Sometimes the developers of World of Warcraft can be mean to their players. Now they are mocking everyone who complains about the Plunderstorm mode.
For a few weeks now, there is the Plunderstorm mode in World of Warcraft. This is an alternative game mode that adapts many elements from popular “Battle Royale” games. There are numerous rewards for quick, short PvP battles. Even without winning a round, there is progress.
What is the problem with the mode? A Battle Royale is fundamentally a PvP event. While there are small PvE aspects, such as mobs that you kill mainly at the beginning to collect some abilities, the core of the game is indeed the PvP battles, which mainly start after a few minutes.
However, these lead to a lot of frustration. Because there are many players who cannot relate to PvP in any form, but still want all the rewards from the mode. Even after just a few hours, calls for a “PvE version” of the mode started ringing out, where you simply defeat NPCs and no PvP is possible at all.
That something like this would completely defeat the purpose of the entire mode seems to be lost on many.
What has Blizzard done now? In early April, it is a tradition in World of Warcraft to publish a few “fake patch notes” in the official WoW forum as a joke for April Fool’s Day. These are usually quite amusing, but sometimes the developers also use this occasion to hold a mirror up to the community. This time, they cleverly mock those players who want a “peaceful” Plunderstorm mode, where they can simply collect the rewards without any PvP. The patch notes state:
We will soon release a complete non-PvP continuation of Plunderstorm. In this event, there is no PvP at all, and it is super easy to get all the rewards because they just lie on the ground in the relative safety of the starting zones! Keep an eye on the calendar for this relaxing in-game activity under the name “Noble Garden”.
The Noble Garden, in turn, is the Easter event in World of Warcraft that is currently taking place. In that, the rewards actually just lie around because you have to (for most) rewards simply open colorful eggs that you find in places like Goldshire or on the Blade’s Edge.
This is how the community is having fun: In the World of Warcraft subreddit, people are having quite a laugh about these patch notes. Under the title “Shots Fired”, many are discussing the current state of the game and especially the Plunderstorm mode. Most find this joke quite successful. They believe that one can clearly see from the comments who understands a joke and who does not. Accordingly, there are also those who did not find it funny at all – and thus become a target for the others again.
What do you think about this somewhat mean “diss” from the WoW developers? Do the respective players deserve it, or is Blizzard disrespectful towards paying customers?
However, Blizzard has recently openly admitted that WoW learns from its mistakes.
