I was completing some Legion dungeon achievements. I had to look up on WoWhead how to do them. It got me wondering… When WoW started, how the heck did players know what had to be done to complete certain achievements?
Take for example: “Dropping some eaves” from the Court of Stars. How did players figure out all the stuff you had to do throughout the instance to complete it? Does Blizz release a “how to” script when they release an xpac?
The achievement usually say what you did to complete it.
E.g. ‘Dropping somr eaves’: Witness the conversation between Advisor Melandrus and Grand Magistrix Elisande in Court of Stars on Mythic difficulty.
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There were no achievements back then.
They were added in 2008
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So this one was actually figured out through some trial and error but also because it actually wound up being optimal. It was better to get this outcome for the sake of M+ rather than the other, and when there’s optimization involved, people will typically go through great lengths to figure it out.
I figured someone knows how to access quest strings.
there are people who dedicate their time (lives?) to finding secrets when something is hidden.
and this 
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Yes. But in this example, you had to kill all the sentries without them raising an alert, disable all the beacons, separate the group around the second boss, then guess the spy on the first try. All of THAT is not listed in the achievement.
And that was just one example. Some of the achievement are much more involved. So I wondered how players just figured it out.
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I was going to say this. They were added in the Wotlk pre-patch. I think by then WoWhead was a thing. Or not long after.
Also, the achievements were very simplistic to start. Though I made the mistake of doing the Loremaster achievement before the Cata revamp, thinking it’d be special, and the revamp just made it easier. It was seriously brutal. I sometimes wonder if it’s a thing on the Classic server.
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No achievements at the beginning but there were still resources for quests if you couldn’t figure it out.
Before Wowhead, there was a site called Thottbot. People went to it and added information about quests and secrets that others could use. Or they discussed things on Reddit and other social sites. This started in Alpha and Beta. There was also a printed guidebook you could buy.
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“Anyone know what this button does? It’s clickable.”
“Idk, push it.”
OH before Loremaster was divided into zones, it was a bit of a nightmare.
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Perfect gem activated
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Especially with all of the drop quests, class, faction specific, and crafting quests. Surprised I didn’t get burned out completing it. I wouldn’t have bothered had I know it was going to be turned into a braindead achievement.
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Separate the group around the second boss?
Oh, the group of mobs. Never mind.
- They were added in Wrath of the Lich King.
- Besides most of them plainly stating what you need to do. WoWhead has existed since WotLK and before it other places that served the same function.
- Complex achievements were not really present at the start. They’re really only a recent thing. There were some secret ones like Insane in the Membrane that people found out about and spread around but other than those most were very straightforward.
Thottbot, too. Which looks funny now with current, uh, colloquialisms.
We had other sites, like Elitist Jerks and Thottbot.
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Data mining.
I did Loremaster before Cata, and without question, the absolute worst part was Silithus.
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I’m pretty sure Wowhead or similar websites had information on all the things even back in late 2000s. While yeah sometimes the achievements would take some figuring out, it usually didn’t take long for someone to post a comment or strategy