Spools, glorious spools.
If you told me that WoW's Mists of Pandaria: Remix would suffer its largest controversies over frogs before it came out, I'd stare at you and ask if you needed some water and a sit-down. Turns out that's exactly what happened this week.
In case you're completely unfamiliar—MoP: Remix is a limited-time event where players can level a fresh character through the Mists of Pandaria expansion with something called the Cloak of Infinite Potential, an infinitely scaling item that grows stronger as you do stuff.
Being MMO players, WoW's playerbase naturally found an area where frogs could "hyper spawn" and, through some gamer finesse, caused them to appear in droves—those who got to the farm early enough to take advantage soared above their fellow players in terms of strength.
Aside from the fact that the whole thing is hilariously contrary to the event's vibe—I'm reminded of a certain South Park episode where the gang spends a lot of time killing boars—it was also hotfixed. But don't worry! There's a replacement, you can go to this spot and kill goats, it's not as fast but—ah, no, that's been fixed too.
Look, I'm not going to cape for the fun police overlong here—but I can see why this is happening. MoP: Remix is meant to be an event that's an enjoyable romp through a weird alt universe version of a nostalgic expansion. While the ensuing power overload from killing frogs, goats, and sundry might be fun—actually sitting there causing localised extinction events for hours on end doesn't scream 'exciting gamer experience' to me.
Fortunately, Blizzard does appear to be responding to the community's clear thirst for more power. In a tuning adjustment that hit the servers yesterday, the MoP: Remix devs added a new item—spools—that allow players to get a whole bundle of threads (which power up your cloak) from content like LFR and the Dungeon Finder. Community manager Kaivax writes:
"Our goal with these additional items is to give players access to more Threads of Time from daily repeatable sources for primary and secondary characters. These should serve as readily attainable power-ups from a wide variety of content, so players can enjoy the breadth of Pandaria while also gaining additional power."
Player response still feels inflamed, though, judging by the initial ream of comments: "Remember folks: Exploit early, exploit often. You will not be punished for doing so, and Blizzard will make sure no one can catch up to you," writes one player.
The lion's share of upset seems to be coming from gear upgrade costs which, in fairness, do seem a mite expensive for items that are going away in three months: "Nobody and I mean nobody wants to spend 9000 bronze upgrading their weapon on a temporary game mode by 14 (FOURTEEN) item levels. You can purchase 4 mounts for that price that will last you forever."
On the other hand, I do think people are losing their gourd over a mode that is, by design, meant to be messy and experimental. I got to speak to WoW's executive producer Holly Longdale last month, who told me that the live team—the group running events like MoP: Remix—develop content that "come together, by WoW team standards, very quickly". This thing's meant to be an experiment, and sometimes experiments explode because of frogs. It is what it is.
