A legendary weapon in WoW: WotLK Classic was much stronger than expected. The error was only discovered and corrected after more than 15 years.
In a game with the lifespan of World of Warcraft, small bugs and glitches are part of everyday life. Bugs are also found in the beloved “Wrath of the Lich King Classic” from time to time, which are only now being eliminated, almost 15 years after the original launch. Ironically, one of the most famous legendary weapons in the game was afflicted with a “small” bug that simply made it 10 times more powerful than originally thought.
What is this weapon? “Val’anyr, Hammer of the Ancient Kings” is a legendary mace that only healers could get in the Ulduar raid. In order to secure the weapon, a total of 30 fragments had to be collected, each of which was dropped from the bosses with a very low probability. The weapon then had to be hurled into Yogg-Saron’s maw for it to complete.
The mace has a pretty powerful effect, as it could cause heals to also create a protective shield on the target. This was quite powerful and coveted for a long time.
What error was found? Blizzard’s QA team racked their brains after spotting a bug. The maximum shield strength that Val’anyr could generate was much greater than intended. A feverish search for the error broke out and people racked their brains about what could trigger it.
In the end, the solution was very simple – because there was simply one 0 too many hidden in the WoW code. As a result, Val’anyr was able to absorb a total of up to 200,000 damage as a shield instead of the originally planned maximum of 20,000 damage.
Errors remained undetected for many years: The bug wasn’t “Classic Exclusive” by the way – it also existed in the original variant of Wrath of the Lich King. In addition, this bug was only fixed many expansions later. This made it even more difficult for the quality assurance staff, because since they saw the same code in the original data and that of other extensions, no error could be found here at first glance.
In fact, Val’anyr was able to absorb 10 times more damage than originally thought – even if the maximum value of 200,000 HP can’t be reached in most cases, because that would require more than 1,300,000 healing in cause in a short time. That was nearly impossible for healers in the days of Wrath of the Lich King.
Nevertheless, it is interesting that some errors remain in the game for more than 15 years – and were not found by the otherwise attentive WoW community.