Rare Mount Collector

It all started in The Burning Crusade from a normal daily heroic run in Sethekk Halls, including the summoning of Anzu, the optional bird boss from the druid epic flight form quest line. When slain, Anzu has a ~1% chance to drop Reins of the Raven Lord, which is basicly himself as a rideable mount. Well, the mount decides to drop and everyone in the party rolls for need, and I, of course, roll highest.

That started my small collection of rare drop mounts, however, I didn't truly farm for them until in Wrath of the Lich King. I think I was the first alliance player to get the Raven Lord, at least I had not seen anyone with it before that, although, it didn't take long before some hunter got it too. (EU-Spinebreaker didn't have many players on alliance side, and probably still don't.) It was kinda cool to afk in Ironforge or Stormwind and get tons of whispers asking where the mount was from, or how cool it was.

At the same time, I was solo farming old world instances to get 8/8 wildheart set, which I would later upgrade to feralheart through a long series of quests - all just for the lulz. I had all but one part - the Wildheart Kilt, which Baron Rivendare in Stratholme can drop (~10%). The kilt refused to appear, though, and I had done about 35 solo runs already, (which were actually rather hard in the beginning but got easier later on with better gear) when Rivendare happens to drop his mount, Deathcharger's Reins, about two weeks after I had looted the Raven Lord.

According to WoWWiki, the mount had a ~0.2% chance to drop back then (it was buffed to 1% in WotLK), which meant 1 deathcharger in 5000 kills. The mount itself isn't too fancy, just the basic undead epic mount in blue color theme, but it was its rarity that once again got me many whispers. I was getting called "lucky bastard" quite often, and even my guild note was 'exotic mount vendor' at some point. Those were the days. (I still had to do quite a few Stratholme runs to get the damn kilt, lol.)

Then, I took a break from WoW and came back when WotLK launched. Higher max level meant I could solo more old instances, which meant more cool mounts for me. The coolness of rare drop mounts inflated heavily in the new expansion though, as tons of different mounts were added into the game. Still, hoping for good luck again, I entered Zul'Gurub, Magisters' Terrace and Karazhan again and again to get more cool mounts to ride.

All but Karazhan gave me their mounts eventually (I ran out of gametime at the end of May and haven't continued my subscription since then) - Karazhan's one week reset timer was too hard even for my luck. All the instances/bosses were very challenging to solo at first, and I had great time learning them. I doubt everyone finds soloing old stuff as fun as I did. At least I got a pretty nice collection of neat mounts.