Setia

Perhaps they could implement aerial combat in certain zones, where you'd need to buy an appropriately priced "battle flying mount".

As long as it's restricted to a few appropriate zones to avoid griefing and PvP exploits(perhaps including some instanced content), I think it would have the potential to be very cool. Would be fun to fight the Blue Dragonflight mid-air.

 

Duodecimal

6K is lowballing it. If the scale of endgame from 1.0 to 2.0 holds for 3.0, the Heinous Gold Sink for the next expansion should be sitting at 20k - 25k gold.

 

Lookit

I don't think it's quite as simple as multiplying the price of the previous epic mount by 5. They made some major changes to the amount of money players made through the course of normal play with the release of BC, and I think they are more or less happy with the outcome. I don't foresee a similar drastic change coming with WotLK.

That said, you are probably right that 6k is a lowball estimate for the level 80 "epic" riding skill, whatever it might be.

 

Jebraltar

I imagine there'll be a fairly large increase in WotLK as well. Probably not as severe, since gold is generally less of a pain in the ass than pre-BC, but it will be noticeable. The increase was mostly just an effort to keep level 70s from going and farming 60 zones like mad since the mobs are so much easier to kill. That problem will still exist for the next expansion (although 70 zones instead of 60 zones).

Although, then again - most of the gold inflation from BC came from quests shooting us up to obscene amounts of gold. Most of the people I know are still losing gold, just vewy, vewy slowly. Daily quests are the first persistent inflationary source I've really noticed. (Mob coin just hasn't increased much.)

 

Faradin

I'd have to disagree. If anything, the quest gold created a temporary inflation that eventually became overshadowed by a greater temporary deflation. Everyone may have been running around with 2000g from quests when they first hit 70, but eventually most of them channeled those funds into the 5000g riding skill required to travel four times faster.

 

Jebraltar

Then most of them got another 2000g from getting their nether drakes.

And no, a lot of people didn't get up to 5000g - the vast majority of people I know don't have epics. Those people usually have more gold than we who got our epics, they just never "peaked" and had their gold subtracted from the economy.

 

Emeraude

Depends on how you go about questing, how much you knew about the exp to gold system, what kind of player you are, etc.

I played in BC's beta, and I leveled a relatively casual toon from 60->70.

This toon was in a few Blackwing Lair/ZG epics, 60% mount, most of the quest rewards were actually usable for it, etc. Between buying the 100% speed land mount, and 60% flying mount I hit 70 with only about 1800g or so, and this was with almost all of Netherstorm/SMV left. Your average normal player will probably end up in a similar situation.

My toon, however was a totally different story, yeah I could have leveled it normally, but after having to deal with that 60% flying mount in beta, there was no way I was gonna put up with it on Live. I grinded to 70 in instances for rep, then went back to Hellfire and did every single quest for gold. The difference in doing Zangarmarsh @ 62 and doing Zangarmarsh @ 70 is huge. Doing Zangar normally will net you 150g off quests, not counting quest reward items, doing it at 70 would be 700g(assuming 10 copper per 1 exp @ 70) might be less if you get less exp for being a higher level, though I think they normalized all of that. I had no other expenses or gear upgrades to take from quests until 70 because I had AQ40/Naxx epics, the only thing I had to pay for was a 900g mount. 2 weeks after BC was out I had 5000g and change for my mount, that path is not typical of your average player.

People who race to 70 and monopolize getting resources that other players can't get to and need are also gonna be ok.

They really need to think about players who don't have time or don't think outside the box when it comes to high priced items. There are ways to amass money but none of them are fun when it comes to getting gold for the sake of getting gold. Yeah I can do my Netherdrake dailies everyday and in 3 months I'd have about 10k in my bags, but I won't because grinding gold for the sake of grinding gold isn't fun, it's one of the reasons you see somebody make an alt, questing in itself with a sense of purpose is fun, the gold you make on the side is an afterthought.

 

Jebraltar

I think that this is a fantastic point - doing quests on my Rogue isn't really any faster than doing dailies on my Paladin was, but I get so many other rewards and there's a definite feeling of progresison, so it turns into less of a grind. To be honest, I usually try to figure out how little time I can spend farming every day in order to keep raiding - I'm down to doing my Ogri'la/Skyguard quests (skipping the Banish More Demons quest because although the Shartuul event is fine, the horrible droprate is not fun) every three or four days. On the other hand, when I actually sign over to my Rogue and do quests, I surprise myself by grinding out 100g-200g before I even get slightly bored, even though it's quests I've already done.

I think it's just that tangible feeling of moving from "started" to "done" - I didn't mind Ogri'la/Skyguard/Netherwing dailies when I wasn't exalted with all three (except for the Dragonmaw Transporters and the Deadliest Trap Ever Laid quests, which were always awful). I was moving from Neutral->Exalted and cool stuff! On the other hand, I have difficulty motivating myself to put fifteen minutes into making 40g from Ogri'la quests.

Not much they can do about that, though - BC had a lot of quest content, we just devour it really, really quickly. I've literally done every non-raid quest added in the expansion (note: >=level 58 required) to the best of my knowledge. It took a while to "catch up" through all the 58-70 content, but I devoured Ogri'la (and especially Netherwing) so quickly that it was ridiculous. Wait - I didn't do Skettis because it was an unbelievably horrible grind. I did get up to the Adversarial Blood line. (speaking as someone who was CC exalted on his Rogue, that's saying something)


Honestly, by the way, I had my epic mount within three weeks of hitting 70 on my reroll character, with no conscious effort to skip quests, etc. (Except for quests with reps I wanted to max later.)

 

sovelis41

I remember when the daily quest system was implemented and saying to myself "oh boy I can just do 10 of these quests every day and I'll have so much gold!" But after getting exalted with the 3 new reps, I haven't been back. Why? What do I need gold for outside of raid repairs, reloading my quiver, and getting some pet food every once in a while? At this point in time, until the new "gold sink" for WotLK is discovered (if there even is one at all), it doesn't really matter if I have 5k gold or 400. My on-hand funds stay at or around 400g with very little to no farming. If I'm really in a bind for cash or need some emergency consumables, the daily quests are there to supplement that, which I like a lot.

 

Tojara

I hope theres massive amounts of frost wyrms in the air that will totally own those people who afk autofly to a zone, estimating that they have 5 minutes to do whatever while flying. =p

Maybe not so intense but you get the idea. I think the reason why I like the old world so much is because of the pace that we moved there. You really got to know each area pretty well and all of its cool features. Now with TBC and 280% flying mounts I rarely see any of the landscape besides the twisting nether and the treetops from time to time.

I'd be happy with 200% flying mounts only in Northerend, 150-200% ground mounts would be nice too. Althought annoying at times, the random PvP and seeing the sights was a bright point of the ground mounts in the old world. The new mounts just take away too much of that, from my perspective anyway. Mind you I love farming herbs @ 280% speed, compared to say 100% and not being able to fly as the crow flies per say (straight line, without things in your way).

Why go through great lengths to make everything look cool to just have people fly over it super fast and see it basically once while in a rush to 80 ;9

 

Gryzemuis

I wouldn't mind if there were no flying mounts in Northrend at all. Yes, flying mounts are convenient. I have 3 epic flying mounts. I use them. But I liked the game better without them.

I don't think that is necessary.
Remember, the goal of the game is not "to have it all, to have it now". The goal of the game is progression. As long as you have something to do to make your character better, the game is fun. This is true when leveling, this was true when we were level6o, and it is still true at level70. If people don't have the time to grind money for an epic flying mount, they will probably still have enough other things to do. Run 5-man instances for gear, get stuff enchanted, empty their questlog, etc. I think almost everyone can afford a non-epic flying mount when they hit level 70. So all players can play at their own pace, and still get the fulfillment of getting to level 70, getting a flying mount, flying around. They can keep themselves busy. Only after all that is done, they might start wondering what else there is to do. That is the time they'll need to grind for money. I think many players will not reach that point. I think many players who do reach it, spend more time in the game anyway. So the problem of getting enough money when you don't have much time applies only to a small group of players in the middle. No big deal, imho.

 

Juli

I've been pretty disappointed with the lack of creativity in the implementation of mounts. I really hope we have more to look forward to than a flat % increase in movement speed in the future (not to mention you can only go so fast before things just get silly). For example, I would have preferred something like a lower base movement speed for epic flying mounts, and reputation/prestige mounts with a speed boost ability with a short cooldown (think epona's carrots/spurs). A little more variation could even be implemented between mount types such as the epic gryphon/wyvern getting a standard cooldown speed boost, nether ray getting a blink of some sort, netherdrake building up speed when travelling in a straight line like old plainsrunning (but returns to normal fight speed if you change direction), or whatever else you can think of. From the state mounts are in now, it would be nice to see mount improvements reigned in so that they were not such dramatic passive increases (small passive increases are ok) but just fun abilities that break up the monotony of 'autoflying' across twisting nether with enough incentive to actually use the abilities. Grinding out reputation or doing quest lines to get a new mount with some cool ability or to teach your existing mount a new ability opens up a lot of progression paths.

Maybe if we get a water expansion at some point we'll see water-based mounts too (or even just as high end engineering toys similar to the proposed flying machine - sea turtle submarines, goblin rocket boats/jet skis)

 

◊ Quigon

I think the key will be allowing casuals to access the content without having to farm for days to do it. I don't believe it will require even remotely the amount of time to get a current epic mount. I personally don't have an epic mount, and would never spend the time to get one unless I had to - and I think having to do that would suck, bad - especially as some pseudo requirement to being ready for level 80.

 

Zogeth

I would think that there shouldn't be another riding skill.

280% is fast enough, its averaging the speed of normal flightpaths. If we go any faster than this, it could cause technical problems for some people. As in the computer will not be able to draw the game fast enough. Anything faster than 300% is too fast.

 

Zedd

I agree, I had my drake for ages now. but faster would only cause "delayed mob spawning" for a lot of people

edit: i cant spell

 

Jebraltar

A lot of people already have that problem - I get it whenever my latency spikes a little.

 

Sapp

It's possible to get that effect on a normal land epic with crusader aura, if the server is a little laggy.

 

Alerian

Here's just some speculation, but as we know, Jaina Proudmoore is in Dustwallow Marsh. Since Blizzard has already confirmed that they are making changes to that zone in the future, it would be interesting to have some sort of tie-in to the Scourge, Arthas, etc, and Wrath as a whole.

Any thoughts?

 

Metrosexuelf

Possible. Although my initial impression was that they were finally going to do something with the Missing Diplomat questline after 3+ years of no follow-up.

 

swills

One thing no-one has touched on yet is Druid flight-form. If they disable mounts from 70-78 (or whatever) then they obviously have to disable flight-form too. I don't mind this at all myself but I can see a lot of WoW Forum bitching from Druids when one of the trained skills you get is suddenly disabled. Losing your mount is one thing, losing one of the few new skills you got in TBC is another thing entirely.

 

s[orc]ery

All i can think of which will appropriately allow flying mounts at this point is a "Licence to Fly" key or something you have to quest for at level 80. Or perhaps some sort of level 80 inscription for your mount that lets it resist the cold?

In any case it seems to me that the restriction will have a relatively minor impact on our enjoyment of the expansion. What i'm really afraid of is something like:

"Hemet Nesingwary's Distant Cousin wants you to kill 30 Northrend Baby Seals.
Northrend Baby Seal: 0/30"

 

Liebestod

I think it's pretty much 100% safe to say that flight forms will not initially be enabled in Northrend.

 

• songster

Actually, I wouldn't mind seeing this as a recurring quest, as long as there aren't too many other "kill 50 weasel" type quests.

Best of all would be a quest where PETA wants you to hunt down and kill Nesingwary's Game Hunters for crimes against animals. You could hunt down melee mobs, ranged mobs, caster mobs (mini boss after each), and then Nesingwary himself at the end :-)