What’s your least favorite kind of achievement?

There are a lot of achievements in World of Warcraft, and across all of gaming, a lot of them are really great! Players love to find some fun pop culture references sprinkled into their game, or complete raid fights in wacky ways to unlock a mount. They can help to spice up an evening gaming session or give you some direction towards completing a secret. However, not all achievements are created equally — with more than 40,000 achievement points to collect they can’t all be winners, right?

Two in Warcraft are on my mind when I think of bad achievements. The first has been sticking like a splinter ever since the beginning of February — Support Your Local Artisans. As part of the 2024 Love is in the Air update, this achievement had you donate 50,000 gold to the Artistans Consortium representative outside of the Gala of Gifts. In return, you got some extra Love Token currency and a whole 10 achievement points.

I just don’t love an achievement whose only criterion is you had a bunch of gold. It doesn’t feel like an accomplishment and certainly doesn’t feel like a meaningful milestone that needs a celebration toast. I know that you can get many achievements just by hitting level 10 or exploring a zone, but at least those meant something at some point. This one only means that you had been doing lots of World Quests in a zone with the Dreamsurge Magpies gold buff active, or you got a Bind on Equip item from a raid and someone bought it from you. I’m glad that additions are coming to the holiday events, I just wish that they were all as engaging and funny as a quest to go take a nap wound up being.

The other achievement I can’t stand is any from a raid or dungeon where you have to use a boss ability to launch yourself into the air and touch a floating orb. There have been multiple versions of this achievement now and I just can’t stand it. They’ll always take more time and are usually trivialized by just throwing extra Demon Hunters into the group. I wouldn’t be upset to see that design get retired.

How about you, is there a style of achievement you would be happy to never see again? Or maybe a specific one that just annoys the heck out of you? Would you be happy if you never saw Going Down? again on your latest character? Why don’t you like them?