Hi Everyone,
I wanted to chime in and talk a bit about the intent of Emblems coming from certain quests in Wrath of the Lich King Classic. I’ll be the first to admit that we definitely should have been a bit more clear about why this change was made and what the full intent was (and what part of it wasn’t intended). It definitely deserved more than a single line in the build notes and I apologize for that.
Regarding the change itself, it might help to talk a bit about an interesting piece of technology introduced in Wrath of the Lich King called “Phasing”. Phasing is awesome storytelling tech that we added in 2008 as a way to allow the world to change around players during key storyline moments and is a great way to make the world feel more alive by allowing your actions as a player to have impact on your surroundings. One unfortunate by-product of phasing however is that it often times places players in situations where two friends grouping together are placed in different phases due to being on different steps of key quest chains.
As a relatively low-risk method to incentivize players to complete key storylines within each zone and get into the same end-stage phases with each other, we decided to add Emblems of Heroism and other bonus rewards to quests that put players into different phases. The idea being that if you had a reason to finish off zone storylines rather than moving on to the next zone with quests unfinished, you are more likely to end up in the same phase as any of your friends who ideally also went ahead and finished all of the key quest chains in each zone. We didn’t want to force players into the same phase in a jarring way, and this seemed like a very simple and low-impact way to both incentivize completion of zones, and give players slight headstart on endgame but putting a few extra Emblems in their pocket as they are leveling up.
This was not, however, meant to be a permanent, farmable supplement or replacement for Heroic dungeons or similar content. This change was applied globally to certain types of quests (mostly elite quests or other quests that place players into new phases), and as a result we likely caught a few quests such as repeatable or daily quests that we did not intend to be impacted by this change. We are going to review the affected quests and more adjustments are very likely coming in future beta builds.
This is a beta, and sometimes some unfinished ideas or incorrect implementation sneaks out. We definitely apologize if this caused confusion, and thank you to those that pointed issues with this implementation out to us.
Hopefully this post helps provide some context for this particular adjustment, and what we are trying to accomplish. Ultimately, the spirit of this change points directly back to our pillar of “Nurture and Protect Social Experiences”. There’s not much that feels more damaging to the social aspect of WoW than trying to group with a friend, and effectively being unable to interact with each other because you are in different phases due to different story progress.
As always, please let us know what you think as time goes by and adjustments continue to be made here.
Thank you!