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Last night while running heroic Utgarde Pinnacle, just after Skadi beamed down, spun around, tossed a few poison arrows, and then dropped like a Nazi in a Quentin Tarantino movie, my group and I decided to see what useless blue loot he had dropped for a group who completely out geared the instance.  To our surprise, he not only dropped the Netherbreath Spellblade, he also dropped the coveted Reins of the Blue Proto-Drake.  After the Ulduar drakes, he has to be the most awesome.  I’m not a fan of the magenta proto-drake, or even the green proto though he does come close.  Maybe it’s because I like the color blue and because all of the blue drakes in Wrath are from instances with insanely low drop rates which means even if you happen to beat the RNG in round one, you still have to roll against, 4, 9, or 24 other people for the blue beast in round 2.

I have only seen the blue proto twice, and I lost the first roll on my deathknight.  This time though, with my paladin charging through that gauntlet with holy wraths, consecrates, and avenging shield throws, I was able to win the roll, so while, and I kid you not, flying around all of Northrend and then all of Outland, I got to thinking about the drop rate, so I looked it up on wowhead and found it was listed at 1%.  Being the uber dork I am, I hopped on pugchecker and looked up how many times each of my toons had cleared UP.  Among my 4 80s, I have cleared the instance 71 times.  I have seen the drake drop twice of those 71, and easily discovered I have had a 2.82% drop rate.  Still very low, but almost 3 times the reported drop rate.

My question is do you think the 1% drop rate is the actual drop rate, or do we tack on 1% to encompass all those drops which are extremely rare?  I know I didn’t kill Attumen over 100 times, but I saw Midnight drop twice as well.  I use a 100 because with a weekly lockout, that’s a little under 2 years straight of running into Kara just for the mount, and wowhead has it’s drop rate and .7%

In all honesty, I have no idea why Blizzard doesn’t feel like they should share drop rates on rare items like mounts.  They would have to include the disclaimer every single time they posted a drop rate which explained just because you do something 100 times does not mean you will get the drop, only that you should.  The laws of probability can be cruel even if the numbers sometimes suggest otherwise.