How adding a playable dragon race to World of Warcraft brought a 10-year-old loot system to its knees

Playable dragon race in WoW disrupts a decade-old loot system, leading to rare mount changes.

: The introduction of a playable dragon race in World of Warcraft caused a significant glitch in the game's longstanding loot system. A coding oversight led the new Dracthyr class to inadvertently receive a rare mount, the Heavenly Onyx Cloud Serpent, much more frequently than intended. As word spread quickly among the community, players exploited the bug before Blizzard fixed it. Eventually, Blizzard addressed the issue by increasing the drop rates for several rare mounts.

World of Warcraft's Dragonflight expansion introduced a playable dragon race, the Dracthyr, which inadvertently revealed a flaw in the game's loot system. This oversight allowed the Dracthyr to receive the incredibly rare Heavenly Onyx Cloud Serpent mount at a dramatically increased rate, causing a flurry of activity among players.

The anomaly was first noticed during the game's beta phase but went largely unremarked until the expansion's pre-patch was live. Within hours of the newfound glitch being discovered, players rapidly exploited it, creating new Dracthyr characters to maximize their chances of obtaining the coveted mount before Blizzard intervened.

In response to the situation, Blizzard issued a hotfix to prevent further exploitation and later took the unexpected step of raising the drop rates for several other rare mounts. This decision appeased many players who had been frustrated by the extreme rarity of these items, reflecting a notable change in Blizzard's approach to loot distribution in the game.

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