[Collection] Collecting, the unreachable goal

Community WoW Community Council
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Collecting has become a huge part of the game, ever since achievements entered the field in WoTLK.

I am a pet collector myself, I know plenty of other pet collectors, but also mount, transmog and toy collectors.

The sad truth about being a collector is that it is almost if not impossible to get 100% in a certain area.

If I want to get all the pets, I will need to spend €10.000 if not more. If I want to get Tyrael’s Hilt for instance, I will need to dish out €1500!

If mount collectors want the Spectral Tiger, they will need to spend €8000-€5000 to get it, which is absolutely ridiculous.

I could give a lot more examples of pets, mounts, and toys that have a ridiculous price tag on them, Old CE’s of Blizzard games come to mind. I know Blizzard does not set these outrageous prices, but they’re not helping it anyway.

There is no prestige in having paid with real-life money items over other people, it’s just a self-proclaimed ego bloat.

There are some transmog items that are no longer obtainable, for whatever reason, and I know at least they’re slowly bringing them back, but I just don’t think it is enough.

The argument about Gladiator and AOTC mounts and transmog are somewhat valid, but they should not be entirely unobtainable, let people pick what reward they want, let gladiator title be obtained per character per season and KSM too.

Add in a legacy mode where you can do mythics raids on the difficulty they were in that expansion and get AOTC mounts like that. I am not talking about the end of raid boss drops that become 1% drop after, I am talking about the Grove Warden from WoD (friendship moose) or the dragon that you got for killing N’zoth in BfA, I am sure there are more examples.

I know slowly Blizzard is adding TCG mounts, pets, transmog and toys as Twitch drops, but in a year, they’re unobtainable again.

Please, stop abusing FOMO, it’s cruel and sucks fun out of the game.

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I know collectors want to have everything in the game. I’m far from a full fledged collector, but I enjoy doing mount and transmog runs from time to time to get to get an item I don’t already have.

That being said. I have said it many times and I will continue to say it.

FOMO Cosmetics are perfectly fine.
FOMO Content is not.

Gladiator mounts are some of the coolest models in the game. If I had the Season 1 Dragonflight mount transformation I would probably never ride another mount again because it’s fantastic, but I would have had to do the content to get it.

There is a prestige factor with these items is very real.

Now the TCG items are a different story to me. I agree the prices are absurd these days and while it is good to see some of the items come to the Trading Post, I dont think they all should. The prices are what they are from basic economics… when supply < demand, price increases. In extreme cases, like that of the Spectral Tiger, where supply <<<< demand, the price increases drastically, which is why you see them selling for $10,000.

I’m fairly indifferent on whether the TCG stuff gets added to the Trading Post. I don’t personally consider those items to be part of the collection as they aren’t earnable in game.

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I hate FOMO anything. Any limited time thing I do not like. Especially if that limited time thing hinges on an additional purchase. Just scummy tactics to get consumers to spend money.

As far as collecting goes, if an item is unobtainable now or costs real money to get or is from the BMAH I just wrote it off and don’t even think about it for “100% completion”.

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As a collector, I know we can’t have everything in game at once, some things,
like the realm first achievements, scarab lord, etc. we don’t necessarily like it, but we understand that.

However that stuff is the vast minority of removed content,
A couple days ago I posted a thread (here) which Im turning into a list of removed content (broad categories not every item, quest and rep it would be to long)

Honestly, this list which while big, but not massive, probably accounts for atleast 80%+ of unobtainable content, and most of them, aren’t things that anyone has a problem with returning

Dataforazeroth fan site, has been a big motivator for me and a lot of others as well, (for those who don’t know, its a collection tracker combined with a collecting leaderboard)

but as of now, someone starting out on their collecting journey in WoW, often gets discouraged, not because of how much content there is. they get discouraged at the fact that, even if they were to collect everything possible for a new character to complete now, there are just some categories they can’t ever become a high ranker in, its just not possible.

Long story short, collectors are resigned to the occasional temporary feat of strength,
but it being completely impossible to compete for the high ranking spots, frustrates people

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Collecting stuff has become content in this game, it’s not just raiding, rbgs, M+ and Arena.

I am not saying Gladiator mounts should be given for free, but let people be able to earn previous Gladiator mounts on other characters.

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Based on the latest builds of the ptr, it seems it’ll be possible to craft the Tier 3 sets (which (in)famously go for a lot of gold on the BMAH otherwise). Cannot overstate how good this is - and exactly the sort of thing we need, to match everything else already brought up in this thread.

On the topic of FOMO cosmetics, I don’t agree at all that they’re “fine” by being permanently gone. That’s not to say they should be given away for free, but in exchange for a similar amount of effort that would have taken to acquire them. Let very high end gladiators eventually assemble old elite sets somehow, for instance.

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The reason I don’t agree with this - and to be clear, I’ve never reached Gladiator so this is my perspective and I admit I could be wrong - is that in each season it may be easier or harder to hit gladiator.

You may see someone with a Season 1 BFA Gladiator mount on a monk and say “oh wow, it was really hard to hit Glad on Monk that season, good for them” In a similar way that you would look at AOTC on Kil’Jaeden as more impressive than Sarkareth.

EDIT: I forgot about the change that made all Glad mounts account wide. This argument could still be true if one season were particularly more challenging than another.

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Fair argument, and I suppose anything related to PvP is more contentious than most other topics. I’d still make the separation of Elite rewards (so the time limited elite sets, which, if blizzard’s standards are used, have the same difficulty to acquire as 1600 rating, save for the last 2 pieces) and the gladiator rewards (which are also time limited, but far harder to achieve with 2100, iirc). This is using the most recent rating brackets ofc, I’m aware they changed some time in SL.

The latter I’ll concede seems fairly reasonable to leave as limited, as it does, imo, have the same prestige as Famed titles, or at least AOTC, depending on your view, but I don’t think it would be detrimental to have alternative ways to acquire the former later on. Just my view on it tho!

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But thats a Blizzard mistake. If they make Monks absolutely poo poo, thats on them… the playerbase shouldnt “suffer” because of that.

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I do not agree with this sentiment. I’m 98%+ in almost every dungeon and raid section on All The Things. Outdoor Zones - 99%+. World Drops 99%+ (all boes)
91%+ in all expansion features with only a few being classified in my mind as being unobtainable. Such as Garrison Command table Tormented and broken Armament tmog.
The short of what I’m saying is that I can’t see a single category overall that you can’t get nearly everything in the game.
All the options for Cash Money buys, you can get in game for gold. All of them. It’s not likely for many, impossible to some in their minds. Everything circulates in game for gold.

The mentality that you will never find a Spectral tiger for below (x)($$$$) is wrong. People sell them for cheap all the time. It’s not widely publicized. Goblins out there can confirm this. Will they, maybe not. I know from experience every single item in the game, is sold for low price points at certain times of the year.

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Am I missing something or did you just prove his point even more? You sound like an ambitious collector and if I understand you correctly, even you can’t collect 100%.

I still don’t see things added to the BMAH as something that’s obtainable. Of course you can grind the gold to buy all things that show up there for gold cap but that shouldn’t be the way to get them. There’s no “collecting” part to that, just that you know how to use the normal AH to get money.

There is no new TGC rewards produced which means that at some point, you can’t get them. All TGC items should be moved to in game rewards, events or worst case, the normal store.

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What I left out that I assumed was evident, which isn’t. Is that I can 100% all these categories. I would showcase the remaining items on my ATT list to prove this except that’s a lot of excess bloat in the thread.

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Yet, you will never be able to collect some of the elite gladiator sets if you’ve missed one season :).

I shouldn’t need to search the dark web for some duped item that people will sell for gold cap, this goes for some tcg mounts and pets, but also old Blizzcon rewards and several IP CE rewards.

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I think most, if not virtually all of the people who think they would like to collect every item in the game and be upset that there are some that they can’t, are people the don’t realize just how much time investment is involved to get to 99%.
I play this game every day for 3-4 hours every morning. For 6 years since I went a little harder on collecting. Every day. I’m still only 95% Insane Account Completion Mode on All The Things.

The drive and dedication to get to this ranking I would surmise basically everyone doesn’t have. There are so many reasons to stop playing the game. Life.

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The more reason to stop putting in unreasonable barriers :slight_smile:

I’m rank 1 pet collector on my server, I’ve hit a ceiling because of the CE pets and still some TCG, its disheartening that the chances of me getting all the pets are very very low.

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Those 1% are things people want, not necessarily because they want to collect 100% but because some of those 1% items are cool items. There are also tons of other cool items in the 99% of items that are available and I grind for those as well (ex Tusks of Mannoroth). I started playing two months after WoWs 10th anniversary so I will never be able to get the Core Hound mount despite it probably being my favorite ground mount in the game.

There are collector’s that don’t want to collect 100% but want to collect things that they like that has been in the game but has since been removed.

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Let’s say we’re talking about the items in the game that you want personally. Say it’s 40 of them. They are the only items you’ve ever wanted.
You’ve missed the content or didn’t farm for the items when the expansion (at the time) was relevant. For whatever reason there may have been.

Can you explain in an objective statement why all of those items, if any, should be given back to you as a player because you missed that content.

Is it simply that you want the appearances?
You like the aesthetics? The lore items? The colour, shape or size?
Is it more of a fundamental objectification towards a gameplay style that is controlled and moderated by a company that doesn’t understand how to keep their players engaged and interested, maybe?

We can all say we want things that are appealing to us, for any reason. I’m wondering if we can find substance in a valid reason that makes sense to the powers that be. We have the means to bring a voice to their ears in some sense. Let’s articulate the conversations as best we can.

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I would not say that I want Blizzard to simply “give” me the mount. I’m saying that it should be available to get if you wanted to go for it. I’d be happy to help provide suggestions for how things could become available but there are probably other players/CC members/Blizzard employees that are far more qualified for that than me.

I realize at the end, we’re bound to have some things that can’t be collected by everyone. But as it stands now, the game has a considerable amount of things that is under the “FOMO/you missed out on this” umbrella and there seems to be no indication of it stopping.

We can use the Core Hound as an example (seeing as it’s no longer available, I already mentioned it and it works fine for your questions).

For some people, that’s for sure one of the reasons. But I don’t think that drives everyone. Some people just want to make a sick looking transmog and they’re missing that one item to match with it. I for one am trying to collect all the mounts in the Cloud Serpent family because I love those mounts (they fit well with my Pandarian Monk and its transmog).

Yes! The reason I want the Core Hound is that it would match with my main characters current transmog (Dark Iron Dwarf with Heritage Armor/Weapons). I know that the dog exists and I use it from time to time but it’s a bit underwhelming in size for what I’m looking for.

Totally understandable and I agree! I hope my answers above helps to achieve that goal.

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