Back during World of Warcraft’s Legion expansion, Blizzard introduced a fun new system called Mythic+ Dungeons which allowed truly skilled players to keep testing themselves against increasingly difficult dungeons (and earn some sweet rewards for their efforts). More recently, Blizzard brought the Mythic+ Dungeons system back for World of Warcraft’s new Battle for Azeroth expansion, but the exact nature of the implementation caused some players to inadvertently receive rewards that were of a much higher quality than Blizzard intended.
Here’s the gist of what happened. Much like in Legion, Battle for Azeroth’s Mythic+ Dungeons operate on a weekly reward schedule. Every Tuesday, the game calculates the highest level Mythic+ dungeon a player completed and then rewards them with a series of items, most often new gear pieces. Since this week was the first week of availability for Battle for Azeroth’s Mythic+ Dungeons, rewards weren’t supposed to be doled out until next Tuesday, but players who participated in Mythic+ dungeon runs during the final week of Legion found they were able to open their reward chests despite not having completed any Battle for Azeroth dungeons.
Not only were some players able to open their Mythic+ reward chests early, but the rewards they were given were staggeringly high in power. It seems that the game used a 1:1 scale for determining the manner of reward in relation to the dungeon level completed, so some of the more dedicated Mythic+ players wound up receiving gear that was as high as 385 item level, which is well above World of Warcraft’s current 355 item level cap.
In the grand scheme of things, this error on Blizzard’s part isn’t a huge deal, but for World of Warcraft’s more competitive community, it has widespread ramifications. If some players have a significantly higher item level than others, then they’ll also have a distinct advantage should they attempt things like the world’s first achievement for Battle for Azeroth’s newly launched inaugural raid.
As of this writing, Blizzard hasn’t officially responded to the issue, but here’s hoping it has some plan for making it up to the World of Warcraft players who inadvertently got left behind in the competitive curve.