World of Warcraft’s released a limited-time event with stingy rewards and has, after community backlash, massively buffed the rate at which those rewards are doled out—if that sounds familiar to you, it’s because Blizzard’s now done it four times in the past year.
First off, there was Plunderstorm, a limited-time event which eventually eased up on its grind. Then there was Mists of Pandaria: Remix, a limited-time event which eventually eased up on its grind. Then there was the pre-patch event before The War Within, which eased up on its grind, but rather quickly, rather than eventually—and now we’re here once more. A limited-time World of Warcraft event has eased up on its grind. Time is a flat circle.
The anniversary event drew anger for being stingy with its rewards because, for some unknowable reason, players aren’t able to unlock daily sources of bronze celebration tokens (with which they’ll grab rewards from the event) without earning 100 of them from weekly sources first, which would have (originally) taken the better half of a month. This would usually be the part where I theorise as to why Blizzard would do this, but I’ve, uh—I’ve genuinely got nothing, I’m scratching my head so hard that I’ve unlocked a new tier of baldness. Don’t worry, Blizzard released a $90 dinosaur in the store, though!
Luckily, that’s all changed. As posted to the forums by community manager Linxy, Blizzard’s buffing Bronze rewards from basically every source by a massive amount. Zone activity weeklies, for example, have gone from rewarding a wimpy one token to rewarding eight. Kicking Queen Ansurek in her thorax now rewards fifteen tokens, up from three. Here’s the full list of new rewards:
- Dornogal Weekly Quests (Worldsoul, Archive, Delve) – 10 Bronze Celebration Tokens
- Bonus Holiday Quests (Timewalking, World Quests, Arena, Battleground, Dungeon, Delve) – 10 Bronze Celebration Tokens
- Zone Activity Weeklies (Awakening the Machine, Spread the Light, Snuffling, Azj’Kahet Pacts, Theater Troupe) – 8 Bronze Celebration Tokens each
- Special Assignment World Quests – 8 Bronze Celebration Tokens each/2 per week
- 11.0 World Boss – 8 Bronze Celebration Tokens
- Queen Ansurek – 15 Bronze Celebration Tokens
- Conquest/Rated PvP Weekly – 15 Bronze Celebration Tokens
- Honor, War Mode, and Brawl Weeklies – 8 Bronze Celebration Tokens each
As mentioned, this marks the fourth occasion in which Blizzard has low-balled the rewards for their events—which I do think are a good thing, on the whole—and sheepishly fixed them immediately after. And, look, I do sort of get it. WoW players can be piranha-like in their ability to swarm into any event, grind it out, and run away with the rewards—the Gulp Frog extinction of ’24 taught me that much.
But it does seem to me like Blizzard’s rewards anxiety, followed by its inevitable benevolence, is starting to get utterly exhausting for its playerbase. As one player on the forums puts it while responding to the news: “Nice changes—but I have to ask, why generate such bad will time after time by releasing content like the anniversary or pre-patch in such a sorry state, only to turn around and make massive positive adjustments week one?”
Why indeed. And, listen—balancing these things is hard. I’m certain it’s more of an art than a science. But there’s also a reason why the people putting these events together are paid a salary to design them. If making an MMO was easy, everybody would be doing it (they aren’t, and it makes me sad). I can only hope Blizzard gets its act together the next go around, because I’m running out of ways to phrase “things were bad, now they’re good”.
