Liverless boars and other Azerothian freaks of nature
by Elizabeth Wachowski 
Jan 21st 2007 at 1:00PM
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People have long noted that quests to gather animal parts usually have illogically low drop rates. There are enough hoofless zhevras, talonless harpies, eyeless buzzards, and brainless basilisks running around Azeroth to confuse a whole university of evolutionary biologists. ("Hey, maybe they knew adventurers were killing them for their horns, so they evolved illusionary horns! Huh? Huh?") Strangely, bosses always have their organs, but only if you're on a quest for them. Maybe that's how they got to be bosses, because they weren't randomly missing their hearts and ears and such.
The lore's explanation for this is that when you're fighting the beasts and demons, a lot of their organs get squished into an unusable state. So if you don't find a horn on that satyr, you chopped it in half with your sword, and if you don't find a brain in that ogre, you used Mind Flay one too many times. This works for most things, but one of the Hellfire Peninsula quests really tests this idea.
You're supposed to return orc blood to an apothecary. A warrior guildmate of mine got extremely frustrated by the low drop rate, and asked, "I'm hitting these orcs with an axe. Shouldn't there be blood all over?" Try as we might, we couldn't think of an explanation for it. A mage might have fried up all the blood with a fireball, and maybe a warlock or hunter's pet could have drank the blood before the character got to it (ew), but a warrior can't really do anything to keep blood from being unusable.
Can you think of a reason why the blood might not have been there? Have you run into anything as confusing as this while looking for various body parts?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Quests
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Teh Phri4r Jan 21st 2007 1:09PM
I think that maybe you needed uncontaminated blood. Blood mixed with dirt or pet hair would be worthless I think.
Im beginning to hate trying to get to 60 Jan 21st 2007 1:54PM
he donated blood earlier that day, how else do you think you beat him? attacking a donor while he's weak... shame on you.
Finnicks Daerkhiv Jan 21st 2007 3:23PM
I agree with number one. Blood on your axe is probably contaminated and unusual for Alchemical experimentation.
Kupcakes Jan 21st 2007 2:46PM
I think its less about the organs and more about "How the hell does this bird have somee cloth, a sword, a shield, some gear, a trinket and money on it"?
jack Jan 21st 2007 3:18PM
I have an explanation for it: you wouldn't exactly be fighting very much if every single boar dropped a liver. You would just do a lot of running to get quest XP rather than actually killing things. This would just be boring, though whether or not it is more boring than killing boars for an hour is beyond me.
Deathlike Jan 21st 2007 4:44PM
Yeah, the first post is probably right, lore-wise.
And Jack? If they made it so that every boar dropped it's liver, they'd just increase the amount of livers you needed to finish the quest. So they didn't do it just to make it harder.
Dave Jan 21st 2007 4:55PM
Didn't you know that orcs carry a vial of their own blood around? Because when they die it all evaporates.
Frederik Holden Jan 21st 2007 6:28PM
Well they all have blood, but only a few of the orcs carry their blood around in handy little vials.
Seper Jan 21st 2007 6:56PM
hehe my comment spawned this :p
it is true though..
Wunsch Jan 21st 2007 10:29PM
Well if #2 is right... then you should at least be able to loot the cookie or the orange juice.
Becca Jan 21st 2007 11:25PM
I've thought about that over and over while questing.
"I'm supposed to collect 6 Murloc spines...and out of the 17 Murlocs I've killed, only 3 had spines. Weird."
My only semi-logical explination is that I'm just hitting them too hard, shattering their litte backbones and skewering them with my polearm. I like to think that when an animal doesn't drop the needed body part, it's because it was totally unsalvageable. When you look at it as "Oh man, I pummeled that vulture so hard, I couldn't even collect a decent liver from him!", it seems to make questing a little more fun.
Steven Jan 21st 2007 11:36PM
I agree with Becca thats the same way i thought about it...helps me from going crazy during the quest. lol
Jereth Jan 22nd 2007 1:32AM
It's like the turtle meat quest in Hillsbrad. No matter how much you pummeled that giant turtle, there should still be enough usable meat there to feed a small tribe.
And yes, as far as game mechanics are concerned, there are of course myriad good reasons why this is the case - but some of us need a little story to it.
Krianna Jan 22nd 2007 1:58AM
How many times do you hit him before he's dead? Maybe... ten? Twenty?
Ten or twenty deep gashes will make him bleed out fast, so you can't get enough for the vial. For maces, you get pulped flesh and thus have orc mush, not blood.
Guess my mage gives the blood freezer burn.
Sanx Jan 22nd 2007 3:43AM
Great Goretusk Snouts. I really had a hard time as a lowbie to acquire those. Other than that, no complaints :)
Theadrick Jan 22nd 2007 10:58AM
I've always figured it's due to the fact that whatever organ you are looking for was damaged during the fight, although it would be hard imo to do alot of damage to all four zebra hooves.
Claes Jan 22nd 2007 11:34AM
I'll buy the explanation on internal organs being useless beacuse of to much damage, but how about bone fragments (for the AD turnins if you still remember those)? They drop from *skeletons* and should be all over the place. Come on, a strat/scholo
run should net you truckloads of the stuff! There's no way that axe/sword/whatever of yours can literary pulverize every single bone in the body (how come the money is still there then?).
Jereth's comment about turtle meat in Hillsbrad is another one that doesn't make sense lore wise.
Ofc, game wise they all make sense, but that's not what the question was about...
GG Jan 22nd 2007 12:26PM
How about when multiple people are on a quest to get a [Head of ...], and everyone can loot the head? Are we supposed to believe that these bosses have 5 heads all of a sudden? Give it up... there's no rational explanation.
Jorane Jan 22nd 2007 1:16PM
IMHO, by far the most illogical drop rate is on the quest Noxious Lair Investigation (http://www.thottbot.com/?qu=82) in Tanaris that requires you to get 5 - only five - Centipaar Insect Parts. I swear I spent over an hour killing Centipaar Wasps, Stingers, Tunnelers, and Workers before I got 5 "parts." How the hell can you kill a bug, see its corpse lying INTACT on the ground, and it not have any "parts?"
tyger Jan 22nd 2007 1:45PM
why does van cleef have more than 1 head?