Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Honor Reset Reversed due to Epic PR Fail

Blizzard previously announced plans to reset honor upon launch of the expansion in order to prevent people from stockpiling enough honor to buy level 80 gear the moment they dinged 80. I commented at the time that this was a major PR Failure, in part because they inexplicably failed to have the new honor award info ready until a day later, but also because of an issue of consumer confidence; wiping out previously earned honor implies disrespect for the time spent obtaining said honor.

Well, now Blizzard has reversed the decision, saying that they will, instead, jack up prices for level 80 stuff. This, of course, is what they should have done in the first place. I am staggered to think that they didn't imagine there would be outcry and only thought to react to it after the news broke.


In other news, Blizzard has announced entirely sensible plans to end WoW's fourth Arena season with the launch of the 3.0 patch (allowing players to continue to play matches for arena points until the expansion finally launches). Lost in the shuffle of these two announcements is the point that traditionally Blizzard offers two weeks advance notice prior to the end of the arena season. This might mean that the 3.0 patch is more than two weeks away at the moment. Perhaps we will get a date for 3.0 at Blizzcon in a week and a half.

2 comments:

  1. >> Well, now Blizzard has reversed the decision, saying that they will, instead, jack up prices for level 80 stuff.

    Another bad idea in my opinion.

    Now, instead of punishing the players that have been saving honor and marks, they're punishing players who haven't.

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  2. It would be a fairly simple matter to significantly increase Honour returns for lvl80 PvP to compensate.

    I'm not convinced that there is any sort of ideal solution here, but the way it was handled from a PR standpoint and the extremely lacklustre 'rewards' they were offering made this the only sensible approach.

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