“Corrupted” items should replace Titanforging in World of Warcraft. However, these items tend to cause more frustration than joy.
In Patch 8.3 Visions of N’Zoth of World of Warcraft, the developers decided to put the Titanforging system on hold for now. Items can no longer randomly have a higher item level and thus be significantly stronger than usual.
Instead, some items are “corrupted” by the Old God N’Zoth and receive powerful bonuses, but also come with the negative value of Corruption.
What does Corruption do? Corruption is basically the price a character has to pay if they have particularly powerful effects on their items.
The more Corruption a character accumulates, the stronger the negative effects that act upon them. A character with little Corruption might be slightly slowed down during combat. In contrast, a character with high Corruption might even be attacked by additional enemies and die relatively quickly.
This is the problem with corrupted items: Corrupted items are basically the new “Wow” effect when looting. Players should be excited that an item is corrupted and equipped with special bonuses. At first, this works quite well. However, once a player wears several corrupted items, the system leads to a new dilemma.
Corrupted items can force players in groups (especially in raids) to take actions they later regret. An example:
A player is currently wearing a belt with item level 410. They have already reached the currently acceptable maximum of Corruption on their equipment, so additional corrupted items cannot be equipped without incurring massive disadvantages.
In the dungeon, a belt with item level 440 and a high Corruption value drops. As compensation for the Corruption, there is an extremely powerful skill due to this Corruption, which provides a significant damage boost.
Now this player is faced with a dilemma: Will they cleanse the Corruption and thus the positive effects at MOTHER, so that they can wear the belt immediately and be more useful to their group? Will they equip the belt despite the high Corruption and risk dying from the strong Corruption? Or will they save the belt for later, when they might have a stronger resistance to Corruption and not be affected by it anymore?
There is no right solution, and no matter what the player does – they will probably be frustrated. If they cleanse the belt, the effect is lost, which could have been useful later. If they do not wear the belt, they lose character power that would be helpful in the current content. If they save the belt without cleansing or equipping it, it will sit unused in their inventory for a long time.
That’s why this is critical for the player: Although the Corruption mechanic mitigates a large part of the RNG criticism, it creates new problems. Instead of being excited about a new, powerful item, players face a decision where there is no good solution. No matter what the player does, in the end, it feels unsatisfying and like the wrong decision.
Nevertheless, Patch 8.3 is indeed fun.
What can be done about it? Some players have already begun to look for secondary items in most item slots that are not corrupted. In that case, they can simply drop another corrupted item when they receive a better one. However, this leads to an overcrowding of inventories – because bag space is already scarce.
If acquiring gear in WoW is associated with frustration rather than joy, then the MMORPG faces a fundamental problem. Or how do you see it?
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