World of Warcraft is full of invisible rabbits. But is that true? And if so: Why are these rabbits everywhere?
There are many myths and mysteries surrounding World of Warcraft. One of them is that the loot is determined when entering a dungeon. A second myth is the existence of numerous invisible rabbits in the game. But what is the truth? Is it just a figment of the players’ imagination? Or is Azeroth actually inhabited by countless invisible rabbits?
Is there any truth to the myth? Yes, there is. Because “invisible rabbits” are something that World of Warcraft has indeed been implementing since its very early days and are still in use today. The game world is full of small rabbits that, under normal conditions, cannot be seen by the players – because they are transparent and cannot be targeted.
Why are there rabbits? The answer is quite banal yet logical. Because the world of World of Warcraft is meant to feel alive. This means that not only player characters interact with the world, but also NPCs. On large battlefields, you can see mages hurling fireballs down a path, and elsewhere you see archers practicing their aim and shooting arrows.
All these effects only work if the animations have a “target” – that is, a point at which they are directed. These points are always creatures in the game. But if something should not hit an obvious creature at all, then Blizzard needs invisible rabbits. These then serve as proxies for the target.
How can you see the invisible rabbits? Occasionally, you can see these invisible rabbits, even though that is not intended by Blizzard. For example, in the WoW subreddit, there are sometimes posts where the rabbits have lost their invisibility:
Those who look closely can sometimes recognize the rabbits even in invisible mode. Because although they are “invisible”, their model reacts to light and particle effects. Thus, one can occasionally see the outline of a rabbit when a bright spell effect is triggered by an NPC somewhere.
Do the rabbits cause problems too? Yes, they do. Because the invisible rabbits can also lead to server issues. Especially during “The Burning Crusade”, this occurred more frequently. There, the rabbits were used in Nagrand so that the Legion’s cannons would fire at a target in the sky. For each shot, an invisible rabbit was generated – which did not despawn anymore. Those playing in the area had to deal with stutters and lags that could even affect the entire server.
Because even if the rabbits are invisible, several thousand could accumulate, all of which are calculated as entities and burden Blizzard’s servers and players’ hardware.
However, the system of invisible rabbits is not the only complex system in World of Warcraft. By now, the talents and abilities of the characters are also so confusing that sometimes one has to read a tooltip over 50 lines to truly understand all the intricacies of a skill.
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