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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsNorthrend-flying quest removed in favor of cash payout
by Michael Gray 
Oct 9th 2008 at 10:30AM
Drkshadow posted in the official forums with what he considers a slap in the face for folks looking to use their flying mounts in Northrend. (It's always a slap in the face, isn't it?) The quest to "attune" your mount to Northrend has been removed, and replaced with a simple 1000 gold payout. If you don't pay, you don't fly.
Bornakk confirms the change only a few posts later. He says turning the attunement into a cash payment makes it easier for more players to get. It might suck to pay the 1000G for each hungry alt. But, really, if you consider it -- how hard is it to farm up 1000G on your main? I think Bornakk makes a fair point -- it's probably easier to just grab cash on your main than take a relatively undergeared alt through a quest over and over.
Of course, we already knew that flying wasn't going to be very expensive. I guess someone might argue that 1000 gold can be a lot of cash, but that's really only a few days of dailies, or maybe a quick trip to sell loot at the auction house. At level 80, I'm just not going to get intimidated by a single grand.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Events, News items, Expansions, Mounts, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 9)
Torri Oct 9th 2008 11:09AM
Exactly! couldn't have said it better myself. It's not like the epic flight skill doesn't cost enough. What is Blizz thinking with that? ''Oh hey! You bought gold from that farmer? BANNED! Hey! we suspect you MIGHT be botting. BANNED! Hey! What do you mean we overcharge for stuff? 5 grand? thats nothing..just do the
.mod gold 5000..oh yeah..thats right..you don't have that abbility..HEY! YOU SAID '.mod gold 5000' YOUR TRYING TO CHEAT BANNED!!!!!!''
Thank you. i have said my peace. Good night.
Jamesisgreat Oct 9th 2008 11:12AM
"it's probably easier to just grab cash on your main than take a relatively undergeared alt through a quest over and over" - erm, what? How difficult was this quest that they had us originally doing to get flying in Northrend? Did we have to down Illidan or something? Win 100 AV's in a row? No? - it was a soloable quest that took a few minutes you say? Oh well yes, that sounds a lot more difficult than spending a week or so grinding 1000g for each alt.....
And also - "how hard is it to farm up 1000G on your main?" - for those of us who haven't got 2 hours to do all the dailies every single night, 1000G is still considered to be a quite large sum of money, and not just pocket change.
superfrank Oct 9th 2008 11:20AM
all you new guys that aren't 70 yet - remember it took many of the existing people several months to save 5000 for their epic flyer - this was without many daily quests available.
Whereas, the quests and mobs from 70-80 give more gold than anything anyone else had before. Furthermore due to inflation and all these existing 70s having access to loads of cash via daily quests, farming ore/herbs/leather pays much better than it did at this stage of the previous expansion.
So you have much less work to do to get your flying mount.
Juliah Oct 9th 2008 11:27AM
Rhyn - I know. It was a deliberate understatement on my part in the vein of "we see what u did thar, Blizzard." In other words, of course it is artificial and arbitrary -- obviously so.
I'm afraid we don't know one another in real life, so I hope you'll take my word for the fact that my tone of voice and cocked eyebrow would convey my meaning better. :)
Rhyn Oct 9th 2008 1:19PM
@ Juliah.
I hate it when I correct someone who is saying the same thing as me but in a different way. Sorry to have bitten your proverbial head off!
eillind Oct 9th 2008 1:51PM
i lol'd
Balius Oct 9th 2008 5:42PM
Gold sinks help new players. The reason they're trying to bleed gold from the economy is so the low level materials and armor become cheaper, and new players can buy themselves level appropriate greens to keep up, they can buy level appropriate crafting materials, they can buy quest things they need.
As servers age, players tend to accumulate more and more gold, and as the wallet groys and the length of the day doesn't, players are much more likely to spend the gold they don't care as much about than the time they do care about. If someone has to decide between buying goldthorn for 40G a stack or get all the way to the areas it drops and farming for an hour, they start thinking a lot less about dropping the cash. A level 35, though, isn't going to have that kind of cash laying around for the herb. If they need one, and aren't an herbalist, they might as well forget about it. And that's not fair.
Honestly, if this cost 10000G, new players should rejoice.
Zandrae Oct 10th 2008 7:44PM
This.
Having to pay another 1000 gold per character is very... very irritating. I have 8 70s so far, 3 of them have the 5000g epic mounts, all of them have the 1000g flying mount (except for the druid who has flight form).
That's 23000 gold so far. Isn't that enough?
Mark Oct 9th 2008 10:43AM
I'm curious about the mount costs. As someone who never bothered to spend 5000 just to get a faster flying mount, am I going to have to pony up that money before I can spend another 1000 to fly in Northrend?
Schadenfreude Oct 9th 2008 11:38AM
No, you can fly in northrend on your slow flyer just fine.
Maz Oct 9th 2008 10:43AM
Do you need epic flying tho?
I'm switching alts and I don't want to have to pause and farm 7000g to get to Northrend flying.
Rugus Oct 9th 2008 10:46AM
Yes, you need it. Fast flying mount = fast everything (quests, zoning, farming, etc...). I was 100% on the "no" side when I was under 5000G. Then I dinged 5000 and decided to give it a try. Well, after you fly 280% you just ask yourself HOW could you ever play without it. Even the 60% speed flying mount is a complete sh*t, compared to the fastest one.
Amaxe Oct 9th 2008 10:49AM
Well the regular mount flies and runs as fast as the level 30 ground mount. Blizzard screwed that one up, as it would have been much more intelligent to have it be as fast as a land mount.
Regular flyer: +60% movement in flight and on ground
Epic Flyer: +280% movement in flight; +100% movement on ground
Regular land mount: +60% on ground
Epic land mount: +100% on ground
after awhile you want to slit your wrists when on your regular flyer
Maz Oct 9th 2008 11:04AM
You miss my question....
Is Epic Flying a Pre-Req for Northrend Flying.
If so, that is asinine, especially if there are flying-only accessible areas for pre-raid progression like Netherstorm.
Matthew Rossi Oct 9th 2008 11:07AM
You can get Cold Weather Flying if you do not have an epic mount. My tauren doesn't have an epic flyer, and he flew around Storm Peaks and Icecrown cursing the day he was born.
Horris Oct 9th 2008 11:14AM
According to this screenshot, only regular flying is a prereq. Of course, I'm not in beta so I'm not sure how accurate it is.
http://www.worldofraids.com/gallery/files/3/0/2/2/0/wowscrnshot_090608_042108_original.jpg
Daneder Oct 9th 2008 12:23PM
I don't see how anyone could complain about this - 1000g is already pocket change at 70, and I'm sure it'll be that much easier to get at 80. People should just stop whining about everything.
Dunwich Oct 9th 2008 12:55PM
May want to focus on the point, squire.
The cost isn't the problem. It wouldn't be a problem if it was a single copper piece and it wouldn't be a problem if it was 50,000 gold. The problem is they've eliminated a quest-chain for a simple "GIEF GLD AND U CAN FLY!!!11" trainer.
Gold farming is rarely fun. Quests are almost always a lot more fun. I can grab a grand in two days happily, a single day if I put my mind to it. But it's not exactly "fun". It's a necessary evil to access the fun.
But what's more fun? Doing a rather unique quest, or handing over a grand to some vendor? The latter just kills the immersion in the game, in direct contradiction to what Blizz banged on about a few days ago.
Then again, I'm still bitter vendors and trainers of all stripes lost their "flavour text" a few patches back for no real reason.
Verymad Oct 9th 2008 10:44AM
Quests > Cash
Bah, i don't like this.
Maybe 1k G isn't much but if they continue to charge for stuff on G it in whole will become much.
Btw. do you see again- blizz bowing down to the major public that just doesn't want to do anything. & they are making buying cash from farmers more of an attractive idea.
Amaxe Oct 9th 2008 10:45AM
I think most were probably planning on paying in order to get their mounts active as soon as possible, but it would have been nice to have the option.
I hear gold comes easy in WOLK, but it is about 3-4 days of dailies now, and probably an annoyance to the person trying to get epic flight to know they now will need an extra grand.