To deserve an achievement

There is a really nice reward from the achievement "What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been", a violet proto-drake with 310% flight speed. Other than A'lar and the gladiator pvp reward mount I don't think any other mounts are this fast coming in at 280%.

No one will be able to get the reward for a year, because the achievement depends upon you completing seasonal events over the course of a year.

In theory it should only ever take anyone a year to complete this regardless of when they start playing. However since the seasonal Brewfest achievement - Brewmaster includes an achievement Brew of the Year which, surprise, lasts over the course of a year. If you missed this year's Brewfest you have to wait two years to get the proto-drake.

Over at the General Forums many have said you are simply undeserving of getting the reward within a year if you missed taking part in this years Brewfest. Mention of "poor planning", "no preparation" and "lack of research" keep popping up. Those commenters think either you should have been aware of what getting a proto-drake entailed and forgoing all and any obstacles completed the Brewmaster achievement or that perhaps you may not have known about the reward but should have completed the Brewmaster achievement for its sake alone and thus you are undeserving of a proto-drake if the only reason you wanted to do the achievement was for the proto-drake.

Many runners run with no intention whatsoever of being first, second or third. However I think achievement rewards in WoW are not gold medals and oversized checks, instead rewards are more like the t-shirt everyone gets simply because they paid way more than an actual t-shirt costs in their entry fee.

I don't raid on a consistent basis anymore, haven't for a while now. Yet, over the course of a few days, I was able to join some runs through some Azeroth instances like BWL and AQ40 and get the Classic Raider achievement. I didn't help learn any of the fights on my character in particular. I didn't spend hours and hours over the course of weeks and months and years. Did I really "deserve" the achievement?

That's why I think we need to get out of this line of thinking that any of us should be deserving of things in-game. At least not when it comes to making an argument for why someone should or shouldn't get something.