As a response to continued criticism of the Ashenvale PvP event from portions of the World of Warcraft: Season of Discovery community, Blizzard has issued further changes aimed to assuage the most significant concerns.
The open-world Ashenvale PvPvE event is billed as one of the star attractions for the Season of Discovery, which itself is widely seen as Blizzard’s take on Classic+. Unfortunately, it is one area of the largely successful new offering that has not thrived in the opening weeks.
The developers have done an admirable job balancing faction populations on PvP servers. Unfortunately, the layering technology that is designed to reduce the need for extra servers has the unintended consequence of creating artificial imbalances.
Additionally, farming the event for reputation and rewards has come to be seen as a chore. It’s with that in mind that Blizzard is introducing a number of quality-of-life changes.
Reputation boosts are coming to Ashenvale in Season of Discovery
In a blue post on the official World of Warcraft forums, two major changes to the Ashenvale PvP event were announced.
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Both the regularity of the event and the reputation rewards on offer have received a much-needed boost. The event will now happen 50% faster, hopefully reducing the frequency of the event overall in the process. Additionally, double reputation for certain enemies sees the reward climb to 400.
Reception to the announcement was mixed, with many demanding further changes to an already altered original formula. One said: “Still happens too infrequently. And have to do something about never being on the same layer as the opposite faction now. Some raids prefer to never see the other faction, but I think I speak for people that love being on a PvP server; it’s boring. We want some action.”
Another pointed to the lack of gearing options for those who play purely PvP. saying: “Can we get some PVP gear added to the Warsong rep vendor? PvP players are getting dominated by BFD players. At least add some in phase 2. PVP players should have gear that’s competitive with PVE players. Thank you!”
In fairness to the development team, communication surrounding Season of Discovery has been remarkably straightforward. If they continue to make highly requested changes, the game should be in a great state heading into Phase Two.