QQ Achievements

When Blizzard activated the achievement system it did not take long for people to begin complaining about the difficulty of completing some of the tasks. Blizzard quickly agreed with the community and made some of the achievements easier.

The World of Warcraft forums have an ongoing complaint over the Valentine's Day achievement. Apparently there is a task based on luck and some people were unable to complete the achievement.

Spoiled.

I've written it before. The current crop of MMO players, including myself to some extent, have become completely and utterly spoiled.

The Halloween achievement was made easier by increasing the drop potential of some of the items required. A questing achievement was found to be difficult to complete, so it too was adjusted to be more easily completed.

Granted, I'm sure Blizzard has an idea of how difficult they want the achievements to be and perhaps some of them actually were too difficult upon release. But not every achievement has a title, tabard, pet, or mount as a reward. Some do not even have points attached as a reward. And it just so happens that the only achievements that have proven "too difficult" are those with rewards. In the case of the Valentine's achievement, a 310% flying mount (or so I've heard).

Would people care how difficult the achievement is if the reward was removed?

I think that this is just one more example of the instant gratification tendencies of MMO players. You see, in the ongoing "discussion" linked above, the argument does not just highlight the Valentine's Day achievement, but also the Brew of the Month achievement. Apparently the Brew of the Month Club and its place in the achievement system was announced at a Blizzard convention. So, during Brewfest, only attendees of the convention and those who were keeping a close eye on it knew to participate in the event.

So now, people who did not join the club during last year's brewfest must wait until Brewfest 2009 and then another 12 months for the event to run its course.

All in all, there are multiple ways to miss the mount reward at the end of the holiday achievements tree and players are going to complain about it's difficulty every step of the way.

And of course, Blizzard is going to "look into" the issues to see if they need to make the mount reward easier to claim.

Again, if the reward were removed, would players still complain?