Today in WoW: Thursday, Sept. 1, 2011
by Adam Holisky 
Sep 1st 2011 at 9:40PM
Don't forget to check out The Daily Quest and our Weekly Podcast Roundup to find out what else is going on in the WoW community. And if you have a news tip, feel free to drop us a line and let us know.
Blue posts
Worgen mount clarification
The intention with the new mounts was just to honor player concerns about achievements and even up the mount totals between the alliance and the horde. It's something people had been requesting since the release of Cataclysm, so we're evening up the numbers by giving the Alliance some additional mounts to add to their totals.
The Worgen racial mount is Running Wild. These are just some extra horses, for your horse needs. Perhaps the blog should have been titled 'New Gilnean Faction Mount'? Or maybe just 'Wyld Stallyns'? We may actually edit the blog to clarify why these mounts were added. To be clear, it's not because we think worgen look their awesomest riding horses.
--
The intention wasn't really to hype this up, so much as to simply inform and reduce confusion. Our thought was, rather than let these be introduced without any context via data-mining, that it seemed like a better idea to introduce them ourselves with a bit of context.
--
The Worgen racial mount is Running Wild. These are just some extra horses, for your horse needs. Perhaps the blog should have been titled 'New Gilnean Faction Mount'? Or maybe just 'Wyld Stallyns'? We may actually edit the blog to clarify why these mounts were added. To be clear, it's not because we think worgen look their awesomest riding horses.
--
The intention wasn't really to hype this up, so much as to simply inform and reduce confusion. Our thought was, rather than let these be introduced without any context via data-mining, that it seemed like a better idea to introduce them ourselves with a bit of context.
--
UPDATE:
There was some miscommunication regarding the initial reason why these mounts were added. After talking with the devs again these mounts are actually being added because they already happened to be available and we thought it'd be nice to make them able to be purchased and ridden. Which is unfortunately quite a bit different than how we understood and framed the blog.
Their existence also allows us to give players that faction change to Worgen something in exchange for their old racial mount. Right now if you faction change to Worgen you lose your previous home-faction mounts, and so we're also trying to correct that with this change.
WoW news from other sites
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- Scattered Shots: Hunter mailbag Q&A
- Addon Spotlight: Errormonster and a mailbag
- World of Wardrobe: Bringing home tier 2
- Patch 4.3: Worgen racial mounts
- The Queue: Some notes ...
- WoW Rookie: Understanding item levels and gear decisions
- Preview RIFT's Chronicles of Telara solo instance content on the PTS
- Massively's Guide to Dragon*Con 2011
- Cookie Monster eat Xbox, but Xbox not cookie!
- Pocket RPG for the iPhone and more debuted today on the iTunes App Store
- Square Enix responds to Deus Ex racial controversy
- Activision digital revenue up to $1.7 billion
- Perfect World Entertainment confirms Star Trek Online going F2P this year
Filed under: The Queue
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Drakkenfyre Sep 1st 2011 9:59PM
You know, I really wonder about the internal differences in departments when one team relays information to another about the mounts being added, and the team responsible for them being announced on the site adds more excitement and flash, as if they never played the game, and realized the mounts already existed, and weren't new nor "new" racial mounts.
For those wondering what I am talking about, it's the post above where Daxxarri admits "After talking with the devs again these mounts are actually being added because they already happened to be available and we thought it'd be nice to make them able to be purchased and ridden. Which is unfortunately quite a bit different than how we understood and framed the blog."
Al Sep 1st 2011 10:40PM
"Left Hand, this is Right Hand. I'll let you guys get to know each other."
Still, good to see things cleared up.
Murdertime Sep 1st 2011 10:52PM
Well, it's best to think of the post as
'We once again underestimated the ability of sections of the warcraft community to be loudly and vociferously butthurt about every damn single thing, even if it's a thing we have no reason to bother doing beyond it's nice thing for a small section of said community and for that we sincerely apologise because apparently this is my goddamn life now, apologising to asshats for their own asshattery.'
musicchan Sep 1st 2011 11:10PM
No matter how awesome a company is, when it starts to get huge, there will be miscommunication between departments. I don't find the whole thing at all surprising, to be honest. It's just how people (and businesses) work sometimes.
Drakkenfyre Sep 1st 2011 11:25PM
Al, this isn't quite the same.
It's odd to see the web team, who presumably play the game, act as if the Horse mounts are completely new to the game. Everyone knows Horses are the Human mount. Even Horde players know Horse mounts are already in-game.
Seeing the web team admitting to adding undue excitement on the announcement, when they simply misunderstood, makes it seem like they don't even play the game.
I am not overly disappointed, or even angry, either way. I was fine with them not having a mount. A mount is nice, and a Horse is better than nothing for those working on the Achievement thing. But it's still odd seeing them admit to misunderstanding it to the point where it seems like they don't even play the game.
loop_not_defined Sep 2nd 2011 12:00AM
Drakkenfyre, does that mean the new Rated Battleground horse mount isn't "new", just because it's a horse?
Of course it's new.
loop_not_defined Sep 2nd 2011 12:02AM
If you cannot buy a horse that looks like this, right now, then it's new. It's that simple.
Drakkenfyre Sep 2nd 2011 12:07AM
loop,
http://www.wowhead.com/item=5656
The only difference is there is no sadle.
In their own admission up there, the mount already existed in-game.
Trynyti Sep 2nd 2011 12:27AM
@Drakkenfyre: I'm actually more surprised that you think that every employee of Blizzard plays WoW. I'm sure there's plenty of people at the company who don't play games at all. Just because you work at a video game company doesn't mean you're a video game player. Where I work we've got plenty of Project Managers, HR (no surprise) and even Artists that are really good at their job, but don't play video games. Granted, you'd expect at least one person in that web team to play (or to have played in the past), but it's typically not a job requirement to play your own games (except during company playtests - if you can tear the artists away from making art!)
Drakkenfyre Sep 2nd 2011 12:40AM
"I'm sure there's plenty of people at the company who don't play games at all."
You would be wrong.
A long time ago, Blizzard said one of the first things they do in an interview is ask the person what their favorite games are, and why.
If they don't play games, reguardless of their talent, they don't get hired. They want people passionate about games, not someone who's just looking for a job.
Granted, an HR person is probably less likely to play games than a developer, but it should still apply.
The person who admitted they messed up was Draxxarri who is a CM. And it would be a very bad position for a CM to not play the game the messageboard he does most of his public work on is for.
B1ue Sep 2nd 2011 1:55AM
@Drakkenfyre
But these exact, saddleless horses did not exist in game as mounts. They look like the mobs in Grizzley Hills, and possibly recylced in Gilneas (I can't really remembr exactly what the horses looked like for that quest). I would guess, and this is but only a guess, that by existing in the game already, they didn't mean that horses as mount existed already, but that these exact models were already in use in the game, and they decided to use them as mounts.
Perhaps they'll clarify further, but that sounds a lot more reasonable than posisting that a CM would have thought humans were running around this entire time on camel back, or somehting like that.
Al Sep 2nd 2011 2:24AM
I'm starting to wonder if an intern wrote the first version. "Brand new mounts for Worgen players are coming" was pretty far removed from "We'll finally fix the Faction Swap mount loss, by adding the horses from the Grizzly Hills quest/old mounts to the Gilneas quartermaster."
Granted, any wording would have ticked someone off in this community, but the unintended vibe of "We're just going to call these mounts 'new' and hope you're too dumb to notice" meant 'twas on for young and old.
loop_not_defined Sep 2nd 2011 5:38AM
Drakkenfyre, you're original complaint was that they didn't know humans had horses. That's a pretty far cry from not knowing humans had a *specific version* of a horse. I sure as hell didn't know, and I even *play* a human.
loop_not_defined Sep 2nd 2011 6:47AM
If you're going to use hyperbole, at least be consistent.
Drakkenfyre Sep 1st 2011 11:46PM
I have to ask, what the HECK is up with the commenting system today? I have had it lose at least 5 replies now. Even using the password it gives you, it says a confirmation email has been sent, and none is.
It's not even alerting you to people replying to your comments anymore.
Fletcher Sep 2nd 2011 12:37AM
The QQ over the worgen horses is kinda shameful and embarrassing. People need to pull their heads in and stop throwing tantrums like incontinent toddlers in the candy aisle.
Marius W. Sep 2nd 2011 1:09AM
Hopefully they put the mount npc in Gilneas, so you know, there is at least one person in there and not just a great looking zone that is completely empty and without purpose other than about an hours playtime.
What I also think is that this is a sign that Gilneas will be populated and serve a purpose, aside from it just being a starting zone for a few levels.
The forsaken preparing for an invasion outside of a completely empty Gilneas just seems silly.
I don't know. Might just be me but it seems that with the revamp of the old world a lot wasn't finished when Cataclysm was released and 4.3 will complete all the unfinished story lines and activity. I think we got 5 levels because they didn't have the time to do all 10 levels.
I said this in a thread back in the day, but it would be a great idea if they split up the leveling in a xpac. At first we get 5 levels, then midway through we get the remaining 5. I can see Gilneas being one of the leveling zones. There is a lot you can do in there.
I can also see it being a world pvp zone as both the Alliance and Horde want it. Forsaken are trying to take it and Alliance is trying to prevent them from taking it.
The Sylvanas story may get wrapped up which would end any and all speculation that she is going to be a boss and removed as leader of the forsaken.
I also said in a thread awhile back that Mists of Pandaria may very well be the name of the Patch and being it is the largest content patch ever, it makes sense.
I can see the Pandas playing a role with deathwing. We ride him and try to get him to the ground.. maybe he flies us over to the magical land of Pandaria.
With it being a patch and part of Cataclysm, everything said in the filing would fit.
Curious if the troll story will go any further cause they made a big stink about the resurgence of the Trolls and all we got was recycled content. While it was fun, it was still recycled content.
Biggest content patch means just that. We've had large content patches before, but I see 4.3 as being epic and it has to be with the competition coming up for Blizzard with Star Wars coming out. They need to do something epic. Of course, we will know all when Blizz-con comes around. I don't see them announcing a new xpac as its been less than a year since the last Blizz-con. I see this Blizz-con being more about Diablo 3 and patch 4.3 which may very well be big enough to be comparable to an xpac, which would rock and make 11 million people very happy. It would also quiet the naysayers, like myself, about what they are doing.
The interesting thing is how much Blizzard is saying about what's coming up. I don't remember this much coming out before a patch. If they are releasing this much detail already, just think how much more there is that they are keeping quiet.
Wow, I babble a lot.
chaosdefined Sep 2nd 2011 7:46AM
I decided to level a Worgen for a bit of a change and to see the other point of view when levelling up, especially as I'd experienced Northrend 4 times as Horde so it was getting a bit dull.
I'm so glad I decided on a class that doesn't wear a robe though, because Running Wild is already a fairly stupid looking animation, but seeing it on Worgen in robes? Oh god...
Just a shame the horses won't be added in for ages.
Al Sep 2nd 2011 2:53PM
It was tolerable once, with the dungeon finder bug, but Blizzard hot-fixed that some time ago.
(If you were in RW when the Finder popped and you clicked accept, then went to Human mode before you ported out after finishing the dungeon, your toon would be a Human racing around on all fours. If you're gonna look goofy, may as well go all out.)