Wow: Account wide achievements. Nay, Achievement Inheritance?

I have been reading an article on Wow Insider (again) that piqued my interests. The topic was on making achievements account wide. I understand why folk want this to be done - if you have done a particular heroic/raid boss on one character and got the achievement, then surely you should be able to prove to that pug raid that is asking for the achievement to be linked as a requirement for entry. You earned it, why cant you prove it? There are also achievement score points and rewards that go hand in hand with gaining certain achievements.

My thoughts on all this after the quote:

Q: When will achievements finally be awarded account-wide?

A: Making achievements Battle.net account-wide is something we'd like to do, but it's not a goal we could provide a current timetable for. All of the original World of Warcraft coding was done with the expectation that the data on every realm would always be independent. Now that we are trying to make as many things as possible account-wide, we’re having to rebuild all of those systems. It is absolutely something we want to do, but it will take a lot of time away from other features.

I fully understand the mechanics behind this. Over 6 years worth of archived data, as well as live data would need to be transferred onto a new database system with a different architecture to allow for Blizzard to make things account-wide. I'm not sure why they couldn't just modify the database so that achievements tie to account owner instead of character, I guess its cleaner and if it is something they are going to do anyway it makes no sense to go through the motions of implementing "A" feature, when doing it properly will unlock loads of features (allowing anything about a character to be account related, not just achievements.)

As for making the achievements themselves account bound... I was not so keen on the idea at first:

1. I actually like gaining the achievements as I level an alt. It makes it feel like I am achieving something as I play (OMG Rly!?)
2. Just because you gained an achievement on a Raid Boss on one character does not prove you can do it on another. You will have different gearing, a different level of experience with that character and possibly a different role. 
3. Seasonal/Holiday achievements and awards (E.G what a long strange trip it's been) should probably be shared, but how to work it? Different characters will have different stages on these achievements - and its tricky to roll them into the one big achievement...

I thought it would make more sense to implement some way for players to reference an alt/main that has said achievement, and for it to be tagged as the same account as the player linking... But, as I was typing point 3 above something occured to me: Achievement Inheritance.

Make the achievements account bound - BUT have the achievement state which of your characters has actually earned the achievement... E.G my priest may be flying a Violet Proto-Drake but when people look up my achievements or I link them - they will see that it is my Mage's character that is the named earner and that the priest has inherited the achievement benefits. 

Sound reasonable? Your achievement benefits and points are awarded account bound - but you can see both account and character achievements seperately (Simply have your achievements table have an account-tab with the first character who achieved it to be named, and any others who have earned it to be listed aswell... This opens up other potential achievements like: Level a character of each race to level 20, 30, etc, etc.) This should be no more difficult to implement than what they are already thinking of doing - but will cater to both sides of the coin (those wanting to earn, those wanting to have achievements be shared) as well as allowing those that are linked achievements to see that you have done the work to earn it - but that it may be on a different character (or multiple characters). This could be a good or a bad thing as far as pug raid leaders are concerned, but hey: If the person has done the achievement on another character and they can see that the player is sufficiently geared, whats not to like?

Anyway, I hope that waffle gave some food for thought.

-V