Why Blizzard Should Extend Retail WoW’s XP Buff

Just under a month ago, the venerable World of Warcraft fan site known as Wowhead broke the news that Blizzard Entertainment enabled a significant buff to character experience in the current (that is, non-Classic) version of WoW. That change was due to the fact that many U.S. states and other nations the world over have “stay-at-home” orders in place as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak. This buff, referred to in-game as “Winds of Wisdom,” passively doubles all experience gained by any character from any source.

It’s definitely worth noting that the Winds of Wisdom buff stacks with all other reliable sources of bonus experience, such as heirloom armor, the Darkmoon Faire carousel buff, the consumable Draught of Ten Lands, and virtually any other experience buff you can think of. Enabling such a generous buff for such a relatively long time is an extraordinary step on Blizzard’s part as far as I’m concerned. I commend them for doing their part to show empathy toward their players who are stuck indoors through no fault of their own.

The problem I foresee with this entire situation, however, is that Winds of Wisdom is scheduled to expire in four days’ time, on April 20th, 2020. I wholeheartedly believe that Blizzard should extend the duration of the Winds of Wisdom buff for at least another month unless nationwide (and for that matter, worldwide) circumstances drastically and suddenly change for the better. Allow me to briefly make my case.

In my opinion, the Draught of Ten Lands is relatively easy to acquire in bulk if you’ve got at least one max-level character and don’t mind farming the resources necessary to purchase it. On top of that, the Winds of Wisdom buff happened to be active during the most recent occurrence of the Darkmoon Faire. These factors combined with Winds of Wisdom have most assuredly helped many players, including yours truly, to power-level their characters.

I mentioned in my initial report on the launch of Winds of Wisdom that Blizzard’s act of enabling this buff could easily be interpreted by some portion of WoW’s player base as a cynical cash grab, as little more than an attempt to coax players into extending or reactivating their subscriptions in order to take advantage of the buff. I said that because I think I can see the reasoning behind that argument, but I’d like to take a moment to try and turn that theory on its head.

Suppose for a moment that Winds of Wisdom is, in fact, little more than an attempt to drain the wallets of its current and returning player base so that Blizzard can make money off of all the newly-purchased game time. Even so, since it’s likely that all the buff is doing is helping players get as many of their characters to max level as possible during the buff’s existence, I see no harm in Blizzard extending the buff for at least a few more weeks.

Yes, Blizzard obviously still rakes in money hand over fist thanks to all that aforementioned newly-purchased game time. Yes, we all know Blizzard isn’t exactly strapped for cash, nor will that be the case anytime soon. However, we, the players, get quite an enticing incentive to reactivate or extend our subscriptions so long as Winds of Wisdom remains in effect as far as I’m concerned.

Personally, I think the main reason Blizzard should extend the existence of the Winds of Wisdom buff is simple: the more characters we, as players, can get to max level much more easily while the buff is active, the more tempted many of us will find ourselves to keep playing until the upcoming expansion, Shadowlands, releases.

The more max-level characters we collectively have, the more we’ll be able to experience of the new expansion’s content and all the drastic gameplay changes and improvements coming alongside it. Essentially, if Blizzard agrees to keep the buff active for at least another month – or perhaps even indefinitely until conditions improve – the more they may find that players are tempted to pre-purchase Shadowlands in order to make sure they can jump right into the new expansion’s content as soon as it’s live.

Now, admittedly, I don’t exactly have much of a horse in this metaphorical race; I’ve already pre-purchased Shadowlands on both of my WoW accounts, primarily because I wanted immediate access to playable Allied Race and Pandaren death knight characters.

Having said that, however, I would desperately like to see the Winds of Wisdom buff extended for at least some period of time for the sake of all the players who are still on the fence about the upcoming content. After all, no one knows with any degree of certainty when all this “COVID chaos,” as I call it, will blow over and allow everything to return to some degree of normalcy.

I’d like to leave today’s final word to you, dear reader. What’s your opinion on the current state of WoW now that the Winds of Wisdom buff is active? Do you think Blizzard should extend the duration of the buff? If so, why and for how long? If not, why not? I’d love to hear your opinions on this matter, so do feel free to sound off in the comments below!