Decor Duels are being removed in WoW patch 12.1 — and so are many of their rewards

Introduced with patch 12.0.5, Decor Duels brought the idea of “prop hunt” gameplay to World of Warcraft — the game, ostensibly an old training exercise revived by the newly-united elves, had players split into teams of hiders and seekers; the hiders would assume the form of ordinary inanimate objects, while the seekers would have to find the disguised players. The feature wasn’t perfect, like many things that came in 12.0.5. First there was the thing where Hunters could bypass any seeking difficulties by using Track Humanoids, or the fact that standing still while hiding (you know, the thing you’d probably want to do since you’re disguised as a teacup) was penalized behavior, but it seemed to find an audience and served as a form of lightweight, death-free PvP. It even has its own exclusive rewards, such as a variety of housing decor, toys themed around the game, and even a giant magical bee mount.

However, one thing that didn’t come with the release of Decor Duels was an end date for the event… until now, that is. Blizzard has announced, both on their website and in the official forums, that Decor Duels is winding down and will be closed with the release of patch 12.1, Curse of Ula’tek. In what they’re calling the “final surge” for Decor Duels, they are also making a few changes to help players that should be available on live servers now:

• Hiders will no longer be automatically revealed when thirty seconds remain in the match.
• Flies have been removed from Hiders who stay in one location for too long.
• The energy increase rate for Seekers has been reduced by 20%.
• Players will earn double the rate of Illusionary Coins.

Ironically, some of these changes are ones players have been asking for since Decor Duels launched, and now they’re finally here right before Blizzard pulls the plug on the feature. The post says that even after the event ends, you’ll be able to buy the decor items — presumably meaning the ones from the Disguised Decor Duel Vendor — and on the PTR these items are available for Voidlight Marl (we don’t know if he’ll continue accepting Illusionary Coins). Additionally, there’s no mention of being able to purchase the cosmetic items from Gamesmaster Fleurian, such as the bee mount or cosmetic items like the oft-requested Spellbreaker items, once the event ends — so if you want those, you’d best get to accumulating Illusionary Coins while you still can.

What’s not clear is why this event is going away at all. Similar events, like patch 11.1.5’s Dastardly Duos, were known in advance to be limited-time affairs. There was no similar announcement for Decor Duels; many players assumed that this event was going to stick around, even if it wasn’t an evergreen affair that was constantly getting new content. Some have speculated that it’s a lack of interest, but lack of people queueing for content has never been a reason for Blizzard to remove it before — Heroic Warfronts are still right there in the game. It’s a puzzling decision, to be sure, and we haven’t heard any reasoning yet, but what we do know is that if you want something from the Illusionary Coin vendors, you should consider queueing up for some Decor Duels pronto.