A legendary weapon in WoW: WotLK Classic was much stronger than expected. Only after more than 15 years was the mistake discovered and fixed.
In a game with the lifespan of World of Warcraft, small mistakes and problems are part of everyday life. Even in the beloved “Wrath of the Lich King Classic”, bugs are occasionally found that are only now being fixed, nearly 15 years after the original launch. Of all things, one of the most famous legendary weapons in the game was afflicted by a “small” error that made it simply 10 times stronger than originally intended.
What kind of weapon is this? “Val’anyr, Hammer of the Ancient Kings” is a legendary mace that could only be obtained by healers in the raid Ulduar. To secure the weapon, a total of 30 shards had to be collected, which dropped from the bosses with very low probability. The weapon then had to be thrown into the maw of Yogg-Saron to complete it.
The mace has a pretty strong effect, as it could make heals create an additional shield on the target. This was quite powerful and coveted for a long time.
What kind of error was found? Blizzard’s QA team had been scratching their heads, as they had discovered an error. The maximum strength of the shield that Val’anyr could create was much greater than intended. A feverish search for the error ensued, and they racked their brains over what could have caused it.
In the end, the solution was surprisingly simple – in the code of WoW, there was simply an extra 0 hidden. Thus, Val’anyr was capable of absorbing a total of up to 200,000 damage as a shield, instead of the originally planned maximum of 20,000 damage.
Error went undetected for many years: The error was by the way not “Classic-exclusive” – it also existed in the original version of Wrath of the Lich King. Furthermore, this bug was only fixed many expansions later. This made it even more difficult for quality assurance staff, as they saw the same code in both the original data and in data from other expansions, so no error could be detected at first glance.
In fact, Val’anyr was thus able to absorb 10 times more damage than originally thought – even though the maximum value of 200,000 HP can usually not even be reached, as more than 1,300,000 healing would have to be caused in a short period of time. This was nearly impossible for healers at the time of Wrath of the Lich King.
Still interesting that some errors hold up in the game for over 15 years – and were not found by the otherwise so attentive WoW community.
