#0 - March 13, 2009, 3:43 p.m.
The "change it somehow" side
-Through things such as server instability, random player disconnects, and some players having bad latency, raids can fail this achievement through no fault of their own
-The aforementioned issues can cause guild drama, and exclusion of people who are unfortunate enough to be disconnected occasionally, and the very nature of this achievement seems to encourage this kind of behavior.
-People figured that the mount would be removed eventually since the ZA bear set a precedent for this sort of thing, but I doubt very many people expected its removal as soon as 3.1, and the announcement left them scrambling to complete achievements last second, not giving them many immortal attempts
-Unlike other achievements, this can only be attempted once a week. If you fail: "Oh well, too bad, try again next week!"
-People on this side of the argument have suggested solutions such as:
-Making it an individual achievement
-Making the mount 280% speed when 3.1 comes out
-Making it like the achievement for taking less than the max number of raiders, where each boss counts individually, and can be earned over several runs
The "keep it as is" side
-Raid achievements are meant to be hard, which is why they have such a coveted reward
-The potential solutions that it become an individual achievement and that the bosses be individual requirements trivialize the immortal achievement, making the title meaningless.
-The potential solution of reducing the speed of the mount to 280% would trivialize doing all the work for Glory of the Raider, ticking off pretty much everyone who already has the mount.
Now that we have a list of both sides of the situation, I will explain why simply removing The Immortal from the Glory of the Raider meta achievement is the right move. Doing this will mean that there are multiple major goals to strive for for any raiding guild - Getting the current incarnation of the Immortal achievement, and getting every other achievement for the current 310% drake, in addition to the standard goals of simply clearing the content. Being able to get the 310% drake without the immortal will mean that many of the problems people have with it will cease to matter. Raid progression will look like this:
1)Clear the raid
2)Clear the raid's hardmodes
3)Get all of the raid's achievements (getting the 310% mount)
4)Do Immortal attempts every week until the next content patch comes out, removing the title from that immortal achievement as well as the drake.
It won't matter that people can disconnect, it won't matter if you fail one week - there's always next week! People will already have their 310% drakes, and having the "the Immortal" title will be icing on the cake - proof that you are the elite of the elite. The best part of this is that it doesn't trivialize it for people who already have their 310% speed drakes - their drakes aren't nerfed, and while more people will have 310% drakes then before, those who have the immortal will still have that title to show that they have taken that one final step above the others.
With raids being more accessible to everyone, achievements have become the way to truly gauge a guild's skill. Achievements are new to WoW, and people are still adjusting to their newfound importance in raid progression. I truly feel that this is the only fair way to resolve this issue, and that it sets up a nice progression for future raid content, so guilds will know what to expect.