WoW boosts rewards for the anniversary event one week after its release. This would be the fourth similar thing it has had to do in a year.

World of Warcraft has released a limited time event with stingy prizes and, after community backlash boosted the rate at which these rewards are given out. If this sounds familiar, it's probably because Blizzard has done it four times over the past year.

Plunderstorm was a limited time event that eventually loosened up its grind. Mists of Pandaria Remix was a limited time event that eased up its grind. Then, there was the prepatch event that preceded The War Within. This eased up its grind, but more quickly than eventually. And now, we're back. A World of Warcraft limited-time event has eased the grind. Time is a circle.

The anniversary event has been criticized for being stingy in its rewards. For some reason, players can't unlock daily sources of celebration tokens, with which they can grab rewards from the events, without first earning 100 of them weekly, which (originally), would have taken the better part of a month. I would normally theorize as to why Blizzard did this, but, uh, I have nothing. I'm scratching so hard at my head that I've unlocked another tier of baldness. Blizzard has released a $90 dino in the store.

Luckily, this has all changed. Linxy, community manager at Blizzard, posted on the forums that Blizzard is buffing Bronze rewards by a huge amount. Zone activity weekly rewards, for instance, have gone up from a meager one token to eight. Kicking Queen Ansurek's thorax rewards 15 tokens instead of the previous three.

• Dornogal Weekly Quests - 10 Bronze Celebration tokens
• Bonus Holiday Quests (Timewalking, World Quests, Arena, Battleground, Dungeon, Delve) - 10 Bronze Celebration Tokens
• Zone Activity Weeklylies (Awakening the Machines, Spreading the Light, Azj'Kahet Pacts and Theater Troupes) - Each 8 Bronze Celebration Tokens
• Special World Quests – 8 Bronze Celebration Tokens per person, 2 per week
• 11.0 World Boss - 8 Bronze Celebration Tokens
• Queen Ansurek - 15 Bronze Celebration Tokens
• Weekly Conquest/Rated PvP - 15 Bronze Celebration tokens
• Honor Weeklies, War Mode Weeklies, and Brawl Weeklies each - 8 Bronze Celebration tokens

As I mentioned, Blizzard has done this four times, lowering the rewards for events - which, in general, I think are a great thing - and then fixing them immediately. And, yes, I sort of understand it. The Gulp Frog's extinction in '24 taught that WoW players are piranha like, able to swarm and slog through any event.

It does seem that Blizzard's reward anxiety, followed by their inevitable benevolence is getting utterly exhausting to its playerbase. One player responded to the news by saying: "Nice Changes--but I must ask, why generate so much bad will every time you release content like the pre-patch or anniversary in such a sorry condition, only to make massive positive changes week one?"

Yes, indeed. Listen, balancing all of these things is difficult. It's definitely more of an artistic than scientific endeavor. There's a reason that the people who put these events together get paid a salary for designing them. If it was easy to make an MMO, everyone would do it (they don't and that makes me sad). I can only hope Blizzard gets their act together next time, because I'm out of phrases to say "things were good, now they're bad".