Monday, October 20, 2008

First Thoughts: Achievements

I think that there’s already a love/hate relationship that I'm feeling towards Achievements. Like most of my guild, I seem to be scurrying around trying to complete achievements. Who knows... maybe it's something that feels substantial while we're all waiting for Wrath to come out. It's kind of that checklist of things we want to have done, or in the case of many of the dungeons, it's the checklist of things we've already done, but didn't get credit for since they weren't tracking it at the time. (/phew... that was a mouthful)

But that's just it: it has the feeling of something substantial. It's new. It's something to do. But you don't really get anything for it. Oh sure... there a lot of new titles, and I think those are a great addition to the game. And I could be wrong here, but I don't think that all achievements track to a given title. And some of them involve so many steps, that the only reward is really just the fact that you got 10 points (or whatever) from that achievement.

I know there was a lessons learned from Blizzard as far as World PvP. They've incorporated many of those things in to the new Lake Wintergrasp PvP zone in Northrend. One of the big things they learned was that you had to have meaningful rewards from a World PvP zone. One of the reasons that people didn't really care about Eastern Plaguelands or Silithus was because the reward was just dumb. Very little honor, and that's about it. It's not like guilds had 40 people in Naxx while there were 20 outside making sure they had the damage buff in Eastern Plaguelands. (well... maybe they were, but still.)

So, what do you get from Achievements? Again, the titles are cool. Good job there. Other than that? Nothing. That's why I'm officially going to boycott getting any achievements... for now... well... at least until I get on and play tonight.

See? I hate these addictive Achievements. It's the curse of "just one more" that always sucks me in for WoW, but now it's even more trackable. I have to get just one more Honor Kill before I run out of G.N.E.R.D.S. before the Halloween event is over. Or run the Headless Horseman one more time to hope a little pet drops. (It's only for the achievement.. I'm still semi-anti pets.) Yep... once again, there's only one true way to win the game, and that's to quit.

Yep, that's right. So, I'm going to quit playing Wow... just after this last quest. Oh.. and I need another achievement. And I should probably hit 80 first. Oh and... :)

p.s. Anyone else have a high skill in fishing, but yet didn't get credit for even 25 fish caught?

8 comments:

Kulat/Kriyet said...

375 fishing - no credit for fish caught, grrr.

On another note though - some of the achievements do come with in-game rewards though - like a special skunk pet for collecting 50 other pets, and a special mount for those collecting 50 mounts. Like when you've got that many already, you need another one?

Hmm, not sure about that thinking.

Of course, I did spend 2 hours yesterday collecting cats, and moths, and oh look a cockroach . . . .

sigh...

Leiandra said...

Oh that's right. I forgot about the Albino Drake. Kinda cool, but I can't imagine myself dropping that amount of cash to earn it.

And the Skunk? Umm.. yeah. I don't recall if I've gotten on my soapbox for non-combat pets. I'll have to look in past posts.

Ardent Defender said...

Something by Blizzard to keep you playing. You get nothing really for it but the fun of doing it except a cool pet maybe.

I guess right now the real achievements are in titles maybe. And who has the most points i guess.

Ardent Defender said...

The Achievements that give free mounts are nice though.

DadGuy said...

You'll probably hate me for this, but read this

And for further reading look at this, with a ton of data gathered by a hobbyist.

=)

Leiandra said...

@Galo - Did you say mounts? Like plural? /e opens wowhead to start searching.

@Dadguy - I think you posted that first link before. Or somebody did and I read it. In many ways, the game is actually quite healthy for me. Sure I could be doing other things with my time, but I enjoy video games. If I wasn't doing this, I'd be sinking money into some other game and system. It's my way of relaxing. There's other benefits to me as well.. but this is just a comment. :)

Anonymous said...

It's WoW Pokemon Syndrome: Gotta catch 'em all! I've actually had a lot of fun though this weekend running around with guild mates doing some of the old instances and what not.

Leiandra said...

I've been having fun as well. The post was mostly tongue-in-cheek. Last night we finished BWL and Onyxia. I had never been to BWL before, so it was neat to see those fights... even if we steamrolled it. Just know that you'll still need to have somebody along that knows these fights.