Proposal: reverse feats of strength (feats of growth)

I would like to propose, today, an idea for a category of achievements that would exist as the counterpoint to feats of strength. Feats of strength are achievements designed to be retroactively awarded for difficult accomplishments that can no longer be done, that no longer need to be done, or that were/are just plain difficult. This means that someone who started playing after they were added is pretty much out of luck when it comes to getting any of them, unless one is added after they start playing. This always seemed a bit unfair to me, even if feats of strength are completely cosmetic awards that don't even add to your achievement point total (even though those, too, are cosmetic), since WoW is supposed to be a game where the only thing differentiating you from someone who achieves more than you is time, dedication, skill, and perhaps knowing the right people. When you started playing, ideally, shouldn't factor into it.

Then I hit upon an idea: what if Blizzard were to just add the reverse? What if Blizzard added achievements that can only be earned in a certain level ragne, and become unavailable once you go beyond that maximum level? Feats of growth, I call them, for they denote accomplishments made as your character was developing. Feats of growth would be achievements that would represent accomplishments done while they were still significant and difficult, before being of a higher level made them trivial. Feats of growth would be inaccessible to us players who have been playing for longer, in the same way that most feats of strength are inaccessible to players who have started playing recently, and would serve to fill that gap left by the absence of feats of strength in the achievement panels of new players.

Feats of growth could include achievements for completing an old-world, Outland, or low-level Northrend dungeon with only level-appropriate group members. There could also be one for crafting a rare-quality piece of armor while it is still a good piece for you, i.e. when your level isn't more than X levels greater than the piece's minimum required level. While it might not be possible to award this retroactively, there could also be a feat of growth for completing class specific epic questlines at the appropriate level, or just completing any epic questline at the appropriate level. Then again, the fact that those kinds of achievement couldn't be awarded retroactively would be exactly what would make them good candidates for feats of growth, since feats of growth would be the antithesis of feat of strength, which are awarded retroactively.

Some specific examples of feats of growth could be something like completing Deadmines without anyone in your group being above level 22. I would also say that the regular achievements for level-cap heroics and raids should automatically award feats of growth for completing those instances with only level-appropriate group members once the new expansion is released, since that's when those feats of growth would be added, and it's obvious that the player was able to complete the instance with only level-appropriate group members if they got the corresponding "complete this instance" achievement when it was a level-cap instance.

That crafting crafting feat of strength I mentioned could be awarded if someone, say, crafts the Barbaric Bracers before they reach level 32, or whatever level the developers think would be the cut-off point where the bracers are no longer useful and the materials insignificant to gather. Considering how frequently crafters make armor for people once they hit the level cap, there would need to be a point beyond which recipies would not award this feat of growth. I'd say that any crafted gear with a required level of 78 or higher shouldn't qualify. I also think that the cut-off point for gear to award this feat of growth should be two levels higher than the minimum required level, rather than five, when crafting items learned from Outland or Northrend recipes, since levels are gained more slowly in Outland and Northrend. This would also mean that players would be cut off once they hit the level cap, making it a true feat of growth.

The implementation of this kind of achievement would also be a boon for the current Wrath heroic and raid achievements. I don't mean the run-of-the-mill "Kill this boss" achievements. I mean the "Kill this boss with this criterion that makes the fight more difficult" achievements. Achievements like Shocking! or Just Can't Get Enough or Momma Said Knock You Out. These achievements are special because they make the fight more difficult, but once Cataclysm hits and everyone is walking around in amazing gear with five more levels, they won't be nearly so meaningful. That's why the old-world and Burning Crusade dungeons and raids don't have these kinds of achievements. So, if Blizzard is to keep things consistent, they should remove these achievements once Cataclysm comes, but that wouldn't be fair to those players who already earned them. So, they could make them feats of growth, and thus acknowledge the effort those players put in that was significant for the level they were at. Yes, they could also make them feats of strength, but if someone somehow manages to get a group together to do heroic Halls of Lightning when he could be moving on to Cataclysm content, shouldn't the game recognize not only the difficulty in doing that, but also the difficulty in doing so while not allowing Volkhan to shatter more than four Brittle Golums or defeating Loken in two minutes?

The remaining question, then, is, should these achievements be visible to players when players are eligible for them? I don't think so. After all, feats of growth are meant to be the counterpart to feats of strength, and we aren't able to see the feats of strength we are eligible for (or the ones we aren't, but that would be particularly cruel). And while showing feats of strength the player can't get is really just taunting them, showing feats of growth would put a sort of pressure on the players to complete the achievement before it becomes unavailable to them, and players probably wouldn't take kindly to a system like that. Besides, most of us didn't work hard for the feat of strength itself; we worked for the achievements that they represent, and the feat of strength is just an incidental marker. Feats of growth should work similarly; no one should try to complete Deadmines without anyone in the group being over level 22 just for a box of text saying they did so. They should do it because it means they'll get more experience points and everyone in the group will have a shot at some drop that is useful for them.

Now, with sites like Wowhead revealing these achievements to the general public, will there be players who plan the leveling of their alts so that they can get as many feats of growth as possible, regardless of the discouragement of this kind of playstyle provided by the fact that un-obtained achievements would be invisible? Probably, but that's just the way things are. Theoretically, players shouldn't be looking at sites like Wowhead to find feats of strength they can still do, but they are, so the fact that players would do a similar thing for feats of growth shouldn't discourage the idea.