World of Warcraft mount collectors can rejoice (or weep), as some of the rarest and most exclusive mounts in the game have just gotten significantly easier to obtain. The business of mount farming in World of Warcraft has always been a serious affair, and ever since The Burning Crusade introduced flying mounts, this aspect of the game only continued to rise in popularity. Everyone wanted to show off their rare mount, because whether it was hard-earned or purely by luck, mounts equaled just as much prestige in World of Warcraft as a full set of tier armor.
Though a lot of mounts in World of Warcraft are rare, very few can compare to those obtained from the world bosses of Mists of Pandaria and Warlords of Draenor such as the Heavenly Onyx Cloud Serpent, considered by Blizzard Entertainment to be the rarest mount drop in the entire game. It has not deterred players from tirelessly farming the Sha of Anger every morning, forever holding out hope that they'd eventually get lucky. To their fortune, the latest changes introduced in last night's hotfix might make their mount farming just a bit less frustrating.
Blizzard Entertainment has announced a sweeping list of changes to the drop rates of all world boss mounts from Pandaria and Draenor, greatly increasing the odds of obtaining them. The previous drop rate chance for the Heavenly Onyx Cloud Serpent was at 0.01%, with the added complication that World of Warcraft players could only loot the boss once. The current drop rate is unknown, and likely will need at least a month of loot attempts from the World of Warcraft community until database websites like Wowhead can establish an accurate estimate.
This change undoubtedly comes as a source of great joy to popular Twitch streamers like Asmongold, who held the community together through some of World of Warcraft's darkest days with his extremely popular mount and transmogrification competitions. While it is a valid complaint that these changes rob the mounts of their exclusivity, it is a change that is ultimately healthier for the game. The affected mounts include:
- Reins of the Heavenly Onyx Cloud Serpent
- Son of Galleon's Saddle
- Reins of the Cobalt Primordial Direhorn
- Reins of the Thundering Cobalt Cloud Serpent
- Solar Spirehawk
Perhaps the problem lies less in their extremely low drop rate, but rather in the lack of any bad luck protection mechanics, such as those seen in Final Fantasy 14's Extreme Trial mounts. World of Warcraft fans see the best solution in introducing a cap on loot attempts, where players would receive the mount as a guarantee after a certain amount of pulls. This would disallow the existence of outlier situations such as farming a 1% drop rate mount over the course of five hundred attempts. While the ramifications of these World of Warcraft loot changes have yet to be fully understood, they are undoubtedly in the right direction.
World of Warcraft is available now for PC. Dragonflight launches on November 28.
Source: World of Warcraft