will appear, “Knurd, Champion of the Naaru.” These are extremely long and drawn out quest lines and Blizzard wanted to ensure they still rewarded those players crazy enough to gain their attunement for Serpentshrine Cavern and The Eye in Tempest Keep. The Eye attunement quest line includes running and completing, Shadow Labs, the Shattered Halls timed event and Arcatraz on heroic, then finally killing Magtheridon himself. This is after completing the almost 30 quests leading upto the dungeon quests. The attunement process for Serpentspine Cavern is a bit simpler as it involves killing Gruul the Dragonkiller of Gruul's Lair and Nightbane found in Karazhan.

Even after patch 2.1.2, the attunement process for Mt. Hyjal and Black Temple remained in place. As of patch 2.4, March 25, 2008, the attunement processes were removed for both Black Temple and Mt. Hyjal. I feel, however unconfirmed, that Blizzard removed these attunement processes due to the Sunwell badge gear which is on par with T6, therefore allowing players to become geared enough to run these raid instances without doing any of the previous ones. The release of this badge of justice gear and the removal of the attunement processes occured at the same time. The experiences learned from the previous raid instances will greatly aid in the learning curve of Black Temple and Mt. Hyjal however. In order to reward those who had already done the attunement process, and those that choose to complete it still, Blizzard introduced another title into the game. This one is, “Hand of A’dal.” This is another unique title as it also appears after the players name, “<>, Hand of A’dal.”

This one is more difficult to obtain than the first. The Black Temple attunement process involves speaking to an NPC in Fathom-Lord Karathress’s room, killing Al’ar in Tempest Keep, and then killing Rage Winterchill the first boss in Mt. Hyjal.

As scary as this may be, that is the simpler of the two quest chains. The attunement process for gaining access to Mt. Hyjal, (remember this one must come first as you have to kill the first boss here for the other one … or at least it used to), all of the quests for Black Morass and Old Hillsbrad Foothills must be completed in the Caverns of Time, then The Vials of Eternity must be looted from Lady Vashj in Serpentshrine Cavern and Kael'thas in the Eye of Tempest Keep.

I am sure by this point you are wondering why my point is. The gear we are obtaining through raiding is great, but come time for the expansion we will replace all of it. A few pieces we will keep for memory’s sake, but the rest will be sharded or vendored for cash and mats. For the few people that have worked to earn these titles, those will remain in tact until they either stop playing the game, or Blizzard finally turns off the servers.

Myself and a few others have decided that we are going to start working on getting these titles, Champion of the Naaru we should have next week sometime as that one is very easy for us to obtain. I feel that other raiders that have progressed that far in the game should consider doing this as well. It’s the one thing that we will always take with us even if the game is going on 15 years from now.

It should also be noted that once a player passes lvl 70, these titles can no longer be obtained, although players that already have them can display them proudly.