Blizzard has released what, by all accounts, appears to be its latest issue of Q&A (for now at least). On this occasion, in case you did not remember, they tell us about the achievements.
There are quite interesting questions and, in this edition we have great representation from both Spain and Latin America. Even aeneia appears in the first question !.
If you want to read the questions and answers, all you have to do is click on Read more.
Q: When will you make the achievements count for the entire account? - Larosh (Europe [German]), Eneia & Payasos (Europe [Spanish]), Rageudder & Kellgros (Europe [English]), ??????? (Europe [Russian]), Nyn (North America / ANZ), ?????? (Korea)
R: Getting achievements awarded to Battle.net accounts is something we would like to do, but it is not a goal for which we have a definite plan. All the original coding of World of Warcraft was done with the idea that the data of each realm would be independent. Now that we are trying to make as many things as possible affect the entire account, we are having to rebuild those systems. It's certainly something we want to do, but it would take a lot of time from applying other features.
Q: Will there ever come a time when we can spend achievement points on something? Or will there be some characteristic that requires us to have x amount of points? - Nordicberry (Europe [English]), Hogosha & Wulkuhr (Europe [German]), Neroth (Europe [French]), Kularia (North America / ANZ), Trafalgarlaw (Latin America)
R: We want achievements to remain optional that you can do to show off or to test yourself. As soon as we add any type of power to the player, or use it to introduce anything, it becomes mandatory for many players. In fact, we think the reason Achievements are so much fun is because the incentive to complete them is up to the player, which prevents (or so we hope!) It from being cumbersome. If you want to go for an achievement you can and choosing to ignore the achievements does not mean that your character will be less powerful.
We're offering pets, mounts, and titles for completing some achievements, but we're unlikely to go any further in that regard.
Q: Are you planning to introduce more achievements directly related to professions or classes? - Cith (Europe [French]), Tsuteymanga (Europe [English]), Sergan (Latin America)
R: Until we can make the achievements work for the Battle.net account, it would be quite cruel to offer a few as Illustrious Grand Master of Alchemy, Blacksmithing and Jewelry for the same character. The same thing happens with classes. The best thing we could do today would be to have something like 'Launch a pyroblast that inflicts X p. damage ”and have an equivalent for all 10 classes, since you could only have one achievement. We have more leeway with Guild Achievements, as there is no need for one player to do all of the tasks. Until then, we'll keep looking for fun achievements for cooking, fishing, first aid, and archeology.
Q: Will we ever see any changes to the reputation or Exalted achievements of Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin? Although I tend to like the ones that have been around for a long time, these two seem excessive to me. Especially in the Warsong Gorge, since you can play entire games without getting any reputation. In theory, you could lose consistently in Arathi Basin and still get to Exalted at a "reasonable" rate. Perhaps you could earn reputation for recovering flags, killing enemy flag bearers, capturing bases, killing with honor like in Alterac Valley, etc. - Idkmybffyata (North America / ANZ), Lunaticheart (Korea)
R: We think they are fine. They certainly demand a lot, but so do other achievements. Also, they are not required for meta achievements.
Q: Since some achievements such as The Keymaster and reputations with the Shen'dralar have been removed, have you thought about creating any feats of strength for these achievements or is it possible that we will bring them back as normal achievements in the future? - Enarhion (Europe [Spanish]), ??????? (Europe [Russian])
R: Added a feat for Exalted reputation with the Shen'dralar in patch 4.1. We're not likely to add a feat to The Keymaster. When we added the achievement for The Keymaster, we decided to downplay the keys in-game almost immediately, so we removed the achievement. Now, unfortunately, it would be almost impossible to find who had the old keys.
Q: Career-related Guild Achievements are much more difficult to achieve than other Guild Achievements. Do you have any plans for the smaller guilds to have a chance to achieve these achievements? - ???? (Korea), Joq (North America / ANZ)
R: We think some of these achievements are too difficult and we intend to make them more reasonable in patch 4.1. The Glyph Achievement The Feather is Stronger, for example, it would have made sense with the old glyph pattern but is ridiculous today. We were hoping to get more data from the guilds currently working on those achievements, but it seems to us that we already have enough data to downgrade. Feather is stronger will go from 25000 to 2500 glyphs in patch 4.1.
Q: I would like the achievement system to be more active and dynamic, will we get to see achievements that unlock quest chains, dungeons or hidden content as a reward for spending so much time on Azeroth? - Grandevil (North America / ANZ)
R: Probably not. As we've already said, we want achievements to be optional. Some players are not interested in collecting pets or mounts and thus find that they can put achievements aside. If there was a good quest chain involved, players who thought they could safely forget about achievements would have to go back to catch up. If you go for achievements it should be because you enjoy doing it, not because you expect to have some kind of additional reward in the future.
Q: Currently, achievement rewards are more focused on common tasks, such as raids, events, or PvP. Have you thought about creating rewarded achievements that ask you to do crazy things around the world, like going for bosses and monsters alone, or more achievements like "Jenkins"? - Thodyr (Europe [Spanish]), Khaelthas (Europe [French]), Assmira (Europe [German])
R: We like achievements to be fun, but we don't want the players who go after them to negatively affect other players. At first glance, defeating a solo boss might sound like a decent achievement. But keep in mind that, if the achievement is too easy, completing dungeons could be considered a very heavy task. On the other hand, if it were difficult, we would have to suddenly go back and tweak the balance of classes like never before. For example, Blood Death Knights are masters of taking out old bosses on their own due to their self-healing mechanics, but this cannot be applied to other classes and specs. We try not to have achievements that require you to ask your group to do something really weird or not at all fun. "Complete a dungeon without collecting any loot" would be very frustrating every time you had to discuss with your party whether you want to get the achievement or not. "Jenkins" is graceful to be a minor achievement considering its history, but too much of the same would soon become tedious.
Q: Will we ever see a "search" option in the achievements window? There are many achievements to review when you are looking for something in particular. - Grandevil (North America / ANZ), Lonik (Europe [Spanish])
R: Yes, it is something we plan to do. It's hard to find specific achievements in the current UI. There are several sections of the UI that could use a more intuitive search.
Q: Will you ever get back the mounts for achieving achievements that were removed (Raider's Glory in Naxxramas) since you have not removed the last mounts? - Joyia (North America / ANZ)
R: A difficult question. On the one hand, we know that there are a lot of players who would like to get those mounts. On the other hand, we made it quite clear that they would only be available for some time, and we would not like to change our mind because we are aware that some groups made heroic efforts to get them in time. But these things are not set in stone and player feedback could end up changing our minds.
Q: The reward for the achievement "It's been a long and rare journey" is still a purple proto-drake, that is, a WoWLK model. How about coordinating the color of the reward with each theme of the expansion? - Shory (Korea)
R: The problem with these meta-achievements is deciding how to structure them for the future. Do we give players who already have the achievement a new mount in each expansion? Do we replace the old frames with the new ones? Do we ask you to repeat the achievement to get a second mount? We added "It's been a long and weird journey" when we introduced achievements to the game, and we didn't always take expansions into account when designing achievements. If "It's been a long and rare journey" had rewarded a proto-drake at level 80 and then introduced another achievement that would award another proto-drake for repeating it at level 85, it would now be easier to adjust the content for expansions. But we didn't, and now it would be difficult to go back and tweak existing achievements, especially those that are difficult to complete.
Q: There are still no achievements beyond "Collect 75 Unique Companion Pets." Will we see a reward for having 100 companion pets in the future? - Whitewnd (Korea)
R: In patch 4.1 there are achievements for having 100 and 125 companion pets. These particular achievements do not award pets, but we will likely introduce another reward in the future, perhaps for having 150 or 200 pets.
Q: Will we be able to see more PvP achievements that award mounts? Currently most cool mounts are earned from PvE achievements. - Demodras (Europe [English])
R: PvP achievements are even more difficult to design than PvE achievements because it is more difficult to create something great that does not make the experience worse for others. You wouldn't want to see a guy try to capture and lose the flag twenty times on a battlefield just to achieve a capture many flags achievement. As a result, many of the PvP achievements boil down to winning a lot of arenas or battlegrounds, which, according to us, already contains quite a few rewards. In this regard, we're adding unique ground mounts for winning rated battlegrounds, similar to the flying mounts you get for winning arenas.