In Vanilla rare spawns were just that, rare spawns. A mob that only popped occasionally in certain areas. They usually dropped a better than average loot as well. More rares were added in the Burning Crusade and were the object of certain achievements. In Wrath rare spawns were for achievements and dropped special satchels with extra loot such as more gold, a stack of cloth and a random blue item or even a mount. Several of the rare spawns were also special pets. In Cataclysm the "old world" rare spawns now spawn very frequently and give a much larger amount of experience when killed. The level 81 and higher spawns no longer have achievements attached to them. Many of the new rare spawns were put in specifically for hunter pets and drop nothing of value. They have special abilities and require special strategies to tame. Some of the rares are elites require a full group or small raid to kill and drop raid level gear.

Which changes in how rare spawns were handled to you like the best? Are there new types of rares you'd like to see in future expansions? Do you miss the achievements for killing all the rares of an expansion? Should the spawn rate for the old world spawns be lowered again?


Posted from WoW Vault

Evolution is a crock of hooey, just like the big bang. Scientists don't have any "facts", its not like they were there when it happened!!1111one!!!


Oh wait, totally not what this is about is it?

 

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*clears throat*


Ahem. Evolution is


"any process of formation or growth; development" as quoted from Dictionary.com


Therefore I do think we ARE discussing evolution! Now as to whethere or not scientists are involved with World of Warcraft is another matter.


As far as rare spawns, when WoW first came out it was exciting to find them. It was great (terrible) to camp them on your hunter or farm them for that one blue they might drop. In Wrath I loved the goodie bags. I loved attempting to solo of the big guys even when I was a lower level. And of course nerd points.


Now, while leveling lowbies I learn all the rare spawns in the zone and just make a circut through them while questing. They give roughly 10x the expe of a regular mob of the same level. Nice easy exp but the spawn so frequently it's odd they even call them rares. It's more like go tot he spot for free exp.


Now the hunter pet "only" mobs....It's coolt o find a rare spawna nd kill it. I understand the frustration in Wrath of having someone come along and kill that bear you were camping for days just so they could get a bag and some nerd points. So lowering the incentive to kill a mob was a smart way to handle that. But then I think they should have added a few other rare spawns just for killing.


I also thought raising the loot quality on the rare spawn bosses like Garr was great. We spent over an hour killing Garr, between wipes, horde and other allies trying ot tag him. Then he drops a 346 item? Gah!! Talk about a let down.


I am curious about the sea horse though. Why did they choose to mkae the mount BoE instead o BoP like the TLPD? nice target for gold farming!

 

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Just never could force myself to care about rare spawns. I kill them if I happen across them, but I never go looking for them.

 

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I loved rare spawns in Asheron's Call. Because they involved exploration. Hunting the Hoary Mattekar was an adventure.
But in WoW? They are at fixed places, always the same. There is no hunt.
The feeling of the hunt totally disappeared in any "modern" EQ clone, WoW is not the only culprit of this. Even for quests, you now have big frigging arrows on a map to show you where to go. Seems like the new generation of players are so stupid they can't understand simple instructions like "go north, then east between the mountains" and need to be hand held all the time.

 

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Mmmm..DAoC the lady of the lake. There was a certain area she was supposed to spawn at around a certain sort of time but she didn't always follow the schedule. At least she didn't when I camped her. The fun part was that she was part of a quest line. I'd like to see some more random / rare spawns that give quests n such.

 

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Agreed.

 

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I used to care about rare spawns in Vanilla as a hunter. I don't know how many days, even weeks, that I spent trying to tame rare pets. But once BC hit I pretty much gave up on rare spawns. I realized that spending such a ridiculous amount of time trying to tame a rare pet was a waste of time.

Now if I come across a rare spawn, I kill it. Unless it's a potential hunter pet. I still remember all of the wasted hours I spent in the past trying to tame a pet, and wouldn't want that on my worst enemy. Well... ok, maybe on Korrigan... possibly Spooky. But that's all, I swear.

Simple fact is, rare spawns are just another way for Blizzard to institute a time sink. That's all WoW is. That's all pretty much every current MMO is. A time sink.

And I doubt we'll see any MMO become anything but a timesink in the foreseeable future. It's kind of the nature of the beast when it comes to pay-to-play monthly subscription games.

 

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I remember killing a bunch of rare spawns in vanilla, Wrath, and Cataclysm. And honestly they seemed pointless aside from "oh hey look a named mob". They never dropped loot I would want to use, even on an alt, and weren't very challenging. So I suppose that achievement in Wrath was the best, uh, "evolution" of rare spawns I saw. And now apparently that's gone.

 

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No more vanity pet rares!

I want to see the rare pet spawns come back like in vanilla WoW where they had special abilities that ordinary versions did not,like faster attack speeds. I remember spending near 3 weeks camping for broken tooth because of its faster attack speed which gave me a slight DPS boost thus worth the effort.

Not a single rare pet in WoW is really worth the effort anymore.