Ion Hazzikostas, WoW's director, admits that there is a 'pattern' and that we may tend to be conservative.

World of Warcraft: The War Within is a great game, but there are some issues. Delve tuning hasn't been perfect, and although most of the recent events have been fun, it took a while for them to reach that point.

In a single calendar year, the same story has repeated itself four times: Plunderstorm and MoP Remix were all boosted after release, as well as the pre-patch event, andthe celebration of the 20th anniversary. In an interview with GamesRadar's Ion Hazzikostas, the game director admitted that it may "seem like there is a pattern".

It's always difficult to predict how quickly players will consume a particular piece of content. "When we think about something like the 20th Anniversary, there's a lot of work to be done there... We want to make sure people don't run out of reasons to play content they would otherwise enjoy too soon."

MMOs are based on the Skinner Box treatment, where you get little treats by pressing a button. In this case, however, the "button' is the videogame. If you give your players all the rewards for your event too quickly, they will blow through it and won't return to what your developers worked so hard on. If you give them out too slowly, they will feel like a rat trapped in a cage. They'll get frustrated and bored, and quit playing.

I find it difficult to criticize WoW's struggles with this because Final Fantasy 14, another MMO that I play, had the exact oppositeproblem in Endwalker. I called it "self-imposed" content drought when referring to the game's Variant Dungeons. The rewards were nice, and the dungeons cool, but there was no reason to return to them, and the whole thing ended too quickly. A little more grinding would have gone a long ways. Other design issues are present, but the main problem is that rewards that can be earned quickly can go too far the other way.

Hazzikostas says Blizzard has a lot to learn about finding the right balance. "Even if the players really enjoyed the content for the 20th anniversary, there was a sense that 'I've already spent a bunch time doing dungeons, delves, and leveling these other alts. This feels like a lot to ask. This is the part we didn't understand until we heard feedback loudly when we were live."

Hazzikostas explains why there is a tendency to start conservatively and then buff later: "We can always buff rewards. Really, we're not going to nerf rewards, right? We can't go back if we give out too much and too quickly. We may err conservatively when we are playing the guessing game to find the right values.

It's true that it might be a cynical opinion of the WoW community. However, it is also true that nerfing a rewards after the event has already occurred creates more controversy. We saw this with the Gulp Frog (though it was arguably an exploit), in Mists of Pandaria Remix.

The WoW community understandably is not happy with events being released at a bad time. No player wants to wait a whole week for a 'fixed patch'. Hazzikostas says that the team is trying to improve and respond quickly. "Hopefully, the player understands we'll be quick and responsive if they feel like we've miss the mark."