Achievements Are Addictive...

...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!

Oh the vanity...

I have loved vanity pets from the onset of WoW, but due to the limitations of bank space, and each pet taking up a slot, I have never kept many on each character. The implementation of the pet "book" to store vanity pets was the excuse I had been waiting for to begin collecting. And once I begin collecting something, well, I don't stop until my collection is complete no matter what it takes! Had it not been for the achievement, I probably would have been able to limit myself to the cutest and rarest pets, but my desire to reach the 50 pet mark for Stinker the skunk meant I had to compromise a bit, adding snakes, cockroaches, and chickens to my little family of dragon whelplings, cats, and collector's edition pets.

It took me the better part of a week's worth of dedicated farming to land myself a firefly vanity pet. After mercilessly slaying over 1,400 little digital bugs with a 1/1000 random drop rate, I still never saw a single pet drop. Instead two seperate and very generous guild mates, upon hearing my nightly firefly count rise without any luck both managed to net their own captured fireflies in record time, several hundred kills at most! And both generously donated their prizes to my cause, which was really very sweet! I really do love my pets, and the fireflies are one of the cutest pets out there (not to mention that they are one of the geekiest as well, with the adorable Firefly reference "still flying").

So while I continue to doubt my random number generator luck, I have no doubts that I know some of the sweetest and most thoughtful guys out there! Thanks Khygar and Bhaird! Since I am writing this after the fact, I should mention that Bhaird also donated a black tabby cat to my menagerie. Kitty! I hope to net a few fireflies as I level up my alts in the Outlands, so that I can regift them to the generous guys who insisted I take these cute bugs off their hands. Let the counting recommence!

Achieve This!

As I suspect that the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion "Wrath of the Lich King" will weigh heavily on my random musings for the next aeon, I feel the need to begin the process of dissecting the transitional experience before I become completely anesthetized to the changes. First and foremost on my thoughts in the last week is a concept familiar to anyone who has ever played an MMO or RPG style game: farming. It is in the front of my mind, as I have spent the last few days killing hundreds (really, hundreds. Eight hundred and thirty-eight to be completely accurate up to the moment) of firefly mobs for the slim chance of obtaining my own cute little firefly pet and the adorable skunk rewarded for collecting 50 vanity pets. Every time I get sucked into "farming mode" for one reason or another, I am reminded of the ways in which MMOs function as work rather than play. Play is an open ended concept, and carries with it both implied unpredictability and enjoyment. Work is directed and focused, and though it can be fulfilling it is not primarily regarded as enjoyable. MMO's somehow manage to fuse together work and play into a system that functions as both entertainment and labor, and that dichotomy serves as my primary academic interest in the genre.

Having deliberately and agonizingly avoided all information about WoTLK, I was unaware about the new system of achievements that is being added to the game. Early last week when my curiosity overcame my better judgement I stumbled upon a listing of these various achievements. The more I read, the more and more amused I became at the magnitude and intense time commitment some would require. The sheer size of the list is impressive (nearly one thousand different achievements are currently listed, though this includes "double" listings for many, one for each faction) and while I am eager to check them off one by one, I am left to wonder why this is being added to the game.

While it's true that this new system provides motivation and reward for the completion of tasks that might otherwise remain incomplete (and hey, some are just plain silly fun), it also firmly cements the cycle that ties most serious MMO players to a game title: an unattainable, perpetual goal. The current list of achievements, as long and exhaustive as it is, will likely never be complete. It is a system that can very easily be expanded infinitely. It is both a whimsical diversion to fill empty hours in-game and a devious method of keeping players addicted. In the aimless months that typically precede a major patch or expansion, many players desert a game, and not all of them return. The timing for the release of this feature, exactly 1 month before the expansion, leads me to believe it has been orchestrated to serve as a tool to keep players task oriented and engaged with the game. And hey, it's working. After all, I did kill eight hundred and thirty-eight fireflies, and I'm still going strong - in a caffeine induced, sleep deprived, dry-eyed stupor.