I do find it strange that they would drop the rare icon but keep the gold one for elites.
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Maybe if they made it a little more flashy it could work. It needs something. Give it a more exciting vibe to click on and realize you just found something special.
Sort of makes me think though, maybe I’m just stuck in the past still. Rare mobs really aren’t what they used to be. Lol they are more or less dailies now.
I like the old one better still anyways 
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I hadn’t considered that. It seems rather petty and thus plausible.
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The mini-map icon at least is quite visible, I’ll give them that—though not Bushtail there or others in Kalimdor/Eastern-Kingdoms, since it doesn’t seem to be implemented in those areas (yet) though it was in MoP through SL areas from what I checked…didn’t check TBC or WotLK rares—however, the unit frame icon is too small at the very least. I’ve used handy-notes/Tomcat’s/RareCoordinator etc + NPCScan for years, so the mini-map icon is not a big deal to me though it’s nice that it’s in the default UI; however, the frame icon is just too “meh” and small for me to like.
Yeah. Some in older expansions do have quite a bit longer respawns, while more recent ones they might as well just be referred to as “uniques” (or “champion” since there are millions of player characters who get called that too 
) instead of “rares”.
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Absolute BS from the person you quoted.
Again, we, the players were constantly whining at Blizzard for using the silver dragon on mobs that ‘weren’t rare’ and this has been happening since Warlords of Draenor released in 2014.
UI update finally gave them the opportunity to get rid of the rare icon that we kept complaining about them using.
Also, let’s be real for a moment right? A lot of players have been using custom UI addons which, yes, get rid of the silver dragon anyway. So it’s something most players weren’t seeing because of their choice of UI addons, and it was something that players were complaining about Blizzard using. Them removing it is hardly a surprise.
Heh. I didn’t say it was true, it just sounds petty enough to be plausible.
It’s interesting to hear that there was such an anti-dragon movement for so long. Of all the annoying factors in the game to get on player’s radar, this was a critical bother? Aside from faster spawn times of the silver mobs and them not being quite as difficult, (which are the two themes I’m seeing come up about them), was there more reason to want the frames gone?
Can you catch me up on this saga?
Basically from Vanilla WoW to Mists of Pandaria, the Silver Dragon around a monster meant that it was a rare spawn. These monsters would only spawn once every few hours, and some of them were exceptionally rare and sought after, either because they dropped something unique (be it a toy, pet or piece of equipment) they were tameable by hunters (such as Loque’nahak in Wrath of the Lich King) or they were necessary to kill for an achievement.
Then Warlords of Draenor came along and Blizzard changed things up. From Warlords onwards, the ‘rare mobs’ didn’t have long spawn times and would respawn just like any other mob, they were guaranteed kills that you didn’t have to hunt or camp for, and they had guaranteed loot, but they’d only drop that loot once (at least until BFA I believe, then if a rare mob became the target of a world quest, they could drop that loot again if it was something that could be equipped)
This pissed people off, and so during Warlords of Draenor you’d have players on these forums and elsewhere getting upset that Blizzard was ‘cheapening the silver dragon’ and making mobs not rare anymore. There were many threads calling for Blizzard to stop using the silver dragon, since the mobs weren’t rare anymore, they were just named mobs that were a bit tougher and dropped guaranteed loot.
And this happened with every expansion. Legion, BFA and Shadowlands all had people writing threads complaining that rares weren’t rare and that the silver dragon shouldn’t be used. And now we’re here. No more silver dragon and folks are demanding it return, which is just exhausting really.
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Rares aren’t rare anymore. They are “vignettes” or side stories. They will respawn in minutes instead of hours or days. It is time for them to lose those dragons as they aren’t very special anymore.
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Oh, hi Grumbl… nm.
Well if there’s addons that’ll take them off, there’s bound to be ones that can put them back on. I had no idea this was even a player gripe and I’ve camped plenty of rares for my hunter pets. Weird that over the past 17 years of playing this game, I’m only now hearing about the contention. Learn something new every day I s’pose. Thanks for the info!
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I thought the same thing too.
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Hmm I searched GD going as far back as 2019 and didn’t find a single post where someone wanted to get rid of the silver dragon portrait around rare mobs. Could you help me find where all these threads are located?
Or are you just conflating “rares aren’t rare anymore” with “rares shouldn’t have the silver portrait anymore?”
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That’s pretty much exactly what they’re doing. At a minimum, the silver portrait let you know that it might drop some interesting loot and that’s enough to keep it.
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2019 was BFA. We’d already gone through five years of rares being generic mobs that might drop a little something extra by that point. Most of those threads popped up in WoD when it first changed, then again briefly in Legion when people remembered it was a thing. After that it’s mostly just people complaining that rares aren’t rare anymore.
I don’t care if it’s here or not, honestly. The only time I see the gold/silver dragons are during alpha/beta when addons are disabled. But if they want to give options, make it a toggle in the unit frame’s edit mode with a default to not enabled.
I’ve been on these forums since Wrath. Never seen anyone ask for the silver dragon portrait to be removed.
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I’m aware. I really didn’t want to bother going back any further because if I hadn’t come across one post over the past 3 years, I figure the complaints must not be nearly as prevalent as the person I quoted is claiming. I figure they’re just bs’ing to be contrarian, but wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt.
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To be fair, not seeing something in the deluge of “WoD is awful” threads isn’t a surprise. They were there though, and not just here but elsewhere too. They were mostly a lot of complaining to complain, like normal. At the time I believe Blizzard had said they wanted to point to it as something you should kill because it might have something for you, and then the rare indicator would go away.
Now they’re marking those mob types with something else and people are losing their minds.
No, there were snark comments made. No one was actually serious. “Rares aren’t rare, might as well not even label them,” isn’t the same as “I don’t like the silver dragon portrait, it needs changed to something else.”
You’re conflating the complaints about how rares work with “silver dragon needs to be replaced.”
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I don’t think anyone ever said the silver dragon needed replaced, but that those rares didn’t need to be identified that way because they weren’t the sort of mob that the silver dragon was meant to indicate.
Soundless is a rare.
Nakk is a rare.
Time-Lost Proto-Drake is a rare.
Those having a silver dragon would be appropriate.
Hirukon is not a rare.
Reliwik the Defiant is not a rare.
Rustfeather is not a rare.
Those shouldn’t have the silver dragon, but having something to indicate they might be a mob of interest is fine.
Regardless, I also think it would be fine if Blizzard gave an option in Edit Mode to turn it back on for those who want it. Though, I think maybe they should first make the target frame mirror the player frame, because the fact that they both look different seems weirder to me than the silver dragon situation.
I’ll need more than “you said so” for that if you are going to call BS.
I’ve been here since the second year of WoW and I don’t remember this big outrage over silver dragon portraits.
Now maybe I am wrong, it was a long time ago, so If I am, let’s see it.