Blizzard Suddenly Provides Temporary XP Buff to Retail WoW

I’m sure we’re all intimately familiar with how chaotic and uncertain daily life has become in the wake of a certain pandemic. According to news of which I’ve just been made aware thanks to the venerable World of Warcraft fan site known as Wowhead, it appears that Blizzard Entertainment is also keenly aware of what many of their fans are going through due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

It seems Blizzard understands that legions of players of their games are currently self-isolating, quite possibly at the direction of their local governments. These players are, therefore, stuck indoors for the foreseeable future. In an effort to express solidarity and understanding with those players, Blizzard has taken what I consider to be the extraordinary step of granting players a one-month-long 100% experience buff to all characters in the current retail (that is, non-Classic) version of WoW.

Wowhead reports that this buff, referred to in-game as “Winds of Wisdom,” will last through April 20th, 2020 and, as aforementioned, increases character experience gain by 100%. I should also mention that this massive buff stacks with all heirlooms. In fact, that’s so significant that I wish to emphasize it, if you’ll indulge me for a moment.

All your characters have a free double-experience buff that lasts for a month and stacks with the experience bonuses from your heirloom gear! If this isn’t the perfect time to power-level all your lower-level alts, I don’t know what is. In all honesty, dear readers, I was in such disbelief when I first learned of this news that I thought there was no way it could be true. I had to log into the game myself to ensure that I wasn’t dreaming. Having done that, I can confirm that the buff does, in fact, exist.

Additionally, for all of you out there who already have max-level characters, or for those of you who take advantage of this buff to get your characters to max level in the first place, Wowhead explains that there have also been some beneficial changes made to endgame content. Apparently, Blizzard has made it to where all gear that drops from the Horrific Visions of Orgrimmar and Stormwind will always corrupt; which, I’m told, gives the gear powerful bonuses at a considerable cost, and Heart of Azeroth Essences are now account-wide.

To conclude this article on a bit of a personal note, I think this experience buff is an outstanding move on Blizzard’s part given the circumstances. I know the company has been the source of quite a lot of controversy over the past several months for various reasons, not the least of which being the absolute disaster that was Warcraft III: Reforged and everything surrounding that.

I’m well aware that the act of granting this buff to players could be interpreted as a cynical move by Blizzard to get players to pay to reactivate or extend their WoW subscriptions, but I prefer to instead view this as a bonus for every WoW player who’s stuck indoors for reasons out of their control. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got an entire secondary account full of allied race characters to power-level.