Lucky you
by Elizabeth Wachowski 
Jan 25th 2007 at 5:33PM
When I came upon this post in the Raids and Dungeons forum, I had to laugh. The guild Dissension on Bleeding Hollow apparently got three Rejuvenating Gems -- each about a 5 percent drop off the three drakes in Blackwing Lair -- on one run. The funny thing is, the exact same thing happened to my guild this summer before we could even clear BWL. One of our healers thought it was funny and told a real-life friend of his, who happened to be in another raiding guild on our server. That guild would not talk to us for several days, aside from random "I HATE YOU SO MUCH" tells from their druids, priests and shamans. The same thing happened later in the summer, when we killed Nef and got three Ashkandis out of our first four kills.
I did the math on the Rejuv Gem drops and it came out to be about a one in six thousand, five hundred chance occurrence. (Please correct me if I'm wrong -- it's been a long time since I've been in a statistics class.) End of Days on Black Dragonflight reported an even more improbable loot table: four Talismans of Ephemeral Power off the four Molten Core bosses who drop them. This has a chance of happening in one out of every seven hundred and fifty thousand and change Molten Core clears.
Have you ever had a wildly improbable run of loot luck? And not an improbable run of not getting loot -- sorry, there's going to be a lot of guilds out there still waiting for that last Wraith Blade or Bloodfang Chest. People who complain about "it must be our loot seed, we've never seen a Eye of Sulfuras" need to look up the phrase "random" in a dictionary, along with "two percent drop rate."
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Sylythn Jan 26th 2007 12:16AM
I don't recall the exact items, but our guild has had the same item (one a cloak, the other ?) drop from both paired dragons in ST. That's happened two or three times for us.
duron Jan 25th 2007 5:51PM
My guild got 5 perditions blades in a row...
Daruhn Jan 25th 2007 6:30PM
Not as impressive as any of those stories but while killing the voidwalkers in the south part of Hellfire I took down one of them and when I looted I found both the Blade of Trapped Knowledge (which sells for about 140g on my server) and some random green ring (which I sold for around 10g). I should remind you that this wasn't even a named mob, just any random one.
Phyer Jan 25th 2007 6:23PM
All of this is moot now because you can get an equal or better trinket in the first 2 levels of Burning Crusade. This makes my "casual player" soul smile just a little on the inside for all those times I was told that I "didn't play enough to make the raid team."
JimJimBinks Jan 25th 2007 10:15PM
Hogger dropped Thunderfury last time we raided him.
We only wiped twice.
Ariel Jan 25th 2007 6:35PM
With my first character, I got a Staff of Jordan (mid-level epic staff) to drop from a random dragonkin in the Swamp of Sorrows. With my next character, I got the exact same drop from a random coyote in the Badlands. Judging from the tells I got when I put them in the AH (and the price I was able to sell them at), these are incredibly rare. Could have fooled me.
michaelrocks212 Jan 25th 2007 7:01PM
Try getting 4 Headmaster's charges in 10 runs... And im a warrior so i just had to scream because before that i had never looted or seen an epic. After finding out the drop chance i figured out that i would probabily never get any luck and that i had used mine all up!
almus Jan 25th 2007 7:07PM
Silithus about 3 months back I was randomly killing snakes. in less than 10 min I had "Destiny" drop twice. I dont know what the odds are of the same world drop epic droping twice in 10 min for the same person is, somone want to do the math? I figured I killed about 30 snakes total.
Decae - Norgannon(H) Jan 25th 2007 8:29PM
Our guild raided Blackwing Lair from September to an hour before the x-pac's release. I can't count how many times we dropped the bosses, but we did so each week, week after week. Finally, 2 hours before TBC went live, Chromaggus dropped our first, and only piece of Wrath.
Dave Jan 25th 2007 9:43PM
How about Unlucky? 4 times on Nef, 4 Ten storms chestpiece. Thankfully not both drops.
Tandav Jan 25th 2007 9:41PM
On November 26th, 2006, all three legendary components from Molten Core (two halves of [Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker] and [Eye of Sulfuras])dropped on a single run. The raid was for the Penny Arcade Alliance, MC Waffles Raid, a pan-PAA raiding group, on the Dark Iron server. The odds of this happening are approximately 1 in 20,000.
mort Jan 25th 2007 10:09PM
elemental mage staff
1st kill in silithus after a server transfer, lol
Andy Jan 25th 2007 11:02PM
My guild killed Rags for the first time early last October, and we killed him once a week until BC came out. Not only did Eye of Sulfuras drop on our first Rags kill, but it dropped twice more since then as well - with the second and third of them dropping only a few weeks apart.
Thankfully, we were able to get the mats together to make three Legendary weapons for Pallies in our guild, so that is good. :)
Bunkai Jan 25th 2007 11:19PM
On my NE druid, I was messing around solo in the Furblog cave in the northern part of Feralas. I was just clearing the cave because I hadn't been in there before. The last furblog in the cave(not a boss or elite) dropped a Precisely Calibrated Boomstick (sold on AH for 300g).
Two weeks later, I was heading over to farm a black whelpling in the badlands...the first mob I killed when I logged in that night was one of the normal wolves that hang out on the hill to get to the Black Whelps...it dropped the Underworld Band for me(AH buyout price of 275g...but I gave it to my wife who was playing a gnome lock at the time).
Many people in my guild had been playing for much longer than I had at the time, and had never seen a random world drop epic, and in the course of two weeks, I'd gotten two while soloing.
I figure that's note-worthy to say the least.
Krianna Jan 26th 2007 12:30AM
My guild has a bad habit of killing a random thing that attacks us and getting great loot-- I got a blue when I was jumped by a pig in the Barrens, for crying out loud.
I'd never seen one outside an instance before.
Samercyn Jan 26th 2007 2:56AM
On September 19th, 2006, one AQ40 run for our guild, Fist of Aman Thul on the Earthen Ring(US) server, we had 2 Imperial Qiraji Regalia and 2 Imperial Qiraji Armaments drop in the same night. The Armaments dropped off each of the Twin Emperors. I believe one Regalia was off the Bug Trio(Vem kill) and I -think- the other was Sartura(I could be wrong on this one).
I couldn't even begin to calculate the odds of such a thing happening.
Marow Jan 30th 2007 8:18AM
I got Finkle's Skinner on my first UBRS run, Shadowcraft Chest on my second UBRS run, and the Wildfire Cape on my third...
UBRS was good to me. =]
Kabira-Fenris Jan 26th 2007 9:26AM
My guild's first ever UBRS run wayyyyy back in the day was littered with 2 hanzo swords and a Lei of Lillies.
Junzim Jan 26th 2007 12:54PM
25 Ancient Petrified Leafs in a row. As a priest I was not best pleased
Trasketor Jan 26th 2007 9:52AM
Yeah my guild, Burnination on Darkspear, have had a very interesting loot history when we started MC. I remember our first MC pull dropped a BOE hunter epic and by the time we were done the raid, after killing only one boss, we had a total of 11 epix! i know this sounds ridiculous but we wouldnt have known how rare that drop rate was if we didnt have other expirenced players that have been in MC before and NEVER seen that. But as far as "rare" drops we have had amazing luck. (at least for us casters melee classes kinda got shafted ;P). We had 5...yes 5 Azuresong Mageblades drop in a row. Also, we got super lucky with the Talisman of Ephemeral Power. I think a total of 4 has dropped for us in the short time we were in MC. (one of which i picked up woot!)