One of the earliest iterations with Mass Effect on the 360, which showed them as literal roguelike upgrades to all future games you played. Halo 3 used it as a metric towards unlocking armor.
So it was just another version of unlockables at the time it came out, but like all things Microsoft they just lazily let it rot into the lowest form possible.
Seems to track with when I started seeing it in some other games I played around that time in 2007. WoW added achievements part way through TBC which came out in 2007 so that looks to be the time of infection.
WoW's achievements came with the Wrath pre-patch, 10/14/08. I know because I was there and had like 80% of them unlock instantly on that day so my panel has that date 100s of times. It was actually a highly requested feature because of how popular they were on the 360 at the time.
Even now, its one of the more positive features in WoW, just because it now works like a "journal and tasks and challenges" panel from other games would. Giving you all your larger goals to work towards besides straight up quests, and functioning as the check box for your unlocks.
One of the earliest iterations with Mass Effect on the 360, which showed them as literal roguelike upgrades to all future games you played. Halo 3 used it as a metric towards unlocking armor.
So it was just another version of unlockables at the time it came out, but like all things Microsoft they just lazily let it rot into the lowest form possible.
Seems to track with when I started seeing it in some other games I played around that time in 2007. WoW added achievements part way through TBC which came out in 2007 so that looks to be the time of infection.
WoW's achievements came with the Wrath pre-patch, 10/14/08. I know because I was there and had like 80% of them unlock instantly on that day so my panel has that date 100s of times. It was actually a highly requested feature because of how popular they were on the 360 at the time.
Even now, its one of the more positive features in WoW, just because it now works like a "journal and tasks and challenges" panel from other games would. Giving you all your larger goals to work towards besides straight up quests, and functioning as the check box for your unlocks.