What is going on with Reward cadence?

Happy Vault Day readers,

Hope the RNG gods treat you well.

In this week’s issue, we have:

• The Darkmoon Faire returns

• How much did Blizzard earn from the brutosaur mount?

• What’s going on with reward cadence?

• More…

News

• The Darkmoon Faire returns this week (Wowhead)

• New rewards for streaming on Twitch but only to U.S players (Wowhead)

Guides

• How many players bought the brutosaur mount and how much money did Blizzard make from it? (Icy-Veins)

• What are the most popular classes at max level in patch 11.0.5? (Icy-veins)

• Everything you need to know about Cyrce’s Circlet coming in patch 11.0.7 (Ivy-veins)

Art spotlight

• Hero talent FX (Wowhead)

What’s going on with the reward cadence?

Over the last year we have had several new events from Plunderstorm, MOP remix and Wow’s 20th anniversary.

All of them have had one thing in common: a slow reward cadence that Blizzard has been quick to improve.

Lets’s take one of these events as an example. The 20th-anniversary event (which is still ongoing) started by offering a set amount of bronze celebration tokens, but in the following weeks after the event launched the rate of gaining these tokens increased significantly.

While this is a welcome change which allows less hardcore players the chance to acquire all the rewards they want from the event it is also frustrating the player base for a few reasons.

The most devoted players will often plan the event in advance. Changing the reward cadence will change plans considerably. This may not seem like a big issue, however, by having an appropriately timed event with an appropriate event cadence can allow players to enjoy the event throughout its up-time and be done with the rewards in time for the next event to release. This reduces the boredom and downtime between events (something very important for Wow’s longevity).

For more casual players having the reward cadence quite slow at the start of the event can cause bad feelings (even if that then later changes) and can cause the player base to lose interest in the event entirely.

This is one of the reasons why many of these recent events have received bad feelings among the player base, MoP Remix being one of the worst culprits. However following increases in bronze gains from this event it ended up being very successful but failed to fully recover from the initial bad feelings.

Ion Hazzikostas recently addressed this very topic in an interview with GameRadar+.

“We can always buff the rewards. We're never going to nerf the rewards really, right? If things go out too fast and generous, we'll never pull that back. And so while playing a bit of that guessing game of trying to pick the right values we may tend to err on the conservative side.”

“Hopefully, the players understand we'll be fast and responsive if it feels like we've missed the mark. We hear the feedback from the community loud and clear.”

This is an understandable approach. Ion is correct that nerfing rewards will feel much worse than buffing them. However being too conservative on the reward cadence ins’t much of a solution.

It is worth mentioning that the reward cadence will never be correct for everyone. Players who have the opportunity to play every day will easily outpace the reward cadence and then be left with a larger downtime between content. However players who have less time to play may end up not getting all the rewards they want with a low reward cadence.

Therefore the best solution seems to be sitting in the middle although I would Err on the side of being generous rather than conservative. I believe there is enough other content to keep the majority of players interested rather than encouraging the FOMO from a low reward cadence.

This problem has been more prevalent recently due to the increases in content. We are now looking at, on average, an 8-week content schedule. This is fantastic for the player as it will hopefully reduce content droughts. However for the developers, this is a lot of pressure to get the content to a workable state in time, manage the reward cadence and listen to feedback and implement changes quickly.

This was very obvious with the 20th-anniversary event. Everyone could see was not in a good state on its release but in the following weeks vastly improved. One can only wonder if delaying the patch by a couple of weeks and causing a slightly longer content drought may have been beneficial in the long run compared to a weak patch release.

Writing this has made me feel like the worst keyboard warrior. Essentially I am asking for Blizzard to develop a crystal ball for the future so they can never make mistakes again. As previously mentioned reward cadence can never be perfect for everyone however I think it is clear that it has not been very good in recent content.

My advice for Blizzard would be to absolutely err on the side of caution when it comes to reward cadence but less than they have been. Even a small nerf/buff to rewards would feel much better than the massive overhauls we have experienced. If the events carry on the way they have been my advice would be to not pay attention to any of the reward guides before the release of the event. Wait for 1-2 weeks then play it because it will be in a much more workable state.

To end on a good note Blizzard has shown in these events that they are listening to player feedback and are willing to quickly implement changes which is a massive change compared to old Blizzard. It does now feel like the player base is being heard and not ignored anymore.

What do you think?

What are your opinions on the reward cadence of the WoW events?

Should they be changed and if so how?

Do you like the current 8-week content schedule? Or do you think it’s too fast?

Let me know in the poll below and on the dedicated Facebook page.

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