PW:Bubble

Ever since Blizzard annouced The Great Mount Changes of ’09 the intertubes have gone crazy. There was rioting, people were injured… oh wait this is WoW not RL so I guess that should be people threatened to cancel subscriptions and the forums blew up. Apparently people were angered; I, however, was not one of them. In case you’ve been living under a rock the changes are:

• Regular land mounts trainable at level 20 (was 30, down from 40)
• Epic land mounts trainable at level 40 (was 60)
• Regular flying mounts trainable at level 60 (was 70)
• Regular flying mounts speed increased to a 150% gain (was 60%)
• Also, Travel Form/Ghost Wolf/Aspect of the Cheetah trainable at 16
• Warlock and Paladin mounts/epic mounts will be trainable at 20/40 respectively.

Had a chance to absorb? Good. Here  are my thoughts on the whole deelio:

Regular mounts at 20? FUCK YES.  I’m leveling a bebeh shaman right now and let me tell you, the barrens? That place is fraking HUGE. I leveled in ghostlands because at least there was some sense of reasoning to where those quests were and it didn’t look like the quest devs splattered paintbrushes at a map of Azeroth and went ‘well that looks good for the placement of the drops.. especially given that people will be RUNNING AT AN INCREDIBLY SLOW PACE.’ And yes, I am aware that I have Ghost Wolf at the moment, but my leveling partner is a Rogue and well, he is still running, so I run with him. And it sucks.

Epic Mounts at 40? Sweetness. This would have been so helpful in those places like feralas. or the crater. or tanaris (epic mount + carrot on a stick? sign me up!) Again with Blizz’s let’s see if we can put the quest givers any farther away from the quest drop locations only this time they added an element of LETS MAKE YOU GO TO A DIFFERENT ZONE FOR A QUEST DROP. (see: Hinterlands/Feralas horde side. and the noggenfogger quest. srsly blizz? SRSLY?!) Any less time that I have to spend schelpping my ass on a slow mount is time better spent getting exp.

Flying Mounts at 60? You mean I’m less likely to get squashed by a Fel Reaver? or attacked by 859,156,120,5261 hellboars on my way to turn in a quest? AMAZING. And improved flight speed? I’m DOWN. Lemme tell you, my priest had normal flying FOREVER. Cuz yanno I don’t like to farm on my priest…and that shit is SLOW. really slow. When you would rather take the taxi with all it’s godforsaken loops and random pathing than fly because the taxi is still faster then you know you need an epic flyer and well my priest isn’t the person to earn that money.

Travel Form/Ghost Wolf/Aspect of the Cheetah at 16? Good news for my druid, though I’ll be mounted soon enough.

Lock/Paladin mounts at 40/60? Again, woot. Even though both my lock and my paladin already have these things it’s still cool. Now, here is where I admit something. I didn’t do the quest on my paladin. I waited until 61 and just bought the mount. I know, I’m a horrible Paladin. But fact of the matter is, those Pristine Black Diamonds you need for the quest? upwards of 150g on my server. NO THANK YOU. Plus I know that finding a group for that shit is damn near impossible now. I rememember helping a friend with her lock quest in TBC where she had to wait for 3 weeks trying to get a group. ugh. I know everyone says the lock/paladin quests are the best in the game. Well here’s where I have another confession. I did the quest on my on my lock (in Vanilla WoW!) and I DIDN’T EVEN READ THE QUESTS. Just oh go here and kill some guys, then drop a buttload of money? ok just give me my firey horsey kthnxbai. So I say, give people the horses, that’s the reason they rolled a paladin/warlock in the first place most likely. Those that care about the quests will go back and do them (they count for loremaster remember? And I have some achievement whoring friends who would do it for the 10 points, even if they waited until 80 to do it) and those that don’t, well they won’t.

Summary? Good Job Blizz. I’m on my 6th character that I’ve leveled through Vanilla, I know where Mankirk’s wife is (and yes I remember doing that quest before Quest Helper/Carbonite/LightHeaded and thinking WOW BLIZZ COULD YOU BE ANYMORE VAGUE?!) and if I can get to her quicker for my sweet, sweet exp than I’m all for it.