I remember when they were added in Wrath. There was a fair amount of reassurance that it would only be about points, no in-game gain. Ulduar wasn’t even out, and people were already changing how they were playing - basing decisions on how to do a dungeon, or which dungeon to do, on whether they could get an achievement. I disliked them that early, even as I went around and did things to get them.
I think the Achievement that absolutely made me hate them, though, was something about killing a number of turkeys in a certain amount of time. I finished it and suddenly, with total clarity, realized that this was what they’d be using to expand “content” without actually putting work into real content. It was busywork to keep players feeling like there was always more to do. And enough players bought in that when someone said they were getting bored, they got profile-mined and told they had plenty of Achievements they could work on, Collections that weren’t completed.
These days it is very difficult to get a new game on Steam that doesn’t have at least a dozen achievements, and so many people I know do all sorts of weird things to get them. For example, my brother and his wife trade off killing each other in games with PvP achievements (what WOW calls win-trading) or perform actions that make no sense in Civ VI, no sense except it will lead to completing an achievement even if they lose the game.
So, yes, I sincerely believe that had achievements existed in vanilla, I would have very quickly grown to dislike them and felt “Ew, GROSS!”
So, I read through all of the comments here and didn’t see anyone touch on this…
I personally enjoy having something soloable to accomplish in a “to-do list” style… However; I firmly believe that they should not be implemented in Classic or any of it’s future iterations because of the toxic behavior that it encourages.
The “link your achievement” behavior. Basically, you can’t do X thing unless you can prove to me, someone of no more value than yourself, that you have done this thing before.
It’s just as bad as gear score gate keeping and while I do believe that things like “Come to the IF bridge and let me inspect you for FR gear” are perfectly acceptable to show that you are prepared to run said event. I do not believe that we need yet another tool to enable the toxicity that will already be prevalent.
Sure. “What was supposed to be vanilla” is invariably whatever change to the actual game the person posting wants. “Nostalgia” is a snarl word used to invalidate the answer “no, I do not want that change.”