Warcraft Mounts

Blizzard announced a series of refinements in the raid progression paths in Cataclysm on Monday. Although on the face of it you wouldn’t think this would affect mount collecting much, there were a few interesting comments in the follow-up answers:

Q: Will legendary items be available through 10 player dungeons? How about special mounts like Invincible?
A: In some of these specific cases, the answer is that we just don’t know yet. We’re going to have to walk a fine line between dropping the same items in both 10- and 25-player modes, versus still offering something extra for the 25s. If we over-reward the 25s, then players who like 10-player raiding will still feel compelled to find more warm bodies. If we don’t provide any extra incentive for 25s, then some players may stop playing with their friends in order to avoid the extra organization required for a large raid.

Overall, our goal is that you make the decision between whether to raid with 10 players or 25 players based on what you find fun and not because of the reward structure.

For perspective, it might help to look back at how we changed lockouts and hard modes on every single raid tier of Wrath of the Lich King to see what felt right and try to fix problems that arose from previous tiers. After seeing the first tier of Cataclysm raiding, we may decide to adjust our design for the next tier.

Q: Will achievements be broken down by 10/25 modes? Will realm first achievements/titles be only for 25s? Will meta-achievement mounts be available for both versions still?
A: There will just be raid achievements, not 10- vs. 25-player versions in most cases. The achievement won’t care if you complete it in 10s or 25s. If we do meta-achievement mounts, it’s possible we’d still have different colors of mounts, or maybe even different mounts; but for some players that might mean that 25s feels mandatory again, which would be a potential problem. This is the kind of thing we’re going to have to consider carefully, and again, we might try a few different implementations before sticking with something we like.

We’re also not sure about realm first achievements or titles. We don’t want to encourage, say, 25-player focused guilds to run a 10-player raid instead because they think that will get them the realm first title faster. One potential solution is you can earn a realm first title in 10 or 25, but not both. These types of achievements also serve as great content for guild achievements.

The emphasis in the second answer is mine.

Blizzard held another Twitter dev chat on Friday, April 16th. This one focused on the recently-revealed class changes in Cataclysm, but there were a few notes on mounts. The most exciting bits: we’ll be able to fly in old Azeroth from the very beginning, and we’ll be able to learn a new level of the Riding skill that lets all our flying mounts go at +310% speed.

Here’s the quotes:

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.

Q: If 310% speed is becoming trainable, does that mean we’ll be able to fly in Azeroth from the get-go?
A: We have considered the concept of “Old Weather Flying.” Just kidding. More than likely, you’ll just be able to fly from the beginning.

In addition, there was one more question that may possibly be mount-related …

Q: Where is my moose?
A: Well, we’re looking for a zone where moose would really fit. Unfortunately we did the perfect zone for them, Grizzly Hills, already. On the other hand, let’s just say we have a large, Egyptian-themed desert zone in Cataclysm….

You can find the transcript of the entire dev chat on the WoW forums at: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=24401849960