Achievements allow players to work towards a goal which upon completion will reward said players with a number of achievement points, usually associated with the achievement’s respective difficulty.
Obtainable achievements include those granted to your character for reaching certain levels, using or creating certain items, killing various monsters, holiday-event-specific achievements and many more. It is a system that has been used in numerous other MMO’s for quite some time. But is the system’s implementation in WoW a simple gimmick, or does it add real depth to the gameplay experience?
What Blizzard got right
Blizzard certainly hasn’t been lazy, and has added a vast number of achievements for players to pursue and obtain. These range from being dead-easy to extremely hard, and should players feel the need to complete as many as possible, it is possible to spend hundreds of hours in pursuit of achievement points.
Secondly, everyone who plays the game has the ability to fulfil the requirements for at least some of achievements, meaning that the system truly works for both the casual and the hardcore player.
The actual interface is very easy to use and it is well-ordered. I could immediately find what I was looking for the minute I opened the achievements interface for the first time.
Another nifty feature introduced along with the achievements system, and accessible via the achievements window, is the statistics window.
Here, a log of almost anything you could ever want to track in-game is kept. You can look up your total kills, deaths, gold earned per day, flight paths taken etc. The list is very long and equally as interesting.
Where Blizzard failed
When browsing through the list of achievements, it quickly becomes apparent that achievement difficulty and the associated rewards often do not match up very well. Some achievements, such as “Old Crafty” (capture the fish “Old Crafty” in the city of Orgrimmar) for example, require a large amount of time to be invested, but only end up rewarding the player with a low number of achievement points.
The aforementioned achievement does not count towards any title-rewarding achievements either. Then there are other achievements that can literally be obtained in less than a minute that offer at least the same number of achievement points. I wouldn’t call it unfair, but it’s rather silly to create “difficult” achievements that reward stingily.
Other Rewards
You may be wondering exactly what the point of the achievements system is if all you get for your time spent playing is meaningless achievement points and the associated yet essentially empty bragging rights that go with them.
The answer is that Blizzard has stepped up to the plate and offered rewards to players who obtain certain achievements.
The most common reward is in the form of a title, which is displayed next to your name to other players in-game. Titles usually require a series of achievements to be obtained before they are awarded. Other rewards include companion pets, mounts and recipes. (Ed – Is this not just indicative of a game that is on its last legs, clutching at straws in order to keep long-time players interested?)
On the whole, the rewards offer enough reason for one to justify working towards the achievements required to obtain them. Blizzard would do well, however, to introduce material rewards to more of the achievements, as at the moment there are many achievements that do not reward anything other than simple achievement points. It’s a case of bitter-sweetness when a large number of achievements are introduced, but many of them are in essence meaningless.
Summary
Whilst not ground-breaking or innovative, the achievement system succeeds in adding more incentive to keep playing. Players both old and new have and will continue to spend much time working towards obtaining achievements as more are added to the game over time. It is just a pity that the system is flawed, as it could have been so much more interesting.
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