Second, I, for one, don’t at all endorse teh concept of “fun can only be had if there is some tangible award or reward at the end of the purported struggle.”

One of the things that I loved about Eve Online is that it allowed you to have fun in whichever way you chose. If you didn’t want to engage in large-scale fleet battles, or combat at all, you could be a complete pacifist and yet have a more powerful standing in the world than most veteran pilots. You didn’t get a “reward” for doing one thing or another, it was a matter of choice. Choice based on which career path made the most sense to you and how you defined “fun”.

But what happens if hard modes aren’t any more fun than normal modes? At that point, the intrinsically motivated players start to wonder why raiding doesn’t seem as fun as it used to be and asking themselves if they want to keep doing it. I think that unless hard modes in Cataclysm are rather more interesting than most of the ICC ones, we’ll see progression guilds struggling a bit with recruitment.

I do agree that the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic isn’t total and most people probably have some of both. But I also suspect it’s true that most people favour one playstyle over the other. Also, there are reasons to sit around in Dalaran that don’t involve showing off (if you want to hang out somewhere with general chat, it needs to be one of the cities) and choice of mount might be influenced by several factors.

Having said all that, I don’t use my Kingslayer title on Spinks. I prefer ‘of the Undercity’

As if there is One Right Way to play these MMO things.

Tangentially, I believe Minecraft is seeing the success it is because it’s unabashedly about playing, not achieving. You can still make grand things and show them to friends, but the game itself simply expects you to be about your own business. There’s a significant lesson for the market there, methinketh.

And yes, I’m all about the intrinsic play. The extrinsic stuff like loot is just a means to an intrinsic end, and the achievements are white noise. (Though I sympathize with those who find them deleterious, much like how I find forced grouping annoying as a soloist. Stop imposing a playstyle on me, devs!)

If you shout to the virtual world that you achieved something, then that would seem to indicate that you have some strong extrinsic motivation for accomplishing what you accomplished. Much like the toons sitting for extended times in Dalaran with their Frostbrood mounts. Those people seem to be demonstrating that there was a strong external motivation for killing the Lich King in heroic mode.

However, the pinnacle of raiding in Wrath was killing the Lich King. If you wanted to be the “best” raider in the current expansion (because you love raiding) you had to kill the Lich King in heroic mode and as a result you would have received one of the Frostbrood mounts. Not turning on your title or conspicuously flying your mount would seem to indicate that you had a motivation other getting external affirmation. I would think this would be a strong indicator that the motivation for the accomplishment was intrinsic versus extrinsic.

Both of these raiders would have received the achievement and shiny rewards, but evidence would suggest their motivations were significantly different. The achievements are not indicative of the motivations for why they were achieved.

Sorry for the extended comment. This is a very interesting topic, to me.

I could not agree more in my specific case.

I primarily 2-man dungeons since 4.0.1 dropped and I do stop experience point gains when I want to ensure I will be able to complete a set of dungeons at the appropriate difficulty level. Upgrades are usually equipped after that set of dungeons is completed, again to ensure I will not be well geared for the content.

I am lucky the wife and two friend are also 2- and 3-man fans and are always available to humour me.

Last night one of them was on griping about the rested XP reset. I asked if she was in a big hurry to get to 85 and she said ‘I hate leveling’. She’s also worried about her rep in Winterspring, as she’s desperately trying to get the Frostsaber Others are upset that their nice purple gear will soon be made obsolete by quest greens, or they’re fretting about how the Loremaster achievement will change, or if they’ll have to re-explore everything all over again.

Others are gleefully smacking down elementals in Stormwind and Ironforge even though there’s no real benefit to them to do so.

I know which group sounds happier.

S. likes them, he has this “dailies and achievements give me something to do” mentality that makes me go nuts.
A. on the other hand hates especially dailies and only does them because he needs to do them to progress in certain reputation or whatever title tracks.

Ironically, it was me and A. who explored every corner of Azeroth and have the Loremaster achievement for doing every quest in sight. I am afraid we suffer from a certain form of MMO-achievement-OCD despite hating them.