Achievements offer the chance to look at content in different ways and track progress. Sometimes they’re boring, but often they’re quite fun. Boring achievements might track progress or simply track something that you were going to do anyways. However, fun achievements task you with going about something in a different way than you might have previously or acknowledge that you did something difficult.

World of Warcraft has some boring achievements – Level 10, Explore Durotar, Northern Barrens Quests, An Honorable Kill, etc. These are achievements that really don’t warrant a “grats” in guild chat. There are also some good achievements. Explore Kalimdor, Disgracin’ The Basin, and More Skills to Pay the Bills are a couple examples. There are also achievements that mean you did something very difficult like The Loremaster, 100000 Honorable Kills, Battlemaster, and The Light of Dawn. These are achievements that pretty much require a quick “grats.” Unexpected ones like Going Down? can be fun as can the Glory of the Hero and Glory of the Raider achievements that task you with doing special things during boss fights. Then, of course, there are Feats of Strength, which are not available to all players.

There needs to be a balance between these types of achievements. There should be far less of the boring achievements because they just clutter up the system. It’s nice to be able to check how progressed in the game someone is, and for people who aren’t at endgame, checking their level via achievements could work. However, many of these boring achievements are hardly achievements. They shouldn’t be taken out of the game, but they should be the minority. Achievements should track the cool things you did. They’re things to show off. Feats of Strength are a great aspect to the achievement system in Blizzard’s games. They’re something special even if they’re not particularly hard.

Right now, I see a lot of the boring achievements in Diablo III. This is likely because I’m just beginning. However, it just seems strange to see achievements pop up when I’ve yet to even complete Act I. Let’s be honest here; I haven’t really achieved much. Also, I don’t care when a friend gets an achievement that’s hardly an achievement. Maybe a single progression achievement for each difficulty would be better? That might be going too far. However, boss-by-boss seems a bit much.

I think a better system is to push the profile we see in Diablo III and on the Web for World of Warcraft. There only needs to be an achievement for everything if the achievements are the only way you show off your accomplishments. If they were just one part, along a raid progression graphic like the one above, some of the boring achievements don’t need to exist.

Another thing I’d love to see are custom achievements. The logistics are difficult, but what if they weren’t worth any points and were in their own section? Basically, a little notepad area that’s part of your profile. These could be used to track personal memories you’ve made in the game.

No Longer Languishing in Ulduar

Convinced Lang to go back to Ulduar since I never saw it!

Where’s the Flag?

Played in a Warsong Gulch match over 12 hours after the flag disappeared and never respawned!

Those would be two of mine!