Van Hemlock (who I’ve been enjoying so much of late that I added him to my blogroll) talks a little bit today about the role of achievement in MMOGs. Specifically, he’s discussing the great support for that axis on the Bartle graph within Everquest 2. That’s hardly a surprise, given the tendency towards achieving the average MMOGer has, but it tied in interestingly with comments by EGM editor-in chief Dan Hsu. This past weekend he talked about how much he loves Achivements on the Xbox 360, and how surprising that was for him as a gamer.

I really like Achievements on the 360 too, and not just because I like flashing my epeen. In a lot of ways, I see the Achievements system as a spotlight. Good Achievements lead you to places you might not have gone before, or push you into experiences you may not have otherwise had. I like to think of them as the designer shining a spotlight on a part of the game and saying ‘Hey dummy, this is fun!’ This gets into a grey area with multiplayer games, unfortunately, as a lot of the Achievements in (say) Gears of War are all about killing a whole whole bunch of people; this is purely epeen territory and is kinda boring.

But, I digress. These two commentaries reminded me of my time playing FFXI on the 360 earlier this year. I loved FFXI all to pieces during my time with it on the PC, and getting to actually play it on a console with a controller (like it was more or less intended) was a smashing time. Even if, really, I didn’t understand why they were releasing it on the 360. Something I didn’t touch on in my review, as I was aiming for brevity, was the lack of Achievements for the game. In this regard FFXI is completely unique for the 360’s launch lineup. Every other game had Achievements, and subsequent game launches have proven out Microsoft’s intention for the vast majority of 360 titles to have Achievements.

This lack, then, is glaring and ultimately frustrating. I picked back up my FFXI account via the 360 (thanks to Square/Enix for doing the right thing there, btw), and my little Taru Black Mage began waddling his way around the world again. During the course of play, I actually dinged 40 … and was very disappointed when I didn’t get that very distinctive blip and notice on my screen. I’m sure there is a perfectly good (technical) reason why your character couldn’t be linked up with the 360’s achievement system; that doesn’t mean I’m not disappointed. I know it’s a little thing, but … c’mon. I’m human! More than once I’ve lamented the fact that my time playing Oblivion was entirely on the PC. I would have loved to get some of those sweet, sweet Achievements for being an RPG badass. Anybody can frag somebody; how many people can claim to be a Dark Brotherhood Listener? I can, but I can’t ‘look back on it with pride’ because I don’t have it on my gamertag.

When other MMOGs reach the shores of the 360, this has to be corrected. It’s a requirement. Huxley, Conan … I don’t care how it is to hook your broke-ass character database up to Xbox Live, I want my gamer candy. I want a little popup for having whacked the foozles, and I want a popup for having FedExed. I’m a 360 owner, dangit, but I want my validation for camping a spawn, getting phat lewt, and not being a n00b.

I may be the only one, of course, but I may be the only one who liked the City of Heroes and Star Wars Galaxies badge systems too. At the time I left CoH I had every site seeing badge I could get my sweaty paws around. I also did the Imperial Theme Park when really the only reason to do it was to get the badge. Again, I don’t care if anyone else ever sees these things. I want to be able to look back at my badges and remember that awesome time I did the Trick or Treating missions at Halloween, or the time I helped a bunch of people find that place on Tatooine and earned myself the “Ben Kenobi’s Old Home” badge.

This is wandering off topic slightly (and has given me an idea for another post), so I’ll wrap it up with this: The 360 is going to be a platform for MMOGs. You know it, Microsoft knows it … so they’ve got to get serious with things here. As gamers we’ve come to expect certain things from Xbox Live, and if they don’t deliver we’re going to be frustrated. Given how new MMOGs on consoles are, I think it would behoove the Live team to get this part right. Make sure we get Achievements when we do cool things on your console, Microsoft; MMOG gamers need a little validation too.