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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsAchievements officially announced for Wrath
by Eliah Hecht 
Jul 17th 2008 at 1:40PM
As we suspected from some hints in the alpha, Wrath of the Lich King will indeed feature achievements. Blizzard just put up a page about them on the Wrath site, including lots of juicy information:
- The system will launch with over 500 achievements, from all corners of the game: exploration, PvE, PvP, professions, and "character development." They promise something for everyone.
- Some achievements will have rewards, but the rewards will be "purely cosmetic and just for fun" (examples are vanity pets, tabards, and titles).
- Additional achievements will come "with each new WoW content update" (which I take to mean "major patch or expansion").
Patch 3.0.2 "Echoes of Doom" has landed and WoW Insider has you covered. From patch notes to talent guides for every class to fixing your addons to 5 easy achievements you can snag right now. Make sure to check out the latest news.- Each achievement yields a certain number of achievement points.
- The achievements window includes a log of all achievements completed with the date on which you finished, as well as all the ones you're currently working on.
- Achievements will be able to be tracked like quests can be now.
- Right-clicking another player will let you compare your
e-peenachievements with theirs. - Unlocking a new achievement will play a distinctive animation and sound, and announce the achievement automatically to your guild and anyone in the area.
- Achievements will be visible on the Armory.
- There are three kinds of achievements:
- Simple achievements, where you just have to complete a goal (like "give 10 hugs")
- Progressive achievements: if you complete one to collect 10 vanity pets, you can now work on one to collect 25
- Meta achievements: completing a set of achievements may be, itself, an achievement
- There are also several categories of achievements (with an example for each):
- PvP ("Win 10 ranked arena matches in a row")
- Dungeon and Raid (each end boss in each raid and dungeon will be an achievement)
- Professions (each new tier of profession skill is an achievement)
- Quests (such as completing a certain number of quests)
- Events (seasonal events will have their own achievements)
- World exploration ("explore all of Kalimdor")
- Reputation ("get Exalted with every faction")
- General: these are said to "tend toward the whimsical" ("getting a shave and a haircut")
Finally, the page mentions "Feats of Strength," which "represent the past glories of Azeroth." These are worth no points and are not displayed in the normal Achievements interface; they mostly have to do with the old world (old PvP ranks, for instance, or rare mounts). As such, they will be applied retroactively.
Overall this promises to be a pretty cool system, and I am definitely looking forward to it (and hoping it doesn't trigger my obsessive impulses and make me try to collect them all). Still unknown is what the achievement points will be used for: just a fun score? Is this how we'll get access to the vanity rewards, or are they going to be tied to particular achievements? As always, if we find anything out, we'll keep you posted.
Filed under: Wrath of the Lich King, Achievements
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 6)
Wildbinx Jul 17th 2008 4:52PM
thats a really cool idea. sounds so much better than a rep grind honestly.
BookhouseBoy Jul 17th 2008 2:02PM
This is awesome... I like that they are also going retroactive, including things that might not even be possible in the game anymore (like maybe activities during the AQ40 gate opening and all that ?). That's a great way to "reward" veteran players, IMO.
Perrins Jul 17th 2008 2:03PM
now say you already expolred all of Outland and EK andKAL just for your own little desire. will this already know that or will you have to explore everything all over again?
BookhouseBoy Jul 17th 2008 2:07PM
That's what retroactive means. Stuff you've already done still counts.
makishima Jul 17th 2008 2:08PM
Well considering if you dont use any map mods the maps always remember what areas you've explored and what you havent, I'm going to assume yes.
pudds Jul 17th 2008 2:07PM
Way to steal from City of Heroes, Blizz.
makishima Jul 17th 2008 2:11PM
Or the 360, or Guild Wars, or.....wait....a lot of things do this.....OMG! The game industry steals ideas from each other!!! Nooo.....wait I can't do it with the proper tone, Vader, gimme a hand?
Vader: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
That's the stuff.
BillDoor Jul 17th 2008 2:20PM
Right, because if someone else does something first, then certainly we can't have fun.
Your MMO would be the worst thing ever.
Badger Jul 17th 2008 2:25PM
... and Half-Life 2, and Team Fortress 2, and Portal, and Guild Wars, and Halo 3, and Bioshock, and ...
pudds Jul 17th 2008 6:47PM
The Badge system in CoH is older than any of the examples mentioned, and far more in depth. Its also the only true MMO on the list.
I'm not saying its a bad thing to copy; the badge system in CoH was one of the strongest parts of the game. I'm simply saying that as I read it, its virtually indistinguishable from the CoH badge system, which came first.
No flame intended, though I suppose my wording *was* poor.
darth.duck Jul 17th 2008 2:08PM
"win 10 ranked arena matches in a row"
"each new tier of profession skill is an achievement"
Do these mean that to get as many achievements as possible we will be encouraged to
1) sabotage our arena score so we play against weaker teams
2) level and drop different professions to collect achievements for every profession?
Bloody Jul 17th 2008 2:11PM
Maybe.
There are no real rewards tho,its just for fun,epeen and personal satisfaction.
You know how most WOW players are if there is no epic gear with big stats on it they really dont care.
matt Jul 17th 2008 2:24PM
Yes, this is another way to encourage people to tank their arena scores. :) Still, I doubt it'll affect things too much, as they'll pop right back up to their proper rating pretty quickly.
Plus, everyone else will be trying to get other random PvP achievements ("as a mage, kill someone with your 1H or 2H weapon in a ranked arena match"), so it shouldn't be too hard to win 10 in a row. :)
Bloody Jul 17th 2008 2:10PM
What I like of these is how you can just play the game,goof around just having fun not really trying to get anything nad bam you get a random achievement.
I want a "played before TBC " achievement.
Isle Jul 17th 2008 2:12PM
I second this thought...
It would be nice to be able to have achievments unlocked for players that have reached a certain /played milestone... or have had their account active for 1/2/3 years. (Kind of like COH/COV)
zappo Jul 17th 2008 4:16PM
When you archive this, you get a "I survived the Molten Core" T-shirt (or tabard).
exit stencil Jul 17th 2008 2:11PM
Little something extra for the casuals. Easy to implement, not much work for Blizzard. Don't like it, pay it no mind.
I doubt I would go out of my way for any of them, but I can't see any of them getting in my way either.
Stormtamer Jul 17th 2008 2:12PM
Not sure on this myself either.
On the one hand it'll be cool just to do the silly ones if your not that bothered, and will be something else for people to be hardcore about.
But then i can also see this as a bad thing.
Can just imagine the guild application requirements now having 'you must have x,y,z achievments, aswell as all this gear', and can also see this as making people feel bad about how much they've actually done in Wrath.
Was said on Blizzcast, that Blizzard wernt happy with the: 'welcome to 25 man raiding, either your hardcore or your not' that made people feel like they'd been hugely left out from stuff (which led to the 10 and 25 man changes).
So i dont think adding achievements will help that, if you get situation like 'the next expansion is coming soon, if you have less than 100 achievments, you've pretty much missed 80% of Wraths content, GG noob'.
Think this might hurt Blizzards playerbase more, because like an earlier commenter said, in singleplayer they're fine and even in games like Team Fortress 2, but in this case there actually no chance for some people to achieve these goals without completely changing the way they play and maybe even as far as their lives.
Willypiggy Jul 17th 2008 2:38PM
Thats what happened to PvP in guild wars, Pick up groups (PuGs) in the highest level of PvP demand a certain rank title (same as in WoW, displayed near your name) to prove your skill, to get to the minimum rank that groups accept (3) then you need to either pay alot of money to guild to allow you to join them and get some points towards the title or spend alot of time in unranked PuGs slowly working your way up, I spent around a month doing the second option and only managed to get to rank 2, I then lost intrest because of how the people with higher ranks (9-15) would dismiss everyone who isn't the same rank as them as noobs.
blackmcsheep Jul 17th 2008 7:22PM
Wow this coulda been so cool, but they made it sound so incredibly lame i now dont want it/think its dumb