Blizzard explains, apologizes for PVP Season 10 gear debacle
The last few weeks have not been kind to PVPers, to be sure. Despite the new arena season starting on Tuesday of this week, conquest points were accidentally down-converted to honor points a week early, with the excess irreversibly converted to gold. Then, making matters worse, Blizzard launched a new tier of ilevel 371 Season 10 gear on Tuesday without warning, just a week after making ilevel 365 Season 9 gear available for purchase with honor. It was a pretty unique double screw, and it rightfully had a lot of players incensed.
In a rare moment of humility, Blizzard has taken to the official forums to address the pair of what the company is calling "mistakes." Specifically, Community Manager Zarhym (who looks adorable when posed next to a lifesized wyvern) had this to say:
The full post, which is available after the break, gives a pretty good summary of the facts behind the case, and perhaps more importantly, what Blizzard intended to happen for the start of this and subsequent new arena seasons. In short: After an arena season ends, that season's PVP tier, previously available only via spending conquest points, will be available for purchase with honor points to give players one last opportunity to spend excess HP before the impending conquest-to-honor conversion (essentially, a one-week-only sale). When a new season begins, the old, sale-priced PVP tier will be taken off the market in lieu of new, better, current season gear.
Before getting into it, I want you all to know that we've maintained an open dialog with our developers over the past 24 hours regarding the way in which the PvP season transition went down since patch 4.2 (this includes relaying a lot of the feedback we've seen on the forums to them). We agree that the mistakes made were very unfortunate and unfair to a lot of players. We're currently exploring some options to try and alleviate some of the misfortune many of you experienced while purchasing PvP gear in the last week.
First off, to be clear, we made two mistakes which led to the primary cause of frustration for players:
1) We noted that Conquest Points were going to be converted into Honor Points above the 4,000 cap with the release of patch 4.2, giving players one week to spend these excess points before the start of Season 10, at which point the 4,000 point cap would go into effect. Instead, the Honor Point cap intended to be enforced yesterday was applied at the same time Conquest Points were converted to Honor Points with patch 4.2. This led many players who saved Conquest Points up for the season transition to receive gold for any Honor Points above 4,000, rather than points above that cap. There wasn't a feasible solution for correcting the fact that the calculations had been run a week early.
2) We didn't notify players that we made a slight change to the way PvP gear is introduced each season. The change simply wasn't communicated among all of the other patch 4.2 changes, which was a big oversight on our part.
These two errors compounded each other. Players were left with no more than 4,000 Honor Points after patch 4.2, which led many players to farm more HP to buy Season 9 gear. Then, when Season 10 hit yesterday, Season 9 (ilvl 365) items were replaced with an HP tier of Season 10 (ilvl 371) items. Since players didn't know this would happen, many of you farmed HP and spent it on the Season 9 items prior to yesterday's maintenance.
Obviously most of you already know what happened and are very frustrated by it, but I just want to clarify the nature of the unrest, as well as the intended way this season transition was to happen. This is the way it should have worked, and how it should work going forward:
1) During any season, a low tier of current-season items will be available for purchase with Honor Points.
2) During any season, a high tier of current-season items will be available for purchase with Conquest Points.
3) At the end of any season, any remaining Conquest Points will be converted into Honor Points above the 4,000 cap.
4) In between seasons, the previous high tier of items become available for purchase with Honor Points, allowing anyone who could not previously afford them with CP one last chance to buy them using the excess Honor Points.
5) The new season begins. Honor Points are capped at 4,000 again. The previous season's sets are removed and replaced with current-season HP and CP items.
We've seen a lot of players ask what the purpose is of having Season 9 items available for purchase with Honor Points for a week, before replacing them with better items. The purpose was for people to spend their excess Honor Points on any leftover items, as once the next season starts players can't keep more than 4,000 HP to spend. Now, the reason why this intent wasn't evident to most players is because we capped HP a week too early, which made spending any Honor Points last week less than ideal. The reality is players would have been better off saving 4,000 HP for the start of Season 10 when ilvl 371 gear was released. But they had no way of knowing that.
That is about all of the information I have to share on this subject at the moment, but I want to remind you that the issues with this season transition are well on our radar. We know we messed up in multiple ways. This not only made our intentions very unclear, but led players to make choices to spend their Honor Points they otherwise probably would not have made.
If everything went according to plan, you probably would've spent any HP over the 4,000 cap last week on any remaining Season 9 items you maybe didn't have. You then would have saved 4,000 HP to get started on the low tier Season 10 items. This is the way we're looking at it and will let you know if and when we have more information to share
For some of you, I'm sure this is all "too little, too late." Still, it's nice to hear a company own up to its mistakes and explain the process.
Was one of your characters adversely affected by either of these two mistakes? And if so, does this response take the edge off the pain?
The news is already rolling out for the upcoming WoW Patch 4.2! Preview the new Firelands raid, marvel at the new legendary staff, and get the inside scoop on new quest hubs -- plus new tier 12 armor!
