WoW players finally awarded rare mount from 10 years ago

Brianna Reeves
wow warlord's deathwheel

World of Warcraft players should’ve received the rare Warlord’s Deathwheel mount 10 years ago, but a bug fix is just now rectifying the mistake.

The Warlord’s Deathwheel Mount won the 2014 Azeroth Choppers competition, which combined the worlds of Warcraft and the reality TV show American Chopper. Two teams were split into the in-universe Alliance and Horde Factions, then spent weeks building WoW-themed motorcycles for a web series.

After winning the fan-voted competition, an in-game Warlord’s Deathwheel was awarded to all Horde players who signed in to WoW between August 1 and September 30, 2014. However, many users never received the motorbike as intended.

A decade later, Warcraft players robbed of the mount in 2014 have finally been compensated. This is according to fans like Redditor vindictive-ant, who received access to the Warlord’s Deathwheel within the last few days.

In response to user inquiries on Blizzard Forums, a Community Manager said the 2014 error was caused by a “bug or crash that was invoked the instant that the mount was initially supposed to be awarded.”

An August 2024 update for WoW featured a fix that retroactively gave eligible players access to Warlord’s Deathwheel. The developer also told users, “there may be other achievements that a very small number of players have been missing, until now.”

Interestingly enough, this is not the first time WoW has randomly rewarded users with the rare item. In April 2022, another Redditor said that they got access to Warlord’s Deathwheel for no apparent reason.

Someone else in the same thread claimed they earned the bike years prior in 2018, likely because of a Faction change from Alliance to Horde.

Yet, based on the Community Manager’s comment, the primary cause of the 2014 mistake was a bug that took Blizzard a decade to identify and resolve.