I don’t know about the rest of you, but since the patch I’ve been literally obsessed with the new achievement system. I’ve been running all over Azeroth with my warrior alt (now 52) and trying to complete as many of them as I can. Which, for a 52, isn’t all that many. I suppose I could be doing this with my Druid or Hunter, who have the ability to clear all the BC and before achievements, at least. With the Warrior, I can only do so many. I suppose part of the fun doing it with an alt is that I’m gaining actual experience while I do them.
This brings me to my point about achievements. Why am I doing them anyway? What do I get out of them?
If you really look at it, there are very few quantifiable rewards for achievements. The more difficult to complete achievements give titles a lot of the time. There are also the nebulous achievement points, but I have no idea what you can use those points for anyway.
So what’s the deal? Why do I bother?
Is it for the pop-up on the screen when I successfully complete an achievement, along with the message in guild chat?
Is it for the fact that something that was once "grayed out" on my achievement panel is now colored in?
I suppose that the answer is really none of those, though they do help at least a little. I think the real answer has to do with the completionist in me. This hearkens back to my days playing Mario games. If you remember Mario 64, that was one of the first games that really CATERED to that completionist tendency. Sure, you could beat the game with a fairly low percentage of the 120 available stars, but who did that? I spent a LONG time after beating it scouring every nook and cranny for the deviously hidden "secret" stars to get all 120.
I suppose I wanted to feel like I had really "beaten" the game, and wasn’t satisfied with just taking down Bowser. It’s funny, too, that in the end the reward for getting all 120 stars was absolutely and completely underwhelming.
So are achievements a way for people to feel like they "beat" WoW? Do we now have a way to say we "beat" the classic and BC content before Wrath hits? Even if you do manage to unlock ALL of the pre-Wrath achievements, what exactly will you get for it beyond the satisfaction of having done so?
In the end, though, if you look at all the different things you can achieve in the game, be they loot, boss kills, or how many vanity pets you own, none of them mean all that much. Even the shiniest Warglaive of Azzinoth will soon be deemed unworthy of an equipment slot, and I’m sure the day will come that you will vendor your Kara or T5 or T6 gear. Achievements, though, will be here to stay.
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I’ve been obsessed as well, in fact everyone in my guild has been. You’re dead on with your completionist point. For me at least there is another factor at work. It’s that these achievements, while not “gaining” me anything, provide me with a little challenge to do things I would normally take no interest in. Each one is a little dare or a bet. A month ago if I was bored in game would I have challenged myself to catch a fish in Org and SW? No. Now there is an in game personal competition for that though, a little voice sitting there saying “hey, do you think you can pull this off?”. All in all I’m loving it and so is everyone on my friend list.
Funeral’s last blog post..It’s Like Christmas For Dead People… Well Undead People Anyway.
Very true. I know a FEW people who were always obsessed with uncovering every part of every map, but most of the people I know were more like me. They just went where they had to go to progress. Now we have at least a little motivation to do a lot of the little things we weren’t doing before.
PTD
I honestly think they are too keep people playing during this weird hiatus between Patch 3.0.2 and Wrath. You know what? I’m okay with that! Since content we were progressing in has suddenly become stupid easy, I don’t look forward to raiding the way I used to, but I do look forward to coming home each night to work on achievements! I probably won’t aim for full completion of the pre-Wrath ones any time soon, since I am most looking forward to hitting Wrath 25 mans, but it does give me something fun to do to pass the time until Wrath.
So many achievements so little time … I personally want to at least clear the heroic outland dungeons since Blizz somehow forgot I did those /fist.
Did you try doing the achievements where you read books from SM/Stormwind etc? That’s another reason for me to run my naked toon to stormwind … to do stockades, read books and I’m not sure if I have to fish there.
Speaking of vendoring old gear. Old weapon and armor sets will always have a place in my bank slot especially if the item are full of raid moments.
I guess like Gevlon mentioned we keep them in our bank just to remember the feeling when they were real. It’s a virtual world but the experience is very much so real and achievements are another way to keep track of em!
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I’ve been doing the Achievements while waiting for Raids to start. And that has left me lots of time to do them this past week. Server lag (suspected to be caused by the massive amount of achievement data being transfered to the servers) has canceled 3 nights of raids for us.
I hope all of this gets sorted out in the next 3 weeks.
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Its not the destination, but the journey.
For all the Achievement Naysayers, I say, “Don’t do them”. Honestly, I find it nice to have all these extra things to do, and it gives me a reason to go back and go past everywhere.
I’m currently working on the quests achivements for Kalimdor and EK, which also give me Reputations with the major cities. Curently I’m at 18 Exalted factions, none of which are the 5 cities. And I’ve discovered a heap of little out of the way places and quests I missed in the 9 60+ characters I have.