Filed under: Mounts

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Tired of hoofing it yet? Once you reach level 20, you can hoof it in an entirely new way: on your first mount. Mounts used to become available at level 40; then the level requirement was dropped to 30, and now Patch 3.2 (August 2009) has set the bar for obtaining your first mount to level 20. On the back of your trusty steed (or Kodo or lizard or birdie or ...), you'll be able to zip across increasingly larger zones and quest areas in style. You'll start off on a standard ground mount. Later, you can upgrade to faster versions of those creatures and eventually to mounts that can fly.

There are two parts to getting yourself into the saddle. The first step is training your riding skill. You'll upgrade your riding skill at level 40, 60 and 70, giving you access to faster mounts and mounts that fly.

WoW.com has covered patch 3.2 extensively. Everything from the surprising changes to flying mounts, to the latest and greatest loot, and all the changes in between. In our patch 3.2 class, raiding, and PvP guides we take a look at exactly what changes and how the changes will affect your playing.

Patch 3.2 is here, and there is a whole herd of mount changes stampeding into your stables. Here's a quick rundown of just what's changed about all the things you ride in patch 3.2, from updates to when you can buy mounts and for how much, new tweaks to old mounts like the Ulduar Proto-drakes and the TCG items, and brand new mounts like the hippogryphs from the Argent Tournament and the long-awaited Ravasaur.

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Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!

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In what appears to be an attempt to put an end to scams capitalizing on the vanity mounts found in Upper Deck's popular World of Warcraft trading card game, the latest Patch 3.2 PTR build seems to have removed the Bind-on-Pickup restriction on the loot mounts. Originally unearthed by Boubouille on MMO Champion, the removal seems to be intended, and includes new methods for obtaining the loot items from Landro Longshot in Booty Bay (with the exception of the Riding Turtle, which reportedly remains BoP).

This means it should be easier to obtain these special mounts if players are indeed selling them for copious amounts of gold - conceivably setting record amounts at the auction house. This effectively kills the scamming method of supposedly selling desireable items like the Spectral Tiger mount. On the other hand, someone with real world cash who gets one of those mounts off eBay can theoretically trade it in game for some whopper gold. That's kind of like they're selling gold in some roundabout way. Either way, score one for Blizzard. It looks like it might be time to start earning a bit of money... think anyone will sell the tiger for 500 Gold? No? Drat.

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Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!

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This is interesting -- the costumes at BlizzCon have gotten more and more complicated every year, as people try to one-up each other by bringing the wackiest and biggest costumes to wear, both for the official contest and around the show floor (you can see some of last year's appearances below). The big winner last year was this turtle mount, complete with wheels and a moving head, and so we wonder: what'll happen this year?

Not so fast, says Blizzard. When a player asks just how far costumers might go (a live mount?), Bashiok says that there are some tweaks to the rules this year: costumes can't go over 10' in any direction, include "liquids or messy substances," or be judged on items that can't be worn or held. That would seem to disqualify the turtle mount, from official judging anyway -- they want the contest to revolve around costumes, not vehicles.

Which doesn't mean that we won't see some crazy costumes on the show floor (and obviously you'll see them here on the site, even if you're not in Anaheim). But the contest itself might be a little more low key than last year -- seems like the Sea Turtle/ATV was enough to make Blizzard dial it back a notch.

Blizzard simply can't make up their minds about this, can they? The Rusted and Ironbound Proto-Drakes, which are rewarded for completing Glory of the Ulduar Raider on Normal and Heroic, were slated for removal at an unspecified time in the future after patch 3.2's launch. The reasoning was that it would be easier to acquire them with Coliseum gear, and they were meant for cutting-edge players only.

However, Eyonix has just announced that they are not planning on removing these proto-drake rewards from the achievement in patch 3.2, and furthermore, they don't plan to do it "in the foreseeable future." In the event that they do change their minds again, you are promised a one-month warning. So get back to those hard-modes!

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Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!

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Without much fanfare, Patch 3.2's new 5-man instance, the Trial of the Crusader, opened on the PTR tonight. Lead Encounter Designer Scott Mercer, AKA Daelo, noted that the instance is still a work in progress and that there would undoubtedly be bugs in the encounters.

I immediately assembled a crack team of terrible players, including uneducated elemental shaman Sneep of <Goon Squad> Horde Mal'ganis US, betraying his faction and playing a draenei; my obligatory hunter girlfriend; my dead-weight editor and prot paladin Alex Ziebart; and probably the worst druid raid leader I've ever had in my current guild, Talid.

Making sure our shoes were velcroed properly, we boldly went where champions tread. On Normal difficulty, of course.

Upon entering the instance, though, our hearts sank when we realized that there were mountable Argent Warhorses along the walls. "No!", we cried. "Anything but jousting!"

But our cries went unheard. That is, until Daelo popped into General chat to let everyone know that mounts were only used in one encounter. Dodged THAT bullet!

And so we mounted up on the Warhorses and spoke to the Silver Covenant herald, Arelas Brightstar, to begin our challenge.

As dear Wryxian announced earlier today, we're getting a new build on the PTR. The unofficial notes for this build are already making the rounds, and they're... not very interesting! Perhaps the most notable change is that the change to mount casting speed, previously only applied to ground mounts, now affects flying mounts as well.

When the casting time change to ground mounts in Patch 3.2 was announced, Eliah Hecht, Michael Gray and I had a long debate about why they wouldn't have applied the change to flying mounts as well. We ended up coming to the conclusion that they were avoiding it for PvP reasons; only needing to be out of combat for a second and a half to mount up and zoom off to escape a fight that's not going your way would be a little... cheap. The outlier here was the Druid Flight Form, which is an instant cast spell. Everyone but Druids hate that though, right? It's pretty freaking annoying when you get into a scuffle, you gain the upper hand, and then the Druid just runs in circles like a headless boomkin spamming their flight button and hoping it eventually takes. So we figured that didn't count. It was a perfect example of why being able to fly away quickly was a bad thing.

Boy, are our faces red. Flying mounts get the 1.5s cast time now as well. Sometimes trying to figure out Blizzard's reasoning doesn't really pay off. I'm not going to complain that much, though. I certainly appreciate being able to get into the air faster!

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Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!

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Rock Paper Shotgun has an interesting piece up looking at travel in massively multiplayer games, and while the analysis is really about travel in all MMOs, of course World of Warcraft gets placed front and center -- with the notable exceptions of Mages and Warlock summons, it's a game that squarely places you in its vast world, and asks you to make some solid decisions about where you want to be. While travel has certainly gotten easier (and will continue to do so), it's still an important part of the world -- sometimes, when you're in a backwater zone and your hearthstone is down and there's no summons available to you, you've just got to get on a griffon and put the time in to fly around.

Why is that? Why can't we just teleport around at will to places we've been before (a la Fallout 3 or Fable 2, if you've ever played those games)? Why does Blizzard make us traverse the wide world? RPS lands on two solutions: either they just want you to play the game more (certainly possible, especially since big worlds with long travel times and subscription fees are a trademark of the MMO genre), or they're just being jerks about it. But their panelists, and Blizzard, have offered one more suggestion: they want this world to feel vast, and one way to do that is to make you move around it rather than warp anywhere you want at a moment's notice.

Then again, that's some deep psychology, and sometimes you just want to get in an instance with your friends and fight (hence the recent changes to summoning anywhere, queueing from anywhere, and so on). Travel definitely serves a purpose in MMOs, but the genre has shown in the past few years that while instant travel all the time might shrink the world a little too much, sometimes you just need to get to where you want to be.

[via Slashdot]

I'm sure lots of you guys who trust datamining saw MMO Champion's list of changes in the latest PTR update for Patch 3.2 and raised an eyebrow at the Headless Horseman's Mount being instant cast. "And lo, thus did the Horseman's steed become the de facto PVP mount!", you exclaimed, prostrate in exultation.

Well, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that you may have just found out what "prostrate" or "exultation" mean. The bad news is that the mount isn't instant-cast. Zarhym explains:

The Headless Horseman's Mount has a variable cast time depending upon how it is used: 1.5 seconds as a ground mount and 3.0 seconds as a flying mount. However, due to technological limitations the tooltip reads as if the spell were instant.

The question of how the cast times will function in areas where flying isn't allowed came up, and he clarified that as well:

Yes, the cast time will depend on your riding skill and the area you're in. So, if you're in Outland or Northrend (no-fly zones excluded), the mount will require a 3-second cast time. If you're in Azeroth, a no-fly zone or do not have a flying skill, your cast time will be 1.5 seconds.

Well, cool! It's not instant-cast, but it'll do. Nice to see that Blizzard is making sure your vanity mounts kept up to speed with the rest of the rapidly-evolving World of Warcraft.

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Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!

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You're a pet and mount maniac. You've hunted down every noncombat pet you can find, gotten a lucky roll on every rare mount you can possibly pick up, and after long last, you've earned both the "Lil' Game Hunter" and "Mountain o' Mounts" achievements. But still, you want more for some reason. More pets, more mounts, more achievement points.

Good news: Bornakk says that there will still be more to find. While he says they won't be upping the achievements every time they bring out a patch that has more pets and mounts to collect, they will definitely add in new achievements periodically for collecting both noncombat pets and mounts (and, though he doesn't say so, we'd assume they'll add in extra rewards besides the achievement points, including extra pets or mounts to be earned at each level).

So if you are in fact a collecting master and have already earned the 75 pets and 100 mounts (a much easier feat than it used to be) for both maximum achievements currently in the game, just be patient. There'll be new goals to go after soon.

Ahh the smell of fresh loot in the air, it must be summer. Well, fans of loot cards and the official Trading Card Game, I bet you have your calendar marked. Tomorrow sees the release of the latest - and possibly greatest - TCG expansion Fields of Honor. Yes, you too could have your very own El Pollo Grande, the greatest mount in the entire history of Azeroth. We've mentioned this thing was rarer than a spectral tiger's tooth, right? Indeed our very own Turpster has been raving about his (insert slightly rude giant chicken joke here) all week.

The best part that is the cards were activated in an earlier patch so you can use them as soon as you find one. No more waiting for 3.1.x or even 3.2. Just to recap, the Fields of Honor loot consists of El Pollo Grande, the Ogre Pinata and the groovy Path of Cenarius. You can also take a peek at Upper Deck's loot card preview page for some really cool screenshots.

But here's the best part. After the success of our last EU giveaway, Upper Deck International here in the UK have very kindly given us a set of shiny European loot cards. Isn't that nice of them? We certainly think so! We're going to give them away during this week's maintenance so check back then.

The roller-coaster of "will they or won't they remove the Ulduar raid drake rewards" seems to have come to a definitive answer. The rusted and ironbound proto-drakes will be removed, but they will give us "about 1 month of warning" so you can make a final push if you really want it. The drakes are rewards for completing Glory of the Ulduar Raider (and the 25-man version).

Bornakk points out the parallel with the Arena mount rewards, and says that this is no accident: these are supposed to be rewards for the "top tier" of raiders, and letting people earn them with more powerful equipment from higher raids would defeat that purpose. Therefore, he says we should expect it to go this way in the future, as it was with the Naxx drakes.

As a side note, he says they may be removed when patch 3.2 comes out or some time after. This suggests to me that they think there's a decent chance patch 3.2 will come out less than a month from now. If they knew it was going to come out later, they'd just give the one month warning a month before they expected the patch to drop.

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Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!

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