Late last night Blizzard updated the Wrath of the Lich King beta realms with a new build — and this one includes the changes to how we store our mounts that we talked about last week!

The changes didn’t go off entirely smoothly: Last night the pre-existing items used to summon mounts all displayed 0 charges and wouldn’t teach beta testers the spells to summon the mount, although newly purchased mounts were working correctly. But Blizzard pulled the server down briefly this morning and fixed the problem.

So how does this change work? When you log in after the WotLK expansion launches, you will still have all your normal mount items in your inventory or bank. But the first time you use a mount item (like the Horn of the Brown Wolf), you don’t immediately mount up. Instead, you learn the spell to summon the mount, and the item (the Horn in this case) disappears from your inventory.

Now you can pull up your Character Info (C) panel. There is a tab on the bottom called Pet. At the top of the Pet tab are three buttons: Pet (only useful for hunters), Companions (for non-combat minipets), and Mounts. You want Mounts.

When you click on this button, you see something like the picture above. As you can see, you get a 3D view of the mount plus a big “Summon” button. You can summon your mounts from this interface, but it’s a lot easier just to pull the icon for the mount you use most out to an action bar like you can do with any spell.

You can store 12 mounts per page and there are multiple pages. (I actually have no idea how many pages you get, but I suspect that, like your Spellbook, the number of paged in the Mount panel just grows larger as needed.)

Unfortunately, there are still some rough spots with the new system. All my mounts converted fine (once Blizzard fixed last night’s bug), but some of my minipets won’t teach me their spells. And the 3D view is … a bit off sometimes, as you can see from this shot that I call “Brewfest Rump”.

But overall the system seems to be coming along nicely. And it will definitely be a big boon to mount collectors of all stripes!

Blizzard poster Ghostcrawler has posted some more tidbits about the upcoming changes to how we store our mounts on the WotLK Beta forum.

It’s a nifty system. Hunters and warlocks already have a tab labeled Pets on their character screen. We just added a couple of extra tabs on the Pet screen, one for Mounts and one for Companions. Your pets won’t really feel like spells. The first time you use the item, they move permanently to the Pet page where you can examine them (you can rotate them like a hunter pet) or summon them.

We know with this system plus achievements players will want to try to get back any pets or mounts they managed to delete previously. No promises, but we have a couple of ideas for how you might be able to get those pets back.

Ooh! Being able to rotate the mount in 3D like a hunter pet in the pet panel will be really neat!

This just in: In the upcoming expansion Wrath of the Lich King, all mounts will be summoned by spells, not items — which means that they will no longer take up any space in our inventory. Good news for mount collectors!

Blizzard poster Wryxian posted about this change on the EU General Discussion forum:

We’re pleased to announce a convenient upgrade to the way that mounts and vanity pets are handled in Wrath of the Lich King.

Players will be able to “learn” a mount or non-combat pet much like learning a spell, recipe, or new ability, and these creatures will then show up on a new Pet tab within the Character Info section of the interface. Players will be able to access and preview their learned mounts and vanity pets through this tab.

Once learned, the pet icon or mount icon will no longer appear in bag spaces or bank spaces. This inventory space will be made available once again for other adventuring needs. Pets can still be set to hotkeys by dragging them to the hotkey bar, much like any other spell or ability.

This is very exciting! Personally I think that this makes collecting mounts much more attractive. Not only does it solve the bag space issue, but it also means that you can have all your mounts available at any time and you have a handy list of the mounts you’ve gotten in your UI.

This change isn’t yet available on the current WotLK beta build, but as soon as it is I’ll have some pictures of the new interface for you.