One of WOTLK Classic Gold: Wrath on the Lich King Classic's best weapons may be more powerful than suitable for 14 years, all because of a simple typo that went unnoticed by both Blizzard and players back when the weapon first debuted last 2009.
The weapon involved is the Legendary healing mace Val'anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings, which is acquired by gathering fragments through the expansion's iconic Ulduar raid and completing subsequent quests. What makes the weapon so powerful is its special effect personalized for healers. When using Val'anyr, heals employ a chance to activate a shield for their respective targets which could absorb as much as 15% with the amount healed. Ulduar was released back in 2009 originally and found its way to Wrath with the Lich King Classic on January 19, 2023.
That can make it an incredibly powerful weapon for tank healing, but as Blizzard notes in a very March 27 hotfix, the weapon's special effect was really stronger than originally intended as a result of a nearly 15-year-old typo. The shield was granted because the weapon was always meant to cap out at 20,000, but another "0" within the weapon's spell script actually made that amount of 200,000. That's a difference.
"The absorb shield from Val'anyr was always designed to have a cap of 20,000 health, but there was clearly a typo inside the spell script in original Wrath from the Lich King version 3.3.5," Blizzard's hotfix reads. "The script set the absorb figure to 200,000! Players in the original Wrath never noticed this."
Now, the reason why this bug looks to own largely gone unnoticed for that long is likely because the amount of players who actually ever acquired Val'anyr back in the day is actually comparatively small. Ulduar was obviously a punishingly difficult raid gets hotter debuted, plus the long strategy of acquiring Val'anyr made it so merely the most dedicated players that had been members from the best guilds had the opportunity to wield it. The final mission to obtain the weapon requires players to tennis ball so the fragments of Val'anyr into their mouth on the final boss, Yogg-saron, at a specific moment then defeat it.
There's also the fact that these few players who did originally get the weapon likely never even approached the unintentional 200,000 shield cap because the shield is dependent on 15% of the healing received. However, players completing Ulduar in 2023 have much more experience (and internet-based guides and resources) that can help min-max their characters, meaning more players are probably using Val'anyr now than in 2009. It also means that the shields granted as a result of the weapon's effect are less difficult and more likely right now to surpass the intended cap of 20,000 in comparison to 2009, making the already powerful weapon extra potent last but not least catching Blizzard's eye.
wotlk classic gold shopping released in September 2022, introduces the Death Knight on the old-school version of Blizzard's MMO. Since then Blizzard has offered several changes to the game's most in-demand expansion, for example, the addition of the new dungeon difficulty as well as the ability for players to produce one Death Knight character free on the expansion's original restrictions. Blizzard recently reverted that specific change, once more making it harder to make Death Knights as a way to deter bots and bad actors from the ability to take advantage of easily generating a level 55 character.
