#1 - Sept. 25, 2013, 9 p.m.
As many of you are aware, there have been several hotfixes regarding PvP gearing over the past week. We wanted to take a moment to not only explain what exactly went wrong, but also what we’re going to do about it.
The problems started with an error in calculating the season "catch-up cap". As you may know, this cap is calculated on a weekly basis. Unfortunately, for some players, these calculations began before Season 14 had officially begun. So, when the season did start, those players essentially had an entire season’s worth of catch-up credit added onto their normal weekly cap of 2200.
As soon as we recognized the error, we despawned the Conquest vendors while we worked on and tested a hotfix to correct the artificially inflated Conquest caps (and remove extra Conquest that had been earned). We also created a hotfix that was intended to solve the initial error with the catch-up calculations during maintenance in other regions, but were unable to apply it before the issue had spread to other regions.
Once the hotfix to correct Conquest caps was completed, it was applied to all regions, and the Conquest vendors were respawned. At the time, we believed that the hotfix would take effect without realm restarts. That, unfortunately, did not turn out to be the case, so over the weekend, a number of players were able to acquire several pieces of gear that they should not have otherwise been able to. On top of that, a small number of players were able to earn the Grievous Conquest achievement, which then allowed them to purchase Conquest gear with Honor points.
We’ve since been working hard to correct our mistakes, and as of right now, here’s where we stand:
- All players who had an inflated Conquest cap have had those caps corrected
- The Grievous Conquest achievement vendors have been despawned temporarily, as no one should have access to them through normal play at this time
- The Grievous Gladiator weapons have had their level requirement hotfixed to 91 temporarily, as no one should have access to them through normal play at this time
However, there is still the matter of the extra gear that some of these players were able to obtain. We need to remove this extra gear to maintain a level playing field for all of our players, but we also have to be extremely careful not to remove extra gear that players earned legitimately (as drops from world bosses, for example). To that end, here’s what we’re planning to do:
- We’ve already begun manually investigating players with multiple pieces of Grievous Conquest gear, starting with the most abusive cases
- For less abusive cases, we intend to apply a hotfix during the next maintenance period that should clean up any remaining extra gear
- This hotfix will also remove the Grievous Conquest achievement from those who have earned it prematurely
- In both cases, our plan is to convert excess Grievous gear into its Tyrannical equivalent, to ensure that no players are accidentally left without an item in a given slot
We are extremely sorry for the inconvenience this has caused, and are working around the clock to fix things as quickly and cleanly as possible. Thank you for your patience.