Blizzard explains, apologizes for PVP Season 10 gear debacle
by Fox Van Allen 
Jul 7th 2011 at 7:00PM
In a rare moment of humility, Blizzard has taken to the official forums to address the pair of what the company is calling "mistakes." Specifically, Community Manager Zarhym (who looks adorable when posed next to a lifesized wyvern) had this to say:
i365 Vicious vs i371 Vicious - Comparison
Before getting into it, I want you all to know that we've maintained an open dialog with our developers over the past 24 hours regarding the way in which the PvP season transition went down since patch 4.2 (this includes relaying a lot of the feedback we've seen on the forums to them). We agree that the mistakes made were very unfortunate and unfair to a lot of players. We're currently exploring some options to try and alleviate some of the misfortune many of you experienced while purchasing PvP gear in the last week.
The full post, which is available after the break, gives a pretty good summary of the facts behind the case, and perhaps more importantly, what Blizzard intended to happen for the start of this and subsequent new arena seasons. In short: After an arena season ends, that season's PVP tier, previously available only via spending conquest points, will be available for purchase with honor points to give players one last opportunity to spend excess HP before the impending conquest-to-honor conversion (essentially, a one-week-only sale). When a new season begins, the old, sale-priced PVP tier will be taken off the market in lieu of new, better, current season gear.
i365 Vicious vs i371 Vicious - Comparison
Thanks for making a clear-cut thread summarizing why this is a big issue within the PvP community, Tauranewone. To keep communication on this as clear as possible, I'll try and clarify what has happened with the transition between Seasons 9 and 10, as well as give you our take. For everyone reading along, please do not create new threads on this issue. We'll be primarily watching this one and would prefer to keep our forums as easy to read as possible.
Before getting into it, I want you all to know that we've maintained an open dialog with our developers over the past 24 hours regarding the way in which the PvP season transition went down since patch 4.2 (this includes relaying a lot of the feedback we've seen on the forums to them). We agree that the mistakes made were very unfortunate and unfair to a lot of players. We're currently exploring some options to try and alleviate some of the misfortune many of you experienced while purchasing PvP gear in the last week.
First off, to be clear, we made two mistakes which led to the primary cause of frustration for players:
1) We noted that Conquest Points were going to be converted into Honor Points above the 4,000 cap with the release of patch 4.2, giving players one week to spend these excess points before the start of Season 10, at which point the 4,000 point cap would go into effect. Instead, the Honor Point cap intended to be enforced yesterday was applied at the same time Conquest Points were converted to Honor Points with patch 4.2. This led many players who saved Conquest Points up for the season transition to receive gold for any Honor Points above 4,000, rather than points above that cap. There wasn't a feasible solution for correcting the fact that the calculations had been run a week early.
2) We didn't notify players that we made a slight change to the way PvP gear is introduced each season. The change simply wasn't communicated among all of the other patch 4.2 changes, which was a big oversight on our part.
These two errors compounded each other. Players were left with no more than 4,000 Honor Points after patch 4.2, which led many players to farm more HP to buy Season 9 gear. Then, when Season 10 hit yesterday, Season 9 (ilvl 365) items were replaced with an HP tier of Season 10 (ilvl 371) items. Since players didn't know this would happen, many of you farmed HP and spent it on the Season 9 items prior to yesterday's maintenance.
Obviously most of you already know what happened and are very frustrated by it, but I just want to clarify the nature of the unrest, as well as the intended way this season transition was to happen. This is the way it should have worked, and how it should work going forward:
1) During any season, a low tier of current-season items will be available for purchase with Honor Points.
2) During any season, a high tier of current-season items will be available for purchase with Conquest Points.
3) At the end of any season, any remaining Conquest Points will be converted into Honor Points above the 4,000 cap.
4) In between seasons, the previous high tier of items become available for purchase with Honor Points, allowing anyone who could not previously afford them with CP one last chance to buy them using the excess Honor Points.
5) The new season begins. Honor Points are capped at 4,000 again. The previous season's sets are removed and replaced with current-season HP and CP items.
We've seen a lot of players ask what the purpose is of having Season 9 items available for purchase with Honor Points for a week, before replacing them with better items. The purpose was for people to spend their excess Honor Points on any leftover items, as once the next season starts players can't keep more than 4,000 HP to spend. Now, the reason why this intent wasn't evident to most players is because we capped HP a week too early, which made spending any Honor Points last week less than ideal. The reality is players would have been better off saving 4,000 HP for the start of Season 10 when ilvl 371 gear was released. But they had no way of knowing that.
That is about all of the information I have to share on this subject at the moment, but I want to remind you that the issues with this season transition are well on our radar. We know we messed up in multiple ways. This not only made our intentions very unclear, but led players to make choices to spend their Honor Points they otherwise probably would not have made.
If everything went according to plan, you probably would've spent any HP over the 4,000 cap last week on any remaining Season 9 items you maybe didn't have. You then would have saved 4,000 HP to get started on the low tier Season 10 items. This is the way we're looking at it and will let you know if and when we have more information to share
Before getting into it, I want you all to know that we've maintained an open dialog with our developers over the past 24 hours regarding the way in which the PvP season transition went down since patch 4.2 (this includes relaying a lot of the feedback we've seen on the forums to them). We agree that the mistakes made were very unfortunate and unfair to a lot of players. We're currently exploring some options to try and alleviate some of the misfortune many of you experienced while purchasing PvP gear in the last week.
First off, to be clear, we made two mistakes which led to the primary cause of frustration for players:
1) We noted that Conquest Points were going to be converted into Honor Points above the 4,000 cap with the release of patch 4.2, giving players one week to spend these excess points before the start of Season 10, at which point the 4,000 point cap would go into effect. Instead, the Honor Point cap intended to be enforced yesterday was applied at the same time Conquest Points were converted to Honor Points with patch 4.2. This led many players who saved Conquest Points up for the season transition to receive gold for any Honor Points above 4,000, rather than points above that cap. There wasn't a feasible solution for correcting the fact that the calculations had been run a week early.
2) We didn't notify players that we made a slight change to the way PvP gear is introduced each season. The change simply wasn't communicated among all of the other patch 4.2 changes, which was a big oversight on our part.
These two errors compounded each other. Players were left with no more than 4,000 Honor Points after patch 4.2, which led many players to farm more HP to buy Season 9 gear. Then, when Season 10 hit yesterday, Season 9 (ilvl 365) items were replaced with an HP tier of Season 10 (ilvl 371) items. Since players didn't know this would happen, many of you farmed HP and spent it on the Season 9 items prior to yesterday's maintenance.
Obviously most of you already know what happened and are very frustrated by it, but I just want to clarify the nature of the unrest, as well as the intended way this season transition was to happen. This is the way it should have worked, and how it should work going forward:
1) During any season, a low tier of current-season items will be available for purchase with Honor Points.
2) During any season, a high tier of current-season items will be available for purchase with Conquest Points.
3) At the end of any season, any remaining Conquest Points will be converted into Honor Points above the 4,000 cap.
4) In between seasons, the previous high tier of items become available for purchase with Honor Points, allowing anyone who could not previously afford them with CP one last chance to buy them using the excess Honor Points.
5) The new season begins. Honor Points are capped at 4,000 again. The previous season's sets are removed and replaced with current-season HP and CP items.
We've seen a lot of players ask what the purpose is of having Season 9 items available for purchase with Honor Points for a week, before replacing them with better items. The purpose was for people to spend their excess Honor Points on any leftover items, as once the next season starts players can't keep more than 4,000 HP to spend. Now, the reason why this intent wasn't evident to most players is because we capped HP a week too early, which made spending any Honor Points last week less than ideal. The reality is players would have been better off saving 4,000 HP for the start of Season 10 when ilvl 371 gear was released. But they had no way of knowing that.
That is about all of the information I have to share on this subject at the moment, but I want to remind you that the issues with this season transition are well on our radar. We know we messed up in multiple ways. This not only made our intentions very unclear, but led players to make choices to spend their Honor Points they otherwise probably would not have made.
If everything went according to plan, you probably would've spent any HP over the 4,000 cap last week on any remaining Season 9 items you maybe didn't have. You then would have saved 4,000 HP to get started on the low tier Season 10 items. This is the way we're looking at it and will let you know if and when we have more information to share
For some of you, I'm sure this is all "too little, too late." Still, it's nice to hear a company own up to its mistakes and explain the process.
Was one of your characters adversely affected by either of these two mistakes? And if so, does this response take the edge off the pain?
The news is already rolling out for the upcoming WoW Patch 4.2! Preview the new Firelands raid, marvel at the new legendary staff, and get the inside scoop on new quest hubs -- plus new tier 12 armor!Filed under: PvP, Blood Sport (Arena PvP), The Art of War(craft) (PvP), Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
grit Jul 7th 2011 7:08PM
Yep, I farmed BGs to buy two set pieces of season 9 gear, only to find out yesterday that they are now out of date. I wouldn't mind so much if they'd just let me sell it back and get the season 10 stuff, or trade it in and convert it to season 10 stuff.
Valorum Jul 7th 2011 7:28PM
this. my first foray into PVP since Cataclysm launched, and I got three pieces in one week. And now they're old. It sucks.
WrecklessMEDIC Jul 8th 2011 1:17PM
My wife and I both farmed honor through AV weekend trying to upgrade as much as we could with the new ilevel 365 Vicious gear for honor points. Neither of us had any Vicious gear to start with and managed to fill every slot before the weekend was out. We're very happy with the gear we acquired but would've been nice to know we should've saved 4k honor to buy the new ilevel 371 that came this week.
Iirdan Jul 7th 2011 7:12PM
DEATHWING SEZ RETURNS!?
Well played, Van Allen. Well played.
Cowboy Jul 7th 2011 7:16PM
I just find it very odd and such a big oversight. And why wasn't anyone notified for the entire week when the knew ppl were gearing up. I also do not understand the reason for destroying the season 9 models and giving us the bloodthirsty models for season10, what the he'll is that about?
Astoreth Jul 7th 2011 8:00PM
> I also do not understand the reason for destroying the season 9 models
This. My biggest disappointment is that I can no longer get the hat to match the rest of my T9 set.
nobbie Jul 7th 2011 8:54PM
This raises another question: Will the models of the current S10 gear be "downgraded" to the S9 "bloodthirsty" models too when S11 starts (with the S10+ stats instead)? That would be awful. If this is the case, then your only chance to get the original S10 gear/models is indeed in the week between the end of S10 and the beginning of S11, with worse stats of course.
Cowboy Jul 7th 2011 9:21PM
My biggest thing is I like to "change" the appearance of my toons gear... If we will forever be stuck with the bt models after every season that would be a bummer.......
capt.queso Jul 7th 2011 7:43PM
I spent 14 hours Saturday after the patch farming Alterac Valley on holiday weekend to buy the entire set of season 9 gear for a retribution paladin turned holy PvP paladin. It is already gemmed and enchanted and such, so at this point it does feel like too little too late.
I keep up with any information on patches and upcoming changes a ways down the pipe and the first time I even heard about s9/s10 honor gear was when i saw it on a vendor Tuesday. Needless to say I was a little bitter. Being a fairly causal arena player, getting most of my play from BGs, I will slowly upgrade items to s10 conquest. I doubt I will spend honor upgrading s9 set to s10 due to the minimal gains. We'll see how much honor I have laying around I guess, but this change was one of the first in a very long time that I was completely surprised by.
I guess that it is nice that they acknowledged it, but that's like buying a DS and Nintendo not even telling anyone about the 3DS coming out in a week. I realize that Nintendo wants to publicize to sell, and Blizzard doesn't have to, they already sold you your subscription. Their matter should be keeping those people happy and not appearing to devalue their time spent farming honor for the pieces. It still doesn't help the poor feelings left after something you feel you had earned being devalued so quickly and with no warning, especially for what I consider to be a "smart consumer".
I am hoping that more can be done for folks that did purchase this set given the lack of information in comparison to almost every other change in 4.2, but I can't say what or how easy it will be to enforce. Honestly, I'm with the guy who said it is nearly worthless to put that gear on sale for a week. Live and learn I guess.
Noyou Jul 7th 2011 9:40PM
I know it might be a major undertaking but the right thing to do would be let people who bought any PvP gear in the last week or so be able to return it within 2 hours (or whatever) of logging in. That or refund the honor that you spent on the old gear. I feel bad for the people who only have a limited time to play or only play PvP. I have a feeling if they don't get this right they could easily lose another 500k subs.
noel mcleod Jul 8th 2011 9:26AM
I got caught in this as well, seeing the upcoming change as a way to *possibly* get my Holy Pally competitive for a while. Going into the patch, I save up my honor points (capped at 4000) AND my Justice Points (also, capped at 4000, which bought around another 2500 HONOR points). Went and happily spent my 6500 points and then played BGs like crazy to gear up, got the 7250 and bought weapons that had never been available to us lowlifes before.
And then Season 10 starts, and my HPs were spent on lower tier gear. At least 10K HP (I worked very hard at this).
This consistent imbalance had been a major beef for me. And while I do feel betrayed by Blizzard, I am finding that the half-tier difference isn't going to mean that much.
Really, really poorly done, but in the long run probably not that big a deal.
It also explains why I got a bunch of gold I really wasn't expecting to get (I had Conquest points from winning random BGs, really really useless at max 50 per day which is sixty freakin' days to get anything useful assuming you can play every day, which I can't.
Blizz, make it so you can buy conquest points from Honor points at, say 3:1 ratio, and I would be happy. And for you elitist jerks who think Conquest points should ONLY belong to arena players, I tried arena and won about 30% of my matches. With crap gear and no previous experience. So don't yap about *skill*, unless you're near the top of the rankings.
Ayabara Jul 7th 2011 9:14PM
While they did not tell people that the T10 low gear would be coming out, anyone who looked on wowhead or anyone who had atlasloot knew as soon as the patch dropped that there would be new honor gear as soon as it started so luckily some people were saved from wasting points
Cariad Jul 7th 2011 7:39PM
I didn't farm honor last week because I happened to be pretty busy, but I DID blow the 4k honor I'd previously saved on 2 characters on Season 9 epics ( would have been over 5k honor if the first major screw up hadn't happened). So I bought pieces, spent money enchanting and gemming them, only to find that they had become obsolete the following week.
Yeah, I was pretty pissed. And like a guildie was saying last night, if they had messed up in such a big way with the PVE tier sets, they would have already fixed it. PVP is very much the red-headed stepchild of WoW, no matter how much people like to complain that class balance is screwed because of PVP.
Not the end of the world, I understand, but I really hope they find a way to compensate players for the wasted time and gold.
Saeadame Jul 7th 2011 7:35PM
I don't really get what happened... I've been buying pieces with honor points both last week and this week that are epic-quality, so I just assumed it was season 9 stuff downgraded to be purchased with honor. Was that not the case?
capt.queso Jul 7th 2011 7:45PM
For the week after 4.2, epics labelled as s9, last season's gear were available for honor. After this maintenance, s10 honor gear was made available, and it is all flatly upgraded gear for the same price that the s9 was a week ago. -.-
jonham013 Jul 7th 2011 7:47PM
Last week it was Season 9 that was downgraded to be purchased with honour. This week, they basically did a Ctrl C on the gear, its named exactly the same, it looks the same. The only difference is its called Season 10 and comes with slightly better stats. Someone on the main forums did an excellent post calculating the total stat gain. Its not huge, but its enough to give people a competitive edge.
The Season 10 HP gear can be found from the same vendor directly after the S9 HP gear.
Saeadame Jul 7th 2011 7:47PM
Oooooooo I see. Thanks for clearing that up for me. Yeah that is annoying now that I know that -_-;
Joker Jul 7th 2011 7:38PM
"If everything went according to plan, you probably would've spent any HP over the 4,000 cap last week on any remaining Season 9 items you maybe didn't have."
Der? I wouldn't have spent all my gold on gemming them and enchants either. I expect to be reimbursed for the gems and enchants and all my armor able to be sold back to the vendor. Or have it upgraded to the current HP PVP set, but by the time they get around to it I'll have replaced my armor with the new set... An apology is not enough.
Cephas Jul 7th 2011 8:19PM
"We're currently exploring some options to try and alleviate some of the misfortune many of you experienced while purchasing PvP gear in the last week."
Blizzard already knows an apology isn't going to cut it - they've said as much here. We'll just have to wait and see what they can do.
scherbaddie Jul 8th 2011 3:55AM
Haha. Gold. You're not getting that back. Some refund for the points might be possible. But not your ~1000g