The World of Warcraft (WoW) certainly keeps getting better and interesting as it welcomes another expansion - Wrath of the Lich King. You may already love plenty features that World of Warcraft brings. One of the most exciting features with Wrath of the Lich King is the Achievement System. This new major feature surely suits a wide range of play styles. Achievements boosts the fun with self-contained goals giving a new meaning to challenges, satisfy goal-oriented players and shows off your accomplishments to other players in WoW.

The all-new achievements system of World of Warcraft unveils more than 500 individual achievements covering all aspects of gameplay involving world exploration, PvE, PvP, professions and character development. Some achievements come with in-game rewards such as tabards, vanity pets and titles. You will definitely stand out when you proudly display these cosmetic and for fun rewards. From the purely whimsical to the truly epic, there will be something for everyone with this new feature.

The Achievements Window

You will notice a new button on your main action bar upon beginning your epic journey in the Wrath of the Lich King. Simply click that button to bring up the achievements window.

The top of the windows displays the total number of points you have earned after completing achievements. Each achievement appears with its name, description, point value, the completion date and a progress bar found at the bottom part. The highlighted parts are parts you’ve finished. Closely similar to the quest tracker is you can designate which achievements to keep track while you play. Achievement system is user-friendly thanks to its primary design goal to provide players with everything they need to know to unlock an achievement.

It sure is rewarding to see your own list of achievements but it’s twice as good to let the world know what you’ve successfully completed. You can easily compare your progress to other players by right clicking other players and choosing the appropriate option. Your accomplishments don’t come unnoticed as they’re announced to your guild and everyone in your immediate vicinity – complete with custom achievement animation and sound effect are too hard to ignore. Your achievements are also viewable on the Armory to let you track and flaunt your accomplishment through the web.

Types and Categories of Achievements

World of Warcraft’s achievements come in various forms. Some are easy to achieve that only requires specific actions to unlock such as defeating a member of each race in your opposition faction in PvP. Others show a progress bar and ask you to do something repeatedly such as give out 10 hugs. While some achievements are progressive – such as collecting an additional of 25 vanity pets after you stored 10 vanity pets. Lastly, meta achievements unlock when you fulfilled other achievements – unlocking all World Exploration achievement in turn unlocks a World Explore meta achievement. Meta achievements include those that involve quests, honorable skills, exploration and reputation will be applied to your character retroactively.

Here is our guide to help keep track of all the different achievements you can unlock in different categories:

Feats of Strength

Feats of Strength represent the past glories of Azeroth as such will make the rewards difficult if not impossible to earn. Feats include old-world player-vs.-player ranks, obtaining rare mounts, special titles, and more. Feats of Strength will be awarded retroactively meaning rewards will be immediately granted to your character if you qualify. Many of them will be impossible to achieve in Wrath of the Lich King. They’re worth no points and are not shown in the achievements interface when unearned.

Player vs. Player

These are accomplishments related to arena, battlegrounds, and other world PvP scenarios. A few examples are:

• City Defender - kill 50 players in your faction’s capital cities
• Arena Hot streak - win 10 arena matches in a row
• Alterac Valley All Star - capture towers, graveyards, and slay the enemy leader all done in one single game

Dungeons and Raids

• Every killed end boss of each raid and dungeon will grant its own achievement.

Professions

• This achievement is consequential to advancing to each new tier of your professions.

Quests

• This category contains subcategories which are specific to a zone. Quest-based achievements include completing a certain number of quests and completing specific quest lines.

Events

• All seasonal events will have associated achievements such as Christmas, Midsummer Festival, Lunar Festival, Brew fest and many others.

World Exploration

• You earn achievements by exploring each zone and get meta-achievements when you fully explore a continent.

Reputation

• This is where you gained exalted reputation with each faction in the game.

General

• This category is general and tends to fall under whimsical. These achievements are things like getting a hair cut, give a hug, falling off the great lift, etc.

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