This is great, excellent, incredible news. I can't wait to see what they've come up with, and I REALLY can't wait to get working on some tough 5-man achievements. Win win win.

Assuming sunwell gear, any of those except M'uru could be done. Hell, current mag can be done without cube clicking if your healers are good/you stack a lot of them. I doubt very strongly that they'll compromise design just to add an achievement for a fight.

Am I the only one that is slightly concerned with how achievements will be timed in their release? I feel that they amazing potentional and would love to see them link achievements in with some of the older ideas.

For instance, clearing Black Temple in under 5 hours, if 20 people in the raid have completed this achievement - You can teleport up without killing Supremus.

Clearing Black Temple in under 4 hours, if 20 people in the raid have completed this achievement - Mother Shahraz's door opens from the beggining of the instance.


Clearing Black Temple in under 3 hours, if 20 people in the raid have completed this achievement - You can teleport onto the stairs behind council from the beggining of the instance.

However what slightly concerns me is whether the implementation could be degrading to raid direction and progression. I see it being all to likely that some people will find frustration with raid content and resort to achievements as an easier way of progression or even that some members will feel dishearted to the extent that achievements will be seen as a form of alternate progression.

I suppose this is more likely should my previous suggestion be implemented be it is nonetheless a concern. One thing I would love however is to maybe, through achievements, encourage things that would have a positive effect on raiding.

Rather than rewarding wacky executions only why not reward perfect execution? Be it through speed or limiting deaths or dealing with specific boss abilities properly. The original ZA bear mount was applauded because of this and I feel like the whole concept has so much potential.

As a Raid Leader, motivation and interest are the two things I hold most highly, I value my time and as such do not want to spend hours and hours clearing farm content with many AFK's and swappings and inefficent trash clearing. This is something that my raid is used to but at first was hard to promote. Give us achievements to help that, alike to the ones that I posted above or even say, something more cosmetic, clear up to Illidan and kill him within 4 hours and you get his infused essence, turning you into a replica of his demon form as an alternative flying mount.

Another example could be with Mount Hyjal, before the rep was buffed it was frustrating that you basically had to clear the place 15-20 times to achieve exalted. How about rewarding, through achievements an indirect reputation bonus? Clear MH in 2 hours and (assuming the old reputation amounts) you get another 2k rep.

Marks of the Illidari were a good start, but, after observing a moderate number of mid-sunwell guilds it really feels as if raiding is floundering due to a lack of direction and motivation, I really feel achievements could remedy this to an extent.

Even if anything other than cosmetic rewards are out of the question, Blizzard have mentioned possibly developing an in-house threat meter what about an in house damage/healing meter? With the suggestion of achievements for your biggest hit how about a weekly changing guild specific achievement of top DPS? Surely that could even be server wide?

I'm just thinking of the top of my head here but surely there are endless ways, requiring little development time that can help the inevitable attrition that comes with high-end raiding. Players and their resources are getting better and more competetive and good challenging raid content takes much to implement so add to it by open ended achievements - would a leader board of fastest raid instances clears be that hard to implement? Surely that would allow the top guilds some competition on an almost e-sports level and let the more laid back guilds also have some competition on their weekly farm instance clears.

"Come on guys, last week we cleared BT in 4:15:37, thats 11 minutes slower than 'top ranked guild on the server' lets pull it together and push hard and fast we can make it this week."

as achievements are going to be shown on the armoury regardless, this shouldn't be too hard to implement, no?

As Intermission said just below you, there is one problem with undermanning achievements in that they force some people to sit out. I personaly don't think that's a big deal, but when combined with notable rewards like this that guilds will want to get rather than just do for fun in their own time it is a very bad idea.

Achievements giving rewards like this is just not good. They should stay cosmetic for the most part and anything else needs to be looked at very carefully; skipping content is a big no-no, even consumable buffs (as Tigole mentioned) would worry me, as you're basicly saying "here, we'll make the game less annoying for you guys, but everyone else should suck it up".

To me it seems simple: The desire to do an achievement should be the desire to do the achievement or the desire to let others know you've done the achievement, it should not be something that the achievement gives you.