WoW: Motivating The Least Used Roles.


Those of you who play World of Warcraft and use the dungeon finder tool will undoubtedly have come across a major brick wall: You have all the roles filled out, except for a tank or healer, and not a single soul appears to be willing to take the role. Or even worse, your healer rage quits mid-dungeon, after you’d just spent twenty minutes waiting in queue for him to show up.

In the patch notes for update 4.1, Blizzard hopes to motivate players into taking these roles, by offering extra rewards for the least used classes. Dubbed Call To Arms, the new system will automatically detect which class is the least represented, and offer additional rewards for entering the Dungeon Finder and completing random level 85 heroic dungeons.

Call to Arms is meant to lower wait times by offering additional rewards for queuing as the currently least represented role. To be eligible for the additional rewards you must solo queue for a random level-85 Heroic in the role that is currently being Called to Arms, and complete the dungeon by killing the final boss.

Rewards include extra cash, rare items, elixers, pets, and very rarely mounts. Also from the announcement:

We don’t feel the tanking and healing roles have any inherent issues that are causing the representation disparity, except that fulfilling them carries more responsibility. Understandably, players prefer to take on that responsibility in more organized situations than what the Dungeon Finder offers, but perhaps we can bribe them a little.

Bribery can be a good thing, when used properly.