Jim Lynch: Tech Tips, Opinions and Reviews

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A while back I barked about why I thought World of Warcraft sucked. Well I’m happy to report that some (but not all) of my complaints have been answered by Blizzard. In fact, World of Warcraft doesn’t suck nearly as much as it used to and here’s why.

#5 Cold Weather Flying At Level 68
Blizzzard has announced that level 80s will soon be able to buy a new heirloom that they can give to their level 68 alts. This is fantastic for those wanting to level faster as the ability to fly will help speed things along considerably from using a ground mount.

Just to confirm, Tome of Cold Weather Flight is actually a new heirloom item planned to go into patch 3.2. At level 80 players can buy this heirloom item from the Cold Weather Flying Trainer in Dalaran for 1,000 gold and send it to an alt of the same realm, faction and account. The tome can be used to learn Cold Weather Flying at level 68, consuming the tome in the process.

I disagree on the cost of 1,000 gold though, that’s far too high. It should be no more than 500 gold. Lowering would encourage people to level more alts up to 80 and would improve the end-game for everybody. The more classes there are available for raiding and PVP at level 80, the better the overall ultimately will be.

Hopefully Blizzard will move to cut the gold requirement back to 500 as quickly as possible.

#4  Mounts
One of the most annoying things about World of Warcraft was the inability to use mounts at lower levels. This truly sucked when you had to run around the Barrens as a horde or otherwise move around as a lowbie. Here’s a list of the awesome changes Blizzard is making to the use of mounts in World of Warcraft:

In the next major content patch, we intend to adjust mount requirements to further improve the leveling experience in World of Warcraft. In addition, cast times for summoning all ground mounts will be reduced to 1.5 seconds, down from 3 seconds. The following is a breakdown of the upcoming cost and level requirement changes we are making for each riding skill.

Apprentice Riding (Skill 75)

• 60% land mount speed
• Requires level 20
• Cost: 4 gold
• Mount cost: 1 gold
• Mail will be sent to players at level 20 guiding them to the riding trainer

Dreadsteed: Requires level 40

• Journeyman Riding (Skill 150)
  • 100% land mount speed
  • Requires level 40
  • Cost: 50 gold
  • Mount cost: 10 gold
  • Mail will be sent to players at level 40 guiding them back to the riding trainer

• Expert Riding (Skill 225)
  • 150% flying mount speed; 60% land mount speed
  • Requires level 60
  • Cost: 600 gold (faction discounts now apply: Honor Hold [Alliance]; Thrallmar [Horde])
  • Mount Cost: 50 gold
  • Can now be learned in Honor Hold (Alliance) or Thrallmar (Horde)

• Artisan Riding (Skill 300)
  • 280% flying mount speed; 100% land mount speed
  • Requires level 70
  • Cost: 5,000 gold (faction discounts now apply: Honor Hold or Valiance Expedition [Alliance]; Thrallmar or Warsong Offensive [Horde])
  • Mount Cost: 100 gold
• Movement Speed Training By Class
  • Druid
    • Travel Form: Requires level 16
    • Flight Form: Requires level 60 (150% flight speed)
    • Swift Flight Form: Requires level 70
  • Hunter
    • Aspect of the Cheetah: Requires level 16
  • Shaman
    • Ghost Wolf: Requires level 16
  • Paladin
    • Warhorse: Requires level 20
    • Charger: Requires level 40
  • Warlock
    • Felsteed: Requires level 20

All of this is going to be really, really helpful at speeding up levelling lowbie alts. It’s long, long overdue as many long time players are utterly sick of having to walk around from levels 20 – 30.

Frankly though Blizzard should have made mounts available at level 10. Yep, level 10. The game has been around for far too long to do it at level 20. Level 10 mounts would be an even bigger help and an even bigger encouragement for long time players to level up some new alts. The faster an alt can move, the faster it can progress to the highest level of the game where the real fun begins.

So Blizzard has taken a step in the right direction but it’s only a step and more needs to be done.

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