The issue is not it being tied to Normal or Higher, which we have stated MANY times.
The issue is they KNEW the achievement said “any difficulty” for the PAST THREE MONTHS.
And now, instead of addressing this, they stealth changed the achievement TODAY, the DAY BEFORE THE SEASON STARTS to say Normal or Higher.
This is EXTREMELY unacceptable, especially with zero communication on the matter.
They NEED to fix this, period.
Again, if a store advertises the wrong price, they honor it because they know if they lose customers over it, it’s a bad deal for everyone.
Blizzard only has ONE CORRECT COURSE OF ACTION right now, and it’s to allow LFR to get it, and be more mindful of achievements they add in the future to make sure they clarify Normal or Higher.
The Moose / Bird / Dragon runs were great, but what people seem to forget was that those were for 1 boss only , so they were very doable as a raffle in discord etc as they took like 5 minutes to 10 minutes or so per run. Having to do all 3 raids as a community event will be a lot harder, due to having to kill loads of bosses over several weeks.
Also, I assume the communities that ran these events in the past are probably busy gearing up to do the runs for the other raid mounts (from heroic), assuming they are still available in S4
As I said in General Discussion - if you want a Normal-only reward? Add a Cosmetic Remornia Sword.
People have been BEGGING for that for ages, and it’s the perfect time to introduce it. (We have Remornia as a pet, so it’s already player obtainable).
The Model Exists, all you’d have to do is hotfix it into an item and add it as an achievement reward.
Like it or not Blizz, you inadvertently promised the mount to LFR players for 3 months. To backtrack now would do nothing but show the playerbase beyond a shadow of a doubt that your plans to communicate more were a farce.
The reward being Normal + is whatever. The issue is the inconsistency of communication. The achievement was viewable on the live game client and then changed with no notification (outside of people being eager and following forums/fansites).
So the standard player for this demographic would not be aware of that and feel somewhat deceived when they go to engage in this activity next week.
Should this reward be changed? Imo, no.
There is a ladder type of reward structure (obtaining everything from that rung and below) going on for Season 4 already, and I don’t think more steps need to be added.
LFR = Boss kill credit for Dinars & Vault
Normal = Mount
Heroic = Title & Heroic upgrade tokens
Mythic = Portals & Mythic upgrade tokens
Participation for LFR will naturally increase this season as a result of the upgrade tokens existing, so additional rewards do not need to be added. The carrot is already there.
It doesn’t bring the community together, it forces people to do something they don’t enjoy. Forced socialization is wrong and this feels more like a pity solution. These community “events” are also pretty much just people who actually decided to suck it up and stayed for the reward. Obviously this will occur and then seem like “people are rallying and socializing”, but this is nothing more than survival bias.
Yes, anytime the community needs to come together is forced by blizzard so I’m not really sure the point? Doesn’t change what it is.
And while yes it’s a bit harder to obtain, I already know of normal clears happening and planned weekly for the mount. So while it takes more time to achieve it doesn’t mean it won’t bring communities together.
And 9.2.7 is still on the PTR. They have time to fix this mistake.
Leave the achievement as-is on live TEMPORARILY.
Change the reward on the PTR for the Normal Achievement to a Cosmetic Remornia Sword. (Maybe even add longer Staff/2h sword Version so more classes can use it, like they did with the Dark Iron heritage weapons that don’t look like their normal weapon type) If this isn’t an “acceptable” reward - they have time to make one.
Add a new achievement, awarding the Slime Cat, for any difficulty. Retroactively grant this for those with the Normal/Heroic/Mythic achievement.
Voila. Reward for everyone, and LFR players get the mount we were led to believe we’d get, normal players would have it exclusive for a bit, then get a new exclusive reward once 9.2.7 drops, as well as automatically being granted the Slime Cat mount cause it’ll be an achievement for a lower difficulty than the achievement they already have.
Win/win for everyone and minimal art/dev team requirements.
I’m disappointed that there has been zero communication from Blizzard regarding the Slime Cat not being available in LFR. It’s not like this is an AOTC mount that’s made for Heroic, this is a special edition season 4 impromptu mount. It’s almost their apology for cutting Shadowlands short due to how much negative feedback people have given this entire expansion.
The only reason I probably received a response in regards to my request to extend the XP buff is because one of my responses in that thread went viral on Reddit and boosted the views at well over 20,000 in less than 24 hours, otherwise I don’t think it would’ve warranted a response without that happening, but that’s my opinion.
This goes beyond just poor customer service, this is indicative of a problem that has been glaring for a long time that people have been complaining about, lack of communication and lack of doing the right thing when the time calls for it.
Blizzard knowingly had it worded that the Slime Cat could be completed on any difficulty in season 4. LFR is one of those said difficulty levels. It wasn’t just available to view on the PTR back in April, this actually made it to the live servers in the achievements. They had to manually hot fix it to change the wording to normal or higher difficulty just mere days before event was set to begin. That’s just beyond poor customer service, poor communication, that’s just downright unacceptable and inexcusable as far as I’m concerned. Why do you think there’s been literally hundreds and hundreds of comments about it in the forum? Not because people are entitled or lazy, because it’s an injustice and it’s not right and I agree with it not being right.
This isn’t an advocate to get them to allow all mounts and things to be obtained In LFR. This isn’t to set a new precedent, this problem only pertains to this particular mount, this particular scenario, this particular situation. I think there should be different mounts for difficulties, that shouldn’t change, I don’t think most people are advocating otherwise.
I just think it’s doing a disservice to players that may not want to do organized concept because they are belittled, maybe due to limited time or accessibility reasons, I just think it’s wrong and I’m glad there are voices to speak up about it because it’s not right and it needs to be said as many times as it takes.
And just because people have been attacking me in GD, as well as attacking others asking for them to fix their mistake:
Please note I have already done fated Nathria in normal this week. I will 99% likely do fated sanctum and sepulcher the next 2 weeks.
As we have said from the start, this has absolutely nothing to do with it being a normal reward and everything to do with how it was advertised, intentionally or not. And yes, an unachievable achievement that is visible on live servers for 3 months is advertising.
Even after I get the Slime Cat, I will continue to keep this thread, etc. up due to the principle of the matter. This has always been the case. Always. I have always done Normal with my guild the first few weeks, and in Nathria’s case, I even delved into heroic on my warlock with them, and almost got AotC but bowed out due to the Demonology bugs on that fight.
An example I use a lot is: (assume for the point of this that aotc achievements are always visible even before earning it)
Assume they do another patch like the one on BFA where the raid launches a bit after the patch.
Now assume you see the AotC achievement is available by clearing heroic. You see this for months.
5 days before the raid goes live, a very short blue post informs you that aotc will no longer be in heroic but it’s mythic only. Then a day before the raid launches they silently hotfix the achievement text and say nothing more.
Can you honestly tell me heroic raiders would not be mad? Would you sit there telling them to just “pug mythic”? No, I doubt you would. So why do you think it’s okay to do things like that to lfr players?
Perhaps the purpose of excluding LFR from the list of activities providing this mount as a reward was done to encourage players to participate beyond LFR and venture into Normal. Season 4 was meant to be experimental afterall and this could well be part of it. I’m confident they’ll ensure to include colour variables in the future for those who venture no further than LFR as opposed to simply not allowing them to gain the mount for their collection. Very nice feedback and good on you, I reckon LFR only players would be happiest knowing they could always gain a mount still even if it is slightly different.
Except again, the issue is not the fact it’s in normal. We wouldn’t be complaining if that was all it was.
The issue is the achievement was visible for 3 months on live stating it was a reward for LFR.
All this accomplished was lower the participation in LFR. There’s people in a discord I’m in atm with a 5 hour active queue for LFR without a pop. I imagine most LFR players quit over this, or will. because it shows blizzard doesn’t care about our feelings or us as players.
Just hope y’all realize the last time LFR participation dropped, the wow team was given an ultimatum to get people back in LFR or they can’t make raids anymore.
Ah right, apologies matey! I did my best to try to and brighten up your horizon and I think it’s fruitless to be anything but optimistic that we might have an impact on their decision making process! Keep posting you’ve always got a very strong opinion and you’ll make a difference I reckon if you stay optimistic and reasonable
Last season I ran a TON of LFR, I ran it weekly on a dozen toons for a stretch even. This season there is no reason for me to run it at all. Ill run each raid once on one toon to get one token to get one transmog off of a vendor that I want and then Im done until Dragonflight.
I thought the mount was cool, and I would have liked to get it, but as a solo player im not going to join a normal raid group to do it because Im just not able to commit to regular raid times in my life and pugging them is more hassle than its worth. The guild I’m in is running it on normal, I have access to it if I wanted to do it easily (im an officer and been in the guild or associated with the people in it since vanilla) and that still doesnt change the fact that I just can’t make the regular time available for it and will still play 95% solo.
From my experience so far trying to get into a group for Normal Fated raids, I’ve so far been declined from every group I’ve applied to.
I’ve seen a lot of groups in the Group Finder either asking for the Ahead of the Curve Achievement for each respective raid or asking for a iLevel which is not feasible unless you do Normal or Mythic+ dungeons. I’ve seen a few groups already requesting iLevel 280+ for a Normal clear.
My main is iLevel 275, But I’ve had tremendous difficulty in getting into a group. Finally had to ask on the Perky Pugs Discord if there is any runs happening this weekend as I refuse to pony up the gold to get my slime cat mount for doing all (3) raids on Fated Normal. Luckily I got a group that will help me tomorrow morning!
I do wish that this mount was left alone and was obtainable thru Looking for Raid Fated difficulty. There is a lot of players that are going to miss out on this mount because of this change at the last minute.
I have had the same issue, being declined for every group I apply to, I didn’t think people would have such a high ilvl requirement especially since people keep going on about how easy the fated raid is to clear.
Even the community things similar to friendship moose have a higher ilvl requirement than I expected, so I am trying to get better gear from mythic 0 but I don’t think doing that will give me enough of a ilvl boost.
As someone that has accessibility issues due to my disability, I didn’t even try to get into a Normal raid because I’m not going to stress myself out that much over a limited time mount, it’s not worth the hassle to me.
I can’t believe that it’s been this long without any open communication or acknowledgement from Blizzard about this. Didn’t they admit that they needed to be more forthcoming with their player base?
The lone response we had about this was a simple, “No” and How maybe there would or could be something comparable to the Moose Friendship Community that we experienced at the end of WoD for the Moose mount that dropped off of Heroic Archimonde.
There’s a problem with that as a solution. The run to get the Moose mount was a one time 15 to 20 minute run. In order to attain the Slime Cat mount, you’re talking 31 bosses or so if I’m not mistaken. That’s literally hours upon hours of run time compared to something that takes mere minutes, not a chance someone is able to offer something on a massive level to help that many people out in such a short period of time, it’s not happening.
What is so wrong with allowing people from LFR to acquire the mount? You even took the opportunity to give LFR a Fated Raid option, so this makes no sense to me.
The silence from Blizzard has been deafening on this and other recent issues. I don’t think it’s right and I absolutely and unequivocally think it’s a step in the wrong direction from them and eats away at some of the goodwill they have been re-building,
I don’t know what else to say that has already been stated numerous times over the last several weeks, I’m exhausted about talking about this topic, but I’m not going to stay silent when I think something needs to be addressed. This is part of why I wanted to become a part of the Community Council, to provide a voice that can be heard, even if they don’t always respond back, I will not be quiet on issues that I think need to be addressed and I will continue to do so even when I no longer have the orange colored text. That’s how much I care.
Blizzard, please read this topic from General Discussion, it puts it into words better than I can:
At this point it’s not the decision you made that’s losing you players, it’s the silence you have chosen on the matter.
You claim the CC was to help you communicate with players better and in general you’ve been good.
But when it comes to ANYTHING Season 4, you are not and it’s undoing the year of progress you’ve made.
If the Season 4 team has no interest in communicating, then someone in charge needs to put someone on that team that will.
Hell, we don’t even have a response to the fact the Great Vault is saying we’re getting season 3 ilvl from raids tomorrow. Even a “it’s just a tooltip error” or “it’s a bug we’ve actively been trying to fix.”
Just to note, even if I get the Slime Cat in Normal, I will not let this topic drop, at least not without a public acknowledgment of the mistake, and explanation why you decided to change it after 3 months. At the BARE MINIMUM, LFR players deserve that much. It’s just basic common decency at that point.
And the “LFR queues are too long” complaints are starting to pile up, if you haven’t noticed - it’s almost like we told you this would happen when you removed the incentive people had to run LFR and chased away the LFR players by bait-and-switching them.
What’s actually funny about this… I found the raid in lfr much harder then in normal. For example there was no single wipe in normal, the bosses where down so fast that some of the mechanics didn’t even come in.
In LFR i had somel wipes and bosses took ages, even if there were lots of people I thought doing incredible amount of dps for a LFR raid.
and I think it’s fruitless to be anything but optimistic that we might have an impact on their decision making process! Keep posting you’ve always got a very strong opinion and you’ll make a difference I reckon if you stay optimistic and reasonable 
