Ghostcrawler: "Bringing Achievements to the Account Level"

[Newsom]

Achievements have never really been a good measure of player skill.

[Archeth]

Still no clarification on what "account wide" actually means (WoW Account or Battle.net account? Cross-region?) Oh well.

Yeah this. Just per WoW account would be just about useless to me (I'm not going to pay 150 EUR to merge my Doomhammer characters, no Sir), region-specific battle.net a bit less so, but still.

[halabar]

Still no clarification on what "account wide" actually means (WoW Account or Battle.net account? Cross-region?) Oh well.

It depends...

Some of the restrictions on "account bound" are due to mechanics apart from the achievements. For example, heirlooms. They are "account bound" but you can't mail them across servers, but you can mail them across factions. So it's likely that the limitations on "account" are partially due to physical/technological limitations that Blizz has or has built-in.

[Newsom]

Heirlooms are mailable across accounts (on the same server), so I guess that is a hopeful indicator of how they view it. I'd still like to know for sure though, since that is currently the only thing stopping me from rolling another alt.

[Teranoid]

Still no clarification on what "account wide" actually means (WoW Account or Battle.net account? Cross-region?) Oh well.

It depends...

Some of the restrictions on "account bound" are due to mechanics apart from the achievements. For example, heirlooms. They are "account bound" but you can't mail them across servers, but you can mail them across factions. So it's likely that the limitations on "account" are partially due to physical/technological limitations that Blizz has or has built-in.

They need to just stop using the phrase "account bound" if it doesn't actually apply and it boggles my mind that they keep using these blanket misnomers for pets/mounts/heirlooms. I'm not holding my breath for legitimate "account wide" achievements but at the same time I'm also not going to pay over 200 dollars to faction and server transfer alts I haven't played since BC that have mounts or achieves I can't get anymore. I suppose though that some progress is better than no progress at all.

[Newsom]

They need to just stop using the phrase "account bound" if it doesn't actually apply and it boggles my mind that they keep using these blanket misnomers for pets/mounts/heirlooms. I'm not holding my breath for legitimate "account wide" achievements but at the same time I'm also not going to pay over 200 dollars to faction and server transfer alts I haven't played since BC that have mounts or achieves I can't get anymore. I suppose though that some progress is better than no progress at all.

You can send heirlooms cross faction already (though not cross realm, since they are still items and it is a technical limitation that I think is quite fair.)

Once MoP hits you will have those mounts and achievements on all characters at the very least on the same WoW account. The question is if they will be shared across multiple WoW accounts on the same Battle.net account or not. We simply do not know yet, so don't throw in the towel yet!

[Skye1013]

Might have just been rumormill, but I thought I had heard something about tying BoA gear into the "account-wide" achievements to get around the mailing to different servers issue.

[rodos]

Still no clarification on what "account wide" actually means (WoW Account or Battle.net account? Cross-region?) Oh well.

For all intents and purposes, assume that the game doesn't really understand the concept of a WoW license. The account-level achievement system will all be based on the Battle.net account and not each individual WoW license attached to it.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/4887739044?page=2#22

[PsiVen]

Overall I'm very happy with this. Mounts, pets, titles, and most achievements should be account-wide. Certain things are lost in the translation that I'm not too happy about -- running old raids on alts to get the mounts/achievements is fun, and this will remove a large amount of incentive for going back to those places. But the good outweighs the bad.

This does not, however, absolve them of needing to fix the desperately silly costs of transferring multiple characters in a world where having multiple max-level alts is the norm and joining a new guild invariably means moving them to a new server or abandoning them. Rolling new alts is slightly more palatable but still awful.

[Newsom]

Still no clarification on what "account wide" actually means (WoW Account or Battle.net account? Cross-region?) Oh well.

For all intents and purposes, assume that the game doesn't really understand the concept of a WoW license. The account-level achievement system will all be based on the Battle.net account and not each individual WoW license attached to it.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/4887739044?page=2#22

Yesssssss!!

[Chicken]

Overall I'm very happy with this. Mounts, pets, titles, and most achievements should be account-wide. Certain things are lost in the translation that I'm not too happy about -- running old raids on alts to get the mounts/achievements is fun, and this will remove a large amount of incentive for going back to those places. But the good outweighs the bad.

This does not, however, absolve them of needing to fix the desperately silly costs of transferring multiple characters in a world where having multiple max-level alts is the norm and joining a new guild invariably means moving them to a new server or abandoning them. Rolling new alts is slightly more palatable but still awful.

I'm honestly looking forward to the day when MMOs stop tying characters to servers and just use them as separate instances of the game world which you can freely swap between.

[Nikachelle]

The best part (for me as a raid leader) is the flexibility I'll have in MoP to ask my raiders to swap to alts on progression raids. That's a huge advantage for guilds who run tight rosters like we do.

Ehhhh not sure I agree with that. It's not like the person on their alt can take the gear that dropped and apply it to their main.

[Newsom]

I'm honestly looking forward to the day when MMOs stop tying characters to servers and just use them as separate instances of the game world which you can freely swap between.

Yeah. Blizzard earns a lot of money from transfers though, they'd never make it free. At least we can group up for most things cross realm these days, that is a huge step forward.

[GMPoison]

I'm not all that for it. Sure, it is the player that's earned the achievement, but it's going to destroy the excitement and feeling you get when leveling an alt, or working on a toon you havent in a while, because you'll already have it from another toon. They're slowly getting rid of all the old quality's of wow that made it great. Have Group Will Travel means you dont have to explore and use a summoning stone like the good 'ol days. You can now fly everywhere which makes the world less mysterious and exciting to explore. I remember when you acually had to run back to your body or be rezz'd individualy before Mass Rezz, or bring your own food and flasks before all of the new guild perks.

I just think that Blizz needs to leave what few old qualitys it has alone, such as if you earn an achievement on one character, you only have it on that one character.

[Sagara]

Well, you apparently still get the "cheer" when you complete the acho and a subsequent toon.