Blizzard Incurs Warcraft Wrath by Stripping Exalted Title from Players, Sees Error, Decides to Undo

For a company that seems to be floundering, Activision Blizzard is not doing much to instill brand loyalty in its biggest revenue generator World of Warcraft. With the launch of Cataclysm, many things in the game have changed. Activision Blizzard logo Among them is the Exalted Rep which you could obtain within a faction or faction city that offers a series of benefits (some are below) and requires quite an investment in time and energy (you were required to have 40 reps to get it).

Blizzard simply stripped World of Warcraft players of the title. Here’s a statement from Bashiok, Blizzard’s community managers from the forums:

We think "the Exalted" is a really awesome title. With Cataclysm we added a bunch of new reps though, and we want the title to keep pace so that it’s always representative of someone that’s obtained a considerable number of exalted reputations throughout the life of the game, even as we add more.

We did consider offering multiple titles for the various tiers, but "the Exalted" fits so perfectly and we wanted to avoid a potentially infinite string of titles like "the Fairly Exalted", "the Nigh Exalted", "the Mostly Exalted", etc. We also considered grandfathering in those who had already earned it but think that this title can be a unique testament to the continued efforts of reputation hunters and keep the same value as we introduce more reps and push the requirements up to match.

It’s different than every other rep in the way we’re raising it with a new bar to meet, and I do apologize that it wasn’t communicated clearly beforehand that it was going to be functioning this way.

Some of the people in the forums are extremely displeased. With Cataclysm Blizzard wanted to add higher reputation levels, so instead of just adding on top of Exalted, they simply pulled it from everyone who had it and reset the bar higher. One player remarked, "Something should have been said instead of just removing it. It just shows how little Blizzard cares of how it’s customers feel..." Another player asked if they will waste time grinding through five levels to get Exalted back, only to have it stripped from them once again when the next big expansion hits World of Warcraft.

Certainly an odd stance for a game company that has been reeling in its net in a gambit to stay afloat. A company that just shelved two major titles (Guitar Hero and True Crime) who is focused on beating its single major title, Call of Duty, into the ground by pretty much only developing it, and of course Blizzard will keep doing World of Warcraft, which generates most of the revenue for the company most likely.

What’s the big deal? Exalted was the highest reputation level that you could achieve with factions. It took massive amounts of work and Blizzard simply yanked it from players without even a word of warning. This impacts players and is a wonderful example of horrible customer service from the largest third-party game publisher who seems hell bent on destroying itself.

For example, to get the Exalted Reputation with Darnassus you need 13200 Un’goro Soil and to collect or create about 6600 MorrowGrain.

Additional info:

With this reputation level and additional restrictions (see Purchasing other mounts), you can purchase and train to ride mounts of another race.
As of Patch 2.3, this reputation level gives a 20% discount.
An additional bar of 1000 reputation after exalted exists, but will finish growing after it has reached 999.
Certain factions sell tabards for players who become exalted.
Gaining reputation with a Faction City you are already 999/1000 exalted with will cause 25% of the reputation to "bleed over" to your next-highest city reputation. This does not happen when you gain reputation with all cities at once (ie, "Horde +250")- in this case, the reputation that would go to already-exalted cities is simply lost.

Another part of the problem is that you not only need to have Exalted with one faction city, you have to have it with multiple cities in order to get to other cities. Some players have counted 50-60 reps will need to be acquired total prior to getting their Exalted back.

The real problem here is that Blizzard lied to its players. They specifically told them that they wouldn’t lose it. Then when Cataclysm was dropped, they pulled it from players. They did not tell the players. Additionally, they grandfathered in some players in some other reputations but did not grandfather in people with the Exalted, which many gamers played daily to achieve.

There are some 135 pages of discussion on it between the players the, now locked, Exalted Title thread. The Blizzard Community Manager has been, aside from the initial reply above, mostly quiet about it.

In a post by Bashiok, the community manager, which was just edited this morning (2/12/11 3:54 AM (UTC)) he said:

Recently we changed ’the Exalted’ title to require 50 exalted titles up from 40, which meant those that had achieved it were now asked to get 10 more reputations to gain the title back. We felt this kept the title as a difficult reward given the additional reputations introduced with Cataclysm, and also avoided the problem of achievement inflation as the game continues to grow, devaluing the reward.

We didn’t let people know beforehand that we were making this change. A pretty cut and dry error on our part. We take full responsibility for not communicating the change properly, and apologize for the frustration it added to the situation. Unfortunately, that frustration in some people’s cases went to an extreme. Over the past couple days we’ve handed out innumerable suspensions to people who were unable to stay within the forum code of conduct while posting about this change. We of course understand passions can run hot, but some of the violations were extreme enough to remove people’s posting privileges permanently. It’s unfortunate because rational, calm, and constructive posting is the type of feedback that’s taken, discussed, and can help encourage real change. For those that were able to adhere to those posting ideals, we truly thank you for your efforts in keeping your cool.

We took your constructive posts and points, and after discussing the change for quite a while with the designers, the decision has been made to move ‘the Exalted’ title back to require 40 exalted reputations. We’re going to attempt this change with a hotfix, but are unsure at this time if it will be able to be applied through a hotfix. It’s possible that a client patch will be required. (We’ll let you know if it does.)

The 45 and 50 exalted reputation achievements will continue to exist, but for the time being won’t provide anything beyond achievement points.

As some have questioned why the title isn’t grandfathered like ‘the Loremaster’ or ‘the Explorer’ titles, these function differently mechanically. While their requirements have changed, the actual achievement is the same. There’s no tech currently that allows us to give a title for an achievement and then move that title to a different achievement altogether and have people keep them. We are however working on such a technology that will allow players to keep items or titles associated with achievements even if we decide to change that criteria.

So, say if we eventually decide to move ‘the Exalted’ title to an achievement which requires 60 reputations in the next expansion (just as an example), players who already earned the title at 40 reputations will get to keep the title when the criteria changes. This technology would allow us to let players keep titles or items they’ve already earned, while ensuring we don’t get stuck in a position where we have to continually generate new rewards just so those who earned them originally don’t lose them.

So it seems that it takes the users to rise up in revolt and flood the forums (there were numerous other threads that were simply deleted as stated above, and players banned from posting in the forums, permanently) before Blizzard decides to listen.

Sure, forums need to be monitored and moderated but deleting entire threads about something that the company caused seems very Orwellian and appears like undue censorship. If it was vulgarity and profanity that was a problem, perhaps they should implement a stricter language filter. Aside from that, death threats and racial slurs or hate posts, Personally, I don’t see the need for them to do mass deletions. But then again, I’m not Blizzard who are almost like Apple in their iron grip control of the game, its information and discussion outlets.

Activision Blizzard might think about treading more carefully in the future, as one player stated after the above announcement, "Please use this mistake as a learning experience for future changes to the game."

We got a tip from a reader about all of this and acted on it as soon as we could.