TYDKaWoW #021 | Your Characters used to get tired

Your experience bar turns blue after you logout for a long time or if you're in an Inn, or both. If your bar is blue, you get double the experience from killing NPCs. That is probably what most people know about the resting in World of Warcraft. To come to this simple system, there were a few major changed during the development.

The system was first introduced with patch 0.6 during beta testing to "broaden and balance some of the gameplay elements". With the introduction of inns, Hearthstones and the rest state, Blizzard tried to promote "exploring other aspects of the game without penalty, such as tradeskilling and social activities".

Patch 0.6 screenshot of the character selection showing your current rest tier. (©Richter @ Beta Server)

And this promotion came not only with the positive resting effect we know nowadays; it came with five different levels of rest. Your character would go down from well rested, rested, normal, fatigued to exhausted as you played. And you didn't want to be in the exhausted state, because that would only give you 25% of the experience from every kill. And to get back to well rested you had to sit in an inn for eight hours. Wow.

In some ways the system might have made sense, but also feels super demotivating to even play the game. I guess grinding was always a part of the game back when it started. But this apparently was even to much for the players back in the 2000s. It only took one patch for Blizzard to change this system, so you didn't need to constantly keep track of your rested status and switch characters to continue playing effectively.

Patch 0.6 screenshot of the character selection showing your current rest tier. (©Guatafak @ Beta Server)

With patch 0.7 it was announced that the "system ha[d] undergone several changes". The previous five tier systems was reduced to three tiers; going from rested (200%), normal (150%) to tired (100%). You could now also get rested experience for logging out outside of an inn with the downside of this being four times slower. Unless you logged out for a few days, which would gain you bonus rest credit, no matter where you logged out, to help "those who only play once or twice a week". But don't log out for too long thinking you get rested experience for all your time playing, this patch also introduced a level-based cap instead of the "previous flat 20,000 experience per level".

And then patch 0.8 simplified this once more to the rest system that hasn't really changed since. We tired tier completely with the only two reaming being rested (200%) and normal (100%). The level-based cap was also simplified into 30 "bubbles" worth or approximately 1.5 levels worth. This final change came with the explanation that "most players will be in the Normal experience tier most of the time" and that the rested tier is intended for people who "are very casual with their play schedules". And this might sound like they cut the hardcore players short, but the final words actually clarify this further by adding that this has enabled them "to greatly reduce the experience necessary for all players to level regardless of which rest state tier they play under".

Was this a Thing You Didn't Know about World of Warcraft?