What do you think of the Great Vault, our new weekly rewards system in Shadowlands?

In the past week or so, we’ve gotten a lot more information on how Shadowlands‘ new-and-improved weekly rewards system will work. The short version is this:

• The weekly chest now encompasses raiding, dungeon-running, and PVP.
• Each category (raids, dungeons, PVP) has three different goals to achieve in a given week.
• Each goal you hit provides you with one more loot option to choose from when a new week rolls around.
  • Seemingly, you’ll be able to see the specific pieces of loot available to choose from, rather than rolling the dice on “random ilvl X piece.”
• No matter what, you’ll only be able to receive one piece of loot per week.

In other words, every week you’ll be able to choose one piece of specific gear from a pool of up to nine total pieces. The end result is a system that provides more player choice when it comes to rewards — and that’s a good thing!

But some folks still have issues with the system. For starters — and outlined in a heck of a lot more detail over on Wowhead — subsequent goals are, in all likelihood, going to provide lower gear rewards. In the dungeon example, the second goal (“Run 5 Mythic dungeons”) rewards you based on the lowest of your top five dungeons run. So if you run a +15 and follow it up with four +10 runs, your first loot option will be a piece of gear from a +15, but your second loot option will be a piece of gear from a +10.

At first, this feels a bit backwards — shouldn’t running more things reward better loot? But if you think about it, this system front-loads the best reward and disincentivizes the need to run a lot of Mythic+ dungeons in a week. If Mythic+ runs are your thing and you just love running them? You’ll get more options. If not, run your best run once and take the loot offered.

However, the fact that it will take so much to unlock all nine rewards is another point of contention among players. The system lends itself to burnout if a player can’t help but be a completionist. It’s also not exactly alt friendly if you ever want more than one loot option — but then again, we don’t really have much better than that now, do we?

I see the pros and cons, but all in all, I’m a fan of the new system. The bottom line is that it offers us more options without making us run exorbitant amounts of content for the best rewards. But I’m also a largely one-character player, so my opinion might be in the minority. How do you feel about the Great Vault? Sound off below!