Warcraft Mounts

Blizzard has posted some clarification on how guilds will obtain guild mount rewards – like the Dark Phoenix, Thunder Lizard, and Lion:

The guild rewards you guys are seeing in game are not hooked up yet. Guild rewards have 3 requirements that must be be met before you can use them. First and foremost, they must be unlocked via a guild achievement. Let’s just say, that for example, you need to complete the new guild achievement “We are Legendary” in order to unlock the Dark Phoenix. That achievement requires the guild to gain access to all 6 legendary weapons currently available in the game. (Note that all guild achievements start on Cataclysm launch, so anything you have now will not matter, it must be done with your guild after launch.)

So, let’s say that your guild gets this achievement and thereby unlocks the Dark Phoenix on the guild vendor. At this point anyone in the guild can see the item on the vendor, but they will need a specific amount of guild faction to be able to purchase it. In this case, let’s say exalted. Now, once you have the guild faction, you can purchase the item for its gold price. (Prices will vary based on the reward.)

I am using the Dark Phoenix and the We are Legendary guild achievement as examples here but you should get the idea. Don’t worry, we wont be handing out all the goodies so easily. =)

And here I was hoping I could get one in my little one-person guild!

Last time I logged into the Cataclysm beta realms after a patch I was excited – there was a Thunder Lizard mount next to the guild vendor! Okay, he had placeholder graphics, but still. Thunder Lizard mount! How cool is that?!

This time when I logged in – after tonight’s patch to beta build 12759 – I was flabbergasted.

+310% Riding Skill

First off, the Riding Trainer now teaches a new rank of the riding skill: Master Riding (375).

The tooltip description for this skill is a bit confusing right now, but as far as I can tell Master Riding is the skill that Blizzard has talked about in the past which will make all your +280% speed mounts go faster.

As a reminder, Blizzard told us in April during a Twitter chat that:

Q: Do you intend to have all 280% flying mounts scale to 310% when a 310% mount is earned, or will only purchased mounts do so?
A: Our current plan, is that in Cataclysm, you can learn a new rank of flying that lets all flying mounts move at 310% (even current 280% mounts). That will probably be as fast as mounts will ever get. We don’t like it that when you get a 310% mount that you stop using your old ones.

On the other hand, Blizzard told us in May via the EU forums that:

It certainly is happening, but it will only be purchasable by characters who are level 85. Players who already own a 310% mount will be ‘gifted’ the training, and it goes without saying that once the skill is learned all flying mounts will become 310% mounts. That’s the current plan at least, and we don’t plan on offering any further speed increases to these mounts.

You must be level 80 to learn Master Riding, and it costs 5000 gold minus any reputation discounts. I suspect that means that most level 80 characters will be able to buy it for 4000 gold, but that’s still a chunk of change.

In the current beta build all mounts say that their speed bonus is +0%, although this clearly isn’t true when you ride one. But it makes the effect of Master Riding a little hard to judge.

Learning the new riding skill seems to speed up all your flying mounts – the effect seemed most pronounced on slow (+150%) flying mounts, as you would expect. But I really can’t give a definitive answer at this point.

On the other hand, players who already have a +310% mount are reporting that they have not automatically learned Master Riding yet. It is likely, being beta, that this is just a temporary situation. But we should definitely keep an eye on it.

Guild Mounts

The second addition that had me drooling when I logged in tonight: guild mounts. Specifically, on the Horde side, a Thunder Lizard ground mount and a Dark Phoenix flying mount.

Alliance guilds have access to a Lion ground mount instead of the Thunder Lizard. Unfortunately I don’t have good images of these mounts yet, but I’ll try to have them up this weekend.

At the moment, anyone can buy these mounts from the guild vendor – and very cheaply! – regardless of whether or not they are in a guild. But so far as I can tell, no one can actually learn the mounts.

It’s not uncommon for Blizzard to drastically reduce the prices of items they want more testers to test and that might be what’s going on with the prices here. The mounts may still end up being relatively cheap, though, since I expect that they will have a pretty steep guild reputation requirement.

Mount UI

Oh, and before I forget I have one more tiny mount change to tell you about from this beta build. The mount panel that displays which mounts you own is now a tab on your Spellbook instead of a subdivision of your character UI.

That gives it a bit more room and also makes a lot of sense, given that mounting is equivalent to using an ability.

Look what greeted me when I logged into the Cataclysm beta after the latest patch!

The model is a placeholder, obviously, but I considering that this guy was standing in front of a ‘Guild Services” sign, I’m going to make a guess that one of those guild rewards Blizzard has mentioned is going to be a thunder lizard mount ….

Beta tester Daddylicious just sent me some gorgeous screenshots of the Abyssal Seahorse — much better than the one I took.

And this is my favorite here. As Daddylicious says:

It looks pretty sweet standing still, but is VERY choppy when moving. It also appears to sit way too high on the surface of the water. (I suspect they’ll work that all out.)

But you should definitely check out all these screenshots. Click on the small versions to get the full images. Both the seahorse and Vashj’ir are just gorgeous.

I inadvertently went AFK for a bit there, but I am back today with actual honest-to-goodness Cataclysm mount news!

As you may or may not know, one of the level 80-82 zones in Cataclysm is Vashj’ir, and all of Vashj’ir is underwater. One of the first things you learn there (via a quest) is how to breathe and walk underwater. But the quest givers also set you off down a long quest chain on your way to catching your very own underwater mount.

Now this is all very cool. But until today, the Abyssal Manta that you eventually obtained had obvious placeholder graphics: it was a nether ray mount, just like the Sha’tari Skyguard Riding Nether Rays. The only difference was that it ‘flew’ through the water instead of through the air.

In the latest beta build (12604), however, the Abyssal Manta was replaced — right out of our mount tabs! — with the first of the new Cataclysm mount models: an Abyssal Seahorse.

The swimming animation on the seahorse is a bit jerky right now. (It makes me a little seasick after awhile.) But I’m sure Blizzard will smooth that out. And I am absolutely in love with the delicate filigree bridle and metallic tack. These mounts have a whole ocean of personality (if you’ll forgive me the terrible pun).

Incidentally I apologize that the pictures aren’t a bit better. Unfortunately upping my graphics right now causes my client to crash. This is a new bug (for me at least) that started with this beta build, so hopefully it will be fixed next build and I can get some prettier pictures.

No word yet on how we might obtain other seahorse colors, but there are several other colors in the game data files, including the purple seahorse you see here, a pretty goldish color, and two absolutely gorgeous light blue and green tones. There also seem to be a couple different colors of tack available – gold, silver, and copper — and each color has a version without the full saddle.

I’m not sure yet which models might actually make it into the game so I haven’t set them up with their own mount pages yet, but I’m linking the images below so you can check them out at your leisure.