Holiday Rare Drops are Bad. Here's Why

Live Posted 2024/03/17 at 7:08 PM by Anshlun

Contextualizing ManuscriptsRenewed Proto-Drake Scales and PatternsHoliday Manuscripts

Windborne Velocidrake: Hallow's End Armor

Parallels with the PastX-45 Heartbreaker

Yep, this isn’t fun. I’ve done the event a dozen times a day on my characters before in previous years and probably would be doing it again this year if I didn’t have other real-life stuff going on.

Right now, if you want to maximize your chance of getting the mount, it’s in your best interest to repeat this event every day on as many characters as possible. That’s… mathematically correct, but not a great experience.

We hear this frustration and the good news is that we’re discussing this issue amongst the team and evaluating possible solutions for holiday events in general. The bad news is that even if we do end up making changes, they wouldn’t be in time for this year’s Love Is In the Air holiday event.

We’ve heard your feedback on the frustrations with X-45 Heartbreaker’s low drop rate and feeling the pressure of having to farm the mount by cycling through as many alts as possible every day. From now on, the first Heart-Shaped Box you receive each day across your Battle.net account will have a greatly increased chance to contain the X-45 Heartbreaker mount.

Any subsequent Heart-Shaped Boxes you earn on your characters after the first each day will drop the mount at the previous, original rate.

ArfusTime is a Flat CircleX-45 HeartbreakerX-45 HeartbreakerX-45 Marks the SpotknowX-45 HeartbreakerwhyDracthyr Nation attackedTangent: Manuscripts vs Mounts/Pets/ToysCosmetics and SeasonsSolutions and Future

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Comment by dokeefe1986arfus was the worst imo and by far the most egregious. people may think a battle pet is cosmetic. but for people that actually pet battle, its not cosmetic. arfus was a huge slap in the face. find the tweet where the dev said that arfus was supposed to be a THANK YOU TO THE COMMUNITY. worst thanks i've ever received in my life. if that was a thank you, then you are not welcome. lolComment by dd614Blizzard seems more dedicated to low drop rate FOMO cosmetics than ever. Sad. Can't even blame Bobby anymore.Comment by WolfQueenarfus was the worst imo and by far the most egregious. people may think a battle pet is cosmetic. but for people that actually pet battle, its not cosmetic. arfus was a huge slap in the face. find the tweet where the dev said that arfus was supposed to be a THANK YOU TO THE COMMUNITY. worst thanks i've ever received in my life. if that was a thank you, then you are not welcome. lolComment by NurmatIt was already alarming during Brewfest 2023, people probably didn't notice but mounts from Brewfest got nerf to drop rate too.Comment by AedionMorrisThis whole article. All of it. Every word. Yes. 100%.Comment by VerroquisI play every holiday and if I get the drops I get the drops, but with chances so low there is no way in hell I am going to no-life a holiday dungeon for 7-14 days for a low res kodo or a red rocket pun. I want those mounts but I want to spend my time in more pleasant ways much more.Comment by 2526346Here's an easy solution:

Add all rare holiday mounts to a vendor that requires holiday tokens. Holiday tokens are earned from holiday events.Comment by zomgzsome items should be rare, opComment by GrumpyTigerThe low % chance/rare spawn stuff has never been fun in WoW. Sitting in an area waiting for several hours for a spawn to appear and then only have a 1% (or less) drop chance is awful. Same with having to deal with limited time stuff where you're slamming a dozen or more alts through every day just to hopefully get it. I used to be all about collecting but as I got older and had less time to monitor a spawn points and do attempts with alts, I've mostly stopped.Comment by RhordricThe manuscipts especially feel like a slap in the face. im not gonna care about these mounts by the time the events roll around again. all my actual cool mounts will have dynamic flightComment by SharkTribeVital to maintain the discussion in terms of "fun" or "not fun", because this is a game. The purpose is fun. If they are implementing patterns of anti-fun design (prohibitively low drop rates, limited-time content, etc), this needs to be addressed directly.Comment by TriveliusI just purchased all the holiday manuscripts because they only cost like 20k gold each? I think there should be option to buy these mounts if you collect enough grindable resources obtainable during the holiday for a bad like type of protection if you really want it.

I didn't even know the holiday manuscripts could drop from bosses/mobs I thought you could only buy them.Comment by RellyneWorse than drop, is paying a good amount of gold for something so minimal like the manuscripts. In rare cases it will actually change the entire mount and in all cases, they're just for one mount.

They should all be just something to buy with the event currency to get players participating and the events alive and that's it.

The only one that was kinda of bad to not be guaranteed, would be the xmas one, because probably everyone wants to fly around in character for it and its the one that impacts the most having everyone using the festive mogs, mounts, etc.Comment by h347hHere's an easy solution:

Add all rare holiday mounts to a vendor that requires holiday tokens. Holiday tokens are earned from holiday events.Comment by PixelfoxI don't terribly mind the ultra-rare drops, though I have been lucky enough to get a couple of them.

I think a good solution would be a form of bad-luck protection where the drop chance goes up by, say, 1% each time you fail to get the drop, so that players who are willing to expend the effort of trying enough times would have a very high (if not guaranteed) chance of getting the drop.

This still means that not everyone will have every item, since the majority probably don't care enough to put in the effort that might be required.

The worst situation is what we have now where you can put in incredible effort (multiple alts per day over a week or two) and still have nothing to show for it. It's not surprising that it can drive some people to the brink of madness.

I think there's much more satisfaction to having an item that's "special" because either you got really lucky, or you invested the time that most players will not be willing to put in. But even in the degenerate case where literally everyone gets every item, there are now SO MANY of every form of mount, transmog, etc. that you rarely see two players with the same look at the same time. When there were only a couple tiers of raid gear back in the early days, the special look of wearing the gear meant something, but now with thousands of looks available, you could have the only set of mythic raid gear in the world and nobody will give you a second look.Comment by DruidBernI got every holiday manuscript except the Love manuscript, and I ran that dungeon 368 times. I ran the headless horseman dungeon over 200 times, and Arfus dropped on my last toon of the last day of the event. As an avid collector of everything, it's very demoralizing. I k now a lot of people who still haven't had the love rocket drop after many years of trying. It feels like the past couple holidays have abysmal drop rates for mounts even with the changes.Comment by SalindrisPeople should rally against AOTC and Gladiator mounts being locked each season 🤷

With TW and pvp being literally the same minigames for 15 years there's no reason to FOMO themComment by PunishedLeechesI would like to add the Trading Post to this as well. They made collecting and completing things a core part of the game starting in 2008, but ramping up heavily since patch 4.3 and transmog, and the Trading Post has guaranteed that you will never be able to complete things like 'all weapons' or 'all mounts' ever again. You may be able to finish one - like 'all cloaks', but you will do so at the cost of missing out on 'all shields', 'all swords' or 'all amounts.'

And thats pretty sad. Previously this only happened due to you not playing the game, which can be argued as a 'dont play, dont get' type deal. But now, there isn't a solution. Its literally 'you don't get' - the end. You don't get to get all of the items from the trading post - ever. You will never be able to do it, unless they overhaul the system or start selling tendies for cash.

I really hope they overhaul the system for TWW. Right now it is just terrible for the game long term.Comment by YirtzCan we talk about how most drops are for Renewed Proto-Drake

All 4 Raid Recolors
Brewfest and Love Armour

Need skins for other dragons manComment by VolkfireNO they are fun and something to look forward to!

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