There are two types of WoW players.
- Those who think that achievements are awesome (“Yay, gotta have them all!! Point me at the grind and show me the shiny title!”)
- Those who think that achievements are lame (“If I want to do something, I’ll do it anyway. If I don’t, no achievement is gonna force me into it.”)
Most of the time, this won’t matter because even people who dislike achievements will find some of them fun or amusing. But there are some achievements that really separate the men from the boys.
Undermanning the raid instances. Oh yes, better believe this one is a doozy. In order to get the super special raid heroic meta-achievement protodrake (which looks exactly like every other protodrake but a slightly different colour and isn’t as cool looking as the ones coming out next patch anyway) you need to run the existing raid instances with less than a full group.
Is it a problem? Nope. But it really will show who in your raid values achievements enough to leave people sitting outside when there was room in the raid for them. We’ve had arguments about that this week, and people do feel strongly on both sides.
(Note: I would mind less if there wasn’t a one week lockout on the raids. But telling 5 people they’ll have to go find a PUG if they want to run Naxx this week is … not how I play.)
Intriguingly, this is not a casual vs hardcore issue. On Elitist Jerks, I was surprised to see debate among the posters about whether the undermanning achievements were daft. But that was more down to my preconception. I had assumed that more of the hardcore would revel in achievements and thrill to the challenge of picking who got to run the undermanning raid.
So maybe we need new classifications for players. Pragmatic vs … see, this is where I fall down. I have no idea how to describe people who want achievements, and are not put off even when they are obviously daft. It’s so very alien to the way I think and play that I don’t even have a word for it. But it’s important because achievements are a huge incentive for a large part of the player base.
And I fear that increasingly, if Blizzard isn’t careful, we’ll be seeing more fights between the pragmatists and the achievement junkies in future. Everyone likes to weigh up effort against reward in MMOs, but pragmatists weigh the rewards differently from junkies. That’s the issue.
Welcome to Spinksville! 
I think the word you’re looking for is ‘retentives’ 😉
There is much QQing regarding Blizzard’s decision to remove a rare mount reward for one of the Raid achievements when patch 3 comes out, and it’s the Achievement junkies who are the ones making the noise.
Now this Achievement (can’t look it up, I’m at work) involves some seriously hard raid Achievements (eg fighting KelThuzad whilst snowboarding down Mt Hyjal blindfolded, or some such nonsense), and it seems it is very difficult to complete.
Most of the people I know doing it, have done maybe half of the ahcievements, but they are complaining that there simply isn’t enough time to get the rest done before 3 comes out.
Ok, so 99% of us have no chance of completing these anyway, whether through a mixture of time, effort, or lack of interest, but for those are aiming to do them, it is seen as a slap in the face.
If Blizzard are going to give people all these hoops to jump through, then they should make sure that those interested in doing them have a decent incentive to do so, otherwise the whole thing will fall flat on its face.
Or, you grab some friends, and run two 20man raids.
That’s what my guild is doing tonight, actually.
Personally, I think the word you are looking for is “completion-ists.” Or perhaps perfectionists.
Yakra’s solution is definitely elegant, but is probably going to end up with someone getting left behind anyway. If you overgear the instances enough to do the short-manned achievements, you’re probably part of a raid group, and if your and your friends raid groups happen to be divisible into 20s on the night in question, you’re lucky. It’s the benching problem, just worse because it might be the only shot you’re going to get that achievement.
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