World of Warcraft Achievement System Rumored

Kotaku has the merest hint of a rumor about a possible achievement system coming with Blizzard's Wrath of the Lich King expansion. "You know what World of Warcraft players really need? Another reason not to get up out of their chair, and Blizzard might be giving that to them in the form of in-game achievements in the next expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. According to DeathKnight.info, players in the Wrath of the Lich King alpha can type /achievement to bring up a screen like the one above, which shows various achievements that can be performed for points, which will more than likely then go towards buying gear and such."

I'm so over Wow.

[TheGeneration]

I played for a couple of years... but man... what's the point?

It's just a giant life force sucking treadmill.

Re:I'm so over Wow.

[Sklyan]

I played for a couple of years... but man... what's the point?

The sense of fulfillment you get from any hobby -- be it building model planes, or collecting bottle caps. Call me an existentialist, but you can step back from any aspect of life and ask "what's the point?" and you will generally find that there isn't one.

So....?

[Stickerboy]

This is just another resource you grind for in the game, from Gold to Honor to Arena Points and Arena Rating to Tokens in instance drops. I think any innovation would have to be in the rewards, like introducing a Traits or Perks system like in Fallout. More raid gear equivalents as a reward would be redundant... you can get that simply by endless losing in Battlegrounds.

From the attention list though, it looks like they're focusing on casual players... "Super Quest Dude", various quest chains, etc. That's a welcome addition for those of us that don't have endless hours to play every day.

Re:I'm so over Wow.

[Moridineas]

That's true and I agree with you (I've argued the same point on slashdot before--who cares if people have fun doing it, it's up to them)

but I think the GP is referring more generally to the feeling of disillusionment/ennui? many people seem to feel after falling head over heels into WoW. I played soon after the game came out, and was very addicted. I then stopped and it was like ... crap, what I was doing, I could have done X,Y,Z etc instead. Of course I reactivated my account 2 years later, played for a couple months, and felt the same thing again, so I obviously didn't learn my lesson :-P

I've heard similar reactions from others.

Re:I'm so over Wow.

[TitusC3v5]

I played for a couple of years... but man... what's the point?

Well, this may be a shot in the dark, but maybe, just maybe, people find the various grinds in the game to be...fun? Far too many people get caught up in the constant gear and leveling treadmill to really focus on what should be the goal of the game - enjoying yourself.

On a related note, this system is more or less a direct copy of LotRO's deed system. There's a running commentary on it right over over at the LotRO forums [lotro.com].

Re:I'm so over Wow.

[silentbozo]

If I build a model plane, I can put it up on my mantle, gift it to someone, and take the skills I developed building that and put it towards other items requiring fine motor skills and and a sense of art and history.

I think someone mentioned in a post regarding WOW on a different Slashdot thread that raiding as part of an established group taught them how to manage time, coordinate with other people, and build leadership skills.

Pretty much, you get out of a hobby what you put into it. If it's just a way of killing time, then all you're going to get out of it is a lot of dead time. If your reason to play is the social dynamics (I knew people who played because their friends had moved away, and it was the regular "meetup"), then I think the test would be if these social networks survive beyond the game.

With that said, I detest games that require you to stay on the treadmill to "keep up". At least when I do work I hate during normal working hours, I get paid...

Re:I'm so over Wow.

[merreborn]

On a related note, this system is more or less a direct copy of LotRO's deed system.

That's okay, Turbine has cribbed a few features from WoW too. e.g., in their first MMO, Asheron's Call, they recently introduced a quest that's virtually indistinguishable from the various WoW deck quests (deck of warlords, deck of portals, etc. etc.). Hell, the whole LOTR UI looks a lot more like WoW than it does Turbine's previous games...

There's an awful lot of 'borrowing' in the MMO industry.

Re:So....?

[Anonymous Coward]

You should be playing on a non-PvP server then.

not quite

[unity100]

the achievement fulfillment you get from building model planes, or collecting bottle caps, stay as they are. each of the becomes a permanent piece in your collection. they do not get obsolete with yearly introduced expansions and get thrown away.

Re:not quite

[BigDork1001]

Lets flip that around a bit. My WoW hobby doesn't leave crap scattered all over the house and piling up in a closet somewhere.

Re:I'm so over Wow.

[happyemoticon]

If by "point" you mean there's some large, enduring justification for doing something, then yes, nothing has a point because we, the planet, and the universe will die. But if you mean ANY justification, things can most certainly have points. I don't need any better reason than pleasure and love to have sex, even though pleasure is fleeting, love is fragile, and eventually I'll die. Likewise, I play video games to have fun, pointless as it may be. And I stopped playing WoW because it stopped being fun.

If I might wax philosophical myself, it would seem that different activities have different reward patterns. Arts, sciences, sports, and skills in general tend to have scant rewards at first, but become more enjoyable and more rewarding as you begin to get better. Conversely, traditional MMOs (like recreational drugs) are really fun in the beginning, and the rewards taper out after a certain amount of use. More and more effort is required to achieve the same reward. There's a ton of stuff to do in the beginning, but as you approach the endgame, content gets harder, more people are required to be more focused, and payoffs are much more scarce - all designed to trickle out those last few drops that you need to feel like you've completed the game. And this isn't really a problem in most games, except that WoW tries very hard to become the last game you ever play.

So, it would seem that in terms of long-term appreciation, we would be well-advised to take up a few things which are open-ended, as things like drugs and MMOs eventually peter out, or only focus on short-term, non-addicting games.

Re:I'm so over Wow.

[Tubal-Cain]

Knowing WoW doesn't pay as well.

So don't

[Moraelin]

With that said, I detest games that require you to stay on the treadmill to "keep up". At least when I do work I hate during normal working hours, I get paid...

The bleeding obvious answer is: so don't stay on the treadmill. Go do whatever keeps you entertained, when it keeps you entertained.

I'm somewhat surprised how many people seem to, well, think they have some kind of _duty_ to achieve some level, get some item, etc. Or in some pathological cases think they somehow prove their penis size by how many level 70's they have and with what gear. So they grind and work and miss the whole point of having fun and/or making friends.

The game between levels 1 and 69 is _the_ meat of the game. That's the zones you're supposed to explore, enemies you're supposed to test yourself against, the quests and bits of story you're supposed to discover, etc. That's the actual game. It's some hundreds of hours worth of content.

And it sorta amuses me to see some people try to skip the actual game, or even use some bot to skip it for them, just so they too can then willy-wave about having a level 70. And then get stuck in an endgame grind which is no more than a repetitive chore for people who've finished the actual game and don't know when to quit.

It's akin to trying to skip most of the LOTR trilogy, just to end up watching the last 5 minutes in a loop, for months.

So basically, then just don't stay on a treadmill. Realize that levels and gear are there just

A) to give you some sense of making progress,

B) so you can practice your new abilities and tactics one at a time, instead of dumping 60 icons upon you from the start, and putting you in front of Kil'jaeden before you even know what they all do, and

C) to gently guide you about in which order you're supposed to go through the story and quests. Among other thing _because_ that's the actual game, some hundreds of hours and thousands of quests, which you're supposed to play and experience. Not just click an "I win!!!" button and be over with it.

But there is no obligation to keep up with anyone or anything. There is no par time that you have to beat. And it's not some shameful failure to take things at your own pace, do the things you feel like doing, and generally just enjoy the game.

In other words, the game is about and consists of the road, not just the destination.

And if you think that that road, in fact the game itself, is just a treadmill, well, you can just quit it now. Because it doesn't get any better. Once you're done with that "treadmill", there is no grand reward waiting for you, and no "meat of the game" that begins at level 70. What happens when that "treadmill" finally ends, is that it spits you right into the tarpit of a repetitive and pointless grind that's there just do give you something to do while you wait for the next segment (i.e., expansion pack) of the actual game.

Re:I'm so over Wow.

[Toby_Tyke]

Well, this may be a shot in the dark, but maybe, just maybe, people find the various grinds in the game to be...fun?

I have never played WOW, but my housemate is a huge WOW addict who will regularly spend his entire weekend playing it. And I mean the entire weekend. Toilet and food breaks, but nothing else.

But the interesting thing is that he seems to derive almost no enjoyment from playing it. All he ever seems to do is complain constantly. "Oh for fucks sake, I've got to kill $x of $y!". "I've been doing this for an hour!". "Now I've got to go there!". Non-stop whining. The only positive things he ever says about his WOW playing are things like "I have X gold", or "I went up X levels this weekend".

Now as I said, I'm not a WOW player, or an MMORPG player at all, so I expect a lot of them are going to reply and tell me how wrong I am, but here's my theory. I think that some WOW players, like my house mate, do not actually enjoy playing the game. They enjoy the sense of achievement they get from having 70 levels and a shitload of virtual gold. The hours of grind required to get there are simply the price they have to pay to get that. That's why you hear so many players complaining about the "timesink". They aren't having fun. They just have to slog through it to pick up the next level.

Before you all start screaming at me, I'm not saying all MMO players are like this, just that I've noticed some are.

Re:I'm so over Wow.

[BobMcD]

Well, this may be a shot in the dark, but maybe, just maybe, people find the various grinds in the game to be...fun?

Agreed. Or to try and put it another way, since all of life is a grind, so why not select the most pleasant version of it?

Rumor and not a big deal

[Avatar8]

First and foremost, this is a rumor. As the FA suggests, it could be a doctored screen since "PvP" is listed twice and having a title like "Quest Dude" is not in keeping with Blizzard's style.

Even if it does get implemented, I don't see this as a system for "grinding." I also play LotRO on those rare occasions when I don't feel like playing WoW. Yes, this appears to be exactly like the Deeds system. In LotRO those are not achievements you intentionally pursue; they're objectives that you just happen to complete while you're playing, or you might complete most of them and discover "If I visit that one last farm, I'll get X." I'd see this having the same effect in WoW. I doubt the rewards for such easily achievable tasks would be great either, just like in LotRO. They're beneficial, but they're not game altering or anything that you cannot play without.

Regardless, we'll keep playing with or without any rewards because playing the game and having a good time is the reward.