Woot! Mounts at level 20 for 5 gold, epic land at lvl 40, 150% speed normal flyers at level 60 in 3.2!!!

[Ualaa]

The first (slow) flyer is currently 60%/60% ground/flying speed.
It is being changed to level 60 for availability, which means Outland quests are trivialized a lot sooner.
More importantly its being made faster for straight line travel then the Epic ground mount.
60% ground and 150% air speed is very nice.

I think the first point is a poor choice, but the second is amazing.
The whole reason to not have flyers until 70th, is because they trivialize so much content.
Avoid 90% of the mobs, land near the quest guy and kill him plus an add, then fly off again.
Cold Weather Flying, while a gold sink too, is not until 77th, to force players to actually play for most of Wrath.
Once you can fly, Wrath quests become a joke as far as difficulty goes, aside from a few group chains.
The thematic elements and story is still there for anyone that takes the time to read the lore.

Blizzard has been quoted on several occasions saying, the game was meant to be played at maximum level for 90% of your playtime.
Unlike most games in the genre, leveling up is designed to be a very small portion of that total.
I'd imagine Cold Weather Flying will be available at 71st, when the next expansion comes, and Wrath is something Blizz wants us to blow through.

Not necessarily a bad thing there.
Take EQ, where it would be two expansions before you upgraded all your gear from the current expansion if you always took the "best in-slot" item for your class.
It could take 2 years after joining a guild to have gear equivalent to current top raiders, because of DKP.
In BC, they pressed the reset switch, as they have done in Wrath.
Essentially nothing before the current expansion counts for anything, as far as gearing up.
Anyone that gets the expansion on Day 1, has as much shot as the top person in a class from the previous expansion.
Especially if a guild wipes DKP for a new expansion, as many do.

[hendrata]

What I don't understand is this: the 225 and 300 riding skill is now affected by faction discount.

1. So the flying skills are affected by which factions? Thrallmar / Honor Hold? Then how's a toon at level 60 ever going to have a discount on the 225 skill?

2. Back then the moment I dinged 70 I bought 225 and 300 skills right away because I know it won't be affected by any faction discount. But now, I'm tempted to wait until they reach exalted with Thrallmar. But we all know how easy that is. No one runs Shattered Halls anymore, no one runs level 70 heroics. If you say "then don't wait for faction discount, just buy it now".... well, 5% or 10% of 5000 times 5 toons is a lot.

[Drew]

This just in:

Class-specific travel forms/buffs (Shaman Ghost Wolf, Druid Travel Form and Hunter Aspect of the Cheetah) will become available at level 16 in patch 3.2! Also, Druid flight forms will be available at 60 for regular and 70 for epic. No early flight for us anymore, but at least we get a matching speed increase (150%) for normal flight form.

[Fat Tire]

This just in:

Class-specific travel forms/buffs (Shaman Ghost Wolf, Druid Travel Form and Hunter Aspect of the Cheetah) will become available at level 16 in patch 3.2! Also, Druid flight forms will be available at 60 for regular and 70 for epic. No early flight for us anymore, but at least we get a matching speed increase (150%) for normal flight form.

Aspect of the Cheetah: Requires level 16
Ghost Wolf: Requires level 16
Paladin Warhorse: Requires level 20
Paladin Charger: Requires level 40
Warlock Felsteed: Requires level 20
Warlock Dreadsteed: Requires level 40
Travel Form: Requires level 16
Flight Form: Requires level 60 (150% flight speed)
Swift Flight Form: Requires level 70

[Tonuss]

That's the thing though, I don't see there being a need to go with epic flying for all members of the group any more. Yes, having epic on a miner or herbalist is a good thing but the difference between 150% and 280% won't make enough difference imo to warrant spending 24kg on a team any more.

That was one of my first thoughts. The reason I wanted to get epic flyers for my characters was because the normal ones were just painfully slow. If I have this right, it means you go from a 160% to a 250% movement speed, or better than a 50% boost?

The question for me is, now that I'm leveling a lowbie team (presently level 21)... do I wait for this change, or go ahead and keep leveling? I'm in no particular hurry, and the amount of money spent is considerably different (something like 39 gold at level 30 now, versus 5 gold after the patch). I may switch back to the high level group for a while, then, and see about getting them to 80 in the meantime...

[Tonuss]

this might be the thing that makes me quit

i've always loved vanilla more than the others, the quality of models and the number items using the same model has highly increased

making it easier to level, having achievements for wiping your ass succesfully, making DKs tanking spells with no CDs whatsoever, making raid anything but ulduar as easy as wiping your ass.

making it so easy to get gold that anyone and their mother has epic flying, the mammoth and the chopper.


sorry for the rant...

but that's just how i feel

I understand your concerns, even if I don't share them. I think that this just makes the most sense for Blizzard. I think that one of the things that made it easy for people to leave EQ for WoW was that after several expansions, the leveling curve was still horribly slow. Aside from the time required to find and assemble a group, the experience gain was still really bad. I think that the Blizzard developers were keen on avoiding that. So when a player wants to reroll, or just level up some alts, they can do so quickly. It also means that you don't have to slog through the old content if it happens to have become old or stale for you. Long story short, I believe that it keeps more people playing than it causes people to stop playing. By keeping the 1-to-60/70/80/etc grind manageable, people aren't as inclined to leave if they feel they either cannot continue to play their class, or just want to try something new.

So yes, it's a pretty big change and not everyone will be happy with it. But I think it's the right move in terms of percentage of people that will play longer.

[Marious]

I cant really see how this thing would be a bad thing at all, I love the whole flyer at 60 very nice, and then a 150% which makes sense because the flyer should be a tad faster than your land mount that the whole point of getting it. And I would have to agree with some of the others, really Vanilla is really old, unless they are adding stuff to the content for those low levels. And whats the big deal? Its not like a lot of us actually have any real desire to play Vanilla or BC for that mater that much since most of us have done 2-3 groups easy through all of that, why not let the noobs get to LK and be able to join others in raiding? For Vanilla no one and I mean no one unless they want the achievement are actually doing the old raids. And for BC all I ever did was some Kara and then right before LK came out I did a little bit of the 25 man content. Never really been big on raiding so it was not that big of a deal, and now I don't have a lot of time to actually raid until later on the summer so really not that big of a deal. And for Epic Flyers well I dont have all of them and there not that big of a deal really my main guys has one my other main has one and I have one on my shaman, the other alts dont have the epic flyers thought they do all have the epic land mount. I was not in that great of a guild when Ulduar came out and now that I have no time to raid, only been in Ulduar a number of weeks maybe 3-4 weeks and we had issues and its not a big deal really I would love to actually raid but if it dont happen aint gonna cry about it.

So just to make it simple I am glad for those that are starting and how easy they will have it.

[keyclone]

makes me wonder if people are complaining that they are not able to get epics.
i wonder what the percentage of accounts have no 80s.

[Tdog]

I will say this...This game has become entirely too easy, and compared to vanilla raids, the raids in this game are a joke.

HOWEVER, these changes have nothing to do with the game getting easier but rather with the game becoming LESS ANNOYING, and I think anything that makes ridiculous stuff become less annoying is always a good thing.

YES, Blizzard in my mind should work on making at least some of the end game as epic to complete as they did in vanilla wow. But them removing old, annoying, out of date, aspects of the game isn't affecting the epicness of the end game either way.

As the 1 - 90 / 1 - 100 rerolls approach, I welcome *anything* that makes the grind easier.

Seriously, when is the last time any of you against this have leveling 1 - 60/70/80 WITHOUT RAF. It takes some serious time.

No kidding, even boosting w/o RAF takes forever.

[Marathon]

I wish they would bring the price down of spells ... that gets exspensive times 4 or 5