Play time is a stress reliever, a much needed distraction, and arguably a self esteem builder for the winners. But another basic need that computer games can feed, is that of creation. Everyone loves to create. Whether it's a five year olds finger painting hanging on the fridge, or Stephen Kings next great horror epic. Anyone with an emotion to express, story to tell, or movie to capture can do their thing.

With the launch of Wrath of the Lich King, much noise has been made about the comparatively "easy" state of available PvE content. Especially because of the accomplishments of Ensidia, forums community-wide have been abuzz with the concern that our favorite aspect of the World of Warcraft—endgame raiding—has become an unfortunate casualty of Blizzard's recent push to make all aspects of the game accessible to a larger player base. Since the release of patch 3.0, players have accepted the arrival of the new Achievement system in various ways. Some have gone practically insane attempting to acquire every achievement possible, while others have written off the system as a gimmick and have chosen to disregard it entirely.

There can be little argument, however, that the system did fundamentally change how players experience the game, and that includes players primarily interested in the raiding aspect. To me, the most interesting portion of the Achievement pane is the "Dungeons & Raids" section. On one hand, this section provides exciting impetus for guilds to venture back into older instances. Whether raiders have conquered those older zones time and again in the past and merely want to rack up more achievement points or are experiencing the encounters for the first time, the new system brings players back to fun and interesting content that they would otherwise have little or no reason to experience at this stage of game evolution.

Between 3.0 and the launch of Wrath of the Lich King, this was as far as I thought Achievements would really impact the raid environment. Now, however, having looked more closely at the Achievements available for Northrend raid zones (and having begun to attempt them), it has become clear to me that this new mechanic is deeply affecting how raiders experience the game in Wrath of the Lich King. In the Burning Crusade, when a player wanted to boast about his raiding prowess, he or she would simply say that he had managed to defeat Kael'thas, Illidan or Kil'jaeden. The claim could be backed up with a piece of gear or by the simple reputation of the player's guild, but the novelty of that accomplishment was decidedly fleeting.

Wrath of the Lich King raid Achievements, however, have added substantially more layers to the process. While it is one thing for a guild to have progressed through and completed Naxxramas on Heroic difficulty or to have defeated Sartharion the Onyx Guardian in his lair, it is quite another to do so without letting a single raid member die or without first sacrificing a single drake. While in both original WoW and The Burning Crusade, the most prominent "achievement" of high-end raiding guilds was simply the successful completion of the most difficult raiding instances in existence, the Achievement system has allowed, and perhaps forced, the focus of high-end raiders to shift.

Now for DPS meters. There was an orange bow and orange blades in BC. Did that mean that hunters and rogues lacking those weapons were uncompetitive? Not really. Did that mean the trend was to keep dropping better and better hunter and rogue gear compared to other characters? Not really. It is a useful tool to imagine gear that is several tiers higher than current itemization and estimate what characters will look like then -- we use it ourself. But remember that gear is not real gear. If resto druids fall behind when everyone has 10,000 spellpower, then we're not really going to lose sleep over it, because the game will have changed so much by the time that gear becomes reality.

So, computer is so funny and easy, please join us!