Diablo III Getting Achievements

[GameBanshee News]

MTV Multiplayer continues to prod the guys at Blizzard Entertainment, this time learning from designer Jeff Kaplan that Diablo III and StarCraft II will be getting achievements alongside Wrath of the Lich King.

...eventually players will have a Blizzard Account that shows Achievements from other Blizzard games they’ve played, including the upcoming titles “Diablo III” and “StarCraft II.”

“Eventually, our plans are for the Achievement system to become an account-based system,” he explained.

When the new Blizzard Accounts are active, a player’s ‘WoW’ points can be added to an overall score dubbed an account holder’s “Blizzard Level.” “It’s basically a gamerscore,” Kaplan said, when I made reference to Xbox Live’s Achievement system. “For now the points are just a ‘WoW’ character score. As we graduate to that Blizzard Account system, which is right on the horizon, it will switch over to a Blizzard Level.”

He added, “Your ‘WoW’ score would be just one factor that will go into your Blizzard Level. And rather than call it a ’score,’ we just wanted it to be like you’re leveling up on Blizzard games… You’ll have this Blizzard identity, and you’ll be able to see things like ‘Oh, this guy was great at Diablo III, but he never played Starcraft and he was mediocre in WoW.’ That sort of thing.”

[Kienan]

Well, I wholeheartedly approve of achievements in Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 (and don't care one way or another about WoW), but when I first read this, the idea of accounts made me a little nervous, as it would probably be fairly easy to apply billing to it, or something. But, considering Blizzard has offered free Bnet for years, I think they can be trusted to offer a great service. So, yeah, it sounds pretty cool.

I was thinking it would be awesome if they patched Diablo 2, or Warcraft 3, or Starcraft 1, or some combination thereof, to support achievements as well, and made these Blizzard Accounts function for all Blizzard games. I doubt this will happen, but I just thought I'd mention that I think it would be freaking awesome.

And, you know, who knows...it could happen, Blizzard is really great with their long-term game support, after all. Diablo 2 and Warcraft 3 got patches recently, and I don't know about Starcraft. These Blizzard Accounts sound like an interesting idea.