I wasn’t going to bother writing this; I was just going to leave quietly. Then I thought, you know what, I may as well just say my piece on the way out.
<—TLDR (blah, blah, two-months’-late-garden-variety Big Love Rocket whine, blah, blah) –
I’ve been playing this game since early 2005 and it’s been a huge part of my life the entire time. No matter what bout of unemployment I was dealing with, I always managed to scrounge a game card if I couldn’t afford my sub. Until now, not two weeks has gone by in 18 years that I haven’t logged in. I am afraid to discover how many thousands of real dollars I have spent on this game and associated collectibles in that time.
Like many others, my white whale was always the Big Love Rocket (which it will forever be known as). Every February since the mount debuted in 2010, I sent at least one toon through SFK every day it was up. When account-wide mounts became a thing (whenever that was), I created an army of alts for the express purpose of farming it. Year after year, I’d create more and more alts, determined that THIS would be the year it finally dropped. As other farmers know, the more toons you ran through the instance during a day (especially for horribly inefficient DPS-only classes), the longer queues got over time until you finally hit the too-many-instances wall. The start-and-end to the daily grind could easily be half a day with even a moderate-sized alt count. And mine was nowhere near as big as other people’s.
When character boosts became available (and the drop level was restricted to cap minus 10), I started paying money to boost any alts I couldn’t find the time to level, just to keep the drop-chance as high as possible. 2017 was the only year I failed to maximize my chances and that was because my dog had developed what turned out to be untreatable pancreatic cancer and I had to euthanize him during the season (although I STILL managed to get some daily runs in, while dealing with a unique form of self-loathing that comes from playing a stupid video game while your dog is dying). I grew to hate the month of February, because each year I knew how I’d be spending it.
Still, I might have carried on this way forever.
Last year, however, Blizzard made an announcement. I’m paraphrasing, “To all those people going through this awful grind, we hear you and we’re going to improve the experience this time next year.” Now, to be fair, they didn’t say WHAT changes they were going to make. But the year went by and I guess I started to believe that this grind that I’d really come to despise would finally be over. The 2023 season approached and I waited for news that Blizzard would implement a global drop-rate increase to match other holiday mounts, or some form of bad luck protection that factored in ALL of the attempts made on the mount over an account’s lifetime. In either of those cases, even if the mount didn’t drop for a season, an end to the grind would finally be visible.
Instead…we got what we got. An undisclosed drop-rate increase for the first run each day only. If the mount doesn’t drop on that run, you’re still going to have to send all of your other alts through - but at the old, soul-sapping drop rate. In other words, the grind isn’t over. It will never be over.
The 2023 season came to an end, I ran my last run, and I logged out, the same as every other year.
But this year, just the thought of logging back into the game fills me with this weird anxiety. In the time since the holiday, there’s been a patch - I don’t care. There’s a new monthly collectible feature where I’ll miss stuff if I don’t do it - I don’t care. I’ll lose my place on the pet collection leaderboards - I don’t care. After this last Big Love Rocket season, I find I am completely and totally burned out of this game - and it’s finally time to unsub.
–TLDR–>
On my way out, two suggestions:
-
Collectors are going to farm. A subset of the player base is always going to do whatever they have to do in this pursuit (remember the unhealthy behaviours the Poundfist camp encouraged - and that was available all year long). Design your mechanics such that the amount of work needed to achieve the reward is known and attainable. RNG is fine, as long as it’s reasonable. The Big Love Rocket RNG for only two weeks a year was never, ever, ever reasonable.
-
For me, and I think this is the bigger one: You changed this mechanic because you listened to the small number of players who were enduring this grind. That’s great! The problem is, you drew attention to the grind in a way that made us (well, maybe just me although I don’t think so) realize how much we wanted it to finally be over—and then threw in what still feels like a pretty cruel bait-and-switch. Don’t do that.
Anyway, if you’re still reading, thanks for taking the time. And regardless of whether you like or hate my post, thanks for a really great 18 years. You and the whole community saw me through a lot of stuff.
Shorel’aran.
