...and other totally obvious observations.
In the month leading up to the release of Wrath of the Lich King, I was planning a lot of things - replaying Final Fantasy XII (because I'm such a sap), running myself out of new Sudoku puzzles for my DS, and tackling the utterly MASSIVE backup of reading material that's been collecting on my bookshelves ever since I first began playing MMORPGs years and years ago. Unfortunately for me, achievement points are exactly the sort of thing that I can't resist. So instead of crossing a few books off my list and perhaps finishing one of the many old PS2 games I never got around to finishing (somehow Okami and Odin Sphere have just been lingering half finished for years) I found myself crawling all over the world of Azeroth - uncovering every last crevice of the world for the "Explorer" title and ugliest tabard ever created, diving back into beginner instances and old world raid content.
There was - and still is - a real feeling of accomplishment when polishing off some of these more difficult items. It's not just the competetive spirit that keeps me jockeying to accumulate more points than other players on the server - it's a desire to check these items off the list, clear my achievement interface of items "to-do" and fill it with items "done". Blizzard is brilliant for tapping into this type of psychology to keep people occupied in the lull that precedes a major content update...evil bastards!
