To their credit, Blizzard has acknowledged these issues with increased droprates and bad luck protection, but has that done enough to make Dragonflight one of the best expansions for collectors, or does Blizzard still have a long way to go?
The Challange
Almost every major patch comes with new mounts, pets, toys, transmog, and, (in Dragonflight) drakewatcher manuscripts to collect. The method to obtain these in-game collectibles can range from boringly easy to mind-numbingly impossible.
In recent years, Blizzard has begun to embrace a philosophy that is more respectful of players’ time. This is perhaps most obvious in the case of gearing, with bad luck protection and more deterministic gearing options being made available via systems like the Great Vault and Revival Catalyst. The approach with collectibles, however, has been less consistent.
Perhaps the most infamously difficult-to-obtain collectible has been the X-45 Heartbreaker. Once calculated to have a drop chance of 1 in 3333, and only obtainable for two weeks out of every year, even today this mount is why you should never expect your collector friends who don’t have it yet to be available during the Love is in the Air festival, because they’ll be too busy throwing every alt they have at the attempt to get this mount.
In more recent times, Blizzard has acknowledged this old-school approach to collectibles hasn’t always been fun. There has also been some experimentation with bad luck protection – with some ideas more successful or better implemented than others.
Drop Rate Changes
One thing we’ve seen Blizzard experiment with is implementing an increased drop chance for the first run per account every day. This has mostly been applied to low drop-rate holiday mounts such as the X-45 Heartbreaker.
Back in 2022, Blizzard agreed that repeating the Love is in the Air dungeon a dozen times a day on alts is not fun, and that they were working on solutions. Increasing the drop-rate per account seems to have been their go-to for holiday collectibles, and players have speculated that this approach is also being applied to new collectibles such as holiday-themed drakewatcher manuscripts.
But has this change helped prevent the “not fun” aspect of running the same dungeon over and over on every alt you have? We worked out that the change to the Heartbreaker results in a 14% chance that someone trying to get the mount will do so in a given year, the equivalent of running the event on 30 characters every day.
For a dedicated collector, this means there is still motivation to run the event as many times on as many characters as possible – only of course now the mind-numbing aspect of the grind can feel even worse, because you know that every character after your first one has the old, massively decreased chance of getting the mount. On the other hand, it’s undeniable that players who are willing to be patient and try over a few years have a higher chance of obtaining the mount just by engaging with the event on the most basic level. It’s an odd approach that doesn’t so much reward collectors for their efforts as punish those who go too far.
Another solution we’ve seen from Blizzard is simply showing a willingness to buff the droprates on some items. When Evokers were first introduced to the game, a loot issue unintentionally gave Evokers an abnormally-high chance to loot certain mounts. While Blizzard hotfixed the issue, they also increased the droprates of affected bosses. More recently, Blizzard has promised to increase the droprates of certain Zaralek Caverns collectibles, though at the time of writing there still hasn’t been an update on this.
But, speaking about Zaralek Caverns…
The Rare Farm
If there’s one thing Zaralek Caverns seemed to make clear, it’s that players are exhausted with rare farms – especially the sort that require groups.
10.0.7 introduced multiple rares around the Forbidden Reach, all of which at the time were far too powerful to be faced alone. These rares were the easiest and fastest way to obtain Zskera Vault Keys and Elemental Overflow, and so groups were formed where players flew around, killing rares together. A handful of the rares dropped battle pets as well.
Then, when 10.1 was introduced, so was a whole range of new rares. Again, these rares were mostly too powerful to be faced alone, even after the patch had well and truly passed. On top of that, many collectibles, most non-tradeable, were added to the rares: including a mount, toys, and drakewatcher manuscripts. The droprate on most of these items are also extremely low – the Cobalt Shalewing mount has a reportedly 0.5% drop chance. According to dataforazeroth.com, fewer than 1% of players have this mount – understandable, since most players haven’t been able to solo the rare that drops it until now.
Anecdotally, Blizzard’s recent attempt at addressing this problem by “funneling” players towards certain rares hasn’t helped. As someone trying to collect Drakewatcher Manuscripts, even though I play on a busy realm and make use of the group finder tool, I wasn’t able to find groups of players interested in most rares while Zaralek Caverns was current content – never mind now. I also haven’t been able to help but find myself feeling a growing resentment towards Drakewatcher Manuscripts. It’s one thing to put time and effort into collecting a mount, but quite another to go back to an old zone to kill the same rares over and over again every day in an attempt to unlock only part of a mount.
Collectibles in Zaralek Caverns that come from rares remain a frustrating problem, as they’re designed around group content even when they are no longer current. The problem is, the faster patch cadence is making it less likely than ever to obtain rare RNG-based collectibles while a patch is still current, and going back to an old zone to farm a collectible is a distinctly solo experience.
Going back to an old zone to farm a collectible is a distinctly solo experience, especially if everyone you know has sworn never to go back to that zone again
Blizzard do seem to be pulling back from relying too much on group rare farms. In the Emerald Dream, rares can be solo’d. Most of them simply drop weapons or armor with transmog that can be found in other places. One drops a toy, and for many collectors, will be the only rare worth targetting. It is worth noting several of the rares are the source for some of the new Druid forms, and at least Talthonei Ashwhisper seems to strongly benefit from farming with a group, but Druids can safely continue to farm these collectibles even once the Emerald Dream is mostly empty.
Bad Luck Protection and Currency-Based Systems
One approach we’ve seen used quite often in Dragonflight is systems where items both have a chance to drop but can also be bought from a vendor. The Seedbloom of the Emerald Dream is a currency rewarded once per week for planting five seeds. This currency can be used to purchase almost any item that can drop from seeds (one mount cannot be purchased, but it can drop from any seed and seems to have a reasonably high droprate). We saw a similar system with Time Rifts, where cosmetics could both drop from Time Rifts and be purchased for Paracausal Flakes.
The advantage of these systems is they benefit everyone. Players who enjoy the thrill of a random cosmetic drop but put in no more effort than that haven’t had their cosmetics locked behind some complicated system they’re uninterested in participating in. Players who want to collect everything have a clear path that they can plan and follow. Most importantly, players who really want a specific item are guaranteed to be able obtain that item as soon as they have the right currency for it.
I would be interested in seeing some experimentation with extremely rare drops – if, for example, it would take a minimum of three or four years to collect enough Love Tokens to purchase the X-45 Heartbreaker, providing you run the dungeon every day and don’t spend your tokens on everything else, that would actively reward dedicated collectors specifically without encouraging them to run the same dungeon across alts – since this currency is not account bound.
Azerothian Archives
The Azerothian Archives of 10.2.5 has been an interesting experiment. This time, cosmetics that can drop and cosmetics that can be purchased have been separated. However, by the time you have the currency you need to buy everything from the vendor, you should already have everything that can drop – even the previously illusive Excavator’s Dusky Fedora, which now appears to be dropping for players. (In fact, mine dropped from a blue tome the first dig I completed after I read the article about it.)
Blizzard does seem to be struggling a little with balancing currency-based rewards. Since purchasable cosmetics don’t have a chance to drop from digs, all need to be bought – a cost of 233000 Mysterious Fragments in total. Players can earn 5000 a week in an account-wide quest, as well as around 500-1000 fragments per dig. World quests also reward fragments (around 500-800 per quest) but also just as often reward gold, and unlocking them is also not account-wide, despite being so on the PTR. Unfortunately, the main way to grind out this currency is to simply attend digs every hour.
As a world event, digs themselves are… fine. They’re a lot more fun with fewer people, when everyone gets multiple jobs to complete. They’re less fun when half the attendees are standing around doing nothing, while everyone else runs around in circles clicking on dig piles. Unfortunately, even at their best, digs just aren’t engaging enough to justify the number of times the game is pushing you to repeat them.
The Azerothian Archives side questline and associated world quests are a little more engaging – a glimpse into a system that feels like it’s preparing to replace Archaeology – but like all questlines, it’s only really fun the first time. Having to repeat it on alts before being able to do the world quests on them is the sort of alt-unfriendly tiresome grind we’re actually kind of expecting Blizzard to move away from as they prepare for Warbands, and it feels like an odd decision.
The above all translates to a rather long and boring grind that cannot be offset by alts or being lucky with drops. Unfortunately, while it has potential, the entire event feels like a step backwards overall. Currency-based systems have great potential as luck protection, but they lose appeal quickly when they’re just a forced lengthy grind. The only real positive is that digs are designed to not be reliant on other players – in fact, it’s actually a lot more fun to complete one on your own.
Puzzle Events and the Potential for Delves
When we think about desirable collectibles in World of Warcraft, it’s undeniable that the most obvious ones are, at the end of the day, low droprate mounts like Ashes of Al’ar or Invincible’s Reins – rare mounts that mostly require perserverance, a lot of alts, and luck. Mounts like Reins of Anu’relos, Flame’s Guidance start out with a higher droprate for those able to complete the most difficult content in World of Warcraft – Mythic+ raiding – and then become rare, low droprate mounts later.
But there’s another type of hyper-desirable collectible – the ones tied to secrets only the Secret Finder Discord has been able to solve. Previous famous examples include the Lucid Nightmare, The Hivemind, and Baa’l. In Dragonflight, Patch 10.1.5 introduced a range of secrets related to Naxrammas, such as the mount Valiance.
One thing we’ve seen an increase of in Dragonflight is puzzle-based challenges that don’t require an entire Discord server to solve. Zskera Vaults and Sniffenseeking are both solo activities that mostly require solving little puzzles more than fighting enemies. While neither of these activities have been perfect, they’re both clearly experimenting with new ways to challenge the player. As a Hunter, the rare gold mouse I was able to obtain through Sniffenseeking is one of my most valued pets.
Perhaps the most well-received puzzle-based event in Dragonflight has been Secrets of Azeroth. Throughout this event, new clues became available daily for players to solve, and it takes 15 days in total to complete the entire event. By the end, players have several new collectibles, including toys, transmog, mounts, and a battle pet.
Secrets of Azeroth is an example of my favorite approach to collectibles: One that specifically rewards the effort collectors put in. The puzzles in this event were challenging, but while you could look up guides if you wanted to, they did not require outside help to solve. It was something that could be worked on entirely solo, but it was also challenging and engaging. No one accidentally ends up with Pattie’s Cap – it’s something you work for specifically. Nobody missed out on Tobias because they couldn’t find a raid. At no point were we expected to repeat the same mindless activity 100+ times. The items obtained through the event feel like they’ve truly been earned through effort, rather than lucky random chance or bloody-minded perseverance.
With Delves on the way, my greatest hope is that they will build on these elements. Island Expeditions required groups, discouraged exploration, revolved entirely around fighting enemies, and the rewards were largely RNG-based. Torghast revolved entirely around fighting enemies, and the rewards were largely RNG-based. We’ve already been told Delves will be different – while some will end in a final boss, others won’t. They can be done solo or with a group.
Keeping the balance between a collectible that’s challenging enough to feel worthwhile once you get it, without the method to obtain it feeling punishing and impossible, must be a difficult balance. There is also something to be said for the value of a collectible so rare and difficult to obtain, it gives the player who manages to obtain The Thing such a sense of pride and accomplishment, they still feel a great attachment to it many years later. How can Blizzard still provide items that are rare and desirable – and desirable because they’re rare – without frustrating the player, or wasting their time?
Though they could turn out to be a disaster, I believe Delves have a ton of potential in this area. For the most part though, I would like to see a continuation of thinking outside the boss when it comes to collectibles. It’s easy to slap a couple of collectibles onto some rares, set the droprate dial to 1%, and call it a day, but it’s also boring. I’d love to see more experimentation with currency-based bad luck protection systems, puzzle-based challenges, and in general more of the innovative approach to collectibles that we’ve seen in Dragonflight, and less of the old, out-of-date approach. If Dragonflight has been good for collectors, The War Within has the potential to be great.
