Picture this: you just obtained an amazing looking mount, hours before the mount becomes unobtainable, or you just bought a mount right before it was removed from the store (as is now the case for the Celestial Steed and Winged Guardian). If you cared about anything that went on in the game, you would probably be relieved to obtain that said mount, knowing that now the mount is part of your collection, never to be obtainable again.
This is the very basic core concept that has been in place in the game for many years in the past, and it is also what creates a sense of exclusivity, prestige, value, meaningfulness for any given item: knowing that YOU got this, and no one else afterwards will be able to obtain it ever again. Adding any item that was removed from the game back to the game removes all value of that said item, both in terms of monetary value as well as any prestige that might come with it.
Using the Tyrael’s Charger as an example here, in the past, you would see someone ride this mount and you would instantly recognize them as an OG player. Now, you look at someone who rides this mount and they’re just some dude who could afford a measly 500k or 25 euros. It was unnecessary to bring back any of the items you brought back the way you did: the transmog helmets, the Swift Windsteed, the Tyrael’s Charger, and worst of all, the Feldrake. Yes, it is true that the mount did not generate any revenue for Blizzard while being sold off on some website, (probably not even 1% of Feldrake owners actually bought it off some marketplace with real money regardless), but that does not mean that it did not generate revenue back when they added it. How many people do you actually think bought a single TCG pack, opened it, and got a Feldrake mount? One in…some extremely small number.
Most mounts that were inserted into the game via the TCG cards came from people who bought tens, maybe hundreds of packs to get the mount. Duped mounts aside (whose fault for can only be traced back to Blizzard, really), those card packs all cost money, which went to Blizzard. As for the other two, yes they were just cheap mounts in the store when they were obtainable. As soon as you removed them, their value started increasing.
A Tyrael’s Charger 10-11 years ago maybe cost the price of a 1 year sub, but nowadays I guarantee there would’ve been people, especially collectors, who would have paid gold caps to obtain the mount, not to show off to the plebs, but either just to have the mount because it’s one of their favorite, or to rightfully show off, to the people who understood it’s value and meaning, as is still the case with everything else in the game: Mythic gear, M+ rating, PvP rating, etc. Yes, the casuals who play 4 hours a week will see someone riding a Glad mount and not care or might not even know what it means, but the rest of the players do. The same thing applies to all the other items you reintroduced, yes they had a set value when introduced, but as time went on, that value increased and they became more exclusive.
You get the point here: unobtainable = exclusive, exclusive = desirable, valuable, meaningful to any player who still cares about the game. If you think it’s just a mount or just a game, good for you, that just puts you in with the rest of the people who don’t care, this thread is not meant for you, although please do keep reading, maybe you will change your mind. For everyone else, amongst which are the dedicated and loyal WoW players (despite all the shenanigans), these things have some importance.
It would not have annoyed any part of the player base if you (Blizzard) would have just recolored the Feldrake and put that in the twitch drops. Or even, for once, make a new and unique model for a promotion that is not part of the WoW Shop? Crazy, right? Everyone that got the Feldrake via the twitch drops would’ve just as gladly put some random streamer on mute in the background for 4 hours: the casuals, the collectors, as well as everyone else who wanted to obtain the mount. Notice that I’m not adding new players into these groups, because if a player were shallow enough to start playing the game over a drake they got from a twitch drop, they would barely generate any revenue for you, and long-time players who invest time into the game are the ones who are paying your bills, and allowing you to continue to do what you are doing at the end of the day, not the 1 month sub fresh players.
You put in effort to farm the Gold to purchase a Swift Spectral Tiger, or Brutosaur, or any other demanding vanity item - which allows you to purchase it, own it, and show it off to your friends, and to anyone else if that’s what you want to do. You put in effort to clear a Mythic raid with your guild, get loot, and then show it (or your parses) off. You put in effort to get 2.4K rating in PvP and then get the Gladiator mount, which in turn gives you the right to show off your prestigious rewards. Just like you would in real life - putting effort into something in turn gets you something, which you can then use and show off. I would even say that some of the more rare TCG mounts in the current day and at their current Gold prices are more difficult to obtain than Mythic gear if you were to compare all of these activities side by side as if starting from absolute scratch (although this is not part of the point).
At what point do we stop giving away items and rewarding people for 0 to very little effort? There are many playing the game right now, some of which are close friends of mine, who enjoy farming, and whose goal is to save up enough Gold to purchase a Swift Spectral Tiger (or some other vanity item they love), so do we just put that in the next Twitch Drop? What about the X-51 Rockets? Why not the '08 Blizzard Bear mount and pet? Surely the fans who paid to attend Blizzcon in person and get a reward in the process won’t mind, right? Maybe for every extra hour you watch on Twitch, you get a random Mythic Raid level item in your mailbox, since it has no importance!
But hey - I get it. It’s the end of the year, the shareholders are not happy with how Shadowlands turned out, gotta pop some cooldowns and pump those statistics and charts as if it were Details! Looking forward to the obvious upcoming drops for the Grinning Reaver, Armored Bloodwing, Mottled Drake, as well as Bobby’s new yacht (kek).
No TLDR, just some sincere feedback from someone who has supported Blizzard for a long time. If you agree, great, if not, great. Thank you for reading if you did.