Regarding talents, I'd like to see them become wider, which would allow Blizzard to do away with the PvE/PvP spec distinction.

Also, probably just missed it, but where is the info specifically stating they are making the talents deeper as opposed to just adding more to the current tiers (or even additional trees)?

I think that'd be a hard sale, given it'd just be the current flying mounts, except the (dismount Z < 0) would be replaced with (dismount Z > 0) =|

Why not? Who wouldnt like to have an Epic Yellow Submarine!

I believe they said it at Blizzcon about 41-50 point talents and new awsome 51 pointers etc...
It came from a Q&A on one of the panels iirc, however I can't recall which one (most likely Class Panel).

One thing they could do to get us to spend more money on mounts without making the mounts faster is to allow you to mount as an instant cast. Druids can already do this (albeit for a mana cost) so I don't think it would cause any sort of major issues and it could lead to some really fun aerial combat.

If that wasn't enough by itself, at that level of skill your mount could stop taking up a bag slot and start giving bag slots... call 'em saddlebags or whatever.

Or, you could introduce more intelligent mounts which had their own hearth (seperate from your own). So your mount could instantly recall from anywhere to Dalaran every hour while you could keep your hearth at your quest hub or in Shattrath.

I'm sure others here could come up with similar ideas to make mounts worthwhile without making them stupidly fast.

<------------------------ Clearly overpowered!

Special extra slots, such as a trinket bag or clothes rack, or saddle slot, are excellent idears for money sinks. Also they should add more forms of currency after gold, causing people to not even pay attention to gold-copper, allowing them to start gypping people 1 penny at a time, like Office Space or something.

Caster classes would have a huge advantage over melee classes. Futhermore, classes that have instant casts would also have a huge advantage over classes who's main abilities have cast time.

Regards aerial combat, even druids can't go flight form while in combat so your options would be quite limited (attack someone and hope combat breaks before you crater unless you're a mage or priest).

Instant cast mounts (simply for convenience), saddlebags, and mount-hearths are all excellent ideas however.

Ah, sorry, didn't realize--I don't have a high-level druid. Though this does explain why I see people doing the Bird > Moonfire > Bear > Charge thing instead of just flipping back into bird. So I guess the PvP aspect might not apply, but the rest of it might still be worth it. ^_^;

Mounts with weapons and HP, or as they're more commonly called, siege weapons.

It might sound retarded, but consider assaulting a huge Scourge base with a raid of smoke-belching, cannon-firing steam tanks backed up by laser-equipped gnomish gundams and spell-slinging Popemobiles.

I think we all need our own private tank, don't you?

Well, I wouldnt be so surprised if we got Tonk BG afterall. They have been hyping about stuff related to Gnomeregan and hence nifty little engineering thingies.

"For 10 000 gold, I will teach you the ways of the Death Knight..."

Yea, to be honest, I thought flight was too easily accessible in TBC, and I hope they don't make it even more accessible in WotLK. After you get 225 skill, a lot of the remaining solo content in the game becomes an absolute joke... imo, it should have required level 70 and then a long Kara-like quest chain for 225 skill, so that people had actually put a reasonable effort into SMV and Netherstorm the "normal" way before cheesing everything with flight.

The fact that everyone seems to believe that flying trivializes the world content lends some credence to my feeling that flying mounts are a detriment to the game. It's really kind of a tangible symbol that you're "rising above" the game world; once you hit 70 and get that flying mount, you're pretty much invincible outside. There's no longer any real significance to roads or mountains or water or any of that, and certainly no mystery left to the game world when you can pretty much fly around wherever you feel like it and see what's going on. Black Temple is the haven of the enemy, as far as Outland is concerned, and you can pretty much just drop straight into it, or snipe any NPC right off of its walls and fly out again. In game terms, anyone can scale Mount Everest, for a minimal monetary investment.

Clearly, for anyone who just likes to be able to beeline straight to an instance portal it's a big bonus; in fact, it's just so damn convenient that they probably won't ever be able to revoke this privilege without an uproar. And that's a shame, because I think Northrend is going to be rich in geography and atmosphere, which ultimately is going to feel a little more shallow when you traverse it completely uncontested.

I really cant agree more with this post. So freaking much of this game was destroyed by flying mounts it's absolutely appalling. Exploration, World PvP, Quests, just the novelty of the world itself. Basically the only part of the non-instanced world that is well tuned (read:fun) for flying mounts is the BEM areas with the fel-cannons and dragons. I really wish they would just learn from their mistakes and add something else that doesnt fly into the game for northrend.

Well, I'd add Skettis to that list too. So... that would be all the content designed for people with flying mounts, then? Yes, of course the 60-69 content is a bit small when viewed from a flying mount. Because you don't have a flying mount when you're going through it for the first time.

So now they've proved they can make good content for people with flying mounts (BEM, Skettis) and without flying mounts (everything else). What precisely is the problem?

About the only legitimate gripe I see is that they've not added much more outdoor content since hitting level 70. That, I'll grant you. But to leap from that to some kind of FLYING MOUNTS KILL WOW OH NOES dystopia is... eccentric.

Nezralix & hip have hit the nail on the head.

I love my flying mount but man, has it hurt so much of this game.

The "flying mount content" is certainly not very interesting, and basically involves a bunch of mobs that still can't target you mixed with an occasional anti-air mechanism that doesn't function all that well. You're still basically paratroopering into whatever quest objective you want to deal with, and still doing so at ludicrous speed if you have an epic mount. You might as well just have a bunch of portals in Shattrath to all the instanced content, because you're not really traveling through the world anymore, just hovering way over it (and possibly taking the opportunity to jump on some poor unsuspecting fool in the meantime). What's the benefit to them? The ability to do some lame aerial stunts or form "LOL" in the sky? No, the real benefit to them, the real reason people buy them, is so that they can effectively ignore everything on the ground that isn't a quest objective.

Any outdoor content they add is just going to be more paratrooper objective sniping. Why bother?

Like many changes in WoW, it's not about KILLING WOW, it's about making the game better or worse. In this case, and in my view, it's definitely worse.

I may be weird but I would actually like to have a portal from Shattrath to whatever instance I want to go to. I don't find that travel time adds anything to the game. (Okay, if it was quite that blatant it might bother me, but something like a sorcerers' guild that for 50s will portal me to select locations across Outland certainly wouldn't.)

I couldnt disagree more. Flying has made many aspects of the fun much more fun and enjoyable for me. I love flying and herbing/farming/exploring/flying around ganking. I still think flying shouldnt be available in Northrend till a high lvl (Maybe 80?) for similar reasons to others, but the mechanic itself is awesome. After you've quested/completed 'the solo game' part of wow with respect to zones/quests etc, theres no reason you shouldnt be able to fly above it all and have an obstacle-free adventure.

Yeah, I don't feel my enjoyment being limited in the slightest by being able to cruise around on my own personal dragon. Maybe everything important in Northrend will be hidden in caves!

Yea, I agree with most of this.. I think flying content is nice, but it has to be included with the realization that any content which isn't specifically created to assume flying mounts or forbid them will be trivialized. My problem with flying mounts isn't that it made it easy to get to Auchindoun, but because it meant that most people cheesed everything in Netherstorm and SMV especially. Like, half the quests in SMV are of the form "get behind enemy lines and kill this mob / collect this item"... and it's so, so much easier when you can just swoop in and do whatever, and then swoop out.

I can't agree, though, that flying mounts had a positive effect on world pvp or farming. Those who had epic flying mounts have a ridiculous gathering advantage over those whose only means of earning an epic mount may be... gathering. Also, being able to just fly 50 meters into the air to avoid all PvP was kinda cheesy, not to mention that epic flying mounts provide a much larger advantage than the epic / non-epic mount pre-TBC. Thank god that they'll probably never release a BG that allows flying mounts, people who enter without epics will probably get booed and hissed at like a level 10 in WSG.

It does seem that the quests were often designed with an assumption that characters would not yet have flying mounts. Perhaps (and I hope so) Blizzard has observed this and designed it so that flying mounts in Northrend do not trivialize content in a similar manner.

Some ideas... Putting quest objectives in multi-level buildings and caves (using new, Northrend style design, rather than the old Dun Morogh cave rehashed again). Perhaps significantly larger ghost towns with buildings that house mobs or objectives, but where the streets are about as safe as a current road. It also wouldn't hurt them to have significantly less "go and get this one item or mob" quests. Perhaps additional "mind control" style quests could help quest content not seem trivialized by flying mounts.