I’ve been lazily levelling my treecow (resto druid) from 70 to 80 and I hopped into a Mount Hyjal pick up group earlier this week. Then one thing led to another and look what I found?
This is interesting because it marks one of the first experiments that Blizzard made with time-limited achievements.
The Hand of A’dal is the title that you used to be able to get for completing the long quest chain required to enter The Black Temple in The Burning Crusade. It required solo quests, 5 man group quests, and some tough raid bosses before you finally got to the prize. (Note: It is true that A’dal does not actually have hands, that’s why he needs your character to do the five-finger related work for him, and that sounds kind of ruder than I had intended 😉 )
The title was obsoleted before the end of TBC, so that anyone completing the quest chain after that would not receive it. I think this happened before they also removed the old reward for the Zul’Aman speed run. In any case, it was the first time (IIRC) that players were prevented from going back to old content and getting the same rewards that people did when it was cutting edge.
So here’s the question. I had no vials on my alt before the title was obsoleted. I hadn’t killed Kael’thas or Vashj by the end of TBC. So how did I get that title on 13th June ’09? It amuses me to keep the title visible because no one knows how hardcore I’m not.
Welcome to Spinksville! 
Did you ever abandon the quest in question? I thought I’d heard that they didn’t actually remove the old quest, just changed the one that’s currently available. If that wasn’t it, I’ve got nothing.
If you still had the old quest in your log then you were able to complete it and gain the title. Blizz only deleted access to the old quest (and the reward for it) in patch 3.0
Either you had the quest from before it was changed to remove the title.. OR someone else in your group shared the pre-changed quest in your group.
My ‘lock currently has both versions of the quest in her log. I’m planning to complete them.. eventually.
Yup, you’re all pretty much right. There are two separate questlines you need to complete for the title — one involves the old vial quest (which was changed in 3.0) and one involves the Akama questline which has a kind of break in it, but you pick up the second part from Fathom Lord Karithress in SSC.
It just so happened that I used to raid a bit on my druid so I had killed Karithress. And I had the old vial quest active too. I just hadn’t played her since the end of TBC (I took a break for a couple of months to go play WAR) and noticed when I logged her on that I still had those quests in the logbook so I left them. I figured, you never know.
I only mention it really because it was commonly thought that you needed to have a vial before the quest changed. Which isn’t the case.