World of Warcraft Achievement System Preview

Blizzard’s official World of Warcraft website has been updated with a preview of the achievement system being introduced in the game’s Wrath of the Lich King expansion pack.

World of Warcraft’s achievements come in several varieties. Some simply require specific actions to unlock, such as getting a haircut or defeating a member of each race in your opposing faction in PvP. Others involve a progress bar and require you to do something several times — such as give out 10 hugs. Some achievements are progressive; for example, once you complete an achievement to collect 10 vanity pets, you might next be asked to collect 25. Finally, meta achievements unlock when you complete other achievements — unlocking all World Exploration achievements (see below) unlocks a World Explorer meta achievement. Some achievements, including those that involve quests, honorable kills, items currently in your possession, skills (including professions), exploration, and reputations, will be applied to your character retroactively.

To help keep track of all the different achievements you can unlock, you’ll find the following categories in the achievements window:

Player-vs.-Player: This includes arena, battlegrounds, and world player-vs.-player objectives. A few examples:

Hot Streak: Win 10 ranked arena matches in a row.

Alterac Valley All-Star: Capture graveyards, towers, and kill the enemy leader all in one game.

City Defender: Kill 50 enemy players in your faction’s capital cities.

Dungeons and Raids: Every end boss of every raid and dungeon in the game grants its own achievement. Future achievements in this category may include ones for completing a run without any player deaths, with fewer than the maximum number of players, or within a certain time limit.

Professions: Advancing to each tier of mastery in a profession earns you an achievement, and there are specific achievements for secondary skills (with major professions to follow).

Quests: Quest-based achievements include completing a certain number of quests and completing specific quest lines. This category contains zone-specific subcategories.

Events: Seasonal events such as the Midsummer Festival, the Lunar Festival, and Hallows’ End have specific achievements of their own.

World Exploration: You’ll earn achievements by exploring each zone in the game — and get meta-achievements when you fully explore a continent.

Reputations: This set of achievements includes attaining exalted reputation with each faction in the game.

General: These achievements tend toward the whimsical, including getting a shave and haircut (a new feature of Wrath of the Lich King), obtaining a certain number of tabards and vanity pets, falling from a great height, and more.