What you need to know
- World of Warcraft is getting a range of free items for watching Twitch streams to celebrate the launch of the upcoming Dragonflight expansion.
- The Twitch Drops will be rewarded for watching specific streams for a set amount of hours, and includes a mega-rare Feldrake mount.
- The Feldrake is available only via out-of-print trading cards, which sell for as much as $3500 USD on Ebay.
- One of the cards was sold as recently as last week. Oops.
To celebrate the upcoming launch of World of Warcraft: Dragonflight, Blizzard is partnering up with Twitch to offer a range of rare toys and mounts as a reward for watching streams of the game.
Explained on the official WoW forums, users will be able to nab the following goodies on set days throughout the end of November and December, after WoW: Dragonflight officially launches on November 28th, 2022. If you link your Twitch account to your Battle.net for WoW, then complete the viewing hour requirements below, you’ll gain access to the rewards soon after.
- Dragonkite pet (view 4 hours): Nov 15th, 10:00 a.m. PST to Nov 17th, 11:59 p.m. PST.
- Feldrake mount (view 4 hours): Nov 28th, 10:00 a.m. PST to Nov 30th, 11:59 p.m. PST.
- Purple Firework toy (view 2 hours): Dec 13th, 10:00 a.m. PST to Dec 28th, 11:59 p.m. PST.
- Ichabod pet (gift 2 subs): Nov 28 at 10:00 a.m. PST to Dec 12 at 11:59 p.m. PST.
Seems all fine and dandy right? Well, this may be the most controversial Twitch Drops, erm, drop, in history, since one of the rewards above is rather insanely valued at over $3000 U.S. dollars. Yes, you read that correctly.
The hyper-rare Feldrake, even as I write this, has eBay listings (opens in new tab) running into the thousands of dollars. The only way to obtain this rare classic mount is to use a code situated on the back of out-of-print Warcraft trading cards. The Feldrake was among the most rare cards from The Burning Crusade expansion, released all the way back in 2007. Feldrakes are regular dragons inflicted with demonic fel energy, giving them that sickly green hue as seen in the picture above.
If you have one of the Feldrake trading cards with the loot code intact and unused, you’re sitting on a small goldmine. Or at least, you were sitting on a goldmine until today.
The most hardcore WoW fans out there have been willing to pay hundreds, and even thousands, to obtain some of the “loot” from the real-life trading cards. I’ve purchased a few of the cheaper ones myself, being the colossal nerd that I am, although I am sadly not nearly nerdy (or rich) enough to drop $3500 on a Feldrake. Thankfully, I won’t have to, owing to the Twitch drops in November, although some fans are decrying the apparent devaluation of one of WoW’s rarest items.
One reddit post noticed that someone purchased a Feldrake card as recently as last week. Given the fact these mounts will be far more commonplace after November’s Twitch drops, the value of the physical card is likely to plummet quite aggressively in the coming days.
Collecting rare mounts in World of Warcraft is one of the game’s most popular side-activities. Mount collecting was always popular, but it seems to have ramped up in recent years. Perhaps it’s partially owing to the fact prestige for actual gear has diminished since Blizzard stopped adding as many unique armor models for end-game content, coupled with the rise of transmogrification (swapping equipped armor visuals for something else). There are many common mounts that can be purchased via an in-game store, or earned through basic in-game activities. But there are incredibly rare mounts that drop from certain bosses and have drop rates below 1% per kill.
The rarity of the Feldrake and the discussion surrounding it is an interesting point of reflection in a year where debates about artificially-rare digital NFTs and metaversal property seem to have dominated headlines.
Indeed, while Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg sinks billions to define value in digital worlds, here’s World of Warcraft, making headlines with hyper-rare digital items from almost two decades ago.
World of Warcraft is available on PC for $10 per month at Battle.net, and even the cheapest GPUs can run it!
