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Collecting is More In-Focus than Ever in WoW - But Some Bugs are Making Things Difficult
Posted
2025/09/07 at 11:31 PM
by
Jezartroz
If you're not a fan of Raids, Mythic+, PvP, or any real competitive content - how do you enjoy World of Warcraft? For many players, the answer is simple: Collecting. From transmog to quests, battle pets to mounts, there's something for everyone to collect in Azeroth, and with each new patch, Blizzard recognizes more and more that many players are just as thrilled to get +1 mount as they are to down that Mythic boss. The War Within has been full to bursting with collectibles, from difficult drop-based currency mounts like
Alunira
to virtually the entirety of Undermine and the various Goblin Cartel goodies, and collectors know and appreciate how much Blizzard puts into the game for them to chase - but there are a few long-standing bugs that make collecting, and tracking, harder than it should be.
A special Thank You to the
Data for Azeroth
and
All The Things
communities - these dedicated collectors have worked tirelessly to bring these bugs to light and attempt to have them fixed for the sake of all collectors. This information has been painstakingly compiled over several years.
If you're interested in joining their Collector Communities, click the Discord links above!
First of All - What's an API?
These bugs aren't easy ones to nail down - and in fact, many players won't even know the basics of why something is wrong in the first place. Many of them trace back to WoW's API, which is the game data that Blizzard allows players to access and is commonly used for creating addons and macro scripts. Many players don't realize that many of the most popular addons they use and depend on on a daily basis exist because Blizzard allows us to use this API freely - and that's why, when something is found to be bugged within it, it can be a big deal. Collectors use the web API, which is slightly different than the in-game API commonly used for addons, but on a technical surface level, they're close to the same thing.
For now, these bugs really only affect collector spaces, but that doesn't mean that somewhere down the line, the interactions won't affect other addons and macro scripts as well. To be clear, this isn't to sound ungrateful - Collectors know that Blizzard giving us this information in the first place is significantly more than most other games have or ever will give to their playerbase - but with continued focus on collecting and more "stuff" being added every patch for Collectors, some of these previously-innocuous bugs have become more and more frustrating for the playerbase.
Character Profiles - Where's My Recipes?
One of the most disruptive bugs for Collectors involves sections that are entirely missing from character profiles. The brunt of API information used on tracking sites or addons such as Data for Azeroth (DfA) or All The Things (ATT) are pulled from these profiles, and this can track dozens of things - from reputations, to achievements, to profession recipes, and more.
Some of these issues are small - for instance, the
Marasmius
Reputation from the Night Fae Shadowlands covenant is missing - but others are significantly larger in scale. Case in point: Pandaria Cooking Recipes. Data for Azeroth highlights dozens of Pandaria Cooking recipes that simply don't exist in the API, even though every other Cooking recipe in the game is reported completely normally. It's very likely that this is because Pandaria recipes are an oddity among the Profession, with several sub-sections to "learn" as if they were specializations, but it's difficult for anyone but Blizzard to know for sure. This isn't a new issue, either: the earliest known report of this API bug was
on the forums over five years ago
.
The list of things associated with the character profiles bug is gigantic - whether you're looking at Pandaria cooking recipes, Vulpera Bag of Tricks unlocks, Soulshapes and Crittershapes, looted Treasures, and more, this is easily one of the largest difficulties for Collectors to tackle to track what they have in their hoards of goodies.
Transmog - Why'd I Lose Appearances?
Most players don't worry too much about recipes - but everyone worries about Transmog. A year ago,
Blizzard finally added API support
for Transmog appearances, and Collectors couldn't have been happier; this was one of the most sought-after API additions (even though ideally, everything collectible such as Drake Manuscripts, Garrison followers, Druid and Warlock pets and transformations, and more would all have API support as well). Unfortunately, this has been a bit of a double-edged sword: the current Transmog API frequently returns incorrect information, and it's been difficult to untangle why.
Currently, the Transmog API updates each time a character logs out; however, it will regularly give the "wrong" data in that update. This makes it seem as though players have "lost" appearances, or didn't earn them properly, causing general confusion and frustration with the system. It's possible to soft reset the API and temporarily fix it by exiting game and restarting, but unless that's done after every character logout, the issue persists.
Blizzard knows that Transmog is a drastically important feature for players - Ion even referenced it during the Systems panel at Gamescom 2025:
While Transmog is going through new feature iterations heading into Midnight, now is a perfect time to tackle this API bug and make tracking easier for all. While we're at it, tracking appearances by source would be a great addition, too!
Why Does This Matter?
For many, collecting of all kinds is the true endgame of World of Warcraft. Whether you're a hardcore DfA Leaderboard topper or just someone who enjoys collecting Transmog, collecting has become as integral to WoW as Dungeons and Raids. Imagine if someone went into a Mythic+ Dungeon and after completing it, was told that Dungeon doesn't count because Blizzard didn't code in the ability for it to give score - that's equivalent to several of these bugs, and truly hampers the collecting experience.
More and more Collector-focused content is on the horizon, and soon, Legion Remix will be here - arguably the biggest Collector event outside of this summer's incredibly successful
Collector's Bounty
. There are dozens more, uniquely involved bugs with the API as well, but even one or two fixes would be incredibly helpful for those whose passion is tracking completion within WoW. With so many new achievements, mounts, transmogs, and previously unobtainable items returning for a veritable collect-a-thon, it would be a huge win for not just the Collector community but all players if some of these bugs could be fixed before even more content is made available.
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Comment by
Flanell
on 2025-09-11T09:53:31-05:00
If it updates when a character is logged out, high chance it is updating just for said character, and therefore not recognising mogs that your last used character cannot use.
Simple fix really fix this is true, and that's just to remove mog restrictions on armour types and weapons.
Nah, you gotta think bigger than from a collector perspective. It's good for the game that armor type is recognizable. Not only from an aesthetic POV, but for things like PvP etc. (No, it doesn't matter if you think PvP is useless or irrelevant.)
We need more things that make WoW feel like an MMO
RPG
and not a random mobile game, not less.
Transmog is the true endgame. I have been saying it since BfA. Nothing else persists.
Nothing else is allowed to persist because the people that desperately beg for things to matter less in the long run just so they can have it as well, regardless if it lowers the value for someone else in the game or not. Regardless if it devalue the challenge it took for that person to get it.
Think T3. Think Mage Tower Appearances. That sort of stuff.
Some come back, some doesn't(thank god), but that's really the reason nothing else persist. Rewards meant to signal a special moment in WoW history is made lessen because people crave something for themselves more than they care about healthy history.
T3 is harder to get now then back in Vanilla. I never wanted it for prestige. I always wanted it because it would look perfect on my eyeless undead and fitted his blue haircolor. But sadly I didn't had a gigachad raiding guild in vanilla and was just a stupid child. And Im too poor for BMAH. Since it was introduced in MoP I only got 2 pieces for 10k each. Now its millions because of these whales and dh that steal the once rogue only set. Then you also need luck that the piece you need is even on the bmah on your server and you are at home to bid. Its nuts. And the crafting ones are more expensive and only available to people who already own the complete t3 set. Make it make sense.
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