Patch 5.4 patch notes
Virtual Realms feature revealed
The Proving Grounds are coming
The latest patch 5.4 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 5 of 9)
Jeni Oct 9th 2008 11:16AM
`Why is there so much groaning over this? I have 3 70s. Each of my 70s paid for their epic flyers just doing quests and dailies. I have about 15k in my alt guild bank just hanging out to pay repair bills and eventually get a mamouth. It's 1000g. Say you do the dailies. You get about 250 or so gold a day. That's 4 days of dailies. Now, remember that dailies are going up from their piddily 12g a quest to 20g or so a quest.
It's NOT HARD to make VERY EASY money in this game.
Blackhorn Oct 9th 2008 11:18AM
You don't need to do dailies. The regular quest & grind of going from 70-77 will get you enough money for cold weather flying (and possibly even regular flying mount training). Like you said, money is easy.. and you don't have to resort to monotonous dailies.
Blackhorn Oct 9th 2008 11:16AM
As an active participant of the beta and the forums, I've been assured time and time again that no matter what you do in Wrath of the Lich King, you WILL HAVE 1000G by the time you need to buy cold weather flying. You have to go out of your way to not do quests and only level in instances to come up short.
This training fee is weeks old. WEEKS. The beta forums have seen it discussed to death every day, day-in day-out.
Now I would have liked the CHOICE to do a quest or pay gold. Why we can't have both? I don't know. Paladins and Warlocks have the CHOICE to either buy a mount or do a quest for one. Why not do it like that?
Naix Oct 9th 2008 11:16AM
5 days until patch. Muahhaha
Joe Oct 9th 2008 11:17AM
you guys need to quit crying, its called a gold sink, mounts have ALWAYS been gold sinks.
I started a deathknight on the beta realms with 0 gold at lvl 76 I have ~2500, I sold nothing on the AH, just did quests and vendored greens, and omg look... I have enough an entire level early to afford the non-epic flyer skll, a non-epic flying mount, AND cold weather flying...
Altho I cannot confirm it, but Im pretty sure I read somewhere that it scales with Kirin Tor Reputation as well, so its 1000g base
Blackhorn Oct 9th 2008 11:20AM
My level 80 DK did a few hellfire quests to earn rep for a heroic key and earned 320G just from those.. and we have people hear moaning that they won't have enough money to spend 2000G on flying at 77 (assuming they didn't train it right at 70)
sephirah Oct 9th 2008 11:21AM
I don't care about gold sinks, I just don't want read BS such "Making it purchasable makes it easier for players to get." or "Cold Weather Flying was indeed a part of a quest line, but we changed it because we felt that it wasn't clear enough where to get it."
Willypiggy Oct 9th 2008 11:19AM
Don't forget that in the same way as you should of had enough money for your normal flyer when you hit 70 you will have enough for this when you hit 80, Just by leveling 70-80 you make around 2.5K from doing quests whilst leveling, so, its not that hard to make the cash for your flyer.
h8rain Oct 9th 2008 11:20AM
Due to the hard economic times hit in the virtual world, this makes sense. Why award someone for doing something, when the dictators(Blizzard) can tax you for the ability.
Just wait.....Gold income tax is going to skyrocket (repair bills).... "Hey guys, I might be late for the raid, cause I need to do some dailies to repair my epic plate armor."
We should rise up and Smite our overlords!
dunija Oct 9th 2008 11:20AM
I really don't think this is fair. They have told us over and over that it would be a quest. Now, they change their minds again. Grr.
Yeah, I'm sure 1k gold won't be that hard to get, but still. I have 3 toons that are gonna be needing this along the way. :(
Redwood Oct 9th 2008 11:21AM
Does this mean one can pay 1000g at level 70 and get this cold weather flying or does on have to wait to 77 or 80?
Joelock Oct 9th 2008 11:25AM
you have to wait untill 77 before you can purchase it, otherwise you could just fly around and skip the zones (honestly it'd be your loss, as much as I'd love to fly I'd miss out on so much of the awesomeness that is northrend
Clegane Oct 9th 2008 11:25AM
I'm not backing down that this is a bad idea. I want the Azerothian congress to approve a 700-billion gold bailout to finance this new gold-sink so Main Street doesn't lose its flying mounts.
dawnseven Oct 9th 2008 2:37PM
LOL !!
NikTC Oct 9th 2008 11:27AM
You know what, i was looking forward to this quest chain its one hell of a boon at the end. But 3 levels maybe 2 and a half worth of exp grind by the time VS just get to 80, from 67 to 70 took me only a few days of grind and i got to level 70 in 10 days. And i had all the money on me to get non epic flying and within two months of JCing and Mining i had the 5k and now im Enjoying doing 25 daily quests and 1k isn't much to me anymore i make that in less then a week of doing dailys. Frankly Boo on Blizzard for taking away a cool quest chain, but their slowing us normal players down a week at most on leveling and makes a few of us grind a little more for the 20k .
Anteia Oct 9th 2008 11:26AM
There's a major missing logic in this post. Namely, you said "At 80" you would not be bothered by this. You will not be 80 when Northrend flight opens. You will not have access to level 80 dailies. You will have surpassed the level 70 dailies, and you will only have questing and grinding to pay for that 1k because you will only be level 77, unless Blizzard intends to screw us by raising that too. I, too, have three alts and the idea of THREE thousand instead of a quest is painful. This is a horrible idea by Blizzard and only encourages gold buying. They have those 8k dalaran rings at level eighty, and the expensive bags by Haris Pilton and plenty of other gold sinks for people who don't know what to do with their money. Flight that people have already paid for should not be one of them. Now, if Blizzard wants to make that cold weather flying + 20% faster flying, then I'm willing to talk. But no improvement and simply granting 'permission'? At level 77, that will be just as annoying. Particularly since level 77 is where people will start trying to save up for crafted epic pieces so they can begin raiding with a better edge and the like if that's what they want to eventually do.
Shadiix Oct 9th 2008 11:26AM
The first blue post on the change had stated that the change was made because not everyone found the quest to get the flight skill and by making it buyable by a trainer in Dalaran it would be more accessible.
Blackhorn Oct 9th 2008 11:26AM
I blame Michael Gray for the whole tone and reception of this post.
NO DAILIES. NO AH. You will have the money. And if you make it to level 77 without having enough cash in your pocket, you did something VERY WRONG along the way. Stay away from the casinos and the wishing wells. You will have the money, on every alt, to pay for this.
So calm down. This isn't even real money. It's pretend money thrown at you for doing pretend things.
Illirien Oct 9th 2008 2:43PM
You're kind of missing everyone's point.. 1k gold is no big deal, but what they've done here is remove something at least potentially interesting and replace it with a purchase.
Blackhorn Oct 9th 2008 2:49PM
Actually, most of these comments are about people fixating on the cost of the training, not the lack of a quest to do.