Why removing the Insane title is OK but screwing up players isn’t

So it looks as if we can’t go insane in Cataclysm. Or at least we’ll have to find another way to show it to the world than by putting a title above our heads.

Blizzard representative Bashiok recently wrote the following:

“Insane in the Membrane is a feat of strength, not an achievement. Feats are things that you can't be guaranteed to complete, which is why they're feats and not achievements. Most of them are actually now impossible to complete, and this feat will join a long list of "you had to be there" moments in WoW time.

The feat isn't being removed of course, those who have it will retain it, however; some of the requirements are, so it will no longer be able to be completed by anyone who has not already done so.

It's possible that in some very specific situations where someone has completed the reputations which are being removed, but not others that will still be in the game, that it can still be completed. But it's something we're waiting for clarity on, and will
let you know as soon as we do.”

And this was confirmed in one of the panels at Blizzcon, where they explained why you won’t be able to get the title in Cataclysm:

”The biggest problem are the changes to the bloodsail buccaneers, that kinda put a bullet in that feat of strength for now. It's fun to do painful things in WoW. If there's a huge outcry for it we'll try to put something equally brute in the game.”

Feats of strength
If you ask me, I’m totally fine with them moving this feat out of my reach. There are already a lot of others that I’ll never be able to get and you know what: I can live with it. I don’t cry myself to sleep for not being a Scarab Lord either. Why would I?

The thing is: feats of strength aren’t that important. They don’t have any impact whatsoever on your character’s stats or abilities to perform. And the sad truth is that I think we’re heavily overestimating the e-peen impact it has. People don’t care that much about those things anymore. We’re all so preoccupied polishing our own achievements and epics that we don’t bother about what anyone else has.

If you’re a completionist at heart, the feats of strength might mean something, but for most of us it’s just a little bit of flavour added to your character. Nothing more.

I think it’s only natural – or actually even good – that they update the feats of strength every now and then, removing the possibility to get them, for instance when they have been trivialized due to a higher level cap. Sure, it sucked a little that I never got the bear mount in Zul Aman, but on the other hand, I’m glad for those who got it. It was absolutely the right thing to do to remove it from the game. Those who got it had to really perform to get it and they deserve to stand out and show off a bit. If I ran through this now, it would feel totally wrong if it gave me that mount.

The game moves on. Some mount drops are removed – but there will be new ones, I assure you. There will always be new feats of strength to strive for, new worthy goals to aim for. If you’re stupid enough to grind for the Insane in the membrane achievement, I’m positive you can keep grinding for something equally insane in Cataclysm. Have no fear.

How Blizzard screwed up
However. This isn’t all there is to this story, which was brought to me by Khaas at the blog Srsbusiness, who sent me an e-mail and asked for my take on this. There are other circumstances, which he talks about in his own blogpost, and here comes the part where I think Blizzard screwed up the players.

You see, it wasn’t until very recently that they said that this was going to happen to the Insane title. As a matter of fact, they’ve assured the players exactly the opposite! One year ago, blue poster Ancilorn wrote the following in the EU forums:

"Just for clarity, Insane in the Membrane will not be removed in Cataclysm. We can only confirm this one for you, but since it's undoubtedly one of the most brain-melting achievements, we thought it nice to let you know that you don't have to rush to have this done before the expansion. ;) "

Apparently they hadn’t thought this through properly when he came up with this "clarification", but the consequences are unfortunate. This title is special in the manner that it is the most extremely grindy achievement you could think of. There’s absolutely nothing that would stand a comparison to it.

If they would remove some other achievement with a month of notice, such as a meta-achievement mount from one of the raid instances, you could argue that it would give plenty of time to complete the achievements you were missing out.

For the Insane title however, a little more than a month is a fairly short time. If you want that title and you’ve only begun your grinding, you’ll be pretty busy the next few weeks to finish it in time. Players who have put their trust into Ancilorn's statement and planned accordingly have every right in the world to feel deceived.

Blizzard has screwed up on this one. They didn’t mean to, but it happened.

And I think this is a good example to explain why they normally are so annoyingly vague as they reply to player questions, why they don’t want to give exact answers about their plans and upcoming changes in the game. They don’t want to accidentally make promises that they later will have to break because things took another turn than they had anticipated.

Ancilorn slipped and now there will be qq.

And this is my third post this week. My slowing down is going badly. I blame Khaas.