• Maestroquark

Okay, even I was part of a raid alliance for a long time, one that is still active, and the response just screams in my head: that's called a guild.

 

• Falk

While attempting not to sound offensive, that -really- would simply be reinventing the wheel.

 

Madlax

I would add a different category for pets/mounts with current achievments and the list of either which the character owns. The feats of strenght for Collectors Edition pets should be moved to there as well.
Mounts, old school ride and all that can easily fit in its own category.
Same goes for PvP mounts.

Put Legendary quests on top of lists.
Atiesh, Scarab Lord, Thunderfury, Sulfuras, Azzinoth. Thori'dal

Gladiator titles can stay in feats.

Quests:
I would be curious to see how many quests i have done out of how many possible from zones/continents.

Pets:
Seeing that I finally get some bankspace to gather pets i´d hope to have the option to restart my deleted pets like Miniwing, Worg, Spider - since they are kinda quest unique.

 

Elensar

Hopefully it would be as simple as talking to the NPC who originally gave you the pet and asking for a new one, as you would if you lost a quest item for example.

 

timski

It seems there is an inherent contradiction in the structure of achievements: They are tied to characters, when many achievements relate to group-based activities. Yet there is not a single robust group structure within the game.

So if a raid/party kill is linked to the people there, those that "helped" miss out. If it is linked to a guild, the informal groups miss out... or people that had no involvement at all (but just happen to be in the guild) gain the achievement. Should the raid leader be able to award achievements? Oh! Imagine the drama, the "achievement selling", the... The deeper you delve into these informal group structures, the more problems emerge.

This isn't entirely new. AQ's Scarab Lord title is a fine example: Like a lot of people, I ground bugs till my eyes bleed, and in the end all I got was lag.

We're in danger of missing the objective of achievements: Vanity. It all boils down to this: Does a specific achievement create more of a "positive vibe" across a group of players, than it creates a sense of division or resentment?

 

Fenrisil

As a basis for promoting game play and striving to complete difficult/fun/exciting and at times, seemingly dull activities, achievements are a brilliant idea, they give people a sense of, well, achievement when they complete a certain task, giving them something a little bit more than a simple "I've done this...woot?" fealing they usualy get.

Certain achievements can be very worthwile such as completing instances, giving the raiding population a swift pat on the back and a nice little bar to look at when there feeling worthless and whether they did infact waste there night playing game in which they killed some monsters with people they have never met. (people in fact like me)

However, exploring the entire continent?.... this tells people what? you wandered around for a few hours? not realy an "achievement" is it, more coincidental rambling, if they put in too many achievements that are, to coin a phrase, bloody pointless, people will just end up resenting those who do them.

Anyone know if there will be any rewards for these? other than titles etc?

I played Guildwars a year or so back, horrible game I might add, they introduced the idea of Titles, basicaly there are 3 dozen or so of these, and they all require differant things, be it PvE faction reputation, PvP wins, exploration, completion of certian PvE areas or gaing enough points from killing creatures in certain areas, but then they decided to introduce skills/effects that were based on your level in these titles and all its now ended up as is an endless grind fest in which, if you dont have the requires title, you simply cannot participate in certain PvE or PvP activities.

The problem im seeing is discrimination on a level of "you havn't achieved this, and therefore your not worthy of doing this".

However, as a point to boost play time and give people a reason to galivant around completing quests and other optional, yet eye bleedingly long grind sessions, go for it, hell I may even end up doing it myself, but i'll probably complain about it at the time.

 

Freelier

Since Blizzard is going to have 500 of them, I'm going to assume that putting them in is fairly cheap. If you can put in a few dozen achievements that reward people who like to explore, then what's wrong with doing it? It's cheap, it'll make the explorers a bit happier, and it won't affect raiders who dislike exploring.

However, the current exploration achievements are pretty trivial. Going back after Wrath comes out and killing Nef to see what the DK class callout does is a vastly more difficult achievement.

I'd like to see some more substantial achievements. Explore all of the areas in a zone that don't reveal parts of the map. Get to the IF airport. Get to the dancing troll village. Get to GM island. Get from Silvermoon City to Sunwell Isle without using a flight point.

 

• giansm

I don't think they would put in achievements for areas that are not supposed to officially exist.

 

• Falk

Just how much of a point is there anyway to collect the proverbial shiny internet pixels? To complete quests? To kill Kil'jaeden repeatly for weeks on end when all that gets replaced by the first 1-2 walk-over tiers in the expansion? People play this game for different reasons.

I think you're galvanized by the Guild Wars experience and grinding giving an irreplacable edge. WoW's a different game.

 

Buiden

At the absolute very least goblin towns need achievements.

 

Hypatia

Talking about the core idea of achievements, I wanted to point out a sort of "ontology of achievements". What kinds of achievements exist in other systems? Specifically for games that have *good* achievements.

1) Playing the game

This is the sort of achievement that you'll eventually get just by playing the game normally. In xbox games, this would include "completed chapter X" type stuff. In WoW, it would be "reached level 80", "killed 2000 enemies", and so on. You're going to eventually do it no matter what, as long as you keep playing. These give a sense of accomplishment as you progress through the game in the normal way, but don't add any special goals.

2) Completionist

This is very much like the basic progress meter of the first bit, only it accounts for things that you're not guaranteed to get just by keeping playing. This would include things like dungeon completions: not every character has to go to every dungeon, especially alts. You're not guaranteed to get all of these unless you make a point of going everywhere. And oftentimes there will also be a sort of capstone achievement to say "Yeah, I did it *all*".

3) Skill

Skill-based achievements have to do with carrying out tasks that are part of the main thrust of the game, but which can't be achieved simply by grinding. Completing instances within time limits or without deaths is a reasonable simple example. Completing instances at all isn't unreasonable (although it's on the low end of the skill scale, it shows you're competent at making it through a given area—the game doesn't guarantee you'll survive even five-mans if you're clueless enough.)

4) Wacky

Yes. Wacky. These are achievements that require great skill or luck in areas that are not a core part of the game. For example, Half Life 2 Episode 2 has an achievement for bringing a garden gnome from near the start of the game to near the end of the game. That's not a normal part of playing the game—you can win without doing that. You can be very skilled without doing that. You cannot do it without going out of your way just to do it.

Really, you can think of these as things that change the goals of the game by giving you a new direction to go. It's not about beating down combine soldiers any more, it's about getting that damned gnome into the rocket. An achievement for completing an instance while tanking (how can the game know you're tanking?) without wearing pants would be an excellent one, because it changes things quite a bit, requires some skill, and also evokes memories of earlier times in the game.

On the subject of class- or role-specific achievements:

This seems interesting, especially if those achievements are split into a separate category. Skill-based achievements, in particular, may be hard to do without making them class specific. A priest doesn't care about an achievement for holding aggro really well. A warrior is going to be hard-pressed to heal a certain amount. etc. And, it's kind of un-fun to have achievements that you'll never be able to get sitting not-lit-up on a screen in front of you. Sure, achievements are "extra stuff". But they're also fun to chase after. Just not when they're impossible.

On the subejct of "loser" achievements:

I've seen these on a few xbox games, and I agree that they're generally a very very bad idea. Having achievements that are really easy to get, like "play five games of AB" or "kill 100 enemies", is pretty reasonable. But having achievements that can only be gained by doing something wrong is not. Not because you have to go out of your way to do it (see the wacky category above), but because the goal is both incredibly easy and directly opposed to the normal goals of the game. If it involves failure in a way that is extremely difficult, that could be acceptable again: "Die after having taken damage from ten different PvP enemies in the last 10 seconds." In a way, that's a reasonable challenge for a tank-type character in AB—you're trying to convince people that you're scary and they should beat on you instead of your friend—so it makes sense for your failure (dying) to be an actual accomplishment.

(Oh, and the specific stupid failure achievement I was thinking of? "The Long Road Ahead" achievement in Guitar Hero II. Fail a song on Easy. If you have any experience with the game at all, the only way you can do that is intentionally, and it's utterly trivial to do so.)

 

Copernicus

A couple minor points on class/profession achievements and if achievement points can be spent-

WoW Forums -> Achevement Points .... Spendable ??

WoW Forums -> Class acheivements?

 

◊ Praetorian

Nice. I think that class-based achievements also have the potential to subtly (or not so subtly) encourage good play.

I could see achievements like, for example:

"The Frustrator -- Win an arena match while Earth Shocking at least 20 of your enemies' spellcasts."

or something for killing a raid boss while maintaining 100% DoT uptime or debuff uptime on something like Demo Shout.

Basically a reason for players to think about and pay attention to the type of things they should be doing.

On a separate note I also kind of secretly want to see an "achievement" for "rotated more than X degrees via keyboard-turning"...

 

Kewangeder

I'm favoring a split system for server firsts, as well, thanks in part to the arguments presented here. Guilds, and characters/accounts.

In fact, I'd go further, and distinguish service lent to such one-time honors. I believe the following would be implementable, given what Blizzard probably would have available in its logs.

We Were There - be at the scene of a first kill of a 10- or 25-man boss.

Silent Service - without changing guild membership, spend at least four hours in an instance either clearing to or attempting a boss as yet undefeated on a server, and be absent from your guild's raid when it achieves a server first kill.

The Riveters - without changing guild membership, deposit in your guild vault at least 8% of the materials required to create special gear for defeating a boss, and then have your guild achieve a server first kill of that boss. (It doesn't matter if those exact materials weren't actually used, or if that guild made more gear than it really needed (e.g., full AR gear for Curator); only that they get into the vault before that first kill. If you farm on your alt in another guild, just mail it to your guilded main and deposit it.)

Manning the War Effort - be present at the awarding of 20 or more boss drops, including tokens, later worn by raiders at a server first kill. (This could be admittedly quite hard to track. The algorithm would require recording every epic awarded for every raider, minus the ones disenchanted, and verifying that they were worn on a server first kill. Then again, how much epic gear is there, really, on a given server?)

Coalition Forces - acquire a server first kill with raiders who are members of at least two different guilds for at least four weeks.

Some of the above might be worthwhile to track as a per-guild-first achievement as well.

Echoing Hypatia's wonderful ontology of achievements, I'll invoke a subgroup of Wacky: Easter Egg Hunt. I've seen several achievements that require finding all N instances of some item. Sometimes this item has nothing to do with anything (wave at all of the residents of Lakeshire); sometimes it does (loot all 25(?) netherdust pollen nodes; visit every flight point in the game; etc.). They seem to appear frequently enough to warrant attention, and can open up whole other ideas for things to do in the game.

 

• Arawethion

Maybe I missed a discussion of this somewhere, but I thought it was pretty clever that the two Midsummer torch dailies were designed to encourage keybinding/mouse turning. Torch Tossing was kind of a pain to do with clicks only (although not impossible or anything, I was usually too lazy too keybind it), but a new player who isn't quick with the mouse could have made it legitimately easier by dropping the torch onto an action bar. And though I didn't try, Torch Catching might have been impossible with keyboard turns only (didn't the torch always fly backwards from your current facing?).


More generally, this class-specific training is best idea I've heard come out of the Achievement system yet. A few weeks ago, we were talking at the Boston BB meetup about how players aren't trained to do anything besides DPS while leveling. Gurg said something like "maybe tanks could have a quest where you have to hold aggro off of some NPC's for some amount of time." I basically replied, "that's not good enough--nothing you learn from one quest (or even a few) is going to meaningfully impact your play when you're trying to start doing high level content. It's not worth the development time."

Achievements solve the development-time issue. You can have a pretty elaborate training regimen for various tasks, without requiring the creation of a whole slew of character-specific one-shot content.

Carrot Cake Soup is like the taste of watching girls make out.

 

Freelier

Ironically, that's not a separate note. I'd call it encouraging bad gameplay, though on my notebook I do exactly that...

I agree that they won't do it.

However, I do think they should. Even with the latest nerfs, it's still possible to get to the IF airport. It's now much more difficult, but it's certainly possible. What does Blizzard gain by claiming that the location doesn't exist?

If they nerf it again and make it impossible, I don't think they should remove the achievement, either. I think a blue post saying that they're not sure it's still possible would be sufficient. How bad is it to have an impossible achievement?

It's certainly a real achievement now to get there. If something is an achievement even without Blizzard labeling it as one, shouldn't they take advantage of that and label it?

 

• Chicken

If there was an achievement for "Tanked the Flames of Azzinoth while clicking abilities and turning with the keyboard" all our Warrior tanks would actually have it. I'm still never sure whether I'm impressed by that or not.

Anyway, to continue on the theme of class-specific achievements, I'll just cover some paladin ideas as I'm most familiar with the class.

- Protecting Hand: Used Hand of Protection to save a caster that pulled aggro on a boss.
- Judge, Jury and Executioner: Keep up a Judgement for an entire fight lasting at least 8 minutes (that'd be really easy with a Ret Pally I know).
- Divine Hearthstoning: Use a Hearthstone while under the effects of Divine Shield while a raid boss is hitting your shield.
- Miraculous Save: Use your Lay on Hands ability to bring someone with aggro back from under 10% health.
- True Crusader: Spend an entire boss fight running Crusader Aura. (Should perhaps not be implemented as I don't think we want to encourage bad play, even if it's amusing as an achievement; I should also add that I'd have this achievement a few dozen times by now ><)
- Cleaning Lady: Cleanse over ## poisons, diseases or magic effects in a single fight.
- Holy Avenger: Make your Holy Wrath ability hit at least 40 targets.
- Charged Up: Complete the quest lines to get your Summon Charger spell.
- Ward Against Evil: Keep a demon or undead target feared for 60 seconds without the spell fading. (Turn Evil no longer has a cooldown in WotLK so this one is possible)
- Freeing Hands: Use Hand of Freedom on someone to make them immune to an ability before it hits.
- For The Greater Good: Die to the damage dealt to you through your Hand of Sacrifice spell. (Like the Crusader Aura one, probably for the best if not implemented)

buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of

 

timski

Keep in mind 2 things regarding exploration achievements:

1. Exploration is a play-style (as in Bartle) in its own right. One that has been poorly represented in WoW historically. So while I suspect many people here will see little value in it, there is a proportion of the player-base for whom it is very much part of the game.

2. As currently implemented, exploration of zone requires the character to tag (walk/ride within the area) every major named sub-area in the zone. It isn't just a case of going to one spot. My main character is pretty well travelled, but still had not explored the majority of zones. Capitals are not required for the continent achievements, so this isn't manically hard, but still massively time consuming, and far from trivial.

On a wider personal note, I found examining my character's logged achievements quite depressing. So many things that I have done were not flagged. That included some things that would be relatively straight-forward to derive from my inventory, even if such an approach was inequitable (because I hadn't destroyed old rare items where others had). I'm growing nervous that this will backfire for the very players it was meant to keep happy...

 

Lookit

Blizzard obviously doesn't "deny the area exists" because flying from Ironforge to Menethil gives you a lovely view of it as you fly right over it. But it is currently an area that is not intended to be accessible by players, so clearly they are not going to incentivize going there.

You ask how bad would it be to have an impossible achievement, and I think the clear answer is that Blizzard doesn't want to do that to any players. In fact, I would imagine that one of their prime goals as they implement this system is making sure that each and every achievement is unlockable by any player. (Obviously, this is not to be confused with their approach to Feats of Strength)

It's seems pretty clear to me that Blizzard won't and shouldn't make getting to the IF airport (and similar activities) an Achievement - but it'd make a pretty cool Feat.

 

nathanbp

Torch Catching was fairly easy with keyboard turns only. It actually flies backwards from the direction it came from, your orientation when it goes up doesn't matter. It takes long enough to throw it up again after catching that you could turn all the way around with the keyboard (although if it then went only 90 degrees or so from the original direction, strafing to the next location may have been necessary). It would have been significantly harder if the torch could have been thrown again in any direction instead of just behind you.

 

CD

I think achievements for killing a boss where no-one in the raid uses any consumables could be a nice alternative to undermanning it or doing it with low ilevel gear.
With fewer people or worse gear there'd just be more pressure for everyone to make up the difference by absolutely maximising consumable use, imagine going back to a boss you know inside out and flasking/ potting excessively simply to get the achievement, would that really be fun?

 

Lamaros

I don't believe this will be the case at all. There will undoubtedly be an achievement for killing Arthas and I assume their stance on the hardest PvE boss in WotLK will be the same as it is about KJ: That it is meant to be hard and not possible for just anyone to do.

On top of that there are/will be manys achievements that are not soloable, and some WoW players just play solo.

Achievements I think would be fun to add, if possible:

AH Master: For buying and reselling AH items at a profit (Didn't see this in the lists already, maybe I just missed it though).
Rare Spawn Achievement: Kill x/all rare spawns in the game.
Friendly Healer: Res x players while not in a raid or party, nor inside an instance.
Motivator: Organise x groups as leader through the LFG system (perhaps difficult/impossible to track).
Trollbane: Kill ZA, ZG, ST, ZF bosses, etc. (Kill every troll boss in the game).
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