World of Warcraft boss fight was accidentally nerfed – and devs are fine with it

The Scalecommander Sarkareth

We’ve all experienced dirt-simple WoW bosses in the MMORPG. These trivial enemies appear during quest chains and are designed to be overcome by sheer numbers rather than any unique strategies. However, it seems one such encounter was meant to be a little more challenging than that.

Scalecommander Sarkareth first appeared as a WoW boss back in the Dragon’s Claw update. The long-time World of Warcraft archeress Nezirra tasks players with tracking down the enemy and bringing him to justice for his past crimes. Upon defeating the skinner, players were promised a challenging fight – and that’s what they got, for a while.

Players who’ve encountered Scalecommander Sarkareth since the game’s big 7.2 update have found a dramatically simpler boss fight waiting for them. Some are calling it a “boss wipe,” but in reality it’s more of a hard-reset intended for use with particularly rowdy buggy encounters.

Players were looking forward to a tactical showdown with Malheredis, an incredibly powerful dragon who was defeated by Sarkareth. But somewhere in the coding, it seems Blizzard coded the wrong script, leaving players with an easy win. Some are even claiming that they’ve received the Scalecommander Sarkareth armour set after one single wipe.

I don’t think I have ever typed the words “World of Warcraft boss was accidentally nerfed” in my life but here we are. Scalecommander Sarkareth boss fight in WoW was buffed by mistake and hasn’t been fixed and people are upset. (via @wowheadway) pic.twitter.com/bY8NQJS1iy

Despite the clear feedback from players, and the undeniable awkwardness of the mistake, Blizzard isn’t forthcoming about why it isn’t taking action. “We don’t have any plans to hotfix the issue,” the studio says, without explaining why.

Some players argue that the encounter was meant to be this way all along, so the Scalecommander encounter should be fixed accordingly. Others say that easier boss fights allow more players to experience content they might otherwise miss, so there’s no need to change it.

Is it weird that, in a game like WoW, the players have more agency than the developers sometimes? It feels like, as soon as Blizzard didn’t fix the glitch, it gifted the players the victory. In a way, it feels as if in a single instant, we all beat Malheredis together.

Despite the boss fight being addressed, it remains unclear whether or not Scalecommander Sarkareth will be modified in the future, meaning players could continue to face a significantly weaker boss in the near future.