Double Blood Shard Bonus This Weekend

Hi all,

In Patch 2.4.1, we introduced a number of new cosmetic items to the game including a few extremely rare items such as the Cosmic Wings and Rainbow Portrait. Among the items intended to be extremely rare are Steffon’s Heavy Lance, Mace of the Crows, and the Harvest Pennant (also known as the Fallen Pennant). As 2.4.1 unfolded, we were surprised to learn that nobody appeared to have found these items. Weeks passed, we checked and double-checked the data, and ran some internal tests—these items were intended to be rare and hidden, but had we perhaps hidden them too well?

Unfortunately, it turns out we made a mistake. Instead of making the items extremely rare, they did not appear at all. The development team is sorry for this huge misstep on our part—we know that our mistake caused many players to spend hours trying to locate items which we now see in hindsight was a wild goose chase.

How did this happen? Testing something that is intentionally extremely rare means we need to use some dedicated testing techniques. Our team uses a combination of code reviews, simulation and cheat codes to verify functionality. Sometimes things can appear to work correctly in parts, but malfunction when they are put together. For example, in the case of the Pennant, we were able to verify that individual portions of the criteria to obtain the Pennant functioned correctly, but the end to end process resulted in the Pennant being unattainable once the patch went live.

The dev team messed up and we’re sorry. We erroneously told our community team (including Nevalistis) that the Harvest Pennant could drop. We can’t make it right overnight but we’d like to start with two changes:

1. We’ve certainly learned our lesson, and going forward when things are intentionally this rare, we’ll have new testing procedures to make sure a similar mistake doesn’t happen again.
2. Although we cannot provide direct restitution to the individuals affected, we’re going to have a 48-hour Double Blood Shard Community Buff for this weekend.

Wyatt