It looks like we have confirmation that the Wrath of the Lich King expansion will include a polar bear mount!

Blizzard poster Bornakk posted yesterday that:

For players who are focused on romping around on a bear, there will be another one in Wrath of the Lich King.

Shortly afterwards in the same thread, he added:

As Tigole put it, does a polar bear sound cool?

Polar bears — neat!

Thanks to Suzi for bringing this to our attention.

Tigole posted today in the WoW Dungeons & Raids forum that the Amani War Bear mount from Zul’Aman will no longer be obtainable after the Wrath of the Lich King expansion launch.

Tigole says:

I wanted to give a very early head’s up to all of you Zul’Aman raiders out there:

Once Wrath of the Lich King goes live, you will no longer be able to obtain the Zul’Aman bear mount by saving all 4 prisoners in the timed run. The Bear Mount will be replaced by a very good, epic item that is level appropriate for people doing the zone. To be clear, the Zul’Aman bear mount is supposed to be an item of very high prestige. We want players who have earned it during the appropriate era (aka before the level cap gets raised) to be recognized for their accomplishment. We have absolutely no problem with higher level players (above level 70) going back and doing Zul’Aman after Wrath of the Lich King is live. We just want to preserve the accomplishment of having saved all 4 prisoners at the intended difficulty level.

We will most likely do something similar with the titles “Hand of A’dal” and “Champion of the Naaru” as well.

Please don’t panic! You still have plenty of time to complete these feats! Wrath of the Lich King is coming along great but is not ready yet! In fact, we’re not even in beta yet! So have fun adventuring for your bears and titles but please consider this your early warning.

You’ve got some time yet, but if you want a War Bear you’d best start working towards it soon!

GameSpy has posted an interview with J. Allen Brack, Lead Producer for WoW, in which Brack talks a bit about flying mounts in Northrend:

We do have a plan for flying mounts, and letting players unlock their flying mounts at level 77 is going to be acceptable to the players once they get there. There’ll be either a quest or a trainer that you can visit to unlock your flying mount which we’ll expect you to use for your last three levels.
…
You can use your Outland flying mount, and we will have new flying mounts for you to get as well.

Brack is pretty clear, however, that we will not be using those flying mounts in the older parts of Azeroth.

The old world is still grounded. The reason for that is just that was how the world was made. The world was not made with the idea that you could fly around. There’re huge amounts of trickery used to design the world. There’s lots of empty stuff that just doesn’t make sense and wouldn’t look good if you could fly around.