Posts with tag flying

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Many things are eagerly anticipated with the release of Cataclysm: guild achievements, level 85, Deathwing. Little has been discussed about flying mounts in all of Azeroth. It is just a snippet in the trailer, but I do remember its getting a huge cheer. Gone will be the days of flying into Southshore and then riding (I mean, really -- once we can fly, who is going to ride?) north to battle the Abominable Greench. You'll fly -- and yes, I know, Alliance won't be using Southshore, but that's a different topic. We will be flying up and out of Stormwind, heading south into Searing Gorge to Blackrock Mountain and a new instance with Nefarian, and we will be using our own mounts. Can't get that one piece of ore on the side of a hill? Fly up and get it. Need to help a low-level guild member outside Jintha'Alor? Fly there from Aerie Peak or Revantusk Village. You'll be able to scout where those nasty Devilsaurs are in Un'Goro without getting stomped on (not that it matters to a level 85).

So once you can fly anywhere in Azeroth, where are you going first? If you are Alliance, I would wager 85% of you are going to the airport above Ironforge. There is a gryphon master at the north end of that area. He always waves when you fly over on your way to Menethil. I'm thinking that will become an active flight point, but I suspect most of you will fly up there on your own, simply because now you can. A few of you will probably go to the fishing hut above Stormwind.

Me? That's not the first place I'm going. I have long wanted to get to one particular spot on the map. I've tried getting there a few times, particularly during the Lunar Festival because there's an elder near this spot. The gryphon flies over it and I so desperately want to get off, right there. No, I'm not telling.

Where are you going to go first? Anyplace in particular, or do you think you will just hop on your flying mount and savor the wind in your face as you fly anywhere?

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Even as inflation and worldwide recession jacks up transportation fares, it seems that Blizzard is bucking the trend and continuing to drive training costs for mounts even lower. Blizzard poster Mumper -- a blue so new to posting that even Zarhym was caught off-guard -- confirms on the forums that the costs to train for flying have been reduced significantly in Patch 3.2.2. Expert Riding is now available for a the ridiculously low price of 225 Gold, down from the 600 Gold price slash of Patch 3.2 (it was originally a whopping 800 Gold)! But wait, there's more! Faction discounts apply, too, but instead of Thrallmar and Honor Hold, which Level 60 players are unlikely to have any substantial standing with, these have been changed to Orgrimmar and Stormwind reputations, respectively.

Mumper (gotta love that name) explains that it was unreasonable to expect fresh Level 60 players to have even 600 Gold. He says that Blizzard wants more players to be flying around at Level 60, and the changes should make it easier for even new players to zoom around the Outland in fancy (and faster) flying mounts. It's good news that Blizzard is being very considerate of the playing community and its economic needs in these harsh times. Now if only we could get discounts off those paid services...

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DoTs! More DoTs! Fifty DKP minus!

Onyxia returns! The Brood Mother has been revitalized as a 10 and 25 person raid, so you'll need to be sure you know everything that's coming at you. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2.2 will make sure you're set for Nefarian's nasty daughter as well as other cool changes.

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WoW.com has covered patch 3.2 extensively. Everything from the surprising changes to flying mounts, to the latest and greatest loot, and all the changes in between. In our patch 3.2 class, raiding, and PvP guides we take a look at exactly what changes and how the changes will affect your playing.

Patch 3.2 is here, and there is a whole herd of mount changes stampeding into your stables. Here's a quick rundown of just what's changed about all the things you ride in patch 3.2, from updates to when you can buy mounts and for how much, new tweaks to old mounts like the Ulduar Proto-drakes and the TCG items, and brand new mounts like the hippogryphs from the Argent Tournament and the long-awaited Ravasaur.

Patch 3.2 is looking more and more solid. There are still some bugs with the bosses in the Argent Coliseum, but those are being worked out and appear to be more of a technical thing than a design flaw. This leads us to think that patch 3.2 will be dropping relatively soon.

So with that said, I've been wondering lately about my alts. In particular the four left between 60 and 70 who are sitting in Outland not doing anything in particular. I know that if I drop the gold on them and let them fly around I'll have much more incentive to play them through to 80, and perhaps even find a new class that I love (truth be told, I'm finding my 63 rogue quite a bit of fun to play lately).

As I'm thinking of finishing my army of level 80 alts, I have to plan a little bit. Why should I level right now if within the next couple weeks I'm going to be able to fly around and do it all much faster? Wouldn't my time be better spent playing Fallout 3 working on WoW.com projects?

Patch 3.1.2 brought it with the usual slew of undocumented changes, but here's one that appears to have flown under the radar for a while -- Mei Francis, Dalaran's exotic mount vendor, now sells basic Outland flying mounts (read: gryphons and wyverns) at both regular and epic speeds. This is great news for, well, anybody who doesn't want to go to Outland! I know that when my shaman hit 77 and I bought all of my flying skills, it was a pain to have to go to Shadowmoon Valley to buy my mount, so I can certainly appreciate the change.

Of course, there are even more mount changes in store -- a 150% speed flyer at 60, for example -- so this is obviously part of the devs' mission to streamline the leveling and traveling process for players of all levels. A welcome and unexpected change for quality of leveling life -- that's what I like to see.

The new Wintergrasp, I am here to tell you, is a lot like the old Wintergrasp. Which isn't a bad thing -- though Blizzard has made a few significant tweaks to the game's big non-instanced battleground, it's still the same match it's been (and a good match it is, if you ask me). The main difference is that all of the workshops outside the keep are now up for grabs, so the defending team can now not only take out the southern towers to knock some time off the clock, but also lock down the workshops to create a vehicle shutout. That's tough to do, in my experience, though -- even if you grab the two lower workshops, it leaves the top two open for attack, and odds are that the lower two workshops will really only be taken if all of the towers are down and the vehicle drives down south need something to do.

So the gameplay hasn't been changed that much, but it is nice that the requirements for the daily quest have been lowered -- we now only need 10 kills of the other side, and there are more NPCs around to count for those kills, so I actually finished both the kill and vehicle quests without even trying. It would be nice for Blizzard to somehow streamline the raid invite/share quests process that happens everytime WG begins, but they're leery of that, given how honor farming was such a problem in the auto-invite AV. And I have one personal request: Blizzard, can you please have me auto-dismount when I try to pick up an RP-GG? I'm fine with not mounting while I have one, but every single time I try to pick one up I get that error message, when all you need to do is auto-dismount me like any other object I use while mounted.

The biggest WG change isn't even in the battleground, it turns out -- most of the players I've talked to are just thrilled that you can now fly over Wintergrasp on the way from Dalaran to Sholazar Basin (and it figured 3.1 would drop a week after I finished the Oracle rep grind). I've even heard you can get credit for winning the BG if you're in the air when your side wins. Though a fix for that will probably have to come during the next round of WG improvements, whenever that will be.

Starting this week, we have a little change coming to The Queue. Adam Holisky and I will be tag-teaming the column, taking turns writing it each day. Today is me, Alex. Tomorrow is Adam. The day after is me. The day after that is him. I think you get the picture. It'll let both of us do a lot more work on the site as a whole, while still keeping The Queue fresh and awesome. I think it'll work out well!

Ezzy asked...

Did they remove the ability to buy Ruby Shades from Haris Pilton? I camped them for a while and the never spawned.

Fresh from the new Beta build today: new Death Knight starting screens and our first look at the Death Knight flying mount – a skeletal gryphon! The starting screen pictured above is pretty cool. The Death Knight is standing on a terrace surrounded by Northrend. Neat. Be sure to click on the picture for a hi resolution image.

The gryphon that we're seen, which is pictured after the break, is about the same size as a normal flying gryphon – but a complete skeleton. The actual name of the flying mount item is "The Winged Steed of the Ebon Blade." It is something that I'm really looking forward to picking up now, and I'm pretty sure most of you will be as well.

Lots of great bits of information coming out from this beta patch – stay tuned for more

I like to have a bit of gold on me at all times. When I see something I want for one of my alts, it's nice to be able to just buy it without thinking about the ramifications for next week's farming and raiding. There's a strategy that I've been using for a couple months now that'll let those that follow it earn upwards of 10,000g a month.

To use this strategy, you need to have access to the following:

• Rare T5/ T6 patterns
• A steady stream of Badge of Justices or Hearts of Darkness
• 5 hours a week set aside for hard core farming
• A second account
  

Those might look like insane requirements to some, and they're not wrong. They are a bit steep. However making this amount of gold should not be easy and be able to be done by everyone. But with that said, it's not too hard to get into a T5 guild these days, and weekly Kara runs plus a few heroics can get you 30+ badges a week.

Read on after the break for the complete strategy.

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UPDATE: The magic number is now 20! Read our updated version of mounts for the leveling player.

In the World of Warcraft, 40 is a magic number. Once you hit this level you get access to a 31 point talent, which usually does some pretty nifty things for your class. You really start specializing into your role as a healer, tank or DPS character. The best part about 40 is getting your fancy new mount. Once you get used to traveling the world on you pony (wolf, nightsaber, raptor, ram, etc) it can be really hard to go back to hoofing it on foot.

The biggest objection to this idea was the possibility of sky-ganking. Ganking however is a fact of life on a PvP server. I try to avoid going to Azeroth whenever possible, partly because it takes so long to get from place to place. Sure it would take a great deal of coding, but I would love to see this explored further.

If nowhere else, flying should be an option in Moonglade. That way Druids could try out their fantastic flying skills as soon as they get them.

Do you think we should be able to fly in Azeroth?

As recently reported, Kharmen EU Talnivarr has reportedly paid 20,000 gold for the Amani War Bear. Kharmen reportedly raised the cash for the enormous land epic ride on her which raised questions about how much gold grinding would trigger a gold farming alert.

The 20,000 price tag seems pretty outrageous considering I'm still puttering along, like many others, on my regular Windriders on all of my 70s. If the Artisan Riding Skill were important to me, I'd make more of an effort to save the 5,000 gold for the mount, but I find it to be low on my priority list. There is no indication that the cost of epic flight will be reduced in the future.