There’s an idea that has been floating around in the community for quite a while now and that pops up to the surface every now and then, most recently in the chat with the developers.
Players are asking for account-wide achievements.
If you did something astonishing – like Herald of the Titans – or something very trivial as Emblematic – they want this achievement to show up on not only your main character, but on whatever alt you have in your stable.
A terrible idea
So far I haven’t said anything about it. There are so many suggestions and requests coming in from everywhere, and you don’t need to react to everything. I’ve just watched it and shrugged. As time has passed however, I’ve become more and more annoyed and astonished that no one seems to have any objections about it.
But now I’ve finally reached the point where my inner pressure is too big for me to remain silent about it. It’s time to speak up. Prepare yourself for an incoming rant of unusual proportions even for being Larísa!
To put it short: I think this idea is just terrible and doesn’t make any sense whatsoever in a game that is supposed to still have some sort of RP flavour.
At it’s core I think that achievements should be see as some sort of public record or even diary, where you can read about what Larísa the mage, Arisal the rogue or Arasil the druid has been up to, what experiences she’s had during her lifetime.
It is a little bit related to the stories you can put into the flag addons that roleplayers use, where they write down a little bit of information about their characters. Of course it’s not the same – the achievement log is auto-generated, you can’t take away anything or add as much as a comment. But it’s similar in the way that it adds depth and gives a better understanding for a character.
Get over it
I honestly can’t find any good reason whatsoever why I’d like to walk around with a baby alt, fragile, inexperienced and terribly geared, pretending that she’s an Astralwalker.
“But what if you want to change your main? I worked for months for my Insane in the Membrane title and now no-one will know because I want to re-roll a worgen in Cataclysm!”
My answer to this is short and sweet: Get over it! If you’ve got a main which you have a ton of achievements on, but don’t enjoy playing anymore – you should give her a long and well deserved retirement.
We’re not into this game to build monuments over what leet players we are. At least I’m not. We’re building sandcastles. And then we break them. And then we build new ones, in different shapes and sizes.
But if you just can’t let go of your character with all the achievements on it, by all means: take some nice screenshots, put together a movie, a photo gallery, a website as a homage to your soon-to-be ex main. Do whatever you want to, but leave it there.
Your new baby hasn’t got all that fancy achievements on her? And so? She’ll get new ones! This is how it works when you switch to an alt. The phoenix is born anew from the ashes. But it’s a baby phoenix to begin with. You can't expect it to be aged and decorated with medals and achievements right from the start. That wouldn't make sense.
Achievements for PUG uses?
Players are asking for account-wide achievements.
If you did something astonishing – like Herald of the Titans – or something very trivial as Emblematic – they want this achievement to show up on not only your main character, but on whatever alt you have in your stable.
A terrible idea
So far I haven’t said anything about it. There are so many suggestions and requests coming in from everywhere, and you don’t need to react to everything. I’ve just watched it and shrugged. As time has passed however, I’ve become more and more annoyed and astonished that no one seems to have any objections about it.
But now I’ve finally reached the point where my inner pressure is too big for me to remain silent about it. It’s time to speak up. Prepare yourself for an incoming rant of unusual proportions even for being Larísa!
To put it short: I think this idea is just terrible and doesn’t make any sense whatsoever in a game that is supposed to still have some sort of RP flavour.
At it’s core I think that achievements should be see as some sort of public record or even diary, where you can read about what Larísa the mage, Arisal the rogue or Arasil the druid has been up to, what experiences she’s had during her lifetime.
It is a little bit related to the stories you can put into the flag addons that roleplayers use, where they write down a little bit of information about their characters. Of course it’s not the same – the achievement log is auto-generated, you can’t take away anything or add as much as a comment. But it’s similar in the way that it adds depth and gives a better understanding for a character.
Get over it
I honestly can’t find any good reason whatsoever why I’d like to walk around with a baby alt, fragile, inexperienced and terribly geared, pretending that she’s an Astralwalker.
“But what if you want to change your main? I worked for months for my Insane in the Membrane title and now no-one will know because I want to re-roll a worgen in Cataclysm!”
My answer to this is short and sweet: Get over it! If you’ve got a main which you have a ton of achievements on, but don’t enjoy playing anymore – you should give her a long and well deserved retirement.
We’re not into this game to build monuments over what leet players we are. At least I’m not. We’re building sandcastles. And then we break them. And then we build new ones, in different shapes and sizes.
But if you just can’t let go of your character with all the achievements on it, by all means: take some nice screenshots, put together a movie, a photo gallery, a website as a homage to your soon-to-be ex main. Do whatever you want to, but leave it there.
Your new baby hasn’t got all that fancy achievements on her? And so? She’ll get new ones! This is how it works when you switch to an alt. The phoenix is born anew from the ashes. But it’s a baby phoenix to begin with. You can't expect it to be aged and decorated with medals and achievements right from the start. That wouldn't make sense.
Achievements for PUG uses?
I think those who ask for account-wide achievements are quite deeply into playing the e-peen game. They’re afraid to lose their bragging rights. When they’re playing their alt, they’re frustrated that they can’t show off that they’re in fact Kingslayers under a temporary disguise – not just some random scrub newbie player. They want to distinguish themselves, for whatever reason. Sometimes they claim that it's for practical reasons – to have easier access into pug raids.
And do you know what? I don’t buy this for a second. Just because you know a fight inside out from the perspective of one class, it doesn’t mean that you know it from a different role.
For my own part I’ve almost only raided on my main mage, but the very few Naxx visits I did on my rogue, clearly showed me how different this was in what you were supposed to do, how you should position yourself, various things to think about. And then I only shifted from ranged to melee dps. I was completely utterly useless! A newbie, almost as inexperienced as someone levelling their first character!
But as it now is, my lack of experience with this character is at least viewable for anyone who screens her. The achievement log doesn’t lie. Yet.
I don’t say that the achievement you have on your main is completely irrelevant. Of course you could and should mention it when you’re trying to get into a pug raid. Your overall-knowledge about the encounter can be an asset to the raid; if the raid leader is inexperienced he might want to take advice from you.
However – there’s nothing that prevents you to do this in the current system. You can mention your main character to the pug leader, he or she can look that up in Armory and you’ll be fine. If they want to check if you’re telling the truth or if you’re a liar, a few simple questions should be enough to settle it. You don’t need hoax achievements to back your story. I think that in the end it's all about vanity, the urge to be able to show off - at any time, on any character.
Developing your account
Now the question is: will the developers listen to the people who feel entitled to free achievements on their alts or do they share my objections? I’m not entirely sure. We have definitely seen a strong movement in the design philosophy from the idea that a player is working on improvement on one character towards rather developing an account.
An example of this is the introduction of the Bind-on-account items. As opposed to account-wide achievements I don’t mind this feature. I’m fine with the fact that you can buy enchants for your alts if you’ve once become exalted with Sons of Hodir on your main. Or that you can buy nice shoulders or weapons for your emblems and give them away to whichever character you want to, to speed up your alt levelling a little.
It’s still possible to explain within the game story: your grown-up, wealthy main character is like a filthy rich uncle, who can send gifts to the less fortunate relatives. Whatever. There’s one big difference in the approach: Just because you get those items, it doesn’t mean that your character suddenly is exalted with a faction you’ve never done a single service for or even seen at all.
Blizzard’s official comments
Blizzard has responded to questions about account-wide achievements a couple of time recently.
Nethaera commented in a thread in the official forums:
And do you know what? I don’t buy this for a second. Just because you know a fight inside out from the perspective of one class, it doesn’t mean that you know it from a different role.
For my own part I’ve almost only raided on my main mage, but the very few Naxx visits I did on my rogue, clearly showed me how different this was in what you were supposed to do, how you should position yourself, various things to think about. And then I only shifted from ranged to melee dps. I was completely utterly useless! A newbie, almost as inexperienced as someone levelling their first character!
But as it now is, my lack of experience with this character is at least viewable for anyone who screens her. The achievement log doesn’t lie. Yet.
I don’t say that the achievement you have on your main is completely irrelevant. Of course you could and should mention it when you’re trying to get into a pug raid. Your overall-knowledge about the encounter can be an asset to the raid; if the raid leader is inexperienced he might want to take advice from you.
However – there’s nothing that prevents you to do this in the current system. You can mention your main character to the pug leader, he or she can look that up in Armory and you’ll be fine. If they want to check if you’re telling the truth or if you’re a liar, a few simple questions should be enough to settle it. You don’t need hoax achievements to back your story. I think that in the end it's all about vanity, the urge to be able to show off - at any time, on any character.
Developing your account
Now the question is: will the developers listen to the people who feel entitled to free achievements on their alts or do they share my objections? I’m not entirely sure. We have definitely seen a strong movement in the design philosophy from the idea that a player is working on improvement on one character towards rather developing an account.
An example of this is the introduction of the Bind-on-account items. As opposed to account-wide achievements I don’t mind this feature. I’m fine with the fact that you can buy enchants for your alts if you’ve once become exalted with Sons of Hodir on your main. Or that you can buy nice shoulders or weapons for your emblems and give them away to whichever character you want to, to speed up your alt levelling a little.
It’s still possible to explain within the game story: your grown-up, wealthy main character is like a filthy rich uncle, who can send gifts to the less fortunate relatives. Whatever. There’s one big difference in the approach: Just because you get those items, it doesn’t mean that your character suddenly is exalted with a faction you’ve never done a single service for or even seen at all.
Blizzard’s official comments
Blizzard has responded to questions about account-wide achievements a couple of time recently.
Nethaera commented in a thread in the official forums:
“It's a possibility for the future. I can't give you much more than that at this point in time, but we do agree that getting a great Achievement on one character and then having to earn it again on another character may not be the most fun for some people. If and when we do make this possible, we'll let you know.
Many things that go with this idea are still undetermined and there are a lot of additional questions that need to be answered such as yours. We'll need to figure out if it's all Achievements, Feats of Strength, only Meta-Achievements, and much much more. We don't have answers on this as of yet either and again, we're still talking about something that is a possibility and not assured at this time. We have a lot in the works right now that we hope you'll enjoy.”
The answer in the Twitter chat showed that account-wide achievements isn’t on the top of the to-do-list for the developers. They may not even like the idea at all. I’m not sure. This is what they said:
“Q. Will there be account-wide Achievements? If so, can we expect to see things
like vanity gifts for having multiple characters?
A. It’s an idea we definitely want to do, but it’s pretty challenging technically, so it’s not on the immediate horizon. We can’t promise anything obviously, but I wouldn’t feel the need to get difficult Achievements on more than one character on the same
account.”
My reaction to this was confusion. What exactly is it that they would want to do? Hand out gifts for having multiple characters? Or having account-wide achievements, as long as they’re not referring to difficult things? Emblematic is OK, Herald of Titans is not?
Whatever it is – obviously it’s technically complicated and I hope it remains this way for a long time to go.
In the end I think the danger of account-wide achievements doesn’t lie in the fraud that it actually is; the problem is that they would detach us from our characters. In combination with the increased use of our real life names as opposed to character names (brought to us by Real ID), it will bring us even further away from the RPG origins than we already are.
We’re not longer playing our characters; we’re John Smith, who has done this, this and this feature in WoW.
It’s not a path I’d like to walk.
Whatever it is – obviously it’s technically complicated and I hope it remains this way for a long time to go.
In the end I think the danger of account-wide achievements doesn’t lie in the fraud that it actually is; the problem is that they would detach us from our characters. In combination with the increased use of our real life names as opposed to character names (brought to us by Real ID), it will bring us even further away from the RPG origins than we already are.
We’re not longer playing our characters; we’re John Smith, who has done this, this and this feature in WoW.
It’s not a path I’d like to walk.
53 comments:
You know, I've thought about this on occasion, thinking it would be nice NOT to have to run all over creation to get the Explorer title, or any of a dozen other titles. (I'm afraid I'm not leet enough to have Hand of Adal, Astralwalker, or FinalBossKiller titles.)
But I've also always had a niggling doubt about whether I'd really like that. However, as usual, you hit the nail squarely on the head: We are only building sandcastles, and as such, they are impermanent.
Some of build ours more ornately than others. Some of us just dig the moat, over and over again. But in the final analysis, they are only pixelated constructs, and as such, aren't worthy of monuments past the screenshots we may take, and the memories we hold.
Thank you for crystallizing for me, at least, why I don't want account-wide achievements.
(On the other hand, an account-wide WoW ID, where someone can find Kestrel in the Armory and see that Osprey achieved a lot more, has considerable merit.)
I would rather they do something special with difficult or rare achievements like they did for Onyxia's birthday (the onyxia pet that was BoA). This way, you can send the pet to your alts and they can display the fact (in a not so in-your-face way) that you have managed to do such-and-such, without having level 1 Worgen rogues running around wearing Kingslayer titles.
I have to agree... and disagree with this one. Account-achievements could be a good thing if associated with this ID they are creating for the forums. Otherwise, I don't think I need my mage to have the achievement for obtaining a pally charger. I did that on my pally and it makes sense to stay there.
The only reason I believe that it would be good for any type of account association is we are at a point in this game where people are asking for achievements before they will allow people into raid pugs. Maybe they are on an alt, but can prove they know what they are doing by giving their account ID to the raid leader. I'm not saying I approve of these practices, but I have to recognize that there are many who choose to remain un-guilded and this may help them.
But, I don't think this is necessarily being pushed by this faction. It's more likely being pushed by people who want all their toons to have access to a title they have only earned on one. They don't want to have to work for it again. Which I don't necessarily agree with.
No worries, soon I'm sure they will offer class changes, for a fee. Maybe even level restarts! For a fee.
I totally agree with you. Some things are very nice to have on your entire account. Heirlooms, cold-weather flying books, those darn Hodir shoulder enchants...stuff that helps your alts level and has an actual ingame effect.
But achievements?? That do nothing? This is just a useless, stupid idea. You hit it right on the head with the "Kingslayer playing an alt but wants everyone to know he's really a Kingslayer" epeen analogy.
You want a title on your alt? Earn it.
Don't want to do Loremaster again on your alt? Then don't.
Want to brag you've done ICC25-Heroic when you're level 10? That's just pointless.
The one type of achievement that maybe should be account-wide should be ACCOUNT achievements, that reflect more on the player behind the desk than on the toon. Something like an achievement for playing since Vanilla, or owner of a BC, Wrath or Cataclysm collector's edition, or "has an 80 of every class" type achievements. I would be fine with achievements like that being account-wide.
The only thing that I can think of that I'd like to see is have heirlooms be truly account-wide, rather than kinda-sorta. Right now, you have to migrate a toon to another server loaded with heirlooms as the only want to truly move those suckers around. I'd rather have Blizz work on this than making certain achievements account wide.
You are in a guild so you do not see the value of account wide achievements. For us who pug regularly, account wide achievements are a god send.
I think the idea of account-wide achievements has its merits from the perspective of additional achievements such as "3 Level 80s!" or even "10 Level 80s!", or even "5 characters with epic flying! I'm riiiich!" "Max professions on 5 characters!". In short, achievements that say a bit about your account overall, but not specific other toons you have. Like what you mentioned, I won't be particularly proud of leveling my level 50 shaman, so nub that she's wearing strength mail, while wearing a kingslayer title.
If anything, I'd go with a compromise. Each specific toon can have its individual achievement tab, but you have another account tab, where you can choose to reveal your account-wide achievements to others. I would prefer to have the option of secrecy, for no other reason that I am an old-fashioned person. The individual toon should not have titles awarded from achievements he did not earn.
I just recently rolled and leveled a dk on another server... and I have to admit, one thing I like is proving myself again where no one knows my name.
I LOVED proving myself by nearly keeping up dps with a "Kingslayer" while being in still mostly blues and 200 epics... I LOVE proving that I'm not the NOOBDK everyone expects me to be, rather than having "Undying" or whatnot attached.
Account wide achievements would do the same thing that RealID was going to do... So yeah, I don't really want that.
My idea was to keep them separate.
Have your normal everyday achievements (just like you see now) for Keeva. So I can see what I'm up to on her - she still needs Molten Core, sigh.
But have some kind of tab or toggle to show account-wide achievements. How many total pets? Hand of Adal on another character? No problem. Vanilla raids or reps on your old main? All there.
That way, people can keep their character achievements separate from their entire account achievements. Sometimes I'd like to be able to see all of my consolidate stuff - all the reps and achievements I left behind when I rerolled. But other times, I want Keeva to stand alone. I don't think they should be mixed together.
I'd also like to be able to share pets and mounts from events - eg my rocket mount, or my TCG pets. But I'm not sold on sharing titles.. as much as I'd love to migrate old titles to a "new main", it seems a bit cheap. I wouldn't think it would be right for my new baby rogue to run around wearing The Magic Seeker or something. Then again, other people might lament the fact that a long-retired character is "stuck" with a super awesome title, and they wish they could wear it more. I dunno - mixed feelings on that one.
But it would be nice to be able to view account-wide stats - preferably separate though. I don't know how hard it would be to code, but ideally it would just be a toggle on your achievements UI. Show Entire Account or Show Current Character.
I'm hoping Blizzard will go down this road, if they go ahead with account-wide achievements.
I'd think they'd do it for a reason other than flexing e-peen. Like getting heirloom gear across servers and such.
It think it could be nice if the meta-achievements could be shared between those of your chars that are eligible for them and have done parts of them.
Like, I have done all the part achievements for the world events but not on the same char and thus I don't have the Long Strange Trip pink protodrake on any char. Sane with the dungeon meta.
Sharing these achievements would give a feel of all your chars having worked together for something, I think, and it could show in the achievement which parts were done by this char and which were done by another on your account.
I pug a lot. at this time, most of my raiding bomes through pugging. and I agree, account wide achievemnts are not a good idea. I guess to some it seems like grinding but it feels really good to me when a particular character earns a particular achievement. its their diary a footprint they make. theirs and no one else.
what I would absolutely love to see though is:
1. attunements that would be account wide. so for example, if I had discovered every single instance entrance in Azeroth, I don't have to do it again and again on every single alt, just to be able to run those instances. I want that discovery journey to be a choice, not a necessity (like wise, it would be nice to have short attunements for heroics and then have them apply to all your characters)
2.ability to link your main's achievements when you're on an alt. preferably cross faction as well as same faction. this comes from trying to get into a pug on my alliance hunter and not being able to prove that yes, I do have experience with that raid from raiding extensively hordeside. not every pug leader wants to go through all these armories that people throw at them, and when you pug a lot, sometime you really cannot be too picky about pug leaders (especially if you prefer not to lead yourself) :(.
I don't want my main's achievements to transfer to each and every alt, I just want to have something like altoholic (my absolute favorite addon) at my fingertips
@Steve: Thank you! About account-wide WoW ID:s in armory I can see benefits, but also complications. Once again it's the "hidden secret alt" issue we're facing. Many players - not the least officers - enjoy being able to slip away to an alt that no-one knows exists. It gives them a break from all the duties. Sure, you can always flag yourself as busy, but I still think that there's a certain value in the complete anonymity.
@Stuart: Hm... you mean like that every Astral walker would get a special pet that you could also send to your alts? I suppose that's OK. Once again it's your rich uncle that is sending you a gift...
@Barrista: Well, as I just said above - the account ID issue isn't entirely uncomplicated as such. It might be the right thing to do to make people accountable for their doings in the forums, a necessary evil. But I hope in that case that you could opt out some chars... but on the other hand I suppose then that the purpose for ID:s like this gets lost on the way.
But still... I'm not sure I buy the help-puggers-argument right away. There are already ways around it - you can inform about the name of your main, they can check in armory, ask you a couple of questions about the fights, what strat you used etc and you'll be fine.
And besides - considering the change to the raiding in Cata, with guild perks and shared 10/25 save, I think pug-raiding will decrease.
@Jormundgard: You've really lost the faith, haven't you?
@Rades: That kind of account achievements you're mentioning are OK I guess, even though they once again put a focus to the account and player rather than to the toon, which doesn't help for immersion.
The collector-sedition achievements are already accountwide btw. You get that little pet on every new char you start. I know because I've got one. (Yep, sometimes I lose my mind completely...:))
@Redbeard: Yeah, that is actually rather annoying. But since they earn money on those heirloom transfers I suppose they're not all that motivated to put it as a top priority.
@Anonymous: Two interests collide here, but I honestly think that account wide achievements are so bad for the game in the terms of RP elements and immersion that this is more important than the convenience for alt puggers.
@Perdissa: Like I said to Rades, that kind of achievements are more acceptable, even though they once again adds to a distance from your toon. It's more like you're a player playing a bunch of toons than that you actually ARE this toon if you get what I mean. But about having tabs for every toon you have to display in game... Why? Is it really THAT hard to tab out and check Armory? Wouldn't that kind of in-game armory eat a ton of resources in the form of bandwidth as well as developing time? Is it really worth it? I'm not dismissing the idea completely but I wonder if it's the right priority.
@Askevar: " I LOVE proving that I'm not the NOOBDK everyone expects me to be, rather than having "Undying" or whatnot attached." And I love that attitude! Kudos to you!
@Keeva: Again as I said above - why do you need to see all that stuff in game? Isn't that what armory is for? Would you want it to be viewable to others? Your secret alts revealed as well? Toons on other servers?
@Typhroon: Getting heirloom gear across servers is already possible if you make server transfers - and possibly they're going to make cross-server mail available one day. Apart from special mounts you already can get the perks that come from for instance rep grinding. The shoulder enchants from Hodir, the head enchants. No problem.
So... what's the valid non-epeen-reason if I may ask?
@Tessy: A reward for the teamwork between characters? Hm... possibly. I suppose... if the meta-drake could be bought for a currencey that you earn and the alts could send their currency to the ONE character who would get the drake (no, I don't think everyone would get it), then he could buy it. But I'm still a bit reluctant.
I suppose I'm a little bit oldfashioned in this way, but I insist on that if you record that a char has done a certain thing he really should have done it.
I think it's a very good idea, but it depends on implementation. Titles transferring? No. I'd feel like a cheat if my Wrath druid was wearing Champion of the Naaru. She never set foot in SSC or TK.
But being able to link your main's achievements? Oh yes, definitely. I think Anonymous is right in a way - you don't need anything like that if you're in a guild. I guess I'll find out soon enough, when my ex-realm priest hits 80, but I feel some "link achi and GS" in my future. Since my main is a healer, and my priest is also a healer, having the achievements proves I do know the strategies for all ICC even though I don't even have Storming the Citadel. Not sure if I'd like to have an inspect feature for all my chars, but maybe we could get an extra panel and we could link from there, so instead of [Fall of the Lich King] it would say Jen-Alonsus [Fall of the Lich King].
In case it wasn't obvious, I don't care much about the RP component. I am Jane Smith who did so and so in WoW, and I *like* it that way. When I'm playing I focus on me, the player, not on my characters. It's my experiences, not their separate experiences. And I have a feeling this is the way most players feel...
@Leah: as far as I know of most attunements are gone fromt the game already. Which I frankly think is a loss. The Kara chain was more of a nice experience than a burden.
About the second issue: is it really a good idea to support the link-achievement-silliness even further? Shouldn't we rather try to foster raid leaders to think and make an effort as they're putting together their teams?
You're mentioning an addon you couldn't live without. I don't know about that, but it sounds to me like it's already doing that thing you're asking for?
@Jen: You certainly sound very detached from your character. But what makes you think that most players feel that way?
Even if the hardcore role-players who actually play their character in-character are very few, I would have thought that we still had some sort of relation to our caracters, not just regarding them as vehicles we use to get to "see" content.
But I suppose neither you, nor me really know. We would need some solid data, a survey of some kind to get the answer about that.
About getting into pugs thanks to your mains achivements I rather feel the opposite. If I'd try to get into a raid with my resto druid, I wouldn't like to raise unreasonable expectations just because I have a Kingslayer title on my mage. I'd rather be that "new" player, who might surprise by shining more than you would expect. And if it would take me longer to get inot a pug, I'd be OK with it.
I think it would be awful to have my Kingslayer title on the other alts - it would seem pretentious to me. Actually, since I only saw him die once (we keep getting stuck on heroic attempts now, so.....) I feel a bit of a fraud wearing the title at all...
I'd rather do better than expected, than worse - to have over-inflated gear is now possible and is no guarantee of satisfactory performance. To have this extended to achievements makes it even worse.
I am deeply in favour of mail being account wide, for BoA items only. Because having to send a mule across to another server makes it all such hard work. I have virtually abandoned the toons on my alt server, and am beginning to think I have abandoned the heirlooms as well.
I do like the idea of a minipet being BoA for an achievement. That could give an indication that you, as a player, know the encounters (even if as a different class/spec) but not on the current character you play.
I agree with your article.
And I think the fact that blizzard actually considers this seriously shows us once more where the game is going - I've already elaborated more on this topic in your last 'jumping article'; this game is leaving its genre. both the 'mmo' and the 'rpg' part are slowly dying away.
the only real point in favour of accountwide achis is the pug issue. changing the entire system just so people can join few more foul pugs easier (and foul they are if all they care about is your achi or gearscore) means this type of playing the game is embraced. "lets get into a group for this and that, the quicker the better, here check my ID".
everyone else, people that actually raid with their guilds or at least dedicate time to create proper pugs do not benefit from this at all, on the contrary they can lose something like you described already.
Oh I am 100% behind you on this, Larisa. From experience I know all too well that a fight as healer can be completely different as dps - just because I've been in the encounter it doesn't mean I know it back to front and inside out. Therefore any instance/raid achievement I might have on one character, I would not dream of using to prove my knowledge on another.
Besides, thinking back to the Tam's post the other day - about the paying to complete the LK fight.....You could have a situation where people can "boast" about it on their main, even though they might have been carried through the content.
So no thanks. I want my achievements there, well earned, with the memories that go with those titles, and not have a little level 3 with silly titles.
Wow. This, I did not expect to see from you.
This is the one feature, in game, that I've been looking forward to most. If they say they definitely will never implement it, it's one of the few things which might cause me to stop playing my account.
I changed my main. I had quite a lot of achievements on the character I changed from, I had worked hard to get them, and by deciding that I don't want to continue playing that character any more, I had to set them aside. The only reason that was made an easier decision was that they might allow account-wide achievements.
To say that the reasons for this are lazyness or searching for e-peen actually really annoys me. The idea that I should 'get over' my side of the argument, when your one even partially consists of 'it breaks rp' - something you do not participate in a great deal - is a little lame.
In character, there's no reason why a level one cannot be an astral walker. In character you have no idea what the person in front of you has and has not done. It's the non-immersive aspects, like that little note next to their name saying 'level one' which allows you to tag someone as 'inexperienced' just because of level. They may not know their class well, but a player playing for the tenth time has a better idea of the mechanics of the game than one playing for their first.
As to the pug-uses I can see it being more useful than you imagine. You're in a guild which raids, I no longer am and have to deal with this sort of thing weekly if I want to see the content - pugging raids means linking achieves and especially if you're dps they're not going to 'take your word for it' that your main is 'x' and they're also not going to waste their time asking 20 questions when there are others to fill your space. This argument isn't one I care about much, just pointing out that it's more valid than you're representing.
There is no fraud in account wide achievements. I have done explorer, I am a guardian of cenarius, I have the holiday achievement steins from every year across my two 'mains' (one of the achievements that annoys me the most to not have cross-character, actually), etc. etc.
The fact that I also moved to my old server, when I changed characters, to my old set of alts, meant that I didn't have all of those little 'log in on the day' achievements, either. I would love to have my Blizz polar bear on all of my characters.
When I group with people, when I go out into the world, I don't represent myself as a character with nothing behind them, with no experience, a whole new person who knows nothing - that would be fraud. It would also be damned unfair given the number of times I've given advice or pointed someone in the right direction of a quest-goal that my alt hasn't done.
As someone who used to raid lead, whilst I also might not know, completely, what to do with my new alt in a raid, I usually have a fairly good idea. I read tactics for all roles, not just my own and re-read them for my class before joining a group for the first time. I also have a lot of characters in two particular roles - tank and healer. Whilst going from ranged to melee dps is sometimes a big jump, going from a priest to a tree, to a shaman really doesn't make the encounter so different. So long as I know my spells, much of the work is going to be identical.
The vitriol coming from this post surprised me, I had no idea why anyone might consider me having my albino drake at level 60 with each alt, my 75-pet deer at my side or wearing a title I've earned such a terrible thing when half of the people in Elwynn forest and Durotar have sparkle-ponies.
tbc...
The idea that it is lazy to not want to have to do certain achievements again is also ludicrous. It's not lazy at all. Wow already has a large number of repetitive actions - daily instances, repeatable raids, heroic modes of the same raids, repeatable levelling content, repeatable rep grinds - the last thing I want to do is repeat all of my achievements. I do not want to spend my game time re-doing the same things over and over when I actually have things I've not done to do. I like playing with my friends, I like jumping on to do an instance, I don't want to have to run all over the world again on my druid, buy all of the mounts and pets again - I want to go out and do my pvp achievements. My achievements are a little more important to me as I'm not raiding much any more - they are my barometer for success as I find the gear rat-race rather dull when there's nothing I'm gearing for.
My only concern about account-wide achievements is that for those from 'first kill' guilds, it would be harder to hide on an alt - as I know the soothing effect that can have.
This is a little bit of a ranty reply, I know, but it honestly is one of those things which I feel strongly about and wished to put a different perspective on, giving the number of replies which seem to think that it's ok or even desirable to be asked to repeat yet another layer of content, to have each character separated into neat little boxes which may not overlap...
/calm
/hug
Its the predictable reaction to gearscore and other add-ons being used to evaluate people before the runs start.
People get tired of patiently trying to convince some moron that yes they have those achievements on thier main and they can do the run thier on with thier alt.
If you want to get mad at people asking for this focus your anger on the dumb Idea that is the Armory. It is the basis of the entire argument.
@Vigorless Fragmentary: Oh yeah, such a change would fit very well into the change that the game has gone through. Now; I'm NOT one of those who desperately long back for how it used to be back "in the good days" when I didn't even play the game. I think WoW is an awesome game as it is. But I definitely don't want it to take any further steps away from the MMO and RP origins. And a change like this would definitely be such a step imo.
@nowiamtree: yeah... the achievement link really doesn't mean that much, or at least shouldn't. I can be kingslayer as much as I like on my mage, this wouldn't help me at all if I as much as tried to heal Naxx. I'm a beginner when I'm at my alts. That's the truth.
@Aurik: I'm actually a little bit surprised that you take such a strong stance at the opposite side of this. But apparently this is a bit of a community divider. It fascinates me a bit.
I never realized that we regarded our toons so differently. OK, I'm not a hardcore roleplayer, but I'm really attached to her and have a completely different feeling when I'm playing my mage as opposed to when I'm playing my rogue. They have different personalities sort of. Even if I don't act in character. That's the only way I can explain it to you. They're sort of alive to me. My imaginary alter egos...
Your approach is another one. And I totally respect this, inspite of my possibly strong words in this post. One explanation could of course be that I'm not that deep into achievements myself. I can enjoy the twist they add to farmed raid content - it happens that I get hooked on a title, such as "merrymaker", which felt totally right for my pretty lighthearted little gnome mage. But that's about is. I haven't gone through the grinds that yo have (well... the frostsaber mount was a grind I suppose, but it didn't feel that bad, I think they've nerfed it a lot since vanilla.) So I can probably never completely understand how you feel.
If achievements is the major purpose on the game, well, then I can imagine that you'll feel a bit locked up on your main since you can't transfer them over and that the grind can become overwhelming.
But from my perspective it would be if not game-breaking, but at least add a little crack into the game if they made the achievments account-wide.
To each one his own. Let's agree that we disagree on this. It remains to see what Blizzard makes out of it. Apparently the community is divided. I can't tell how the proportions are though. In the forum thread I linked to, there are advocaters for both perspectives. And what about the silent masses? Probably they don't even notice...
Cheers and hugs!
I find it strangely disturbing just how little I care about this issue. Knowing me, I am having a hard time thinking about anything that I do *not* care about.
Well now I have one thing. It weird i tell you!
/end derail
@Sam: Armory was already in place when I started to play WoW, so I've never had any second thought about it really. I actually think it's quite handy and good. Although I still think the game activity log should be optional.
I suppose all those things tie together. I just think this is where you should draw the line. Others will think differently of course.
@Dwism: That's because you're gone fishing, slacker!
The thing is, I don't care to have a Kingslayer title or anything such on my level 10 druid that I just made. But once I hit 80 and start getting some gear and want to do some PUG raids I'd love for some way to show that I do know the tactics.
GS sucks, but people use it and without the achievement having slightly lower GS than they ask definitely means not getting into the PUG. When you talked about waiting a little bit longer on your druid.. Well here's the thing. I have a paladin alt - she has every piece of gear she can get from Triumph emblems and almost everything from Heroics. Her future updates are from raids. But guess what? She doesn't have the achievement so no one will take her. Despite the fact that I know the tactics.
Also, I don't care so much about the little achievements. But what about the big ones? Just because I switched my mains at some point does that mean I'm lazy (in your words) because I don't want to re-visit every part of Azeroth to be an Explorer. Or have to re-do every world event (something that takes a full year) to get my violet proto-drake? Or re-do the 2-3000 quests for Loremaster?
I think that big stuff like that - you can't expect someone to want to do more than once. And no, I don't want to "get over it". Those took a lot of work and abandoning a character with those titles/mounts/pets is sad. But what is my option? Just "get over it" or do it again. Both options which really suck. Or stick with a character I no longer need/enjoy.
I understand your point of view - I just don't entirely agree with it I guess.
Actually, I am... in a way, very attached to my chars. But in a non-RP way, I guess, if that makes my sense. I LOVE my druid a lot, and I can't imagine going to another main. All my alts have certain... traits I can't change - name, hairstyle, face markings. But, through it all, Jen the druid is Ioana's character, same as Khrista the soon-to-be 80 priest.
I think that what we (=pro account achievement) want is a halfway point. Right now you have 2 extremes:
1. You don't have the achievement (say Storming the Citadel). People will assume you never saw Putricide in your life. You don't know the mechanics, you don't even know what he looks like.
2. You have Kingslayer. People will assume you did all the fights and know the strategies.
What I'd like is something to say "I have done these fights on another character; while I may not know exactly what my current character has to do here, I have done the fight and know what to expect, in general". A good RL would know what to do with me then...
Hey Laria,
its me from The Pug. We chatted recently.
I trusted your advice and there I am, reading your comments, even writing one as if there were not a thousand things I should take care of instead. :D
On this topic: You should consider what achievements really are.
Totally meaningless, anyone disagrees?, attempts to give player another means of satisfaction, accomplishment.
They are meaningless because they are not really integrated in the game. Sure you can have a title, or a mount, but in a game where you have to kill stuff to suceed, or a game where killing stuff is the means to an end, they dont mean anything.
This is the try to give those poor achievements a little bit more of substance I guess. Maybe they can do more interesting stuff with them if they are accountwide.
It wont increase their value per se, but I think maybe making them account wide gives them some more much needed substance.
I would not blow storm and whistles about privacy issues until we got even the slightest prieview.
Seems to me you have gotten in the cataclysmic mindest of most other players these days, too.
Everything will go to sh**, and if the possibilites exist that something is suboptimal it will be.
If something can hurt your enjoyment it will be implemented that way.
Where does that hysteria come from I wonder.
Great way of starting off an interesting discussion! :) I was going to reply with a comment but it got a bit long so I made a proper post for it:
http://priestwithacause.blogspot.com/2010/07/account-wide-achievements-different.html
I'd kind of assumed there would still be an indication that you did the achievement on a different character, at least.
I dunno, to me achievements were already something very detached from the game world, so it doesn't really bother me. Achievements themselves already are 'anti-immersion'
@Saga: Did I call you lazy? Hm… Can’t find it. But sometimes I suppose I write too quickly.
I suppose I just can’t see why it’s so terrible to have the Loremaster title on a char that you’ve retired and work for some other title for the one you’re playing right now. Does every toon have to be the same?
@Jen: "I have done these fights on another character; while I may not know exactly what my current character has to do here, I have done the fight and know what to expect, in general".
You could actually whisper that to the Raid leader you know. Old fashioned I know but…
@Kaputt: /greetings! Welcome to the comment section after all this time!
Achiemements have as much or as little meaning as you put into them. Not more, not less.
What I’m suggesting is to see them as a part of your character development, something that individualizes your character and makes it into a special person. But if every alt you have is a copy-paste of your main that meaning gets lost.
I’m definitely not totally worked up by this. I write this way because it makes a way better read. Ask me about the real-name/real ID issue, then I can get angry for real. But this. Nope. I’m sorry if I mislead you. Believe it or not – I’m NOT cataclysmic. Just a blogger who likes to use rhetoric to make engaging blog posts.
Not that I don’t have those opinions – I do. But maybe I seem more hysterical than I really am.
@Shintar: Thanks for the link! Well I don’t agree with your views on this. I think the diary should be knit to the character and not to the player/account. But how boring wouldn’t the blogosphere be if we agreed on everything?
@Iapetes: I don’t know if achievements necessarily needs to be anti-immersive by nature. It really depends on which approach you have to them. OK, some of them "obtain an emblem" aren't really immersive at all. But some of them might actually support you in finding suitable goals for your hero... I think.
@Larísa - Maybe it's me being silly, but I do enjoy having my stuff in one spot. I don't necessarily want the actual title on my new main - but I want it to show somewhere that I did it. Not on some retired toon that never gets taken out anymore.
But even then, the titles isn't my main beef with it. It's the long, horrible grinds of things like the violet proto-drake. I just don't want to have to spend another year on another character - I would really, really like to get my violet proto-drake. Or grind out those 75 pets again for my fawn. (I really love pets and mounts.)
Sure, I'd still have it on my old main. But why do I have to do it all over again to have it on my new main? I don't see them harm in wanting this.
I don't think every achievement should be account wide. I also don't necessarily think you should get every title at level 1. I just want there to be a way to show that I did do this - even if on another char.
And I saw you saying to someone that they can whisper the raid leader that they've done it on their main, and of course they can. But you can't verify it - without re-logging your main (if you're lucky enough to have it on the same realm), so they might not believe you. Then why would they take you if you don't have the achievement and they have a person standing next to you that do? (Even if on your main you might actually have done more bosses and know them better)
"Achiemements have as much or as little meaning as you put into them. Not more, not less.
What I’m suggesting is to see them as a part of your character development, something that individualizes your character and makes it into a special person. But if every alt you have is a copy-paste of your main that meaning gets lost."
And thats the point, i think.
Blizzard dont want them to be something you GIVE value to, they want them to be something that has value in itself, unescapable.
The real problem, in my opinion, is that WoW has become an ALT-game. The concept of a main character is steadily dying since launch. They sense of progression has been lost. Accountwide achievements might remidy that to some extent.
Damn, my spelling is abysmal. Sorry for that.
As a role-player, I hate the idea that my bank alt would be a Kingslayer. Ugh!
Why not just have a section on the achievement screen that lists the major achievements of your other characters? That way PuG leaders can see that you -have- killed Arthas. Yet you can still enjoy working for a second Kingslayer on your alt! Win-win!
Larisa: Of course. And he would say either "lol nub dun belive u" or, more articulately, "How can I be sure you did those? Xxarthasdk can link the achievement on this toon so I *know* he's got the experience". Xxarthasdk gets to raid, I don't.
(Oops... Saga already said the same thing. Sorry.)
[Fwiw, the characters I'm talking about are indeed on different servers, so I couldn't log my druid to prove she killed LK.]
@ Larissa I suppose you have a point. but I come from a culture where you adjust to the people around you rather then trying to make them behave in a way you wish, so I just kinda go along with the whole link achievement thing (I hate gearscore misuse though and generally try to avoid pugs that ask for it, unless the requirements are actually reasonable). i doubt that it will go away, unless blizzard will make achievements unlinkable.
altoholic doesn't let me link achievements :( but it does let me look through everything I can possibly need to know about my alts without having to relog. like whether they still need a recipe someone is trying to sell for a good price right now (and I can link recipes too), if I can cut a particular gem and if I even have a pattern for it, do I have any of the particular item on one of my characters before i buy it, almost as up to date loot list as atlasloot, etc.
I'm kinda embarrassed to say but I'm hugely dependent on it in game and I wish it existed in real life (wouldn't it be nice to be able to get a remote look into your pantry to verify if you need a articular obscure item, you forgot to add to your shopping list and then saw on huge sale in a store and cannot remember how much of it you still have left - real life experience here O_O)
Larisa, Larisa, Larisa.
Sometimes I wonder about you, dear. When you say you are going to rant, I get all excited that you are going to let the pigtails down and go nuclear, but alas, once again, in a clear, concise and level-headed way you have explained your position.
I, on the other hand, being a hot-blooded (well, at my age as hot as can be expected) American male can show you thing or two about ranting, as in:
"Account-wide Achievements Suck Ass!"
Achievements, by definition, are earned, not passed around like so many after-dinner mints. You want to show off your main's Kingslayer title? Play your main. You want to show off your Explorer or Ambassador or Loremaster titles? Get on the characters that earned them. Don't give me this sniveling, whiny little, "Well, I did it on my main and therefore I should pass it on to wah, wah, wah..." Spare me. You want an achievement, do it the old-fashioned way, go out and earn it (again and again, if need be).
Each character, at least in my mind, is an independent being and should only have those attributes it has earned. For instance, I like to think of my characters this way: My main, a NElf hunter likes to raid (11/12 ICC, grrr, gonna get you, yet, Arthas). Well, he has a sister character, a level-capped NElf warrior who, after seeing what raiding has done to her brother, doesn't like to raid, in fact, she is friendly to the races (Ambassador) and seeks out adventure (Loremaster). They both have human cousins, a preist and warlock, who spend the majority of their time battling to protect the Alliance lands against the incursion of the Horde (PvP). As you can see, they have their own history - their own backstory, their own way of doing things, their own view of the world. For each of these characters to somehow be able to run around bearing an achievement/title that was earned by another character is a straight-up, flatout lie - those characters did not do anything to earn it other than exist. Now, I have no problems with making dungeon keys (thinking Scholo particularly) or gear (including arcanums and what not) BoA, but achievements?
Uh-uh, no way!
I am not opposed to allowing me to link another character's Achievement (so long as it is properly listed as Player earned this Achievement as a Class on Date).
I am opposed to handing out Achievement rewards account wide.
However, there is a 3rd side to all this, and Saga is in that position.
Consider that my Paladin has just over 8k Achievements, including unobtainable titles, pets, and grind-heavy items (108 mounts, 111 pets, Loremaster, etc.).
What happens if, in Cataclysm, the Paladin is no longer an enjoyable class? What happens if, at the same time, I find a whole new level of enjoyment on another character?
I switched mains about mid-way through TBC. The only thing I "left behind" was my old PvP title. And it was a tough decision! I felt conflicted when it became more and more obvious that my Warlock was no longer my main focus of WoW.
If I were to have to make that choice again, switching from my Paladin to XX - not only leaving behind a single Title, but 30+ titles...
There has to be some sort of middle ground, and I hate to say it, but I think it will be done via a paid-transaction.
I foresee an option where, for $XX, players can transfer all Achievements from character XX to character ZZ, including any rewards.
Love the discussion! I'm in the neutral minority, it seems -- I rather like the idea, in general, but wouldn't be hugely upset it's never implemented. I find it interesting that the sticking point for a lot of people seems to be in the titles. As far as they go, I'm rather in agreement with Larísa -- it would seem silly to run around on my level 27 Priest, proudly declaring that she was (drum roll, please) a Kingslayer! Even level capped alts are a bit sticky -- just because my Warlock is a Kingslayer doesn't necessarily mean that my Druid can heal Sindragosa properly (or that she's properly geared to go the encounter in the first place). Whether or not you RP, it's the gear-score checking raiders that are going to be concerned with your achievements, from a progression point of view.
I do like the idea of vanity BOA rewards. Spent an entire year getting your Violet Proto-Drake? Give the actual achievement (and achievement points) to the character you completed it with, but make the mount BOA like the Onyxia whelps. Finally got your main exalted with 40 reputation factions? They get the actual achievement, but make the equipment, enchants, and patterns they sell BOA (this is a sore point for me -- I love crafting and hate having to repeat the same painful rep grind on several characters to learn all the patterns across different professions). With that sort of setup, there would still be incentive for the completionists to work on the achievements for their individual characters (and gain points and titles), while seeing/using the vanity rewards on other characters as well.
For the record, I don't RP at all, but I do get attached to my characters in the sense of the time I spend playing them, and the memories/nostalgia that go along with that, similar (I think) to what Jen said above.
I don't think that blizz needs to go so far as to make achievements account wide, but I'd love them if the reputations from classic wow could be passed on from one toon to another. I still have 13 or so MC clears to get exalted on my mage (current main, been that way since midway through BC) yet my original toon has been long max exalted. Same with honor kills & especially the reputations for the BG ones!
Larisa, I'm with you on this one.
If I may run a slight tangent, though, I do think there's a place for account-wide reputation as an *option*. I can imagine characters "vouching" for their little sister character or whatever, bypassing some of the rep grind (though maybe not all of it, sure). Seems to me that such would be sufficiently "role playish" to work.
But yeah, account-wide Achievements (and Achievements in general) are most about making the player feel special, not making the game world and character interesting.
Account wide achievements are a good thing.
The titles should be linked to the specific toon, but achievements aren't part of Role Playing, in my opinion. Achievements is a glued-on system to keep track of what you (the player) did.
The argument that you don't know fights on rogue even though you did them on mage, is flawed. A druid can have achievement earned as a ranged dps, but he may now want to join a pug as melee/tank/healer, yet achievement does not dissapear.
Achievements should say which toon[s] you got it on, though.
The reason so many people support it is often because we're *not* role players and we want our in-game achievements to be displayed on a per player basis, not per character.
Personally, I'm reluctant to swap my mains purely for the fact that I would have to maintain that old character for achievement purposes. Otherwise, I lose so much. My Yogg0 kill. My ZA bear achievement. My SWP clear credit the day the achievement system was released. Etc.
If I switch mains, I have to prove to someone that the character with all of those achievements is mine. And that I deserved them, for whatever reason.
I can see why it would be viewed oddly by RPers, but you can easily ignore achievements on a per-character basis for RP reasons. Especially since RP demands suspending OOC knowledge as it is.
@Jen: which makes me quietly wonder why you want to raid under such a leadership in the first place... Is it really that enjoyable?
@SpiritusRex: Thanks for the support! You're way more blunt and outspoken than I am. But basically I think we agree.
@Dorgol: Yeah, what happens if that pala will go to a rest? That's what I'm trying to convey here that we play different characters with different fates and life stories. But apparently I fail to get this cross. SpiritusRex put it better.
The dollar option yeah... no... I don't think so. I think it would be considered an advantage, across the line for RMT. I hope so at least.
@Kattiara: yeah, it's been chatty here today indeed! I don't mind making rep rewards BoA. More than just the enchants I mean. That's a great idea.
@Anonymous: I'm afraid it doesn't make sense to me that one char could take over the rep from another one. A char that never ever had seen that faction... It's not logical. OK, there's a lot of magic in this game, but things usually makes sense within the game context. Rep that goes cross characters doesn't.
on the other hand.... reading the next comment maybe there's a solution to it...
@Tesh: That's not a horrible idea. Could work. I think that there might be a few things you could work around. But I do think that the idea should be to try to keep the character interesting, the RP aspect of the game alive.
@Anonymous: if it's glued on to track the player I think it doesn't make sense to give the toons specific titles either. It doesn't make sense to me. I don't think my argument about not knowing the fights on my rogue is flawed. As a hybrid you have more knowledge about the other trees than you have about an entirely different class. Definitely.
@Lume: I'm not a role-player either. Only in my closet. To me it's important that I'm playing my beloved gnome with pink pigtails and not a blue cube. She is a "living" person - although imaginary such if you get what I mean. You don't have to be an outspoken in-character role-player for this attitude.
To be honest I have no idea about how "real" roleplayers look on this issue. Maybe it's as you suggest that they hate achievements so much that it doesn't matter. I don't know. For my own part I think they could be integrated as a sort of documentation of your characters backstory.
I guess what I'm confused about is posed in a simple question:
Why should I *have* to shelve all my achievements when I retire my character? What is the real benefit for me doing so?
And the answer I have is: There is no benefit. For me.
I realize I will get achievements on my new characters. Different achievements. But why should my other achievements be shelved within a shelf? I realize I can bring them out to show people. And it's not so much that I want to show people as it is that it often serves as part of a resume these days.
When someone is looking to join a raid, they often look at your achievements and when they were accomplished. The same goes for PvP. When I'm setting up a BG team, people are inevitably going to look at all the members of that team and see what they've accomplished PvP-wise. But these people aren't going to know Bob, Joe and Mary are all characters of one person.
...
Even if you're not a RPer, I think the complex is there and part of the basis of your argument was made on the grounds of role play. I'm very familiar with it, because I role played so long ago. Which is why I said you can always just separate them mentally and through notes. And there's no reason they can't put a note on your account-wide achievements that shows which character(s) you've accomplished something on.
And I argue for account-wide achievements because the game does not cater solely to the RP dynamic. If anything, it was initially catered to general players who didn't treat it as purely a RPing game. Just because a game's genre has the RP acronym therein, doesn't mean everyone approaches it in that manner. And it doesn't go to the lengths UO did in developing the story through RP. Chris Metzen isn't there role playing Varian. It's all computerized and programmed. And, for cost and practical reasons, it almost has to be. And this being based on my experience also coding and being involved in many of the plotting methods for the MUSH I played.
As such, I don't see it as something that could really be completely RP-centric, so I don't play it as such. So, to me, I'd rather see a system that is account-based. And, like I said, there's no reason they can't tack on a note about which characters of yours have accomplished what. And if they don't do that, there's no reason you can't keep notes.
I guess there's no reason I can't keep notes, either. But remember my point about them acing as a sort of resume (a resume for both the applicant and the organization).
"@Keeva: Again as I said above - why do you need to see all that stuff in game? Isn't that what armory is for? Would you want it to be viewable to others? Your secret alts revealed as well? Toons on other servers?"
I don't think it would be as bad as you think - I don't think they will link achievements between characters, or reveal who your other characters are. If they added it to the armory, they could just put into your account-wide achievements that you have the feat of strength for the pally charger - they don't have to put a note next to it that says "achieved by Character of Realm" etc.
And what's the difference between seeing it in game and seeing it online? Or are you just saying you don't want your character achievement pane cluttered with stuff from other characters? Because my suggestion solves that issue with a toggle.
On another note, I don't think it's just about pugs or showing off. It's also about the people who have rerolled or left another character behind, like me. All my old achievements and reps - I often wish I could have taken them with me somehow. I don't necessarily want Keeva to absorb them, but I've often wished for a "show account-wide achievements" toggle.
I'm not an RPer, but I do have some RP "tendencies". Like being sad when I leave characters behind, retire them. I levelled Keeva before there was such a thing as faction change - so my original druid is still 70, retired. And it makes me sad, sometimes. So while you may think that showing account-wide achievements would be bad for RP, in some ways, it would be good, too, for those of us who miss our old characters and want to remember the adventures we had on them. Not necessarily because we want to epeen about killing C'thun on XYZ date, but because it would help to make those characters feel less abandoned.
I look at it like the WarcraftPets.com lists you can keep. Your true character list of pets is an honest list of only the pets you have on your main collector. Or you can have a list of all the pets you own across all characters - which can include restrictions like an old character who has the panda, faction-specific pets, the engineering pets (well, not now they're BOE), TCG pets that someone gave to you but aren't on your main, etc. Sometimes it's nice to be able to show your entire collection in one place, so you don't feel grumpy that you lost some on a retired toon. And it's marked as such, so everyone knows if it's a single character list, or a list spanning several or all of your toons. So you're not "cheating" :P
If you want the Explorer title on your new character, I do think you should have to go explore. But in your account wide achievements, it would be nice to have "explored azeroth" checked off, regardless of character. Your character-specific pane could still show that it hasn't been achieved yet, if you'd like to keep things separate.
If I got a rare drop mount on a character I don't play often, I'd like to be able to move it to my main. That seems fair to me. Another reason is that I have my "Achievement Junkie" toon that goes for all the... you know.... achievements. I'd like to fill up her barn, if you catch my drift, and to do that, I'd like a few of my other toons to be able to shop over mounts like the Raven God from Heroic Sethekk Halls and the Baron's skinny steed from another and get them all on her. I don't think that's cheating in any way.
@Lume: I agree on that WoW isn't a RP game, but it still has a tiny little element/influence from it and I think it would be sad to see this go. It's a part of the soul of the game for me. But that's just my personal taste and I can understand that there are other players who see it more like a sort of arcade game, where the idea is to make a top score and top the lists. The player. Not the toon. Sort of.
It's two different approaches that we represent and the question is who is the one that should make the effort, taking notes etc, because the game doesn't support their way of seeing it. So far they've made one call on this. Maybe they'll change their minds and go in another direction. The answers indicate this.
Looking at the comments to this post and to the linked forum thread it seems that the players are very much diveded on this. There are plenty of people who feel strongly for both sides. and then there are ofc others who just don't care (looking at Dwism!)
@Keeva: It's possible that you can make some feature where you can see/display achievements you have on other characters, without suggesting that you actually have them on THIS character. I can't quite picture what it would look like, but if it would be possible to make it and still have a cleen overview over the backstory of the character you're currently playing, I'm totally fine with it.
@Anonymous: Apparently we have different views on this. I'm not an achievement junkie. When I'm playing WoW I'm creating different characters with different experiences, strengths and weaknesses. I don't want it to mix up into a united picture of me as a player. I don't see the point of this. Others think otherwise and I accept that. cheers!
@Larisa: I wouldn't raid with "lol u no have achi" raid leader, unless I'm having a masochistic day. But even from my POV as potential RL (my guild is planning some 25-man runs and we might have to pug for them), if I had to choose between someone with an achievement and someone without, I'd choose the person who has it (if, of course, s/he is literate and seems to have a brain). It's a simple matter of making sure your players have a clue about the fight. All things being equal, an achievement does show you have at least an idea about the encounter.
(Also, in my particular case, I don't have much time to play my priest, so I can't really get in a regular raiding guild on that realm, hence the need to PuG.)
I would like Account-Wide Achievements, but not in the way it's listed here.
I would like to have achievements for doing different things on different characters.
For example having 5 Max level characters will give You an achievement on all those 5 max level characters and that there could be a reward for it too. Something like that.
You get the idea.
Similar account-wide achievements to this one, but the only problem with this one in Wotlk is, that leveling is too easy. A few days play time is enough to get from 1-80. Good, that this changes in Cata. There this achievement might even be worth something :)
Achievements awarded for killing certain bosses as Account-wide is a terrible idea, because You haven't really done them on the character, You are on. You haven't achieved them there. So yea, it's a terrible idea.
But I think, that my idea about the account-wide achievements is nice. What do You think?
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