The thing is… achievements are what ultimately caused me to quit WoW. It completely sapped out the enjoyment of the holiday events for me.

The current emphasis on achievements and worldwide leaderboards is discouraging for me. I recently took a stab at making an iOS game in an effort to get a development business underway, only for my game to be mostly ignored because I had no “itch to scratch” involving writing a game with such Darwinian mechanisms to drive community. (I’m an old school solo gamer.)

It's a tough balancing act. I participated a lot more in the WoW holiday events because of the achievements. I noticed that a lot of people did not like competing with the new horde of achievement go-getters making holiday events more frantic and overcrowded.

I eventually quit WoW because I could not keep it as a reasonable, casual attention sink. It would always end up as the dominant time and attention sink in my life.