We all know that World of Warcraft''s Wrath of the Lich King expansion is coming with some killer stuff, and that includes the game's brand new Achievement system. What we don't know yet is what happened behind the scenes and how it all came to be. Fortunately, lead game designer Jeffrey Kaplan had a conversation with MTV Multiplayer recently and told us all a little something about it.

Kaplan says that originally, the people over at Blizzard didn't want to call the system Achievements because Xbox 360 and Steam were already using the name. They came up with all sorts of alternatives like Goals, Accomplishments, and other titles, but at the end of it all, it came back down to Achievements.

“We sort of came around to the conclusion that all players call them Achievements," He added. That realization made them settle on the name finally.

Next was brainstorming on how to go about it. Kaplan recounts that the core concept of designing their Achievements was “we wanted to focus on getting the user interface in a good presentable form and things that other Achievement systems haven’t done a good job of.”

In terms of execution, Kaplan believes that their edge lies not only in well thought-out Achievements, but a nice interface that will be pleasing to the community's eyes. He said Blizzard welcomed mods of the interface and are fully expecting people to take advantage of it.

“Our [user interface] guys went out of their way to build the Achievement system so that the mod community can completely rip it apart and do whatever they wanted with it — the look and how the information is presented to you," he added.

Kaplan concluded by saying "we fully expect that people will come up with their own Achievement browsers and comparison systems.”

---

Related articles:

• Photo-op: QJ.NET's WotLK screenshot request announcement
• World of Warcraft site update: Northrend region guide