A very rare mount will soon be given away for players of World of Warcraft. This has sparked a discussion in the community: should certain content really be limited in availability? The Game Director Ion Hazzikostas has a clear opinion on this.
Which mount are we talking about? The Fel Drake is a special version of a black dragon that glows in places with the neon green of the famous fel corruption.
The mount is quite rare and sought after in World of Warcraft, as it comes from the trading card game that is no longer produced. Accordingly, there are collectors who pay up to $3,000 for the Fel Drake.
This is the problem with the mount: Since the dragon is only available for a limited time, it is considered an absolute collector’s item and rarity – and as something that can easily be missed. Those who did not play the trading card game or purchased packs never had a chance at the mount.
Now Blizzard is offering the Fel Drake as a free Twitch Drop, for which you only need to watch World of Warcraft for a few hours during the release of the new expansion Dragonflight with certain Twitch streamers.
This sparked a discussion in the community that has been brewing for some time. The topic: FOMO, short for “Fear Of Missing Out”. This has long been a point of contention among players.
Certain content in WoW is only available temporarily. The best known are certain achievements, called feats of strength, which you only receive if you complete raids at the highest Mythic level, as long as they are active content.
Often such content is linked with rewards like titles and mounts that are never available again. Those who start later will never have the chance to obtain such an item.
Since the Twitch Drops, the community has been discussing in forums, on reddit, and other social media whether FOMO is still relevant, how long exclusivity should last, and whether such content truly needs to be inaccessible, especially when the only ones who have it no longer play.
One of the most famous FOMO mounts is probably the black Qiraji Battle Tank. Only a few players per server could obtain it in Vanilla WoW. Here you can see the rarest mounts in WoW:
“If you missed it, you missed it”
This is what the boss says: In an interview with wowhead, Anne Fuchsia asks Game Director Ion Hazzikostas about various topics, including overstuffed inventory in Shadowlands and what his stance on such limited content is.
His response to the question of whether content like Gladiator mounts and top-tier achievements will ever return is very direct:
I consider this extremely unlikely. Some of these very special mounts, rewards, and titles that exist at that time mean: You were there. You achieved this. And if you missed it, you missed it.
The vast majority, over 99% of all rewards in World of Warcraft, are things you can come back to years later and obtain. Kill old Mythic raid bosses and get their titles, farm the mounts. But for a handful of things, it’s really about being part of the experience. And when you see someone with it, you know they achieved it when it still counted.
We don’t want to expand this area too much, but we will probably keep it as it is.
Ion Hazzikostas via YouTube
Hazzikostas is only talking about content that can actually be earned in the game and not external rewards like the Fel Drake. Nevertheless, he clearly answers the question of whether FOMO content will ever be made available to new players.
With the release of Dragonflight, by the way, some content from World of Warcraft will also disappear irretrievably. You still have time to secure it:
WoW Dragonflight launches next week – 3 things you should do before it arrives
