As a WoW veteran, I'm sure I'm supposed to be upset about those mount changes, but actually.. it looks like a rather nice change. Walking across low-level zones isn't particularly cool, and compared to current zone design, you need to move a lot (constant running between Raven Hill and Darkshire, now doable with a level 20 mount!).

I suppose this could mean that in the next expansion cycle, the artificial Cold Weather Flying barrier would probably get ditched as well.

So what could this possibly say about Swimming Mounts? The current Sea Turtle is 0% land/60% water, and requires Apprentice Riding (75). We might not need new skill levels if they add better swimming mounts to the three higher Riding levels. Journeyman could be 100%, Expert 150% and Artisan 280% swimming. Of course, this assumes that the Sea Turtle is more than just a quirky rare drop.

For northrend, I'm sure that will happen, but there will be something similar in place for the new expansion. They specifically said that it was there to let people experience the content at something resembling the designed pace, and not just zoom by everything.

grutak: I believe it is. Not only accessible at lvl 60 but also at 150 or 160% speed.

Is expert riding skill(basic flying) speed percent being buffed? Isn't it 60% flying live now?

Yes, it is being buffed. This is going to make Hellfire Peninsula a lot faster.

Regarding the mount changes - has it been mentioned if this means druids will get flight form at 60, too? Or maybe even 58 (though I highly doubt it).

Also, I've seen no comments on it, so I'm going to highlight one of the changes as I missed it the first time reading through: cast times for summoning all mounts will be reduced to 1.5 seconds, down from 3 seconds - I can't wait for this!

I'm not entirely comfortable with the PvP implications of that change. As it is now, if you need to run (fly is a different matter) somewhere that's less than 6 seconds away, you should not mount. If you're in town, you can pretty much stay mounted, or you'll cover short distances. If you're out killing mobs or questing, the mobs are either close enough for the next pull, or you're crossing a larger distance. If you're raiding, you're crossing large distances, or not mounting at all.

Disregarding PvP, there are very few cases where you the time spent mounting isn't just plain negligble. In the whole scale of the transit time, the "loss" of 3 seconds cast just isn't worth mentioning. But in PvP... Whether it's WSG or an arena, a single GCD out of combat to mount has a fair chance to make a difference. Call me afraid of changes, but I don't quite see a gain in any other area of the game that makes it worth the risk of introducing "mounted combat" in a, ah, somewhat backward manner.

Sounds great.
Another change I hope they will do is to remove all mounts from the global cooldown. At the moment, it is the case for some mounts but not all, I don't know why.

The changes to Basic Flying make a lot of sense. In BC flying was a convenience; there were very few places where flying was required. What flying was mostly good for was traveling across the huge gaps between Netherstorm, Hellfire and Shadowmoon. In Wrath, both Storm Peaks and Icecrown are effectively impossible without a flying mount, and both also feature significant vertical transitions. 60% speed was excruciating enough when everything was fairly flat, but constantly having to go up and down makes it undeniably tortuous. The extra speed boost will help significantly.

So my new DK doesn't even need to fly down to Stonard now . . .

I wonder if that portal will still have the level 58 restriction.

Well, by contrast, I've farmed/quested/whatever on my rogue and probably decided "to spend the time mounting or not" at least 5,000x over the past 4 years. Perhaps your experience is different and that's fine, but I think the gaps between a lot of things are just far enough the consideration is real. Halving that time is nothing more than a giant convenience, in my mind.

I'm sure high-end PVPers will adjust almost immediately to the changes, as they do to new abilities, buffs, nerfs, etc.

Just some basic math regarding the mount casting speed change:

One hour = 3600 seconds; we're saving 1.5 seconds per mount, 3600 / 1.5 = 2400 mount casts for one hour of saved time.

If you only logged in to do your 25 dailies, and it took one mount per daily, after 96 days you'd have saved an hour of staring at a cast bar.

If all I was mounting for was herbing: assuming 3 herbs per node, I would get roughly 7200 herbs from those 2400 mounts or 360 stacks. Assuming it takes 60 seconds to locate and pick a node (I'd be surprised if it takes you that long, but who knows, maybe my server has a lack of herbalists), that extra hour is 60 more picks x 3 herbs per = 180 = an extra 9 stacks of herbs.

I've never really been a fan of portals (or portal cities like Shat and Dala) from an immersion POV, but if NPCs can travel to the Stair of Destiny to fight the demons, we should (and will) be able to do that as well.

On a side note, wasn't it great how they added a proper "boat transition" world map loading screen to Northrend? I know it's just a loading screen made to look like a boat travelling over the world map, but it instantly makes Northrend feel like part of the world. Would it really be so wrong for the next Neutral city to not have portals, but things like zeppelins and boats to just tie the world together (Undermine would be ideally suited)? It's unlikely they will be going back to making things 'difficult', but I think not everything about old world travelling was bad.

Little touches like that help, but ultimately I think portals are used in the new major cities for a very simple reason, time.

Vanilla WoW had all points of interest spread and disconnected such that travel reminded you how big the world really was. This certainly contributed to what made the game interesting but it also contributed to what made the game difficult for players with limited available time. If it could take 15 minutes to get to where you needed to go, and you only had a hour or two, that's a very significant chunk of your time being eaten up.

Portals do shrink the world significantly. While we still fly from place to place in Northrend, the rest of the "world" now mostly consists of <insert city of choice here> and the Caverns of Time. There's no need to go anywhere else, save during World Events. As much as I enjoyed the 'big' feel of Vanilla, I don't think I'd trade 5 minutes a trip for that.

Alternatively I think the long travel times are fine for new players who haven't yet explored the world. I remember when I first started playing flying over zones I never been to, it looked pretty amazing. However for the veteran player who just wants to get to where they have to go, they dont need or want to see the world they flew over 100 times already.

I dont think WoW should have instant teleportation to anywhere you want to go but I feel this is a step in the right direction without making the world feel small. I imagine that if Blizzard nerfs transportation/leveling again, they'll do so by having every character know all the FP's from the start.

My concern is that the adjustment will almost certainly be more frequent mounting-dismounting to move around the arena/BG. It'll be clunky, it'll make battles look and feel significantly less smooth with sudden jumps in speed, and it's going to affect the way distances are used. The gameplay impact here is going to be much larger than anywhere else.

And the consideration is, well, math. If you're in an area with a 100% only mounts, there's a 6 seconds running radius around you in which you should not mount. If you're going further, you should mount. This 6 second radius is approximately somewhere right above 40y - a fairly large distance compared to the distance between most mobs. The equalent distance for a 280% mount is (and apologies if the math is off, I woke up just now and not quite firing on all cylinders yet) 4,67 seconds, which on foot is, meh, somewhere above 31y.

The Ring of Trials is a circle with a 50-60y radius. Halving the cast time means that if you're going further than 20y, mounting is worth it. BEM and Lordaeron have terrain that makes for larger travel times still. It's altering gameplay by shrinking the distances of all arenas - making it harder to properly game those distances to score a kill - for a convinience elsewhere that is largely negligble. Obviously it's not an issue that'll make the Sky Fall Down And People Quit Playing, but then again, neither is the current mount cast times.

So I totally appreciate what you're saying and I'm sure it'll affect arena. But purely PVE, I am quite sure this change is one of those "not game-breaking but unbelievably welcome" things. It's going to make so much of the grind less unpleasant. And believe me, if you've done something like get exalted with Wintersaber Trainers for that alone, it's a godsend.

My 2 cents on the travel time issue, I would have tied it to the world explorer acheivements. Explore Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms get a land speed increase. Explore Outland and Northrend and get a flying mount speed increase.

The Isle of Conquest preview is up. Definitely sounds like it could end up being a fun improved version of AV.

World of Warcraft (en) Forums -> 12/06 The Isle of Conquest Preview

beaten to the punch...please delete.

Here's to hoping that the objectives outside of killing the General offer enough of an advantage, or that killing the general is too hard to do without them, that this won't becomes another PvE battleground where players ignore each other.

I'm glad they're taking another shot at large-scale BGs, though.

I am hoping that the PvE aspects of it are limited to just killing the general. Meaning no NPC guards, but also that the map is built to funnel the two teams into each other instead of past each other like AV. I admit that I'm a little underwhelmed with that description though; it sounds just like they've just mashed together AV, Strand, and AB and called it a new BG. I guess I was hoping for something a little farther from what we already have.

Although to be fair, a strike team parachuting into the enemy keep off an airship sounds pretty damn cool.

I agree with the above two posts, the biggest problem with Alterac Valley [in my not-precisely humble opinion] is that killing the General is an instant win, and you don't need all four towers down to do it. There just wasn't enough incentive to hold strategic objectives, and even radically different Alterac Valley games usually turned out the same way. Both sides rush, first and second tower are taken and defended from reclamation, third and fourth tower are defended by anyone stuck at their faction's base, and once the main graveyards are taken it comes down to who was faster without strictly being better. PC interaction is limited to the occasional person trying to sneak a tower defend, forced Gazelle fights, and the path choke-points. Turning in secondary objectives, while fun and profitable, almost never comes up even when you have the faction recall talisman.

Isle of Conquest gives me a bit of hope that while I will still need to spend some crazy time in Alterac [mounts, oh boy!], the feel of Isle will replace that aching hole. Fights won't just depend on 'get in first' because there won't be any more freedom of passage into the main keeps unless you create it. Parachute or drop the walls, or you don't get in. Fights can easily become attrition wars [ever affectionately known as honor farms] where the oil and cobalt become the most important. If attention isn't paid to the airship, you can air-dropped and have your own explosive open a defensive gap. If attention isn't paid to the siege workshop, you don't get engines and have engines coming at you. If you don't take the shipyard, your siege is relatively weak. All in all, it sounds well designed, the AB/EotS like capture mechanics will keep things interesting, and (hopefully) fun. I'm really hoping there won't be anything ridiculous like 'Airship becomes only thing that matters', cause then it's just AV all over again, rush wins, no matter what.

As for mounting, I'm torn. Personally, the time saving for daily grinds and resource gathering, as well as leveling alts, is a huge boon since I don't want to run through the same content I've already obsessively gone through; and even if I did, I could do it much faster. The PvPer in me can't decide to cry fair or foul. On the one hand, this will reduce the advantage druids [and shamans] have because of travel forms in BGs and arenas, especially when flag capturing is involved (meaning catching them isn't impossible). On the other hand, I didn't want EVERYONE to get the advantage, which seems like a crap-fix, I'd rather the forms simply be restricted to base speed, or +20% tops, in arenas and any battleground; and of course, druids can still do it in combat which is another can of worms [unlikely to change, so I may as well quit griping].