wow All WoW Achievements Completed - A Xirev Interview

[Starym 3,800]

 

We've all heard about the man who's finished the game very recently, getting all the currently available achievements and claiming that he can now finally play the game. What you may not have known is that this is his second time to do so, as he also finished Legion World First back when it was current! We took some time out to talk to Xirev about his impressive... ahem... achievement, and found out a whole lot more about his process.

He talks about the worst things he's had to endure on specific achievements, the 1100 days played across all his accounts and characters, when and why he started this endeavor, his first achievement complete expansion, some very negative comments he's gotten about his accomplishments, his overall thoughts on BfA as someone who's spent a lot of time in its every nook and cranny, and a lot more!
 

When did you decide to start actively working on getting all the achievements in the game? 

I started caring about achievements in Cataclysm, but working on the achievement What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been in Wrath of the Lich King was what first introduced me to doing them - I didn’t end up finishing it until Mists of Pandaria though. In Wrath of the Lich King I did achievements for the rewards that they gave, in Cataclysm I started actively doing any achievement that I could regardless of the reward - it was mostly rep grinds in the beginning.

Every expansion after Cataclysm increased my conviction to try to get everything, and in Warlords of Draenor I was fully committed to finish it all, as it was a very good expansion to do that sort of thing since there wasn’t much new content added. Seeing people AFK in Orgrimmar in their corner that they always stood in showing off their gear, mounts and ton of achievements was a big motivating factor to want to strive for the same thing. 
 

You had also completed Legion as the first with all achievements, was that your first “complete” expansion and (then current) max achievement points? 

Warlords of Draenor was the first time I finished with everything but it was a while after other people did it. I’ve been in the top 10 of achievement points since the start of Legion all the way until now. Sometimes being very far ahead of even the second place as can be seen here:

What would you say the general ratio is of the achievements you got on a single character vs. what you had to do on others to get them all complete and how much /played do you have on your accounts?

I have most achievements on my main Mage, if I at one point did an achievement on another character I would go back and do it on my Mage again just to have everything done on one character. My /played on my Mage is 565 days total and 117 days at 120. Total playtime on my main account is 974 days and I have a second account with 303 days. Some of that time is overlap, but definitely not all of it. I also have a third account with 32 days but that’s all overlap with the other two. So I’d say total across all of the accounts is somewhere around 1100 days.
 

What would be your top 5 (or more) worst and/or most difficult achievements to get? 

What comes to mind in BFA is Most Minis Wins, that achievement made me take a 2 month break from playing because I wasn’t getting the last one I needed. I ended up getting it on my first try the day I came back after the break.

Catchin' Some Rays also took quite a lot of time and was really frustrating because at the start of the expansion the drop rate was really high and people got it within 50 casts - I put it off for too long and they significantly reduced the drop rate, so it took me close to 8000 casts to get it. Knowing I could have gotten it much faster made that achievement especially sour in my mouth.

Existential Crisis from Mythrax in Uldir was probably the hardest raid achievement ever added before they fixed it. The description of the achievement and what you actually had to do to earn it was completely reversed and it took around 200 wipes to get it, which is harder than most Mythic bosses.

You’re only as strong as your weakest link and it was hard to find people willing to spend time on trying to do it.

The high rated PvP achievements are definitely the all time hardest to get though.

How was BfA in terms of the new achievements added compared to previous expansions?

I’d say it was pretty similar, maybe a bit more than Legion. If you consider the 500 Honor Level achievement as being added in BFA (was added in the prepatch) then the time investment needed to finish all achievements significantly increased for people who did not farm a lot of Prestiges on different characters in Legion.
 

How does it feel clearing everything on that list out? You joked you can then finally start playing the game, but does completing all the achievements make you feel “done” with the game or does it give you more freedom to do what you like?

It feels like when it’s your birthday, you don’t feel much different from the day before. Sure, there’s some sense of relief of “I’m finished now” followed by the realization that the main factor of why I’m playing the game has suddenly disappeared. I have finished all achievements in the game multiple times in BFA already, same thing in Legion, with each patch I end up with everything so I’m kind of used to it by now. It’s no longer about striving for something, it’s all about maintaining which isn’t as fun I think. What I did when I was done with everything in Legion was to play Final Fantasy 14 for a month followed by working on collecting transmog and such for the addon All The Things. I have not done much if any All The Things collection in BFA apart from the things I usually do.

I’m not sure what I’ll do this time around though, probably just continue doing the things I was doing before.
 

What is your favorite WoW activity? 

Going for all achievements, not doing the achievements themselves, just the collective effort of doing all of them.
 

What was the path that you took to getting this done? Did you have a very specific way in which you approached it or did you just play the various content and then narrowed it down as you completed specific ones?

At first I mostly went for achievements that awarded something, then achievements that indirectly rewarded something (like reputations), after that I kinda picked a category and worked my way through it as much as I could. So for example when I decided it was time to do fishing I’d only do fishing achievements until they were all done.
 

When a new expansion comes up, do you actually play it “normally” just to enjoy it for a while, or do you head straight into the achievement hunt? 

I think doing the achievements is playing the game normally, they guide you towards doing all the different activities the game has to offer, and as I don’t have a certain preference to what type of content I play the game for it is normal for me to just do everything that is on offer. They don’t take you that far off the beaten path. I usually never prepare beforehand when a new expansion or patch comes out, I like going into it and figuring out what I want to prioritize and focus on while it’s live. It would probably be better if I did prepare but I don’t think it’s that worth it.
 

What were some of your favorite achievements to do (and not just the really easy and fast ones ? )

It kind of depends, achievements that I was able to do while watching a show or something were the ones that felt the most satisfying to do because it was almost like I wasn’t even playing the game while finishing a long achievement. Others were fun to do just due to how hardcore I went about doing it, like doing 4000 daily quests in 2 weeks by figuring out which daily quests were the fastest ones to do on as many characters as possible each day, and then just bruteforcing the 10000 daily quest achievement.

Farming PvP WQs on 45 characters to get 90k honor per day to finish the 500 Honor Level achievement was also fun to do. It wasn’t super necessary though, as I started at 350 Honor Level the day the prepatch came out because I had done a lot of Prestige farming in Legion. I would have gotten 500 by now without doing the WQ grind anyway as I’m at 673 Honor Level as of right now.

Achievements that no one really had an idea on how to do and having to figure it out on your own are fun as well, like Naxt Victim which by the looks of the Wowhead comment I made about it helped a lot of people out.
 

As someone who’s spent possibly the most time dealing with the specifics of the expansion, what are your thoughts about BfA in general and what would be some of your favorite and least favorite things about it?

BFA has been pretty bad for my motivation I feel like. Island Expeditions completely broke my will to farm things outside of achievements, the sheer amount of stuff and incredibly low drop rate just made me feel like it just wasn’t worth the time to farm, I would rather just play another game instead. Low drop rate pets and mounts from rares that just take ages to get is also something I don’t like, Soundless, Rustfeather, Arachnoid Harvester, I feel like the drop rate is too low and it just forces you to keep spinning the slot machine until you get it. Paragon reputation boxes were bad in Legion and they are bad in BFA as well, it is probably what I dislike the most about the game right now. The fact that you have to farm paragon reputation on both factions to get everything is also simply ridiculous. 

The amount of gold sink mounts they’ve put into the game this expansion is also something I don’t like, they’ve removed all the methods I had to earn passive gold and put tons of mounts that cost a lot in, and that also made me stop caring about getting all mounts and such.

I usually play a lot of alts and more than 50% of my total played used to be across alts, but now in BFA I’ve barely played them at all, I don’t even have all classes at 120. They made the incursions too weak compared to the Legion assaults so I didn’t feel like I had an efficient way of leveling my alts with just a few minutes every day. The corruption system is also something I dislike, mostly because I’ve been really unlucky with it. If there was an easier way to get the corruptions you wanted it would be better. Some goods things about BFA have been the essences I think, Memory of Lucid Dreams completely saved Fire Mage after they basically cut the spec in half in BFA. The raids have been pretty decent I suppose, losing master looting wasn’t that great though.
 

Are you looking forward to Shadowlands?

Sure. I know that if I don’t have much time to play because of other circumstances I will still probably have enough time to finish all achievements and I’ve been going for this a long time so might as well continue.
 

Knowing how much effort it’s taken you to get here, if you could go back would you do it all over again?

Well that’s kind of tricky. I feel like I have gotten to know myself better because I’ve done this, but also it is a lot of time invested. I’ve gotten a lot of insensitive comments about mental health and me wasting my life, but just because I have tangible proof of my “wasted” time it doesn’t mean I waste more time than others. I’ve just had a very specific goal that I’ve achieved as efficiently as possible, no one is able to be 100% productive all the time. I feel like it has helped me try harder at university and striving towards achieving my goals in life. I have not failed a single exam during my time at uni even while playing a lot. So yes, I would do it again and I’m satisfied with what I’ve accomplished.

 

A very positive end to the interview, and we'd just like to congratulate Xirev on what he's accomplished once more and are looking forward to him getting there again in Shadowlands!

You can also head on over, watch and follow him on his twitch and twitter pages:

• https://www.twitch.tv/xirev
• https://twitter.com/XirevWoW

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The man with all the achievements talks to us about how he got there and a lot more.

[Dejo93 1,023]

I can imagine "Live to win" playing in the background of the interview

[Aernath 173]

A very nice interview, gives a very nice overall insight about achievements and current state of the game. And I totally agree with everything he says about BfA. I hope some Warcraft Devs also read this too.
If even a player this much dedicated is saying these, it means you really have to do something about that for the general casual player base which makes the real percentage of active players.

[dartbodman 64]

Sooo several months left on 8.3 and people have already finished every single challenge in the game

[Ariecho 15]

He talks about the worst things he's had to endure on specific achievements, the 1100 days played across all his accounts and characters, when and why he started this endeavor, his first achievement complete expansion, some very negative comments he's gotten about his accomplishments, his overall thoughts on BfA as someone who's spent a lot of time in its every nook and cranny, and a lot more!

Why would people give him negative comments?  He pays to play and therefore should enjoy the game the way he wants, no?  Nice interview, by the way.