Have you achieved anything worthwhile in WoW?
World of Warcraft has finally jumped on the idea of introducing an achievement system, and the new tactic has appeared in a recent build of Wrath of the Lich King’s (WotlK) alpha testing. Achievement systems are nothing new in MMOs; the Lord of the Rings Online has had an achievement system for quite some time now.
Given successful MMOs tendency to incorporate unnecessary and occasionally inane features, we must always ask when we see this sort of announcement: is this a good thing? Quite honestly, there’s no harm, but it does appear like this is yet another instance of needing acknowledgment for small victories. Those that have played little league baseball or peewee football know exactly what I am talking about: everyone gets a trophy! So now, Blizzard has introduced its own trophy system, and the list of achievements have raised some eyebrows to say the least.
For those who are strangers to how an achievement system actually works, you can basically think of it as a re-worked list of quests. In the closed Alpha version of WotlK, you can bring up the achievement window with /achievement, like many other windows in WoW. By completing an achievement, you will begin to accumulate points (what they are actually called is unknown), which you might then turn in for mounts and other phat lootz.
According to Kotaku, some of the current achievements that Blizzard is tossing around involve revealing the entire mini-map in certain zones, PvP objectives, and even things like achieving a level 70 (soon to be 80) over multiple characters.
There are no inherent drawbacks that I can see to the introduction of an achievement system in WoW, but it is nothing too exciting- the developers of Warhammer: Age of Reckoning (WAR) are simply the latest developer to put one in an MMO. Some gamers have speculated that Blizzard decided to put an achievement system in WotlK as a response to what WAR is doing. On the positive side, another method to move your WoW character onto bigger and better things should only be a good thing, even if players only like the achievement system, because it is yet another way for them to be virtual show offs.
A number of screen shots of WotlKâs achievement system have been circulating the blogosphere; however, most of these shots appear to have come from sources other than Blizzard. For now, the WoW achievement rewards and the achievements themselves remain shrouded in mystery- maybe figuring them out is an achievement in and of itself.
