I have played some other mmo's and their badges actually give you stats and such. Some can be geared toward health, mana, resitance, critical, etc., which would add another level of strategy to the game. It also helps the user become more authentic and different than the rest because we would be able to gear this badge to how we like to play i.e. with a lot of health or low health but lots of resistance etc. Badges would be so much more useful and worthwhile if they actually helped the user. Obviously, it would have to be well thought out and balanced, but I'm sure KI would be more than up to it. Who knows, maybe new badges could come out specifcally for that reason. I would enjoy it if they were hard to get though. :] No better feeling than the feeling of self accomplishment.
Neat idea, but I don't think they would be able to do that with ALL the badges, maybe a few. Reprograming all the old badges to give you some stats, would be some serious time consuming stuff. I do believe some secret or hard to obtain badges should offer a little stats.
Alright, you've played some other MMOs with badges that give you stat boosts and such. Wizard101 is not some other MMO. It is unique and incredible. And do you know how many badges there are? Most people don't. There are twenty- three pages of badges with seven badges each. So ...
23 x 7 161 badges
One hundred sixty-one badges. It would take a huge amount of time to reprogram all of those. Enough time to, likely make a new world, finally increase the level cap or something like that. So, would you prefer becoming level 70, earning experience and sensational new gear in a new world and such over a 5% boost to your damage?