Why WoW’s Collector’s Bounty Event Deserves a Permanent Spot in Timewalking

For the past month, World of Warcraft's The War Within expansion has been running an event in-game called Collector's Bounty. For those not in the know, this event multiplied the droprates of mounts (and gear) which come from raid and dungeon bosses from older content several times over. Seeing mounts like Ji-Kun out of the Throne of Thunder raid boost up to a 7% drop chance from its original 2% gives you a huge opportunity to collect those hard to get trophies of the past.

But, with today's maintenance, the event has concluded. Let's see what I was able to takeaway from the event and most importantly, look at what Blizzard could do for Collector's Bounty in the future.

The Bounty Helper AddOn

If you're anything like me, you've likely forgotten about some of the mounts that you're missing and exactly where those mounts are from, or perhaps you're just looking for a checklist for raid & dungeon mount collecting. The Collector's Bounty Helper addon, created by Bettiold, was the best way to see what you still needed to complete each week on a per-character basis.

Many thanks to Bettiold for the clean interface and having something basic that just worked. We didn't need anything over the top for this, just a quick and dirty list with their kill statuses. The addon apparently will be supported going forward, which is great because its a very handy piece of kit to take on your adventures across old Azeroth and beyond when looking to go and get some old mounts.

No Dice

You can't win them all and it's comical at how many times one can run a mount each week with increased drop chances and see nothing. It's not that anything is ever a guarantee, but it looks like Onyxia's mount will continue to be the bane of my existence.

Which honestly I'm not even mad about, it's comical! I also still don't have the Blazing Drake from Deathwing so "Awake the Drakes" will continue to elude me all these years later.

On that note, I've been doing the Spine of Deathwing fight wrong for the past half year because in Patch 11.0.5 (October 2024) the fight, along with other mechanics in Dragon Soul were changed! As it turns out you no longer need to wait for 9 magma pools to spawn to trigger the Amalgamation's Nuclear Blast to pop off Deathwing's armor. Oops. I've been used to just tabbing out to wait for Dragon Soul boss mechanics. I discovered this one late last night when I accidentally killed an ooze early... PAIN!

Dice

Not all was pain though during Collector's Bounty because I finally finished several mounts that I never again will need to worry about obtaining and that feels amazing. To kick things off, the absurdity of the Zul'Gurub Zulian Panther mount, a place I ran exactly 40 times during the first few weeks of the event. I was blown away how the mount hadn't dropped yet and then, twice in one run!

It's hilarious how this is possible and it goes to show you how insane it is that a particular mount doesn't drop from a boss kill. My understanding of the entire Collector's Bounty event is that Blizzard doubled the loot tables for every boss in old content so if you have 3 gear slots that drop, now you have 6, and if you have 1 mount slot that can roll a mount, they've made it 2. That effectively gives you 2 chances to get a mount per kill of a boss. Perhaps Zul'Gurub unintentionally has 2 mount slots on the drop table for High Priestess Kilnara and so my understanding is wrong, but seeing 2 mounts off the single kill proves that at least some bosses did have 2 mount slots during the event which means 2 RNG rolls.

I received the following mounts during the event, in addition to the aforementioned panther:

• Experiment 12-B from Ultraxion (Dragon Soul)
• Rivendare's Deathcharger from Lord Rivendare (Stratholme)
• Drake of the North Wind from Altairus (Vortex Pinnacle)
• Spawn of Horridon from Horridon (Throne of Thunder)

Overall, it was a solid event for myself and during the hunt for mounts I also found an absurd amount of transmog, and made over 150k gold from selling drops that flooded my mailboxes. That isn't a lot of money by modern day WoW standards, but it will certainly pay for a good chunk of repairs going forward for running more up-to-date content.

The Future of Collector's Bounty

Blizzard hasn't made any confirmations about the event going forward, but I have a suggestion and it's incredibly thematic for the event; Add it to Timewalking. I won't pretend this is some novel idea, I'm certain that many others have talked about this already but I do believe this would be the best way forward. When the event first kicked off, it was magical seeing so many players in front of various dungeons and raids across the world and it made things feel lively again.

Chromie, I know you can make it happen!

An MMORPG is a game where you should see players all the time and in the old worlds, its not a guarantee you will see people out and about, even on a Tuesday after resets where you might see a fellow disgruntled mount farmer running into Icecrown Citadel for the 900th time looking for Invincible.

If Blizzard were to bring back increased mount droprates during each dungeon or raid's Timewalking week, we'd start to see those parts of the world flood with players again during targeted times. It's not even like it is that common to see Timewalking as an event on the World of Warcraft calendar, where we normally see it take place every few weeks, and even then, it's only one expansion at a time. This would let us see each expansion of old content get a focus a couple of times a year and reduce the madness of running so many raids at once. I certainly was unable to keep up with every single raid on even a single character each week, there were just too many things to do!

But, if we can see this happen every few weeks in a different place in Azeroth and beyond, it will bring that much-needed activity to the world outside current content and I'd love that. Perhaps Blizzard could bump up the Timewalking slightly more and bring us world quests in different old zones during each Timewalking event as well - a topic for another day!

An alternative could be a yearly return of Collector's Bounty during the WoW Anniversary events towards the end of the year. It might make a potentially packed schedule of activities a bit more hectic though, so I'd much prefer having Timewalking hold the keys to the increased drop rates instead, as long as Collector's Bounty returns, I won't complain. Blizzard, you pulled off a fantastic mid-content event and I'm looking forward to seeing what you have for us next.

Which mounts were you able to secure during the event? Were you able to 100% transmog from any of the raids? Let us know about your experiences with the event in the comments below!