Achievement with EffectsFollow

So I was thinking that something interesting they could add to WoW would be silly achievements that have in-game effects. So what do I mean? Well let's say you killed 10,000 mobs of a single type, let's use bears as an example, you would receive an achievement called "bear hunter" or something. This achievement would have the effect that when you had max threat on bears you may randomly cause them to cower in fear. This would be a low percentage chance, but it could happen.

I bet we could come up with several different achievements of this type, what would you folks have?

Yeah this mindset.

I'm all for adding new and different things to the game, but anything that gives an advantage risks becoming required. Think about how people feel the need to do Deepholm and the rep grind for the shoulder enchants on every character they want to play semi-seriously. I'd hate to hear the next requirement was killing 10,000 bears to get a 1% crit increase against them because there's this bear boss and he.... well you get the idea.

Nothing wrong with the idea IMO, but I can see it going bad fast. Devil in details and such.

To be fair I think blizzard is struggling with this a little too. How can you add in 'fun' bonuses without them becoming 'required' bonuses? You know some kind of rewards that aren't all mounts and companion pets...

Edited, Nov 22nd 2011 12:17pm by someproteinguy

Yeah Furious has got what I am talking about. I don't actually mean a Stun effect or anything like that, I mean a purely cosmetic effect in which a mob shows fear in the cower position.

Should have been more clear.

No, I mean more like, you buy 500 Roasted Moongraze Tenderloins from a vendor, and you get an achievement called Best Customer (with title) and when you sit to eat, you get a message from the NPC via whisper saying: "The regular?"

Lemurcat has caught my drift.

I thought the same thing at first, but the more I thought about it the more I realized that I may be thinking about it the wrong way. Let's take Therazane rep for example. Is it required? No, but it does enhance game play by giving you access to the best shoulder enchants when exalted. So, when you see that 'Therzane' achievement box pop up, you know you've just improved your toon's effectiveness potential. You're not getting the bonus for the achievement per se, but you are getting a reward for completing some task. Small bonuses like the OP mentioned could work the same way.

So the real question is not, "Should they give you perk for certain achievements?". It's "Should they add these small perks to the game?".

I would welcome things like this. I don't think it'd be game-changing, but it'd be really fun to have.

If you think about it, though, I think what's being said is that while the achievement itself isn't offering a reward, that which offered the achievement does offer one, so effectively it's as though the achievement gave said reward.

The real pickle is deciding which achievements should offer rewards if you look at it that way. They should likely be achievements that make sense and possibly even give meaningful rewards, but at the same time they can't be of a nature that they'd become required beyond what's already required by the community.

And ultimately, aside from perhaps things like rep gain percentage increases or reduction in costs of buying things from vendors, I really can't see any meaningful achievement rewards not becoming required by the community as a pre-req for joining their groups or whatnot.