Comments on: Why I Love and Hate Achievements

By: Mark

Mark — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 21:31:28 +0000

Just discovered the blog- well done on writing interesting content!

Achievements are an interesting mechanic. I like them because I am a fairly casual player and running Kara for the 27th time is utterly boring. But having the impetus to do something i wouldn’t normally do makes it fun again.

otoh my son is a hardcore raider/pvper and hates them. he thinks its childish and wouldn’t stray 2 feet from his intended path to achieve on.

All in all I think they are a boon. it gives Blizzard an easy mechanism to add in temporary and once-in-a-lifetime reasons for world events, it gives people who want something besides pvp and raiding something to do and its (fairly) easy to ignore if you hate them.

By: dscomboulat

dscomboulat — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 11:22:25 +0000

I agree that redoing things sucks. I’ve done everything but full clears of old naxx on my old main, and none of that but a few old non heroics, and lbrs counted. oO

but… on my new main priest, i’ve loved doing things over, ok some of it is a drag, and i haven’t run an outlands dungeon since then, but fishing up old crafty in org as alliance, working on mr. pinchy and actually caring about the halloween event, as well as finally opening my world map. (something I had only previously done on my old warlock main, for utility) was fun. its given me sumt to do in the last two weeks before wrath. besides what? the world event of scourge which I did for the quests but offers terrible gear, which is packed with haste, which… is now nerfed!! hell I spent a fortune getting rid of haste gems lol.

so the achievements have given me sumt to do, as well as my guildies, I got lurker and am working on solo fishing Gahz’ranka. =) there is some challenge if you look.

and no, I won’t heal shit. unless they need an item upgrade, which they don’t. we can go back and two man the shit at 80.

By: Tankette

Tankette — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 19:51:38 +0000

For the most part I have ignored all the achievements except exploring. I have explored a few new places every day until I had everything explored except Northrend (obviously). There was very little I had missed in the Outlands. The Eastern Kingdoms had a few new places with STV being the hardest to find every nook and cranny. Then it was on to Kalimdor, which was a much bigger challenge. I am really happy I did take the time out to explore it all because there were many cool and beautiful parts of the world I'd never seen before. The forests in Feralas and the cliffs and coasts of Azshara really stood out. Tankettes last blog post..Kael

By: Briolante

Briolante — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 17:38:55 +0000

For my part, I think achievements take some of the fun out of the game. Human beings have been using tour guides to visit foreign places as early as ancient Roman times, but they sometimes prevent us from getting lost, wandering off the beaten path, and discovering things we never expected. It’s gotten worse these past few years with mapquest, GPS, and the like. Half the time when we’re exploring a new place, we’re not even looking around, we’re just staring at the stupid GPS machine trying to figure out when the next turn is. Part of what makes “playing around” fun is its unstructured quality. All these things in WoW that now have achievements were there before, but one to had them find oneself. Post-3.0, you see people just running around in a mad dash to check everything off their list and they barely stop to smell the flowers. Part of what was/is so great about WoW is that the world is so big and you can find some little corner to piddle around in. Now you just see a steady stream of overachievers running in and out doing often ridiculous things to get achievement points. I think Syd is right, achievements should be seen as a scrapbook, not an itinerary.

By: Solidstate

Solidstate — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 22:46:29 +0000

> Now, if I or my groupmates could buy pink bunnies with those achievement points

Be careful what you wish for. Someday Blizzard might introduce rewards for achievement points, and who knows if the dev in charge might not remember reading your blog post and chuckle evilly to herself…

Solidstates last blog post..Guardian of Cenarius

By: Gnomeaggeon

Gnomeaggeon — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 03:19:19 +0000

I am an over achiever.

I expect my mates will hate me as much as I do for all those Kara runs

By: Yggdrasil

Yggdrasil — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 23:06:37 +0000

I don’t feel too strongly either way on the achievements. I haven’t pursued any of them with even the slightest vigor. I’m much more concerned with getting my Warrior in a full set of lvl 68-70 tanking blues and purples, so I imagine I’ll come back to them later, if at all.

By: Jay

Jay — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 19:38:57 +0000

Hats off, I too feel the same way... mostly about the drawbacks. I've found that most activities that my guildies are doing right now has to do with gettign achievement points instead of pursuing content they haven't seen, T6. Disappointing to say the least. Jays last blog post..Visceral Combat - Intro

By: Mooonfire! » On Achievements

Mooonfire! » On Achievements — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 17:02:23 +0000

[...] was reading Sydera’s post on the topic earlier today, and I have to say… I like achievements. Even the ones that are a pain, or [...]

By: YoursTruly

YoursTruly — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 15:42:34 +0000

I already put a few guild members on ignore because they were asking whether I would tank heroics for them 2-5 times an hour despite the fact I have not logged on my tank after the first three days 3.0.2 was released.

I tanked one heroic, one Karazhan, one Zul’Aman, and one Black Temple run since the nerf and they were so trivial I decided to level a new toon who will level unspecced and wear only five piece of armor max. A shaman if anyone is curious.

I hope WotLK will provide a challenge again because frankly, I can’t see myself playing WoW much longer if I have to create artificial challenges to keep my interest