Even devs are afraid to make new threads around here.

Information about specific achievements can be found at Achievements - Character

Split from the general Wrath thread, here is what Tigole had to say here regarding various posts that were talking about achivements.

On Tuskarmageddon (kill a million tuskaar)
On challenging dungeon & raid achievements
On Sulfuras' Feat of Strength not showing up if you deleted the item
On kill achievements
On legacy content
On what Achievement Points actually do:
Also on the wow forums regarding character vs account achievements: WoW Forums -> Achievements which is it?

Daily quests don't count: WoW Forums -> Not enough quests to complete achievement?
Armory features are planned at some point. WoW Forums -> Achievements and armory?

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.

Raid 'challenge' achievements sounds exactly like the stuff some people have wanted for a long time. Win!

A bit sad they cant fit in kill achievements retroactively though :/
Guess they could fit in the many 'head' drop quests from many Vanilla bosses? Not that it would be either fair or accurate for measuring who actually killed the bosses. I also assume they dont have saved the actual time a quest was done, just whether the character did the quest or not?

Yep. A continuous stream of new achievements would be easy to implement and keep players interested in the game.

One can already imagine what the Naxx ones might look like... for people who have more Naxx experience than I, at least. Kill Raz without losing any Acolytes. Kill Heigen without anyone dying. etc.

I really wonder if 'Beat KT with 20 men' achievement will mean that KT (and other bosses with this kind of arrangement) will be initially tuned with possibility of 20-men raids in mind, or it will be left to the mercy of gear advancement and eventual nerfs.

Mag with 20-men is totally possible now (but probably not initially, because of cube exhaustion?), Kael is debatable, Vashj is outright problematic, Archimonde is probably easier, if those 20 are exactly NOT those guys. I never saw Illidan, and judging by threads on these forums, 20-men M'uru is not a distant possibility.

So those kinds of achievements will probably end up on 'fun' bosses (15-man Rage Winterchill, here I come!) or we may risk losing specific types of encounters with huge amount of 'roles' to fill.

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.

My best guess is that the current raid achievements such as Kill Kel'thuzad with 20 people are basically placeholders/examples. I'm very curious whether they will put in achievements that they aren't sure are possible, or if they'll make sure to "balance" all the achievements to be possible. An example of something we've done recently was kill Solarian without any ports (< 1 min kill). When Solarian was first introduced I seriously doubt people would have considered it possible and in fact it wasn't until there was changes to the game and increasing amounts of gear. It would still be cool to have things that are seemingly impossible without much higher level gear or strange strategies or whatever, things that the Blizzard devs couldn't have thought up beforehand.

The whole idea for the Raid achievements is to make something that you have to go out of your way to achieve. It's not just supposed to be another thing that everyone grinds out. I think in this specific case that having to stack the hell out of your raid group isn't a bad thing at all. It's not something you have to do every time to kill the boss, or even have to do more than once. It's something that you bust your ass to do by stacking the odds in your favor as much as possible.

I absolutely agree. Some of the best challenges are ones that seem nigh-impossible at first.... and a few genuinely impossible achievements won't really hurt anyone.

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?

I dont think underman achievements should be part of raids. Who gets shafted? Doing all heroics with 3 people sounds good, because you can just grab a bunch of friends. But for 25 mans, alts and casuals still usually want some gear, or just experience the content. Id rather not see people sitting out for an achievement for the rest.

A better way to challenge a guild/raid would be to put limitations on the fight, rather than limit the amount of people. Current raiding-world examples: (a lot of these are just copying the heroic raid dungeon thread)
- Gruul - with 2-3 growths
- Mag - without using cubes (its only around 12k damage, the AoE thing).
- Hyrdos - all on one side. OR, Hyrdos without seeing 150% on any side (many adds)
- Leo - kill caster before melee demon at enrage split.
- Vashj - dont kill any Naga. Off tank them all.
- Alar - only one tank. Use exploding birds to launch the tank to the next platform when alar swaps. Takes good dps coordination, along with a good tank who can aim himself.
- Astromancer - kill her in 60 seconds (ie, use Kael weapons to kill her).
- Kael - dont kill any weapons? Maybe just kill before x-amount of pyroblasts/birds.
- Supremus - no deaths (maybe my guild just has too many retards)
- Akama - without casting a single heal spell across the raid. (did this the other week). Bandages/stones usable.
- Teron - time limit, stay true to the dps race.
- Mother - no deaths (again, we have too many retards which would make this quite a challenge).
- Illidan - considering the current theme on this boss... make him drop an item with a 1% drop chance. Getting this item finishes the achievement. (ARHGHGRBEGJER)
- Clear Hyjal in 1 hour 30 minutes.
- Clear BT in 2 hours 30 minutes.
- Clear both in 4 hours 30 minutes.
- Kalecgos - no more than 5 seconds between demon death and dragon death. OR, decurse spell not used, let it bounce off naturally with big heals and a bit of SR.
- Brut - kill it in 4:45.
- Twins - use a real strat, such as raid group up on Shadow twin and have a single person kite/tank images up the top. (requires some Shadow Image AI knowledge)
- Muru - P2 in 60 seconds.
- KJ - Never have two dragons active at one time. OR, offtank all/some reflections (but thats adding even more RNG to the fight). OR, kill it without using any breaths.

These push your existing members to the limit, not force you to kick some out to make a little grey box turn gold.

Farm Status: Kil'Jaeden - kill Kil'Jaeden 4 times in a row without wiping once.

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.

I agree with this.

Along similar lines, I think that giving Achievements for getting very low drop-rate raid items such as Legendaries or Ashes of Al'ar is not a good idea. The player has already been rewarded by getting the uber-item. Only one person in the raid can get these items. It's just an extra kick in the teeth for the second rogue in the raid (when a warglaive drops, for example).

I mean, technically it's an achievement, but it's also an achievement which is not really in your control. First the item has to drop, and second, your guild/loot system has to award it to you.

I was thinking they might have done that just to make those things trackable, as Achievements will be armoried.

However achievements for things like atiesh and the legendary bug mount were under feats of strength last I saw, which basically only makes it an effective way of saying you did something or received some item and here is the proof. No one would see it unless they actually inspect you or look you up on the armory.

The more an achievement becomes a means of progression the more some folks will be alienated. Every advantage that can be found is used by people wanting to get a leg up. From what I gather achievements are supposed to be the vanity feathers in the cap and not just another means to a game play advantage or perk. Just like the CCG's items are a "Wow! Look at that" sort of thing I expect achievement rewards to be pretty much the same.

I think this will be a great addition but they'll need to be VERY careful about what they choose to set as an achievement.

Undermanning can leave people out as was previously mentioned. Monotonous grind achievements will encourage people to not have fun, all in order to get an achievement, and some people will do this (see the honor system).

Battleground achievements are particularly worrisome. I don't want to get yelled at for recapping a graveyard in alterac valley because someone else wanted their achievement, and I don't want people sitting in the base accomplishing nothing just to say they're working towards an achievement, etc.

Every achievement idea they Blizzard comes up with should have to go through the question of "Would this be fun to try to achieve? Would it detract from the fun of others?"

I will second this. BG Achievments should be things like "came back from a 4 cap to win AB with a 5 cap" not "lost AB to a 5 cap 5 times in a row".

I don't see undermanning being that big of a deal. You don't have to go for the achievement if the waiting list is a mile long to get into your raid. I saw it more of a thing where its an off night, you only have 15 people online in your guild and everyone is bored so you start up a raid to get some achievements in some lower tier instance.

As for battlegrounds, I must say that was something I was worried about. For a place like AV I'm usually just in there for honor. I enjoy the games where they are somewhat quick and progress is being made by my team and I loathe the games where we aren't getting anything done. So to have an achievement where your teammates are all trying to kill the enemies before they dismount scares me a little.

There has to be a comfortable medium for not introducing rewards that would alter the power of a player but would offer a reward that a raider would find usful. After all what other type of game is it expected for you to repeat the same content 20+ times. In fact future content is based around the fact that you need to farm content over and over to gear people up.

I think blizzard is missing out on an opportunity if they don't add rewards that raiders would want. If you're on your 5th month of farming Black Temple what exactly are you logging on for. For the most part it's one or two drops that a couple of people might need. There isn't much real motivation and the rewards have diminished. This is a key point. A guild that is first going through BT for example is getting much more out of the instance because they are seeing new content and there are many more items you need as a guild. But the longer you raid the fewer rewards you get for doing the same amount of content. Every guild has been through the runs where it turns into a shard fest.

So why not add something to balance that out. Add goals that guilds can strive for even after their 5th month of farming a zone. Not stuff that would alter future power or aid in future zone progression but something that is worth shooting for.

* Radiance buffs in a specific zone that you unlock with achievements that are copies of common buffs like Fort, AI, etc... It simply lets the buff classes not have to worry about buffing.
* Zone Buff to increase run speed when out of combat.
* All out of combat res spells become instant cast. (again earned specifically for a single zone)

These are just a few things I came up with quickly to illustrate that you can add rewards without it turning into a way of progressing or altering a characters power in an encounter.

Blizzard nerfs and opens up content to allow more people to see content. I don't have a problem with that, I think more people seeing content is a good thing. My question is what are they doing for guilds that have been farming zones for months and months. Shouldn't there be more goals and rewards that can be introduced to make that more enjoyable?

I disagree on the point of grinding achievements. Some do enjoy that kind of thing. See the people that have almost 40 exalted reputations. They did it simply to say "Look what I did" and that is at least part of the reason to even have achievements.

They, however, do need to be careful with the rewards when adding such achievements like a grind. I think an ideal balance would be: "Do I want to kill 1000 murlocs for achievement A, or run around without pants for 48 hours for achievement B to get [Cool Flashy Item]." And if you do happen to do both achievements, well you just get [Cool Flashy Item 2] a bit sooner or have some points to save up for the next items released.

I really hope they do include a "raiding without pants" achievement.

But more seriously, I agree that time-limit/no death/all adds alive/etc achievements sound better than undermanning achievements, at least for raids. It's really not the end of the world either way since the rewards are purely cosmetic, but I'd hate to tell a normal 10 or 25 man group, ok, 2/5 of you have to sit out because the rest of us want a nifty title.