Why is there items that are unobtainable?

Question

I understand that some items are special for some people or guilds (like the Rose Shield), but why is there other items that you can't obtain in game (like Golden Helmet, Horned Helmet, Warlord Sword etc)? Why create an item that the players can't obtain?

Comments

That's is a opinion based question?

Answer 1

Most of the unobtainable items have a history and some people believe that adding it back to the game would break it's history. This is the case for Golden Helmet, Horned Helmet, Warlord Sword.

However CIP tends to add items sprites on the game before adding a way to loot them. The Hammer of Prophecy was added at Tibia version 7.0 (2007) but the Last Lore Keeper  who drops it was only added at version 11.02 (2016) . This is the same case for The Calamity added at 8.2 (2008) while the boss The Scourge of Oblivion who drops it was only added at 11.80 (2018).

Comments

good points regarding the dates the sprite was made and the time it was actually implemented. there's a good 10 yr +/- difference between creating sprite and then creating a spawn that drops it.  (obviously not the case for all sprites but the ones u mentioned)

Answer 2

I wanted to put in a little bit of my thoughts of why Tibia would create unobtainable items. It really keeps you looking or trying to solve dead-end quests for example, The Serpentine Tower! I think it's always rewarding when you find out an item that has been unobtainable for so long finally gets implemented. I think Tibia has plans for when items get put into place, but they tease us with images first. Everything happens at the right time and right place they say er was it wrong time wrong place....Or maybe there's no such thing as unobtainable items and their all hidden under rocks of some sort and we all are terrible explorers. I wanted to share this quote about "Special Items" just as a bonus in my answer because it reminds me of how I am too just a terrible explorer.

Then there was a time with a heavy reliance on first-time explorations. That was still back in the earliest days of Tibia when we only had one game world, mind you. The idea was to only reward the first player who reached a certain area while people getting there later would receive nothing - first come, first serve. However, this era was haunted by problems coming from another source: The server was quite unstable so there were numerous crashes. For instance, you could actually "kill" the server by using a distance weapon on a character that shared the same spot with you. A crashed server led to a reboot and the map was completely reloaded, too, so the treasures were obtainable once again despite the original idea of unique rewards. Only the unpredictability of when a reboot would take place (it could be days) prevented the worst. Yet, as you can probably imagine, the 'forced respawn' of treasures was quite commonplace - actually to an extent that people rather kept the bug a secret to abuse it. The implementation of the magic system made it even more flawed due to the imbalance between vocations, allowing certain vocations to get treasures with no risk at all by using invisibility to avoid monster fights.

Knightmare Stories IV. - The Secret of Secrets

https://www.tibia.com/news/?subtopic=newsarchive&id=2665&fbegind=8&fbeginm=12&fbeginy=2000&fendd=7&fendm=1&fendy=2020&flist=11111111

Answer 3

In my opinion is about creating the Lore, myths and legends. NPCs will talk about items that no one knows how to get, etc..

That gives a RPG  atmosphere to the game, players will wonder about it, will try to find out, is a mystery, it motivates people.

If everything would be obtainable, then part of this whole RPG background would be lost, also contest would lose a bit of value, since some unobtainable items are only available on contests, like Yellow rose.

I like that we have that, I've lost some hours back in 2004 trying to reach the Crown   room in MOLS, Carlin.