Somehow that innocent pleasure has curdled. I loved the unexpected messages that would pop up seemingly at random informing me I was now a Breakfast Expert or a Slug-Squasher. I first encountered them in LotRO, where I found them highly entertaining and funny. I'm coming to the conclusion that I really loathe Achievements. Having a floating window appear on a mouseover is in no way that I can determine any possible kind of improvement, either aesthetically or practically. I much preferred the simple, elegant version with progress bars, exact numbers and plain text descriptions, all laid out like the page of a notebook. I found it so much easier to follow the old simple screen of clear text than this color-washed pictorial grid. The main listing down the left-hand side requires extra clicking to get to what you want and when you do get there you have to scroll down an enormous array of identical icons that bounce directly off the retina without leaving a trace of meaning.Ĭlearly whoever designed the new interface has a far more visual memory than I do. The way GW2 Achievements were sorted and displayed before the recent change wasn't perfect but it suited me it's much worse now. Alphabetized, chronological, positional any of those is good.

Anyway, amusing or not, it's largely useless because to see the name requires a mouseover or a click and by then you could just as easily have opened the box and looked inside.

It's amusing to have a Dressing-Up Box with cosmetic items in, for example. In MMOs it can take the form of naming actual imaginary boxes with real see-them-on-the-screen names. Putting things in boxes is all well and good when you have the time and inclination. It's not a view I share.īoth Google and Feedly, however, stand higher in my estimation in this regard than ArenaNet because although those companies might think they know what I want better than I do myself they are at least prepared to let me disagree and bumble on in my own, inefficient, disorganized fashion if that's what I prefer. It seems to be a common view amongst designers these days.

They've joined the faction to which Feedly also belongs that believes everything is better if you put it in a box. Google, a company with which I am increasingly falling out of like, decided overnight to reorganize my mail.

Gw2 frozen out achievement