World of Warcraft: Current Year

Nothing about that cut scene makes me want to come back and play WoW. I miss when I used to see something from WoW and would get pumped to play. Think the last time that really happened was Legion, unfortunately.

That camera shake tho

It's been Season 1 and done for every expac for me save for a little stint in S2 of Shadowlands.

jayrebb said:

It's been Season 1 and done for every expac for me save for a little stint in S2 of Shadowlands.

Click to expand...

This is the way to play now. I do 1-2 months at start of expansion and I will look at what's changed for my class every patch. I only really play 1 class so if those changes seem fun then I will play 1-2 months for that patch. I couldn't give a fuck less about the story in WoW but raids/m+ and class gameplay is still top tier since Dragonflight.

There may be a lot of loot, but the mounts are still not guaranteed by any means. Blizz admitted the actual scenario is more like they're 5% drops at best. Out of the mythic raids I've seen:
O/114 Sylvs
0/103 Jailers
5/99 Nines
.. which is rapidly getting to statistically broken levels (aka the buff is likely broken for some mount drops),

Wombat said:

There may be a lot of loot, but the mounts are still not guaranteed by any means. Blizz admitted the actual scenario is more like they're 5% drops at best. Out of the mythic raids I've seen:
O/114 Sylvs
0/103 Jailers
5/99 Nines
.. which is rapidly getting to statistically broken levels (aka the buff is likely broken for some mount drops),

Click to expand...

Your mileage may vary, as always with RNG.

I went into the Collectors' Bounty event needing only 8 mounts from the dungeons and raids pre-DF, and I got them all within 2 weeks.

G.M.O.D. off High King Mekkatorque : I ran Battle for Dazar Alor 100+ times in LFR (I have 60 level 80 characters thanks to all the crazy XP events plus the insane XP post-expansion stuff they did after DF) and it never dropped, so I think LFR is bugged for that one, but it dropped after only 4 normal runs.

Glacial Tidestorm off Jaina in Battle for Dazar Alor (Mythic only), dropped after 4 runs or so.

Ny'alotha Allseer off N'zoth in Ny'alotha (Mythic only) : dropped after around 20-30 runs across two weeks, but I saved time by having the shortcut unlocked accountwide for that raid.

Vengeance off Sylvanas Windrunner in Sanctum of Domination (Mythic only) : got very lucky, got it the second time I ran it during the event.

Sanctum Gloomcharger off The Nine in Sanctum of Domination (any difficulty), got it quite fast too, maybe 10 runs or so, I think it dropped on Heroic but it should be fine on any difficulty.

Zereth Overseer off Jailer in Sepulcher of the First Ones (Mythic only) : got quite lucky, it dropped after about 5 runs or so.

I was missing 3 dungeon mounts : Underrot Crawg (mythic only from last boss in Underrot, it took me around 70 kills across my alt army, but you can ride through the dungeon and skip all bosses so it takes like 3 minutes tops), Tomb Stalker (mythic only from the last boss in King's Rest, dropped after only 2 runs), and Cartel Master's Glider (off the last boss in Taz'avesh, can drop on Heroic and can be farmed endlessly because this dungeon has no heroic daily lockout, but bring a monk to death touch on last boss otherwise it takes forever, that one dropped after about 20-25 runs).

I'm now just going to do the few raids where I'm still missing some transmogs since the event also doubles the amount of loot dropped by bosses. All I can say is good luck if you're trying to collect a mount you want, and keep at it, most of my friends in game also got a few mounts already.

Realistically, most people don't have as many high-level characters as I do, though Blizzard has provided so many crazy XP events that it's very easy to level up a bunch, so there's a good chance you're not going to get some of the mounts you covet if you only have 1-2 characters running the weekly stuff for 4 weeks, but the boost is definitely working nicely as far as I've seen (except for LFR G.M.O.D. as I said, pretty sure that one's fucked because it doesn't drop off the same boss on LFR and some intern probably missed that).

I think what's going on, and what's always been going on, is despite what I believe are Blizzard statements to the contrary, every raid member doesn't get their own independent chance at a mount. Instead, your raid has an X% chance of a drop, and your chance of getting that mount is divided by the number of people you bring along.

Now, I have seen a Nine drop two mounts during the event, so I think it's working like the item drops are - the loot tables have _extra_ slots with better drop chances during the event, in addition to the _unchanged_ original normal drop chances. Let me elaborate:

Boss still has its normal 1% (or whatever) chance of dropping a mount.
During the event, the loot tables have been amended, and there is also an additional 5% chance of dropping a mount.

So your raid could have zero mount drops (if you get the 99% and 95% no mount rolls), 1 drop (if you get the 1% mount roll and the 95% no mount roll), 1 drop (if you get the 99% no mount roll and the 5% mount roll), or 2 drops (if you get both the 1% mount roll and the 5% mount roll). You will never get 3 or more drops of a boss during the event. Unfortunately for the raid, your individual chances are then divided by the number of characters you've brought along.

Why do I think it works (and has always worked) this way? My statistics classes were a long time ago, but these are just binomial distributions. So let's plug in some numbers for some raids.

A 20 man raid with a 1% mount drop should get 1 drop ~16.5% of the time if every player gets their own 1% chance. We sure as hell do not see 1/6 raids get a 1% mount drop outside of the event.
But more importantly, if every player had their own 1% chance at a mount, we would see 2 drops 1.59% of the time. I don't recall seeing 2 mounts drop ever outside of the event.

Then let's plug in a 5% chance. We'll leave it as just the bonus 5% chance, but the odds for the players should be better than this since they still have their original drop chance as well:
A 20 man raid with a 5% mount drop should get 1 drop nearly 38% of the time if every player gets their own 5% chance during the event. We sure as hell don't see this.
But with just a 5% chance for each of the 20 people, we should see two drops nearly 19% of the time, and 3+ drops almost 6% of the time. Needless to say, we sure as hell don't see this either.

Well, maybe my personal luck is bad. So let's see here: I've been in 28 Sylvanas mythics*, all nearly full, since the event started, with no one getting a mount. If there was an independent 5% for each of the 20 players, you get 0 drops only 35.85% of the time for each raid. Getting the 35.85% result 28 times in a row only happens 3.355x10-13% of the time, so therefore there's a 99.999999999966% chance each player doesn't get an independent drop chance.

--
So what does that mean for the players? Simply put, everyone should be doing every raid they can solo during the event. If you can't solo it, you should bring along as few people as you can get away with, as each additional raid member reduces your individual chances. The increased chances definitely are real for most raids / dungeons I've heard reported, so if you wanted Ashes of Alar or whatever, now is the time to send your whole army after it solo, one character after the next.

*But I'm not convinced _all_ the mount bonuses are working correctly. Even assuming the raid has just that 5% bonus chance, Sylvanas' mount dropping 0 times in 28 samples would only happen ~24% of the time. Jailer mount drops reportedly are also very low (even at the raid level). Meanwhile the better than 1% droppers seem to be happening more than 6% of the time.

Wombat

I can't say for every mount affected by this event, but what I can tell you is that I ran Sylvanas with 2 friends and Jailer with 1 friend, and both times when I got the mount it didn't appear in the group loot, it was on the corpse of the boss and only visible for me. So going by that, it shouldn't matter how many persons you're doing your runs with.

In my experience, most people in raid groups don't loot the corpse, expecting stuff to either show up in group loot or appear in their bags. Remaining unlooted, items such as these two mounts are discovered later in their mailbox. It is possible some mounts dropped during your 28 raids but some players didn't realize they got it, because they found out after leaving the raid. Who knows.

Some other mounts appear directly into your bag when the boss dies (G.M.O.D for example).

RobXIII said:

I've never been a fan of the season thing personally, I feel like only expansions should reset your gear/progress.

Click to expand...

You've answered your own question, for a game with a monthly subscription, resetting the gear once per expansion means they might only get a subscription from you one month an expansion.

Instead, Blizzard (or their accountants) has long since figured this out, and it's all FOMO all the time, with time-limited content out the ass. Off the top of my head, the time limited stuff they have running right now, all of which expires by 8/5 or earlier:

Do X number of timewalking dungeons for a pirate infinite dragonflight mount.
Kill treasure goblins for tokens for bloody themed Tier 2 cosmetics.
Do the lame Dastardly Duos activity for whatever toys are attached to the quests / achievements.
Kill optional delve boss (Underpin) in season for mount skins / titles / whatever.
I _think_ Overcharged delves are time limited, and completing that talent tree gets you a mount + toy?
Kill Y Undermine raid bosses every week for the cartel chip for mythic level gear / appearances.
Ahead of the Curve equivalent for clearing the Undermine raid.

I _think_ the Visions of N'zoth stuff isn't time limited, but if it is, add that mess as well.

Now, I will say that Blizzard does add some of this stuff to the Trading Post, potentially years later, but you'll just be getting these items _instead_ of whatever you would normally buy from that.

1 tier invalidating the gear from the prior tier has been in the game since release (with some exceptions in the beginning because itemization and class design were horrible). The difference now is you don’t have to go do the old raid to gear up for the new raid.

Visions are going away with 11.2 release and the helm enchants will disappear completely.