Someone with a good memory may remember my personal “crusade” about the Honor points not being correctly distributed in the Battlegrounds that started more than two months ago. It was the middle of May, the Battlegrounds were patched on the test servers and they were still severely bugged in all thier parts: design, implementation, polish, balance and so on. We were just behind the E3 and Blizzard decided, after a week, to close Alterac because too bugged to be displayed at the show. It was a rather odd choice because Warsong was way more bugged, to the point of being completely unplayable. The flags were vanishing as the players logged or ported out and this made the instances lock and stall without the possibility to reset them. The players could just try to join one just to discover that the flags were missing. This while Kalgan was already celebrating their success.
I check back a couple of weeks and patch later to discover that NONE of the severe bugs were solved. Instead they were able to break things even more (thread also here. When the Battlegrounds launched on the test servers a player was getting 498 honor points for each flag returned, a few patch later, instead of fixing the actual problems, a flag was worth just 68 points. Unblelievable. Returning the three flags and completing the BG was worth just a total of 166 points. Less than a single kill:
This means that, you know, playing the CTF game is now completely USELESS. You just go there, leech kills in solo for a bit till the diminished returns are off and then jump on another instance searching for new opponents. That’s the behaviour that this system is rewarding and encouraging.
I’d really congratulate myself with the dev team. I definitely didn’t expect them to be THAT clueless. That’s not anymore a matter of good or bad design. Whoever came out with this last idea is just an idiot. Nothing else. There’s no need to disturb the “game design” on this issue. That’s just pure idiocy.
But then a day later Kalgan comments the problem on the forum and dispels my attacks by stating that the change to the points is unintended and just the result of a bug. Which brings to my withdrawal from the discussion: the problem is acknowledged and there isn’t anymore a reason to rant about it, the BGs are still on test and we will just have to wait for a fix before the patch is pushed live.
Some more than a week later, after having confidence that the bug was being solved, I opened with a clear title: “I’m a fucking optimist”. The patch reached the live servers, the test was complete but THE BUG WAS STILL THERE, UNTOUCHED. Actually BOTH the bugs. The display of the points in the UI and even the actual amount of points rewarded. Which is so terribly frustrating when you spend so much time testing the patch on the test servers, writing detailed reports and comments about the bugs and trying to draw the attention so that they get properly addressed. FOR NOTHING. The whole problem was blatantly ignored as a minor detail.
I started to investigate the problem some more till I got some evidence that not only there was the display bug, but even the actual points weren’t correctly distributed. Along with me even some other players started to notice that something was wrong. From Blizzard just silence.
From there I stopped to bring the issue up. It was just about wasting time. On the official forums there were multiple threads spanning more than twenty pages, with zero answers from Blizzard. The Honor system was so utterly horrible that the players didn’t even care about it to a level that could have moved some devs from their prolonged nap.
Another two weeks pass without a word, till Caydiem “magically” appears on one of those threads that some players continued to bump:
Random Foozle:
Why are people getting this misconception that you earn 1660 for winning a Warsong? Look at the scoreboard, it says 49 for first capture, 99 for second capture, and for winning you get 166, meaning you either get the addition of all 3, or 166.Caydiem:
That is not the proper honor reward. The correct honor is 1660 for the level 51-60 bracket.We’re looking into the display issue.
Smarter Foozle:
There is a display issue. It’s showing 166 instead of 1660.There is another issue – you are not being awarded 1660.
Caydiem:
My apologies. I was and am aware it is more than merely a display problem, but I was posting rather quickly. :/The database folks are investigating why honor is not being correctly distributed.
So we are back at the same point. More than one month passed since the bug was intruduced, the patch was published on the live servers with the problem still there untouched. Two week later we get another confirmation that “the database folks are investigating it”. Okay. What exactly are these database folks? Let’s wait some more I guess? Eventually we will see a fix with the next patch. Or it’s asking too much?
This while a keen player posted an interesting discussion with a funny GM about those points disappearing in the ravines of these mysterious servers (re-edited to cut out random spam not relevant). Where the fuck these points are going? We will get them back someday?:
You gained honor from the individual kills!
You have pride in the victory!
Have a super-fantabulous day in World of Warcraft!
What. The. Fuck?!
This was still happening three weeks ago, we were about in the exact same situation and again I decided to keep all this aside and wait the next patch. This patch arrives the 13 of July. I do not even bother to check because, once again, I have no doubts that the bug has been finally solved after all the protests from the players and not just an from an isolated fool on his blog. I’m busy with other stuff and I really do not care to waste my time to go back and investigate the problem *again*. Till yesterday.
I don’t have time to spend in long raids, so I decided to play these days in Warsong and gain some points. I wasn’t trying to find something to rant about. The Honor system is crap whether it works or not. I just wanted my reward for what I was able to do. It’s late in the night and there’s enough players just for one active instance. We win it easily, three times in a row within a short time span. We probably aren’t going to get many points from direct kills because there are just us around and we fight against the same horde characters over and over.
But there are the flags. The flags do not have those fucking diminished returns.
Today I log in and this is what I find:
There were two bugs, the “display bug” and the actual points not being received. Guess which received the priority and is now solved? Time to reopen the thread:
—
Okay. It’s from the middle of May that I rant against this and it’s bordering the absurd.
The Honor reward for winning the CTF game in Warsong is STILL BROKEN after more than two months and multiple threads spanning more than twenty pages with absolutely zero feedback from the CMs or developers.
In the last two days I didn’t log in so the yesterday tab is showing just the brief session I had in the night.
As I said the session was deep in the night on Mannoroth, around 5AM. There was just one single instance spawning and the exact same group of Horde and Alliance playing.
We were able to WIN THREE TIMES IN A ROW in a short time span.
Now we all know that due to the retarded diminished return system we didn’t got Honor points from the direct kills after the first session since we faced three times just the exact same opponents. But what about the honor reward given by returning the flag?
We won three times. Each time grants us 1660 points. Straight and clean and without counting the direct kills of 10 horde players for a minimum of four times.
1660 * 3 = 4980
We MUST have AT LEAST 5000 Honor points as a bare minimum. Plus the kills we did along those sessions. The correct amount would be near 6000-7000 HPs.
Now look again the Honor points that the system ACTUALLY granted us:
2521
That’s enough for ONE session while we went through it three times.
I’d like to receive some “feedback” on this because after two months of reports and demonstations we don’t even have the problem acknowledged and if this isn’t the duty of a Community Manager I don’t know what it is.