I agree with Horns here.

And it will happen. Just watch.

I predict the achievement system will alienate new players from the game. Most new players will not be able to PUG instances, because you can now verify that they’re a noob. Blizzard has drawn a line in the sand, and beyond this point player retention is the best they can hope for.

That won’t effect me though, you might say. Just wait until you don’t get into a raiding guild ’cause you haven’t killed the bosses the guild has on farm yet. Good times.

your writing a blog for a video game and your not too excited about more ways to express and share your e-peen?

<3 irony

Horn’s, you make it sound as if you have no free will at all and that you don’t want to be able to compare yourself to other players. Well that is a massive part of what makes MMORPG’s so popular. Ultimately, I want my guy to have better stats, look better and have done more than the next guy and I don’t think this is any different.

Take it for what it is, an addition to the game, something to work towards if it interests you and not a creative ploy created by Blizzard make you play the game longer. You do have a choice in what you do in this game and just because it is there doesn’t mean it has to have anything to do with you.

http://www.wowinsider.com/2008.....hievement/

Apparently getting the 75 pet achievement will net you a pet skunk.

I’ve felt the same way about other games. At a certain point the mechanics become the same and all of the extra 100+ hours of gameplay is just the same essential experience with a new wrapping.

But I agree with your point about achievements. They seem to be a particularly hollow form of content addition.

Moron.

Some people liked to do a lot of those things anyway, such as collect vanity pets or mounts, grind out all the reputations, etc. Now at least other people can see what they’ve done.

And yeah they are designed to make you play the game more, but what isn’t? New levels are designed to make you play the game more, new gear, new arena seasons, new classes, new dungeons, new battlegrounds, it’s all designed to make you play the game more.

As for the epeen comment, yeah I guess they are just numbers to add to your epeen, but again, what isn’t? All of WoW is just a game. It’s all just numbers. Your level is a number, your AP is a number, your armor is a number. WoW is basically just a big spreadsheet with 3D graphics. How are the numbers associated with the achievements system suddenly less valid than the numbers associated with all of the rest of the game?

And who cares if you can compare your achievements to other players? You can already compare gear with other players, reputation status with other players, gold amount with other players, HKs and arena rating with other players and on and on. Achievements are no different than what is already in the game in that way.

There are three sides to the feature:

1. Recognizing things that you did. This means that even long after you’ve sharded all your Tier 6 gear, there’s a little reminder of its existence. I like this. It makes the endgame feel like less of a complete waste of time as the expansion draws near.

2. Letting others recognize things that you did The first thing my wife thought of when the feature was mentioned was that it would let her have some idea of how experienced guild applicants were — checking their achievements for heroic clears, and challenge clears. If someone has the three-man-Magisters, they’re probably decent. This is sort of iffy — it could lead to great players being neglected for groups/guilds because that character is new.

3. Giving you things to do. Being able to see ungained achievements lets you know about things that you haven’t done. It’s a reminder that, say, you haven’t finished up questing in zone X, or you never actually beat the final boss in dungeon Y.

I’m the sort of person who likes exploring, and likes collecting. I fill in the map, and collect flight points for places I never plan to quest in or go to. I can’t be bothered with raiding or running instances for the most part. (Actually, I spend most of my WoW time writing addons nowadays.) Achievements really appeal to my playstyle.

My wife is the exact opposite; she’s a hardcore raider, and levels almost exclusively through instance running. She doesn’t really care about achievements.

I think achievements thus make a lot of sense for Blizzard. They appeal to the “casuals” like me, and don’t get in the way of the hardcore.

There’s another positive thing so far: there’s still no rewards for them, and I’m hoping it will stay that way.

As for the “fluffy” achievements, I’m actually looking forward to those to. I’m a very self-improvement oriented player, though and have always enjoyed the multitude of progression tracks available in Warcraft. And of course they’re designed to make you want to play the game more. What kind of a game company would spend development effort on things that wouldn’t?

I think that the idea of Achievements is a great thing, and that ideally, they would help to truly measure the skill of a player based on personal accomplishments and what have you. Unfortunately, much like Arena ratings, their current design is empty and holds no real value.

I do like the approach, however, in providing a digital check to what we have “accomplished” in our digital life. Hopefully, when refined, it will be more meaningful.