I have heard one of their rationales is that they don’t want newer players to see a really cool reward with a huge time sink to get it. I think this reasoning is flawed for at least four reasons.
- having a very desirable ‘high end’ reward that players can strive for is exactly what made this game so engaging. Legendaries in vanilla, ashes of al’ar in bc, invincible in wrath, mythic level xmog/mounts/titles in current day game, Glad mounts, just to name a few.
- Cutting Edge / HoF/ Gladiator all exist. These not only take a huge time sink but extreme dedication in and out of the game to gain the skills/knowledge/network needed to complete them. Glad mounts also go away and are unique/desirable.
- Although I don’t have the figures to back this up, a 500+ mount collector is likely to be way more valuable from a business perspective than a new player. I have personally spent thousands of dollars over the years between accts and tokens. I’d be surprised if most new players in 2022 even make it to 1 yr worth of sub time paid.
- There are so many rewards, and specifically mounts, already. Is a cool looking 600 mount collection achieve really going to cause that much stress for new players? I wonder if they have any data to back up their claim that new players would see a 600 mount reward and quit because of it. Seems like a really weak excuse.
I’ve said this in the past, but it appears the current dev team is tunnel visioned on this and many other topics. I have 0 hope anything will change until there are new people in decision making roles on the WoW team.