One of the nice new features in WoW's WotLK expansion is Achievements. This system runs exactly the same as Microsoft's Live Achievements - complete certain ingame objectives and you get points. I'm really looking forward to seeing this implemented in WoW.
There are achievements for exploration (visit named zones within the four continents), killing bosses in dungeons, completing quest chains, and equipping leet gear. There are points available for obtaining lots of vanity pets (the little novelty companions that follow you around and occasionally do some entertaining idle animations) and mounts. I'm particulalry excited about the PvP achievements though. As well as the endless grind for your welfare epics you can now also spice up bg's and world pvp by trying to win shutout matches, racking up massive amounts of damage/honour kills/healing, and completing various other PK-flavoured tasks.
In contrast to Live's system it does seem most of the WoW achievements cannot simply be boosted - there's very little chance an Alliance team could persuade a Horde side to throw an AB just so they could get a perfect 2000:0 score.
One thing that does seem to be missing from WoW's scheme though is a point to all the point's. I mean - I have 3000 achievement points - what does it get me? A couple of the achievements reward you with a title - an ever-popular option for WoW players. But apart from that..... nothing.
A major part of WoW's fun is getting hold of gear and adornments, such as the aforementioned vanity pets, to show off around town and in BG's. Rare mounts and armour show you have achieved a level of success in instances. Wearing the current season's gladiator gear instead of two seasons' past shows you have real pvp skills, not just the ability to play hours of AV's. Why not include items that can only be obtained through the redemption of Achievement points?
Exclusive mounts, tabards, buffs could all be quite nice. The latest invite-a-friend scheme allows you to allocate bonus levels to your lower level toons - why not allow players to buy levels through achievement points? After all, most of them require a certain level of dedication and investment in time, so why not recognise that by making the long haul to 80 withnew characters a little easier? (Surely Blizzard are going to have to speed up the journey from 70 to 80 anyway to save us from a plague of Death Knights in the endgame? Otherwise the LFG channel next summer will resound to the cries of 'Tank LFG for anything!)
So, its a good idea and this meta-game will breath fresh life into much of the content, both new and old, when WotLK is released. But it could do with a bit of polish at the back-end. Give us more reason to labour at the tasks you set, Blizzard, and make Achievements something we really want to get done, not jsut a pointless stat, good only for trade-chat battles.
you have discovered the fatal flaw with many games nowdays. TF2 and its achievements system is quite silly (though i would say its the best around). not only are some rediculous to get (like that wining AB 2000:0 or deploying 3 simultanious ubercharges on the one ally (bit of a waste if you ask me)) but what you get is some extra stats and a few new toys (3 to be precise...only upgrades of the old weapons).
these systems are all in place to keep the hardcore playing. all they care about its points, stats and gear. what better way to keep them entertained than by dangling some of these things on a stick for them and make them run around in circles for hours to be better than everyone else (who would eventually end up with all the achievements too). for anyone with half a brain we can clearly see this system is shallow and a mindless grind at best. it wont appeal to anyone but the hardcore.
Sun Aug 17 2008 5:24PMWell, let's be honest - all videogames are designed to keep people running around in circles to be better than everyone else, MMO's probably more than most. Achievements are just one more thing to collect over hours of effort for no real gain.
I'm just suggesting Blizzard should come up with some virtual reward, something visible in the game, to make collecting achievement points worthwhile.
Sun Aug 17 2008 7:02PMOther games have already done this...LOTRO has something just like this though before it, GUild Wars did it...get masters on all missions get a title, explore the map and get a title etc. Warhammer also already has this...though it's in beta..they said they were going to have it for quite some time.
WoW is just copying at this point.
Sun Aug 17 2008 10:43PMThis part of the expansion sounds pretty blah to me. Several games have similar, but at least most of those actually give you something for the points, even if it is just a fancy house item (if WOW had player housing...).
I hope this is not intended to be a major part of the expansion.
Sun Aug 17 2008 11:48PMYea I agree with all the previous posters, everything and I mean everything in WotLK has been implemented in other games. The points system is LOTRO, Guild Wars and such. I also heard this is going to be implementing something like the Age of Conan Battlekeeps Siege PvP. I honestly think WoW either has to die or be overtaken (Hopefully WAR or SGW will). But at this point WoW has drifted pretty far from the Iconic Classic RTS Warcraft and has stretched in to a whole new ClusterF**k of stupid idiotic pointless quests and Dungeons. I get no joy and many people don't get it because nobody really likes to spend 3+hours in a Raid for a piece of gear U might not even get.....................................
Sun Aug 17 2008 11:59PMthe basic flaw i see in all these systems is that this is another static system.
even if you were the heroe that slew the big dragon in 1867 and got a statue for it in 1976 most people should have forgotten you because more pressing matters are at hand.
the achievemt system is yet another endless bag where you collect but never loose showing us how little dynamics a mmo world really has.
Mon Aug 18 2008 2:57AMIf you don't enjoy the journey, why even play? After you're fully geared are you satisfied? The achievement system just provides one more set of goals for players while helping to stretch the income stream for Blizzard. There's nothing wrong with that. It's simple commerce from Blizzard's perspective. No one knows for certain if Blizzard has long term plans for achievement point redemption or some point level reward system. Blizzard has stated that they plan to expand the list of achievements over time. Though I'm one of the first to bitch and complain about some of their decisions, in this case I see achievements as a bonus that costs me nothing if I choose to ignore it and as something pretty cool if I find the system compelling.
Mon Aug 18 2008 6:20AMI think it's a little late for an achievement system in WoW. It is something that should have been in place back when the game launched or very shortly afterwards.
And CoH was one of the first MMORPG to implement an achievement system.
Mon Aug 18 2008 3:07PMIt seems to me that achievements system is a feature of the game that will actually suffer due to the size of the palyer base. When there are millions of players online, who cares if you killed Onyxia - millions of others killed her too.
Since SWG came out with a collections system a while ago they have kept a record of serrver-firsts. So if you were the first person on your server to kill 1000 rill or collect all the parts of the IG-88 statue - its recorded forever and every player sees it when they examine their own collection.
I just think it would be nice to see WoW come up with something similar, a way of showing the world what you did, rather than just another page on your character sheet that means something to only you.
Tue Aug 19 2008 5:01PMMMORPG.com writes:
Login or Register to post a comment