Bonus Weekends in WoW (XP, Rep, Gold, Etc.)

[OzzieDK]

Honestly this. If it was during the whole week and rotated out I could be fine with it. Weekend only is lame and people that can't play on the weekends will feel slighted and left behind.

The idea can be worked on though, not sure how Blizzard would implement this but there can be a decent rotation, embedded in the calendar.

Also, the only aspect that bugs me about this idea is the gold. I mean, how much more gold can Blizzard throw at someone with a character with full Garrison? Its (almost) passive income is waaay enough to pay for your subscription fee nowadays anyway.

[Deleted]

Wouldn't work simply because it's two entirely different games, WoW is run with a finite amount of items, providing boosts to gathering professions could very well crash the economy in certain aspects where that has little to no effect in Diablo.

As far as the XP boost goes, there's already potions and a highly streamlined quest line where you literally can't go wrong even if you try, and the reputation boosting is rather pointless and like shooting themselves in the foot.

If you get it to fast there's less reason for you to stay in touch with the game, which ultimately will affect some form of que taking players out of the pool.

You are being overly cynical, I think. WoW doesn't have finite items; it has as many items as its players choose to create, i.e an infinite amount in theory.

Marketplaces run on the principle of supply and demand, and nothing about this changes that.

That said, you are right in acknowledging the risks; this would need to be balanced carefully, and it might be the case that things like gold and trade goods should not be involved at all.

I see no issues with XP and reputations however. Getting the right Bonus Weekend is tricky enough, then there might still be other restrictions in place, the more obvious being the short duration of the event.

Ultimately, these events are about filling your friends list with online players, if only temporarily. There are few things as effective in keeping a game and its community alive as hype - the feeling of immediacy, and that there are things happening.

[Jujudrood]

This would be a decent idea, but there really isn't any need for it, as described anyway.
Leveling is simple enough that adding an extra boost (on top of all the boosts you get anyway), would become laughable because you already can't finish a zone without the quests graying out, but it wouldn't hurt much either in the long run, I guess.
Bonus apexis is near useless because that gear is garbage for the most part, but could help fill those pesky slots that don't wanna drop, I guess.
Bonus honor used to happen, at one point or another, but they removed that from BGs for whatever reason.

Instead, what they should do is tie in current content with their holiday events.
Children's Week is starting (or already did, I personally don't care because I've done them all in years prior), so adding a bonus to it that has meaning in current content would be worthwhile, like bonus apexis or maybe a free roll token at the end. You still have the pets and whatever else kinda garbage comes as rewards, but also current content incentive as well.
Do this with all holidays and there's your "bonus week".
(PS they may already do something like this that I'm not aware of because I haven't done anything holiday-related since Wrath when I got my purple dragon).

[guardian_titan]

BG weekends were removed because of the shear number of BGs. Waiting over 2 months for a particular weekend to run a certain BG got old. It then got rolled into the random BG system we have now where you always get bonus honor, etc for doing a random BG. The new system also shrank queue times because rather than having some people only queuing for the weekend BG and others for everything else, now most players are pooled into the random BGs.

Given that timewalker dungeons are going to be a weekend thing and will be 2 of the 7 (TBC and WotLK) weekend bonuses Blizzard is going to add, the question is what the other 5 are. Rep and legendary bonuses are likely. So that would be 4 of the 7. Bonus xp is probably gonna happen, too, so 5 of the 7. That leaves 2. So either a gold boost is likely (for quests only or something) or the other two might be events of some sort like the Darkmoon Faire. Possible a boost to resources like herbs and crafted materials could happen, too. I could potentially see a power boost weekend as well where you do like 50% more damage or something. Rather than nerfing Hellfire Citadel with a 30% damage buff/debuff like they have in the past, the bonus damage weekend could be the nerf and a temporary one at that.

For those that say they can't run things on the weekend ... Booty Bay fishing tournament. People have been whining for years about it. They added the Kalu'ak tournament only to remove it later. Unless Blizzard expands the bonus weekends to the point where they have to change the system like BG weekends were, you're crying to deaf ears. For whatever reason, Blizzard likes the idea of events being on weekends rather than doing something on like Friday-Sunday and then Tuesday-Thursday leaving Monday off. Joys of a seven day week is that you can't really split it evenly unless you split it by hours rather than days.

Begs the question why Blizzard's being really slow to announce what all of these weekends are unless they plan to sloooowly roll them out over the next few months rather than put them all on the PTR and release them with patch 6.2. We might get the TBC and WotLK timewalker dungeons in 6.2 as long as a massive bug doesn't hold them back, 2 more weekends in 6.2.2, 2 more in 6.2.5, and the last one in 7.0.1 (using made up patch numbers).

[Crtarel]

It does seem like an interesting idea.

[Deleted]

Gold, no. XP and rep, it doesn't hurt.

[Hellravager]

All over that xp weekend definitely but it would defeat the purpose of lvl 90 boosts

[azurrei]

Honestly this. If it was during the whole week and rotated out I could be fine with it. Weekend only is lame and people that can't play on the weekends will feel slighted and left behind.

agreed, bonus WEEKS would be good, I always hated games that solely focus on weekends for bonus stuff.

[Einsz]

I don't like it. Bonus week/day/month w/e is a horrible concept.

[Icaras]

There sort of is an "event" like that already, the once a month darkmoon fair, u can get exp/rep buffs while it's active.

[Deleted]

This would be a great idea, for example old reps increase % or even XP for those who want to evolve alts.

I don't agree with gold though.

But these events would be nice to motivate help to get out in the world.

[Archmage Alodi]

I liked the weekly buffs back in 5.4 , wouldn't mind seeing them again

[Packing an i5]

never understood why every other MMO has it but wow.

[Deleted]

All over that xp weekend definitely but it would defeat the purpose of lvl 90 boosts

FYI: The boost to 90 was implemented to inspire people to pick up WoD, not to generate a ton of money. Had they simply opened up the boost for free to everybody, or priced it too low, then the concept of "levelling up" would be void, which would be a shame. They did it solely to get people to buy WoD, and having a bonus experience weekend would not impact on that.

[Deleted]

They used to have bonus honor battlegrounds every weekend in the past, don't know if there was something similar to dungeons.
And xp was bonus as well, remember you could level alts really fast in the weekend bonus bg, don't know why it was removed tbh

[Deleted]

What ho,

Snip.

Why do you always say What ho?

Also, sounds like a good idea. Something fun, noone is getting pressured into things.
Don't see anything wrong with it.

[10minutemail]

FYI: The boost to 90 was implemented to inspire people to pick up WoD, not to generate a ton of money. Had they simply opened up the boost for free to everybody, or priced it too low, then the concept of "levelling up" would be void, which would be a shame. They did it solely to get people to buy WoD, and having a bonus experience weekend would not impact on that.

Oh, I'm pretty sure Bli$$ard decided on the boost service with dollar signs in their eyes.

[Raiju]

Most of the others would just encourage mass-grinding.

That's the point.

@OP good idea imo.
@time concerns, doesnt have to be weekends - could just be random days, weekends, weeks, fortnights, etc.

[Deleted]

100% Extra Legendary Quest Items (such as Abrogator Stones) dropped in raid dungeons

That one is awful, rest is fine i guess? Most guilds do a lot of raiding during the week, especially Tue-Thu. This would make you miss out on stones or force you to do the raid again with a pug on a different difficulty if the bonus would be proactive on already killed bosses.

[Raiju]

the OP is purely example. It could be a week on / X weeks off (like it was intended to in mop) or similar.