Warcraft Mounts

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.