WOW achievements confirmed

By Oli Welsh Published 21 July, 2008

Plus: Latin America falls to Blizzard.

A major bit of World of Warcraft news passed us by in all the E3 hubbub last week: Blizzard confirmed that next expansion Wrath of the Lich King will introduce an achievement system to the game.

The move was strongly rumoured following a leak from the alpha test last month. Blizzard spilled the beans on WOW's official website last week.

There will be more than 500 achievements at Lich King's launch relating to every aspect of WOW, "including world exploration, PvE, PvP, professions, and character development". Some will come with cosmetic in-game rewards - tabards, vanity pets and titles are all mentioned.

The achievements window will be accessed via a new button on the action bar. As with the Xbox 360 equivalent, achievements each have a points value that adds up to a total score. Some even come with progress bars and quest-style completion objectives, and can be tracked on the main screen.

You can compare your achievements with other players' just by clicking on them, again like Xbox Live. Unlocked achievements are announced with animation and sound to anyone in the vicinity, as well as on your guild channel.

Achievements are very much in vogue with MMOs right now. WOW's current competitor Lord of the Rings Online, and near-future contender Warhammer Online, both feature achievement-style systems, while Age of Conan also has one in development.

It might not be entirely original, but WOW's achievement system sounds very well-sorted to us. Check out the official page for more detail and some examples.

Meanwhile, in other WOW news, Blizzard announced that the game would launch in Latin America for the first time at the end of this week, on July 25th. Mexico, Chile and Argentina are the first countries to get localised versions of the game, and dedicated Spanish-language support teams. The Spanish-language support pack will also be available across North America.

WOW will also release in Russian later this year. We'd bet that a Portuguese version for Brazil is next on the list after that, as WOW's world domination continues.

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About Oli Welsh

Oli is Eurogamer's acting deputy editor and reviews editor and likes to take things one word at a time. He is among the best dressed people in South London.

Read more articles from Oli by visiting the Oli Welsh archive page.

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Comments (14) Latest comment 4 years ago

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  • Mox #1 4 years ago

    For any feature X,

    "It might not be entirely original, but WOW's X sounds very well-sorted to us"

  • berelain #2 4 years ago

    Woop Woop. Does anyone really care? Probably, actually.

    But these achievements are coming rather late in the game, aren't they? LOTRO and WAR's achievements integrate so well with the game because they've been there right from the start, and actively reward players for doing other things in the game. It looks like a lot of those WoW ones are just there to encourage you to farm more in-game cash... collect vanity pets? Good gods, one is expensive enough.

  • DFawkes #3 4 years ago

    I was going to go back to LOTRO for a while to work on a title or two, but if they're in WoW too I don't know which to play. I like both a lot, but when I play WoW I think "I could be working towords my house". If I play LOTRO I think "I could be working towards my mount".

    Extra content is always nice though, even if it's just achievements.

  • magicpanda #4 4 years ago

    Nice summary here (spoilers obviously)

    http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?pa...

  • Flashy #5 4 years ago

    DFawkes, I would recommend getting back into LOTRO - the latest free content (Book 14) is coming out tomorrow in the US and hopefully Thursday in the EU, and the expansion in October/November is looking red hot! Don't think there's been much (any) coverage of it on Eurogamer, but there's been quite a bit of info floating around about the new Legendary Weapons system which sounds awesome. Not to mention Moria orcs that wear the beards of dead dwarves as loin cloths.

  • Oli Verified Reviews Editor, Eurogamer.net #6 4 years ago

    Flashy, we covered the LOTRO expansion in a couple of news stories back when it was announced:
    [link url=http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=94707
    ]http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?art...[/link]
    [link url=http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=94818
    ]http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?art...[/link]

    We'd love to do more, and will as soon as Codemasters gets us good enough access to base a preview on.

  • oMonarca #7 4 years ago

    Would be nice that a Portuguese language pack could be released for Portugal...

    I guess size matters...

  • DFawkes #8 4 years ago

    Well it's settled for me, I'm going back to Middle-earth, cheers Flashy :)

    I mainly stopped as my machine is a lot happier running WoW than LOTRO, and LOTRO only on minimum everything. I'm getting a new PC soon though, which should be better. Not that anyone asked. But I agree with berelain in that the titles and deeds are more organically integrated into LOTRO.

  • dfunked #9 4 years ago

    I've been playing the beta since yesterday now and I love the new achievement system, it really does slot into the game nicely...
    Haven't been able to copy my level 70 across yet to see how many achievements I've already unlocked on that yet though (they should work retroactively)

  • paulf #10 4 years ago

    maybe they thought the game wasnt addictive enough?

  • Azazel #11 4 years ago

    Been around in Guild Wars for a while now...

  • rudedudejude #12 4 years ago

    Do Warriors have uses other than tanks in LOTRO?

  • Flashy #13 4 years ago

    My mistake then Oli :). I had just noticed that bar the re-review a month or so back, there hadn't been much news! I hope that Codies shall rectify that in the near future. They do seem to be a bit off the ball PR-wise, but I suppose that is the downside of being the Euro distributors rather than the developers!

    On the issue of titles and achievements, I think it is a great idea, whichever MMO it's on. It's a nice added bonus to exploration and general killing!

    And Adam, in LOTRO, there is no generic 'warrior' class, but there are 3 classes which you could class as warriors - Guardians are tanks, Champions are melee DPS and Captains are a buffing class.
    Edited by Flashy at 21/07/08 @ 21:13

  • jimr9999us #14 4 years ago

    *yawn*

    Why are my thoughts of WoW changing from "boiled turnips" to "clown shoes"?

    Throw every possible feature you can into a game, and it becomes WallyWorld; that is, irrelevent.

    Remember when the plaguelands meant something? and there weren't 5000gp handbags for sale?