Account-Wide Woes in Elder Scrolls Online - Is the New Achievement System Bugged?

It’s been over a week since the Ascending Tide DLC and Update went live for PC users, and what was supposed to be one of the defining features of the patch has turned into a source of much displeasure for some players of ESO (Elder Scrolls Online).

We are, of course, referring to the implementation of Account-Wide Achievements, often abbreviated AwA. The ESO Forums have been dominated by complaints about the way this has been implemented into the game ever since the patch went live, but what exactly has gotten so many players so upset about it?

Upon first inspection, it seems that Account-Wide Achievements could only be a good thing, right? The feature promised to save time for players who would no longer need to redo time-consuming achievements on their alternate characters, and would immediately have access to the benefits of any of the achievements they completed on a different character, no matter which one they were logged into. Such benefits include titles and furnishing items from Achievement Vendors.

However even before the patch went live, there was already some disquiet about it. Some players were saying that the change would break immersion or roleplay value for them, when their alternative characters - separate individuals in their eyes, would suddenly be reaping the benefits of things that they, themselves, hadn’t accomplished. For example, why should a character who had never set foot in Maelstrom Arena in his life suddenly be known as the “Flawless Conqueror” for the deeds of another character on the same account?

ESO's new achievement system has proven controversial among playersSome players were also a bit annoyed that they had put in a lot of time earning difficult or time-consuming achievements like Master Fisher on multiple characters, which in their eyes is now effectively just time that was wasted as they could have just waited for this update if they had known about it.

But when the Ascending Tide patch actually came out, the problems with Account-Wide Achievements turned out to be more extensive than the early critics of the feature had anticipated.

In a thread on the ESO Forums, players are reporting that NPC dialogue has been affected in strange, probably unintended ways by the AWA changes.

For example, NPCs will apparently refer to your character as if they are a member of the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves' Guild if you joined those guilds on a different character.

This has upset some players who like to roleplay as their characters or make characters with a certain “theme” - an example that was mentioned on the Forum thread was that of a crusader who is now spoken to as if he is a thief or assassin.

However a couple of players did pitch in with some tests they had run, and these seemed to indicate that these instances are quite rare, and therefore quite possibly just unintended bugs. This has to be confirmed by Zenimax to know for sure though, and they have been very quiet on the topic so far. It remains to be seen if this will change in the coming days and weeks.

We hope you enjoyed this article about Account-Wide Achievements in ESO (Elder Scrolls Online). ESO is a massively multiplayer online game (MMO), developed by Zenimax Online Studios.