Hi, everyone!

Before we blast off into The Great Dark Beyond, I’m here today to share some information about our next progression adjustments, coming in Patch 31.0. To better understand where we’re going, let’s first go back a bit to see how we got here.

Earlier this year, we made some adjustments to our Weekly Quests. Our initial changes in Patch 29.2 were aimed at rewarding our most committed players while encouraging others to play more. But after the changes went live, they didn’t reward players for their time in-game quite like we had hoped. On the contrary, we saw that some players gave up on those harder quests and played less instead of more. Those who did work to complete the Weekly Quests told us they saw them as a chore.

An important part of design is acknowledging when a change doesn’t work, learning why it doesn’t work, and then adjusting in a different way. So, starting in Patch 31.0, we’re making three changes to our progression systems, aimed at giving players more accessible goals and getting them to new content faster:

1. Reverting Weekly Quests (completion requirements and XP grant amounts) back to what they were prior to Patch 29.2;
2. Improving the Rewards Track by swapping out five of the early 50 Gold grants for five The Great Dark Beyond Packs and adding four The Great Dark Beyond Packs to the Tavern Pass; and,
3. Updating the regular Tavern Brawl reward pack from a Standard Pack to a pack from the latest expansion!

Some of you have been asking for this quest reversion for some time, or liked the changes we made, so I want to give some insight into why we’re making these changes now.

Our goal is for Quests to be achievable and rewarding for everyone – in order to work towards that, we need to return to a baseline for us to build from for future adjustments. We’re making the change now for two reasons. The first reason is that we wanted to see how our 29.4.2 changes impacted a full expansion cycle to make better-informed decisions. This took us through Patch 30.4 and gave us time to evaluate a plan for this next expansion. The second reason is that making the Weekly Quest change at the 31.0 patch meant that we can also make the adjustment to the Rewards Track at the same time—these systems are intertwined, so updating them both simultaneously helps allow for a better overall experience for you.

Looking forward, we plan to continue monitoring and tweaking these systems. Rewards Tracks are trickier to adjust while active, so changes there will probably be made only once every expansion or two. Quest adjustments are more flexible, so please continue to send us your feedback as we keep iterating on them. Other aspects of our progression systems, like the Tavern Brawl rewards, might fall somewhere in the middle.

More details will be shared in our usual Rewards Track Refresh blog with all the new Rewards Track details, coming closer to launch. I'll also be back next week to share some details and insights about the unique Pre-Release Tavern Brawl we’re doing this expansion. Until then, we’ll see you in the Tavern!

- Tyler