The origin of World of Warcraft's achievement system

MTV's Multiplayer site continues to bring home the goods about Blizzard titles. We've already noted Tracey John's discussion of plans to track achievements across all of the developer's games ... but where did the idea of achievements in World of Warcraft come from? And aren't they basically the same as what's offered on Xbox Live? Not so, says WoW lead designer Jeffrey Kaplan. Their goal was to take what others were offering and make it more accessible, approachable. That's a good description of World of Warcraft in general, this blogger would say.

Another change is the tracking of numerous statistics to inform one Achievement. The approachability of these tributes, essentially, comes with a lot of depth. Kaplan noted that despite all that, they are deliberately calling them Achievements to tie into other services. "We sort of came around to the conclusion that all players call them Achievements. Steam has a great Achievement system, Xbox has a great Achievement system; it's almost just like this weird game at a certain point to not call them Achievements."

---

	One of Azeroth's millions of citizens? Check out our ongoing coverage of the World of Warcraft, and be sure to touch base with our sister site WoW Insider for all your Lich King needs!