WoW Classic's Season of Discovery revives the old-school tradition of random players ruining your day, stealing a vital item that costs five gold to access

A worgen, a large, canine dog-man, looks very surprised in World of Warcraft Classic. — (Image credit: Blizzard Entertainment / PlatinumWoW on YouTube)

One of the more interesting things about WoW Classic's Season of Discovery (SoD) is how it's recaptured that vanilla feeling of going on little adventures. This is done mainly through its runes system.

In case you're unfamiliar, every class in SoD has access to runes that give them important, build-defining abilities. For example, to get a Molten Blast that lets my shaman hold aggro as a tank, I had to team up with three other randoms to Flame Shock a lobster man out of a block of ice.

In other places, these runes have also recaptured the old-school feeling of getting absolutely screwed over by complete strangers.

To get this thing, you need to buy a set of Demolition Explosives from a vendor in Hillsbrad Foothills for a whopping five gold—which is a lot on a fresh, pseudo-vanilla server—then head over to Durnholde Keep and use them to clear some rubble. Doing so will reveal a chest with the rune inside. Except you're not the only one who can loot it.

As Soulflash writes: "I drop the bomb, blow up the rubble and as the chest appears, another lock comes and steals the chest. I thought nothing of it, just assumed it would respawn and I’d get the rune and move on. NOPE. The rubble just respawns, I’m now [down five gold] and have no rune to show for it."

Other players have pointed this out on threads in both the classic WoW and main WoW subreddits. One commenter even allegedly did it by accident: "Yep, I went there and saw a warlock placing the bomb and thought, neat I can save five gold, so I looted it. Then I saw the chest did not respawn so I told him to wait there and went to buy a bomb." In contrast, the post's creator J0nnyf1ve just had a fellow Warlock steal it then put him on ignore.

Under any other circumstances, in any other MMO, this'd feel like an oversight. It may even get patched out in following updates—but for WoW classic, I mean… it feels right, somehow? While this sounds frustrating, I can't deny that it's also very goddamn funny.

The jank, limitations, mob tagging, and item stealing of older MMOs isn't really palatable to a modern audience, but it creates compelling, player-generated stories like this one. It makes the quest to get this rune suddenly more interesting: any Warlock who wants it'll be looking over their shoulder as they plant the rubble or logging in on the wee hours of the morning to reduce their chances of a rune gank.

You know what, I hope they don't fix this. At the risk of sounding like an old man: Season of Discovery just made a whole new way to get your day ruined by a stranger, and you just don't get that kind of stuff in MMOs anymore. Will you have fun getting your rune stolen? Not at all, but you're gonna remember it more than any glossy, cinematic tutorial that makes you 'feel like a hero'.

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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.