On June 22, 2022, a Developer Update was published giving the Classic community valuable insights into Blizzard’s approach and philosophy to Classic WoW. In this update, we learned about the three design pillars that Classic devs use to guide their hand as they consider making #SomeChanges to Classic in order to bring our community a positive experience.
The first and most important of these pillars is Nurture and Protect Social Experiences.
Wrath of the Lich King brought new and exciting ways for guilds and other communities to come together in pursuit of a common goal, the most obvious of these being the implementation of Achievements — especially meta achievements, which reward people for working together to complete a group of achievements.
The following achievements are currently required to complete the Glory of the Raider meta achievements, which many communities are eager to complete, as it rewards the iconic Plagued and Black Proto-Drake mounts:
A Poke In The Eye (10/25)
Less Is More (10/25)
The Dedicated Few (10/25)
Subtraction (10/25)
These achievements are antithetical to the primary pillar of Wrath Classic, as they require communities to exclude members to complete meta achievements they have been working towards together. Assuming a static 25-player raid team, in order to get all members their Proto-Drake, these achievements force groups to go at least two weeks without playing with everyone on their team.
Looking ahead to the later raids of Wrath Classic, the completion of the meta achievements does not require groups to exclude members.
The removal of the above achievements from the requirements for the completion of the meta achievement would better reflect the core values that drive the Classic team, and would ultimately lead to a better experience for the Classic community.
Even then, those 5 people would need another 5 people to be willing to sit so they can get theirs. It’s just not at all a fun way to have to organize how we play the game.
We’re bringing attention to the fact that the current meta requirements go against the design philosophy for Classic.
As you said, this content was cleared on Day 1. This content is easy for many guilds, and dropping 5 people from your raid team for 2 weeks won’t make the raid more difficult in a meaningful way.
I’m not suggesting the achievements be removed from the game; just that they be removed from the requirement for a team-oriented meta achievement. Blizzard even seems to have acknowledged this awkwardness, as they didn’t implement similar requirements on later meta achievements, and they even removed a similar achievement from the Glory of the Hero meta achievement.
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