Sneaky World of Warcraft hotfix titles players 'Champion of the Dragonflights' a whole week after a dramatic cutscene did, leads to most getting their full honours while standing around doing nothing
It's a cut above a pat on the back and a 'well done', at least.
World of Warcraft's Seeds of Renewal patch is out: adding worldwide dragonriding, the reclamation of Gilneas, follower dungeons, and an altogether surprising amount of meat for an interval patch.
Included in the update was a cheesy—though warranted—little scene where the dragon aspects congratulate you for your part in knocking over all their raid bosses for them, with Vyranoth's proto-dragon form (pictured left below) kinda making her look like an intern that stumbled into the wrong meeting.
"We proclaim you: Champion of the Dragonflights!" announces the life-binder Alexstrasa to a swelling chorus of music. Your character raises their weapon to the air surrounded by a fleet of drakes, it's all very cute.
Only, some players noticed something was wrong—you never actually get the title. For the uninitiated, WoW has a 'title' system that's become all-but standard for MMORPGs these days, giving you something to slap next to your name for bragging rights, jokes, or just roleplay kicks.
It is admittedly very funny to have this fully-voiced, written, and animated cutscene celebrating your player's involvement, giving them an in-universe title… only for that title to not carry over into the game. The aspects might as well have reached down and plonked a gold star sticker on your character's breastplate.
As spotted by WoWHead, Blizzard has quickly added a hotfix to sort everything out, turning the grandiose title into an actual in-game thing. The team did this so quietly, in fact, that it appears to have confused some players in a thread on the game's forums.
One writes: "Mine randomly got awarded five minutes ago while AFK’ing in town," to which another player responds: "[I'm] happy to not be alone in the mysterious title acquisition." The timestamps on the post match WoWhead's post almost to the hour, so it looks like players have been rewarded retroactively.
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Ultimately—assuming the title wasn't just forgotten in the first place—it's a nice gesture to rush back in and slap that bumper sticker onto Seeds of Renewal's epilogue quests. The dev team could've let this slide, and I doubt anyone would've noticed or cared—especially considering the title's not rare or anything, you get it after knocking out a couple of quests.
Harvey's history with games started when he first begged his parents for a World of Warcraft subscription aged 12, though he's since been cursed with Final Fantasy 14-brain and a huge crush on G'raha Tia. He made his start as a freelancer, writing for websites like Techradar, The Escapist, Dicebreaker, The Gamer, Into the Spine—and of course, PC Gamer. He'll sink his teeth into anything that looks interesting, though he has a soft spot for RPGs, soulslikes, roguelikes, deckbuilders, MMOs, and weird indie titles. He also plays a shelf load of TTRPGs in his offline time. Don't ask him what his favourite system is, he has too many.