achievement posts (Subscribe to this feed)

WoW Insider is now WoW.com, if you haven't yet heard, but don't worry: we still have everything you need to know about the world's most popular massively multiplayer online game, from tips and tricks to news and views. Here's our most popular posts from the past week, including news about all the new Druid forms above -- if it's in Azeroth, we've got news about it, just for you.

News

• Beware of Blood Elves selling mounts
  One of our writers' friends falls prey to the game's newest scam.
• Achieved: Level 1 to 80 with no deaths
  A character appropriately named Cautious reached the highest level in the game without dying once.
• Revamped Night Elf Druid cat forms revealed
  New looks for Night Elf Druids.
• Zarhym explains Druid form color combos
  Want to make sure your Druid has the form you want? Here's how.
• Ensidia gets world-first Algalon 25-man kill
  One of the game's biggest pro guilds downs the last major boss in the current content.

Features

• An interview with a scammer
  The perp in the article above gets the WoW.com interview spotlight shined on him.
• WoW, Casually: Rating the classes for casuals
  Which class is best to play for a casual player?
• Arcane Brilliance: Reaching the hit cap
  Mages, here's how to make the most out of those spells you're casting.
• The lore of Ulduar
  The latest game dungeon has more than a few hooks and hints into the rest of the World of Warcraft.
• The Queue: Waterfalls
  Our Q&A column will actually go chasing waterfalls to find answers to your questions. Not just stick to the rivers and the lakes that they're used to.

Loot Ninja dug up an alleged Microsoft sponsored Xbox 360 survey that brings up some interesting achievement topics. Specifically, questions that inquire about non-gaming achievements (like watching a certain amount of DVDs), having them unlock in-game content and even pitches the concept of having a virtual "in-game way to view your Achievements list." Similar to the proposed PlayStation 3 Trophy Room in Home.

Seeing how much we adore the 360's achievements, we're willing to support most any plan (gaming related or not) to expand the number of ways we can increase our Gamerscore. Most of the survey questions are good ideas, except for the one that asks about swapping pop-up messages for environment based notifications. Bad idea. Removing the iconic bleep-bloop would be an unforgivable sin.

[Via Kombo]

The team behind a new achievement tracking website called TrueAchievements is very, very angry. The reason: Achievements and their respective Gamerscores aren't really standardized, meaning that Gamerscore often fails to be a true depiction of a person's gaming talent.

Based on the idea that the harder an achievement is to unlock (no matter its Gamerscore value) the more points it should be worth, TrueAchievements uses a formula that takes into account how many players unlocked a specific achievement. Compared to the game's total population, a difficulty multiplier is calculated. The multiplier is figured into the game's Gamerscore and -- presto! -- a new, more accurate way to calculate a person's skill ensues.

Those who earned all the Avatar achievements will be humbled to know that it's the game with the lowest TrueAchievement value.

The official Fable 2 Achievements have been unveiled, and it appears the previous rumor from August was pretty accurate. Even The Swinger (i.e. "Take part in a debauched bedroom party with several participants.") is still in there. However, there's an added note in about 30 of the Achievements, specifying the ability to earn them simply by watching someone else (i.e. another hero in a world you visit via online co-op) fulfill the requirement. Despite the lack of surprise, we are genuinely excited to being rather vice-full in our quest to obtain all 1000 Gamerscore points.

[Via X3F]

A rumor in Game Informer (full text from GI after the break) states that Gamerscores and achievements will be transferable to Microsoft's next console. As far a rumors go, this is one many Xbox 360 owners might pray Microsoft wouldn't prevent from becoming a reality.

Achievements and Gamerscores are two features of the Xbox 360 that have developed a strong following, particularly among "ch33vo-holics." We can already imagine the internet hissy-fit temper-tantrum freak out we'll see if the Xbox faithful can't transfer their data. Although the next console is still years away, it would be unfortunate to envision Microsoft not allowing gamers to transfer their data effortlessly to the next system.

[Via X3F]

We did it guys! It was a huge success! Last night's Maybe Next Time Buddy X3F Live event (where we went on a mission to earn a certain achievement) was an overwhelming success as achievements were unlocked and I personally obtained 1000 Gamerscore in Halo 3. Woohooza! Click your way towards the break to read a detailed account of the event as well as view some screenshots featuring commentary (thanks to our new gallery system) and a crazy cool panorama shot. What are you waiting for guys? Get your click on ...

For the thorough achievement hunter, there are an elite series of Gamerscore garnering goals that the softcore gamer is not likely to possess, such as Dead Rising's Zombie Genocider achievement, or, well, most of the achievements from Chromehounds. One stands out above the rest, though, requiring a great deal of time and skill to earn -- the "Seriously" achievement from Gears of War. Getting 10,000 kills in ranked multiplayer earns you 50 Gamerpoints, and hopefully, a concerned intervention from a few of your closest loved ones.

Bizarre Creations' latest project The Club gives a hearty nod towards the life-consuming achievement with one of their own -- the cleverly titled "No, Seriously" requires you to kill 10,001 opponents in ranked online matches. Oh, we see what you did there. We'll have to wait until Feb. 19 to see if the game is good enough to merit that kind of time investment, and if Bizarre ripped anything else off of Gears -- such as a steroid-infused protagonist that speaks with the eloquence of Tourette's suffering sailor.

Well, it looks like gamers can finally rest easy. Readers may recall that Turok was to include an achievement called "Grab Bag" that rewarded players for killing their own team members. Specifically, players had to kill "at least 1 creature, 1 enemy, 1 teammate, and yourself in the same round of a public match." With griefing players already ruining multiplayer games everywhere, gamers were naturally upset when Turok's developers decided to actually reward them for it. Thankfully though, the devs at Propaganda have seen the light and will be altering the achievement with a launch day patch for the game. The achievement will remain in the game after the patch, but will now only require players to kill a creature, an enemy, and themselves. So it's mostly fixed, but don't be surprised if your teammates are constantly throwing grenades at their feet.

[Via Joystiq]

GameStrata, a new game statistic tracking and social site, has just launched into a (semi-)public status. Players can use the free service to keep track of a range of quantifiable game performance details. We're not quite sure what to make of the service, since an Xbox Live Gamertag does nearly the same thing on a platform basis, albeit Xbox only. (We see overlap with Steam too, for another heavy competitor.)

We'll give the site some hope, however, since it's signed a wide roster of EA, Activision, Capcom, and Sega for launch titles. Those games are Battlefield 2 (PC), Guitar Hero III (Wii, 360, PS3), Lost Planet (360), and Universe at War (PC, 360). The site combines stats from all of those games into a single user profile. It'll also strip Gamertag data into its service.

GameStrata aims to bathe geeks in delicious data to keep them away from in-game -- and community-based -- competitors. Co-founder Barry Dorf takes exception to our classification, saying via email, "We do not see the space as having competitors, only partners.There are publishers that track stats and some that do not. We do not believe the publishers that are tracking stats are at the granular level we want them to be, or they want to be. Where do I rank in the first chorus during Sabotage in GH3 on Medium, or how many headshots did I make last week in Battlefield 2, and where did it rank amongst those stats?"

Those details run deep, letting gamers graph performance over time -- say, kills with a certain weapon -- and compare it to friends. Players can also broadcast a syndicated news feed to update competitors with their latest achievements.

After reviewing concerns about its Xbox achievement choices, Propaganda games says it'll consider removing the "team kill" award after the Turok launch early next year. Although CVG reports in its headline "Turok dev to scrap team kill achievement," the quote from Propaganda VP Josh Holmes is actually, "We are currently looking at readying a patch or solution for it if it does become an issue when the game releases" (um, looks like somebody forgot to read the story before writing the headline). That's not a definitive statement that Propaganda will nix the controversial achievement, but merely acknowledgment that the developer will consider doing so after the game releases.

Actually, a few statements made by Holmes in the interview are a little frightening. For example, he says that the team kill achievement -- which gives ten points for killing one creature, enemy, teammate and yourself in a single round -- was originally created as a joke because they found that players in their first Turok match met all the criteria. That's not exactly a confidence builder.

David Dreger, better known to the Xbox community by his gamertag "Knuckles Dawson," finally saw the end to his 681-day Xbox achievement streak on Oct. 4. Dreger tells why it happened in his latest Achievement 101 feature on sister-site X3F. After receiving MVP status from Microsoft on Oct. 1., he finally made the decision to stop -- but it took another few days for it to actually happen. Dreger received at least one achievement on his Xbox 360 gamertag every day from Nov. 22, 2005 until Oct. 4, 2007.

Dreger, who is also a co-host on sister-site X3F's podcast, says he's accomplished all that he wanted to with the achievement streak. What finally made him stop his streak was a good game of Halo 3 with a friend while they were on the level "The Way the World Ends." Dreger says he's still interested in getting achievements as he is a self-proclaimed "achievement whore," but now is focusing on simpler tasks like getting his score to 54,321, to mirror when he had 12,345. Y'know, just for the heck of it.

Welcome to another edition of the weekly Gamerscore whoring extravaganza, X3F Achievements 101. As usual, I'll discuss the last week in unlocking Achievements, or discuss any news that's especially pertinent to the Achievement obsessed. Unfortunately, this week was pretty light, with E3 just around the corner, there wasn't much spare time to grind through any games. I didn't rent anything this week, but I did get my feet wet with Rainbow Six: Vegas, as well as made a couple discoveries whilst playing some Arcade titles locally with friends.

Welcome back to another edition of X3F Achievements 101, complete with Gamerscore whoring goodness. This week we take a look at finishing up Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, a very quick look at the ever distracting and delicious Darkness, as well as some personal Achievements, while not exactly adding any value to my Gamerscore, are still pretty cool little accomplishments that occurred over the past week. All in all, it was a solid week, with a few minor hiccups that'll you'll have to check it out for yourself.

So the previous week has come to a close and I'm back with another glorious edition of X3F Achievements 101. The past seven days had some serious grinding behind it as I finished off the amazingly tedious Eragon. Hopefully Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End be a third time's charm for film-to-game adaptations. I'll also give my interpretation of the release of the Halo 3 Achievements, which took the interwebs by surprise this week. Either way, there's a lot to cover from the past week, so let's get started.