Man "Beats" World of Warcraft
Precision pointed out that a Taiwanese man has been named the first ever person to successfully beat World of Warcraft, getting all 986 achievements, completing 5906 quests and /hugging 11 players. Insert joke here. There are many.
And unfortunately the "sub games" are variations of "deliver item X to so-and-so" or "kill X amount of monster Z". Yawn.
It's the getting there that makes it fun, not the accomplishment. Last night we had a good run, and we're finally up to the last boss in Ulduar. It's not the highest and it's not the lowest, and the accomplishments were frosting on the cake. And nobody really cared all that much about the gear that dropped.
What did happen was the execution of a carefully planned approach using a refined strategy with a group of ten friends you can depend on to carry out the tactics well. It involved discussion, a couple of wipes, refined approach, then finally success against Thorim. That was hugely fun.
This is not simple carrot and stick. The win took a lot of thought, a lot of communication and some fairly fast and furious in-game action, a few close calls and some very close timing. If you see WoW as nothing but a level/achievement grind, then you're playing it wrong. It's all about the people you play with, not the counters, that make it fun. And an arbitrary challenge is still a challenge, isn't it? Otherwise you'd have to give up on all games and sports. What a dull life that would be.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear