In Case You Hadn’t Heard – Mounts Getting Another Radical Change in Patch 3.2

Just in case you don’t like the podcast and have not been watching trade chat (which I don’t), you might have missed one of the more significant changes coming in patch 3.2.  And you might as well brace yourselves now for all the whining and wailing that’s about to happen in this thread.

I don’t know why change makes everyone so weird.  Just bear in mind that as the game progresses Blizz has simply got to make the lower end content move faster.  Otherwise people will just be completely overwhelmed with the enormity of what they are about to have to do and just chuck it.

So over the last year we’ve seen a LOT of changes that make leveling faster so much easier than ever before.  Increased XP across the board, mounts at level 30, and the piece’ de resistance – Refer a friend.   Plus a whole bunch more that I’m sure made a difference but i sleep from time to time, and I’m getting older, so I forgot them.

So let’s just deal with what’s out in front of us shall we?  You can’t forget something you haven’t done yet (how’s that for a philosophical position eh)?  Patch 3.2 has a lot of tasty tidbits, and we expect it very soon, so let’s cover one of the biggies – mounts.  And just so you know we’re being as accurate and up-to-date as is humanly possible we’ve ripped the information directly from the test realm patch notes page as of this afternoon just minutes before this post goes live.

• The cast time for summoning any ground mount is now 1.5 seconds, down from 3 seconds.
• Apprentice Riding (Skill 75): Can now be learned at level 20 for 4 gold. Mail will be sent to players who reach level 20 directing them to the riding trainer.
• Journeyman Riding (Skill 150): Can now be learned at level 40 for 50 gold. Mail will be sent to players who reach level 40 directing them back to the riding trainer.
• Expert Riding (Skill 225): Can now be learned at level 60 for 600 gold from trainers in Honor Hold or Thrallmar. Faction discounts now apply (Honor Hold for Alliance; Thrallmar for Horde). Flight speed at this skill level has been increased to 150% of run speed, up from 60%.
• Artisan Riding (Skill 300): Faction discounts now apply (Honor Hold or Valiance Expedition for Alliance; Thrallmar or Warsong Offensive for Horde).
• In order to further equalize the number of purchasable mounts available to each race, a new 60% speed ground mount has been added for night elves, and a new 100% speed ground mount has been added for the undead.
• Flying over Dalaran and Wintergrasp is now possible so long as players keep a healthy distance above the ground.

WoW – your first mount at level 20, epic ground at 40.  Seriously, that’s a mount before you leave your extended starting zones!  Follow that with Flying mount as soon as you hit Outlands and epic flyer DISCOUNTS for rep.  But by far my favorite in the whole dang list is the fact that the regular flying mount isn’t such a lame excuse for an upgrade any more and actually gets a significant speed increase.

Past that – ALL mounts now cast twice as fast.  No big guess where this one came from, and honestly I’m not sure why mount casts stayed that long this far into the game.  Instant cast shaman and druid forms against 3 second mounts – sigh barely covers it.  Cutting it in half makes it a lot more livable.

And even though it’s last, the change in the ability to fly over WG and Dal was just a necessity.  really, is there anyone who thinks that the auto-dismount was just about the dumbest thing ever?  It was truly one of the silliest things in the game.  this tweak will end a lot of frustration for me.  It’s a little late to help my own toons, but I won’t have to complain as much internally any more (probably).

So for all of you who have been putting off plopping down 5k on yet another epic flyer, but your third alt has all the rep in the world, it’s about to be your lucky day.  Then again, you may just decide that the K-Mart mount isn’t quite as lame as all that now that it has at least a little zip to it.

Plus, if we’re going to go in for conjecture, this also looks like you can have your epic flyer for full price right at level 60, and there have been sources that have prognosticated you will be able to grab your cold weather flying as soon as you hit 70 and set foot in Northrend.

We’ve actually been kinda holding off on some of our leveling on the ally side for a bit to take maximum advantage of the mount changes alone.  Why run when you can ride right?  In our book, these mount buffs are a very welcome change.