(Just a quick edit: I think people are missing the point. This isn’t about adding the mount back or not, or if LFR is raiding or not or if it deserves rewards. This is just about how this mess could have been avoided.)
Angry casual players all over the forums and social media, many content creators agreeing with them, people cancelling their subs, bullies and elitists out in droves for a new chance to spit on casual players (not all, as was pointed out, but quite a few), some content creators agreeing with them, and Blizzard seeming to side with the bullies by digging in their heels. And on top of it all is the perception that this change was all done solely as a way to sell more WoW tokens. It’s just a mess. And it could have been so easily avoided.
Imagine this: Blizz makes a mistake with achievement text (I don’t personally think this is what happened but I’ll go with it here) and that mistake pretty clearly says that the slime cat mount can be obtained in LFR. Now imagine they don’t notice the mistake for months and the players assume the achievement text is correct. Why wouldn’t it be? It was even added to the live game with no changes.
Now imagine Blizz notices the mistake less than a week before the season goes live. They now have two choices:
- At the last minute, tell players the mount doesn’t actually come from LFR and change the achievement text
or - Keep their mistake to themselves and just add the mount to LFR
We’ve seen the results of picking option 1. What would option 2 have looked like?
The casuals, especially those who resubbed just for the mount, would be happy, because the mount would be available the way they assumed it would from the achievement text, and casual players who didn’t know anything about the slime cat mount until the season went live would be happy to have something to do this season.
The elitists wouldn’t care about the mount being in LFR because they didn’t care until the last minute change. Literally no one complained about the mount being available in LFR until it was no longer available in LFR. And honestly that goes for both sides. There was no mess until the mess was made.
Option 2 would have made a lot of people happy and almost no one mad (there’s always outliers). It’s so obviously the right choice that I’m honestly still amazed Blizz went with option 1. An absolutely clear easy win just sitting there, a way to go out of Shadowlands on a fun note for everyone, no matter their skill level. Instead they stubbornly decided to kick the bad PR hornet’s nest again, and this is how the end of Shadowlands will always be remembered.
Edit to add where they can go from here:
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They can do nothing and say nothing. Basically what they’re doing now. Might not be the worst choice, since the damage is already done. Down side is that it implies agreement with one group of players over another.
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They can do nothing but explain the reasoning. If they’re absolutely not changing things this is the way to go. Not going to make people that much happier, but it’s better than nothing.
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They change course but say nothing about it. Not a great choice. Just exchanges one group of angry players for another and also implies agreement with one group over another.
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They change it and explain why. If they’re going to change it back, which I doubt, this would be the way to do it. It would smooth things over a bit. Blizz would have to decide this on info we obviously don’t have, like how many are unhappy vs happy, number of subs canceled, number of tokens sold, etc. etc.
Hard place they’ve put themselves in. Whatever they choose to do, an explanation would help. Silence about the issue just makes it worse.
In any event, I’ve said my piece on the topic and I won’t be talking about it anymore unless something changes, which I doubt.
