Hi everyone! This bug has been posted before on the WoW Cataclysm forums, but it hasn’t garnered much attention, and it is, in my humble opinion, the most bizarre bug I’ve seen in this game so far.
Let me give you a little background before I go into details, because it’s easy to misunderstand why the achievement or rather the realm-first achievement isn’t triggering.
Before Cata Classic came out, there were a handful of servers that had a low population. So low, in fact, that they had almost no raiding population at all. Most of these servers became inactive during the Ulduar patch. By the time the Trial of the Grand Crusader patch came out (Phase 3 of Wrath Classic), most of these servers had zero raiding population (probably because after Ulduar, a lot of people went to play Hardcore WoW or moved to high-population servers). Because of this, many servers never defeated Anub’arak on heroic difficulty or Heroic Lich King (two servers, in particular, never defeated Algalon, Yogg-Saron, Anub’arak, and Lich King on heroic, but I’ll get into that later).
Now, fast forward to Cata Classic. A group of people found out that the Angerforge server had no Yogg-Saron 0 light,/Algalon/Heroic Anub’arak, and Heroic Lich King logs. So they decided to move to this server, and to everyone’s surprise, three out of four realm-first achievements were available! Those being: Death’s Demise (Yogg-0 Light), Celestial Defender (Algalon), and Lich King. The only one they didn’t get was Grand Crusader (Heroic Anub’arak), which is very strange considering they got the other three.
Fast forward to 2025: another group of people found another server (Maladath) that had no Algalon logs, Heroic Anub’arak, and Lich King, and they got two out of three achievements. Again, no Heroic Anub’arak realm-first achievement, which would be Grand Crusader.
It is highly, highly unlikely that a guild decided to defeat only Anub’arak on Angerforge and Maladath but didn’t bother to check the other bosses, which begs the question: Is the Realm First: Grand Crusader achievement bugged?
Again, it’s easy to think that if you don’t get a realm-first title/achievement it’s because someone else already obtained it. However, considering these two groups of people went to servers that had multiple realm-firsts available, it makes everyone involved believe that the achievement is indeed bugged and isn’t triggering for whatever reason.
Now, why is the achievement bugged? What could be causing this? Well, Grand Crusader states that you have to defeat Anub’arak on heroic difficulty with 50 attempts remaining, meaning you have to clear the raid with zero wipes.
Here’s the interesting part: ToGC had a limited attempts system that would reward you based on how many attempts you had left. A chest would spawn next to Tirion after clearing the raid. So, with zero wipes, the chest would contain tokens/weapons and a special cloak. With 49 attempts left, you wouldn’t get the cloak. This system incentivized guilds to clear the whole raid with zero wipes.
The thing is, this limited attempt system was removed when Cata came out, along with the chest, making these rewards unobtainable. It looks like because of this, the achievement became unobtainable in Cata Classic.
So, you might be thinking: "Oh, the achievement is just not available anymore in Cata. Wrong! People were still able to get it even back in original Cataclysm, and there is evidence that proves this:
(2011 Reddit post)
https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/fwcdj/realm_first_h_lich_king_and_grand_crusader/
(2011 Wowhead comments)
There were also a lot of servers that didn’t clain this realm first back in original wrath so that’s why blizzard changed it so people could get it.
So, the achievement should be available in Cata Classic.
To wrap up this long post: A group of friends found another Cata Classic server that has Grand Crusader and Realm First: Lich King available, and we would love to get these two achievements. I know it’ll be very trivial to get it in Cata, but Blizzard might shut down these servers soon, and it would be a shame if this particular achievement goes away without being claimed.