Blizz on 1.8.4 "ten minute" BG rule
by Damien Barrett 
Dec 7th 2005 at 4:00PM
When Blizzard released the 1.8.4 patch yesterday, it introduced a controversial change to how Battlegrounds works. Briefly, in v1.8.4, battles in BG need to last more than ten minutes to gain a Mark of Honor.Suffice it to say, people didn't like this change and Blizzard has posted an official response in their forums explaining that this rule change is a mistake:
The ten-minute rule had been implemented as part of 1.9, and was set to be removed from 1.9 as the Deserter debuff was put in place. Unfortunately, because 1.8.4 was developed simultaneously with 1.9, the ten-minute rule had actually made its way into 1.8.4 too (which was tested and signed off upon some time ago, around the time this change was being implemented). As such, the ten-minute rule mistakenly went live.
This was not intended by our development team, and we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience. The ten-minute rule does not exist on the patch 1.9 test versions that have been on the test realms for some time now (with the exception of Warsong Gulch, which is being fixed), reflecting the fact that the Deserter debuff was intended as a replacement rather than an addition to this mechanic. We intend to fix this bug in a server-side hotfix soon.
So there it is. Blizzard will be fixing this change soon.
Filed under: Patches
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Chris Gardner Dec 7th 2005 4:25PM
For the record, this is a rare time when Blizzard fesses up to a mistake. It was pretty clear going into 1.8.4 that both it and the desert debuff upcomming in 1.9 was a little TOO harsh, and a lot of us questioned the logic behind the maneuver. Between the two, the debuff is a good way to prevent people /afking from the battlegrounds (afking in a battleground causes you to leave it - people do this when they think they're outmatched). Now, at least if you lose, you still get some honor.
Silvertusk Dec 7th 2005 4:41PM
#1 hit it on the nosey.