Been reading up on it some, but the main site for WoW has very little info on them!  You get so many points for completing one and some even give rewards like tabards, mounts, pets, etc.....but what are the points for?  Are they like XBox 360, just points to show off bragging rights of how many you have or do they serve another purpose; like for unlocking deeper meta-achievements at some point?

I've always said to myself that if I ever return to WoW it'll be because of the achievements, cause I really enjoy earning them on the 360 I bought late fall.

Just curious but has anyone completed all them yet that are available?  I know more are/will be added in updates and keep expanding on them, and also are people going back and still trying to achieve the harder ones like raiding the racial cities and getting exhalted in all the reps, etc?

For someone that left WoW because he was bored of not having much to do after awhile, will the achievements; based on my love for the 360 ones be enough to hold my attention and stick with it for awhile again?

It can be two things depending on the kind of person you are:

• They can promote obsessive behaviour, thus becoming another time sink and a cause of frustration or,
• They can be a means of natural in-game development, when you do the things you like and you get achievements for it.

It's all up to the individual. In the current implementation I believe that they promote obsessive behaviour in a natural way (if this makes sense). But in the end, as with all the unnecessary grinds (reputation grinds for example), it's up to each one of us to dictate the level of involvement.

I think I fall into the Obsessive if its fun to do category....if I start doing an achievement and a short while later it becomes boring; I stop enjoying it and have to move on!  If its for a neat title or something I can display, yet also rather time consuming/boring that many may not be willing to do or have, I'll cotinue to do it to be a bit more unique and stand out.

Other times I'll come back to a particular achievement just to finish it no matter how boring it may be!  Like I'm playing LOTRO atm, and I've done it all...everything that MoM offered I did in under 2 weeks or am very close to finishing.  The deed system there was interesting at first to get titles and higher lvl traits, but I already had most of them at lvl 10 before MoM, and the traits remained at lvl 10 so there is no reason or reward in doing them...its really annoying!

Last time I played WoW I wasn't much into raiding or doing instances much besides going back to old-WoW and helping alts/nubs clear old instances quickly.  Since playing MoM and doing the instances there I've been having an urge to try out raids and much more complicated instances and I recall; WoW thrives on them.

Its very temping, since nothing out now is worthwhile, LOTRO is becoming very boring again...I'm kinda awaiting Aion but I'd rather wait a few months after launch for the hype train to crash then see if its worth it.

Originally posted by Zorndorf

and no it was NOT  Athene. 

HAHAHAH, that guy is funny. 

...but yeah titles and small rewards greatly enhance gameplay to me for some odd reason!

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Most of the achievements will not be completed even in a year time.

A title like Battlemaster is incredibly hard to achieve in PvP. I guess playing for it would cost you at least a year AND the support of a full PvP guild. Like winning AV in 7 minutes requires a  premade with tanks/healers downing Drek Thar with all generals alive and fighting  the enemy at the same time.

The same goes for PVE, titles like Twilight Vanquisher are not given yet on my server.

Thought I'd pick those sentences out, you're wrong.

1- Some people are VERY close to having every achievement complete.. the only ones they lack are the achievements related to world events which will occur in the coming months. Also, the PvP battleground achievements are too easy to complete with premades. We've even collaborated with an alliance premade taking it in turns to get them :).

2- Your server must be terrible if no guild has managed to complete that encounter 2-3months after release, it isn't terribly difficult.

Achievements are very much a personal preference.   Pretty much any activity in WoW has some sort of achievement associated with it.  The trick for me is to do those that are based on stuff I would do anyway and ignore the ones for stuff I do not do.  So I focus on quest and profession based achievements and ignore the ones for PvP and dungeons.  Also if the achievement requires me to go too much out of my way or do stuff I do not find fun then I will generally skip it as well.

So the Loremaster achievements (complete x quests in a zone) come generally easy since I am a completionist when it comes to quest.  Explorer achievements come easily as you play the game.  From time to time I will do one of the 'extra' achievements for a category which usually mean doing a certain activity (eg.  daily quest, holiday quest) in a certain way or under a certain time limit.  Then there are the cheesy achievements like doing /love to a variety of critters or slaughtering turkeys real fast. 

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Here is a nice link btw:

http://www.wow-achievements.com/

if you look at the top person at that site

eu.wowarmory.com/character-achievements.xml

he does have many done, 

Overall summary:  687 finished out of 745 possible

his biggest gap is World Events, followed by PVP 

-- he's done everything else with exception of 4 raid/dungeon achievements

Bullshit timesink for casuals and bored raiders, plain and simple.

WoW players love being measured and quantified by a video game.  Raiding can be a fun thing to do with a guild you like.  There are tons of players, though, who just use their guilds as a means to an end and hate more than half of the people in them.  They just want the phat lootz.  Arena can be a fun thing to do with friends.  There are tons of people, though, including many top arena players, who hate their partners or team members.  They just play with people they hate because what they're really after is a high rating.  BG's can be a fun little diversion and a measure of how well you stack up in largescale battles.  Instead, most people do BG's just to farm honor to get gear.

Prior to the achievement system, players could go out and chase after obscure things on their own.  The entire fishing "community" was based around that principle, as well as other semi-casual microcommunities, and that's how most casual players operated.  Achievements are just designed to lure that kind of player into the same never-ending, compulsive grinds which currently define so much of the game.  I guess I shouldn't say never-ending.  The currently released raid content is so easy that any mediocre raid guild will have its main teams decked in best-in-slot if they raid regularly, regardless of how the RNG has treated them.

I say that having a half-decent score.