World of Warcraft: Dragon Legion It’s on fire, and as you can imagine, Activision Blizzard’s dwarfs behind the wheel are driving some of the hype around the launch. After all, they’ve been mired in bad PR for a while now, and with the dumpster fire around Overwatch 2, the company needs a win. How will it generate excitement? Give away a ridiculously expensive mount for free.
The company plans to do this with Twitch Drops, a great way to ensure hordes (and alliances) of people flock to the newly expanded stream, no matter what, in theory. Sure, you can keep streaming, mute the tabs, and spend time doing other things, but the marketing team can still point to viewership numbers and the game’s high rankings on Twitch and claim success.
The only problem is that they give away the evil dragon, and the dragon kite pet. Both were originally available through the now-discontinued World of Warcraft tradable card game, and have so far been largely unavailable to casual players. With this exclusivity, Drake has become a very valuable item. Sold for around $3,000 on online marketplaces like WoW TCG Loot.
As you might imagine, this caused quite a stir in the World of Warcraft community, especially mount collectors, who have always been the more enthusiastic and dedicated players in the game. For some, the ownership of a Fel Drake is a treasure in their mount collection. Truly rare items, whether bought with lots of real-world cash, in-game gold, or lucky packs opened years ago.
“Added Fel Drakes to Twitch Drops. I want to start by saying I don’t have Fel Dragons, but adding TCG mounts as Twitch drops has removed TCG mounts as the last remaining investment to fight gold inflation,” RichNasty on WoW forums wrote.
“Now, all TCG mounts have the potential to be given away as freebies to the entire Warcraft community, whereas previously they were in limited supply. This means no one wants to pay millions of gold for a mount that might be given away for free later.”
This is the financial angle of the larger argument made by those opposing the Fel Drake Twitch Drop. Over time, mounts like the Fel Drake, unavailable to the average player, have become the last true status symbol in World of Warcraft. You might argue that gladiator mounts, which require players to reach high ranks in limited PvP seasons, but even this has been tainted by the largely uncontrolled boosting scene in World of Warcraft, you’re left with very little The truly unspoiled trophy is on the WoW Collector’s digital mantelpiece.
Those who hold this view are right because this is a step Blizzard has not taken before. However, for everyone who defends the virtues of exclusive Warcraft mounts, there seem to be 10 people who are laughing at the situation, grinning when they’re about to get a new mount for free, while diminishing the value of the pre-existing Demon Drake Code and A collection of incredible niche segments within the player base.
“Please remember that the Evil Dragon Twitch Drop is November 28-30, it is very important that as many people as possible watch it,” user Ill_Excuse_997 captioned a post on the World of Warcraft subreddit. Their stance is happy and hope this promotion is a success to encourage Blizzard to continue distributing TCG mounts in future promotions. This is the position of the mountless masses, scrambling for a dragon that looks worse than many of the incredibly common mounts in their collection. They do it for the same reason people love to see NFT stocks crash or pretentious modern art go wrong – because it’s funny.
But let’s quickly break down why Blizzard is doing this. First and most obvious, the vast majority of players will not be negatively affected. Fewer than 0.1% of players own it, and very few players farm the gold needed to buy it. The move will bring overwhelming cheers from most and a relative whimper from collectors.
Second, of all the mounts, it’s the one that has been available years ago. Back in Mists of Pandaria, players can duplicate items and sell them on the auction house. Yes, these items may be deleted if detected, and the mounts will disappear from your collection, but a wave of much cheaper Fel Drakes is still flooding the market. If the Demon Drake is a glittering crown on the player’s mount collection, it’s made of fool’s gold.
But there is a reason why the evil dragon beast given to Warcraft players for free is not important, and many people may miss it. Mounts are no longer important in World of Warcraft. They haven’t been there for many years. With each major patch for the retail version of the game, a dozen or more mounts are usually added. Many of them recolor the same model – a practice that devalues the mount as soon as it hits the market, because who cares about your creepy handheld mount, and I have one that’s exactly the same except it’s slightly greener.
In retail WoW no one will “wow” when they see your mount, unless you’re AFKing on a Swift Nether Drake or something like that, but even with those really special mounts, most players don’t Know and don’t care why this is special. Years ago, mount saturation killed the value of mounts, and it was just one of the crumbling bones.
Interestingly, if you’ve played World of Warcraft Classic, you can still experience the golden age of mounts that meant so much. Not the bronze drake – no one ever cared about that – but the lost prototype drake, or the black prototype drake, or invincible when it appeared! What it actually means when you see them in the wild. For about a decade, the evil dragon meant nothing to almost anyone.
So yes, you can go and watch Dragonflight live if you want. Get a Fel Drake as a prize! Hop on it in-game, fly on it for a while, then toss it into the Favorites tab forever. The only thing Blizzard has done with this promo is to give most players a good reason to watch the game as it approaches its release date, and probably also tombstone the actual mount value. But hardly anyone visited it, so whatever.
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