Posts with tag motorbike

Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. Today, we are convinced that archaeology's RNG won't apply to us.

There are a number of interesting (and by interesting, perhaps I mean "occasionally very expensive and likely to drive you insane via RNG-laden accessibility") mounts available from professions, though for some of them, you'll have to be a practitioner in good standing before you'll ever be able to learn them.

Regrettably, I am the bearer of some very bad news this week concerning the Vial of the Sands for all those of you who like circumventing the highest costs in the game.

Also read:

• Combining The Ambassador and Mountain O' Mounts
• Mountain O' Mounts in Outland
• Mountain O' Mounts in Northrend
• Mountain O' Mounts in 5-man dungeons
• Mountain O' Mounts in raids
• Mountain O' Mounts from achievements
• Mountain O' Mounts from PvP

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

Maintenance day, maintenance day! One of the best days of the week, or one of the worst? I'll leave that to all of
you to decide.

Nautical D asked...

I stopped playing WoW just before 3.0 patch came out and deleted all my characters and items to make sure I didn't return, is there any way I could get back and start on WotLK without having to roll new chars?

Despite so much hate surrounding them in the beginning, the motorcycle mounts added in Wrath of the Lich King have been a massive hit. They're absurdly expensive, and yet there are tons of them running around. Some people still hate them, but there's plenty of love to go around.

Some of that live hit the official World of Warcraft website recently with a huge gallery of Hog/Chopper screenshots, from both factions. My favorite out of them all is the one I used above, because what's more awesome than Tauren in Lumberjack shirts and silly hats? Not much.

We also posted a little, much smaller gallery of our own quite awhile ago, you may remember. We took the screenshots in the gallery below during the Wrath beta when the motorcycle still had some pretty funny graphical glitches, so check that out too, if the official gallery isn't enough hog for you.

Thiosion asked...

What instances other than Ulduar and Icecrown are (is?) Blizzard suspected to be working on?

Screenshots may not be the cleanest way to present this list, but at least you won't have to worry about transcription errors, right? Here are some of the many trainable recipes we were able to find in Northrend. Remember that the Grand Master trainers are in Dalaran which you need to be level 74 to do the quest to enter. If you're not that level yet, make fast friends with a L74 Mage who has been up there and trained the Portal spell.

Also remember that some of these may have changed since beta. One thing that hasn't changed is that sweet, sweet ride, the Engineered Motorbike.

After a recent article on how the Engineering motorcycles of Wrath are going to be BoE items usable even by non-engineers, there's been a lot of commentary both here and on the forums about many Engineers' preference for the mount to be BoP -- or at least usable only by fellow Engineers. Last night we heard from reader Deftek who made the following three points: a). the motorcycle would be the only mount in the game beside your own faction's that doesn't require a rep/token grind or a profession; b). the vast majority of Engineering's gadgets have always been for Engineers only, and; c). everyone is going to have one if all you have to do is buy the reagents on the AH and track down an Engineer.

It's an interesting conundrum. Profitability and accessibility seem to be zero-sum in the game, and Engineers have complained for years that the profession was a complete money sink because they could sell so few items or services. I'm leveling Engineering on my Warrior right now and it became apparent pretty early that the profession lacked the usual lucrative items available to others; there's no real equivalent to Tailoring's bags, Leatherworking's armor kits, or Alchemy's raid potions. I've made money selling Mechanical Squirrels and that's it. So while I understand where Deftek's coming from, I still think the profession would benefit greatly from the addition of marketable BoE items, and Engineers have just been handed something that basically sells itself.

Having said that, a mount isn't an equivalent to, say, super mana potions or golden spellthread; you buy the motorcycle once and you never need to replace, consume, or update it, so the market for it will never extend beyond these one-time purchases. So while Engineering needs more moneymaking items, from an economics perspective the mount isn't a good choice and possibly should be BoP. But it sure looks cool, and I'd love to have one on my (non-Engineering) main.

I met a player in the beta a few nights ago riding one of the brand-new Engineering ground mounts, and he was kind enough to pose for a few pictures and chat with me about it. At the time he confirmed that the mount was being sold in Dalaran for a fraction of its actual value, presumably for the sake of testing its passenger function (which unfortunately still seems to be bugged, so don't count on hauling a buddy along if you run out and buy one right now). He also said the mount was BoE, which both I and Alex had a hard time believing would remain a permanent feature. Blizzard seems to keep most engineering gewgaws in the family, as it were.

Well, it looks like we were wrong; CM Valnoth has confirmed that the new Engineering-made ground mount for Wrath is going to be Bind on Equip, so I'd advise making friends with a good Engineer sometime soon (by the way, don't miss Jaylynn's #68 comment on the next page of the thread). We're not sure how expensive the mats are going to be once Wrath goes live, although the player I spoke to estimated it would be less than the current cost of a Turbo-Charged Flying Machine (though quite likely to be more expensive before the Northrend-fueled economy settles somewhat). Daniel Whitcomb's also observed it's likely to remain BoE as having one of these babies is linked to the achievement Get to the Choppa!, so with any luck Engineering is going to be a somewhat more lucrative profession in the expansion.

I was a little mean earlier and dropped a teaser for the new motorcycle mounts from the Wrath of the Lich King beta on Ask a Beta Tester earlier, so let me make it up to you all. We've put together a little gallery of the highly anticipated (by some) motorbike mounts that were officially implemented just last night, so if you're interested, go on and take a look.

They're a little buggy, they use some slightly new mechanics. They're about halfway between a mount and a siege vehicle. Your action bars don't change or anything like that, but it is definitely considered a vehicle since a passenger can hop into your sidecar. It's also not Engineering only, but I think that is so they can get extra testing done on it. It's a seriously cool mount, and one I'm pretty okay with. If Azeroth can develop helicopters, airplanes and submarines, they can build motorcycles, too.

Did you doubt that engineers would be the coolest players in the expansion? This little demo of the motorbike coming (supposedly) to engineers in Wrath of the Lich King is, as our own Dan O'Halloran said when he saw it, the first movie of WoW where the death metal actually belong. The thing tools around Grizzly Hills at top speed. Maybe it's just the way it's been implemented on the private server, but if those jumps are possible on the live realms (physics? in WoW?), then vehicles in Wrath are going to be awesome.

Of course, this doesn't exactly signal the return to swords and sorcery that players were hoping for in Northrend -- what does it mean if we've replaced the spaceships of the last expansion with tanks? But WoW has always had a steampunk feel, and this does seem like a natural extension. Ladies and Orcs, start your engines!

[Thanks, Akussa!]

I know we've been laying the Wrath news on thick but we're all incredibly excited, and I think most of you are, too. It's especially difficult to restrain myself when I see things like the motorcycle you see above, which I was directed to by an acquaintance of mine that's in the Beta. I don't have a concrete source on the fact that these motorcycles are made by Engineers, but I'm pretty confident that's the case. Is there anything else they could be? I suppose it's possible that they're strictly for quest use, but I somehow have my doubts. It looks like they put too much work into them for their role to only be for a quest or two.

The only thing that really makes me wonder if these are actually Engineering mounts or not is the fact that they're distinct by faction. A nice touch, but I think that would make it the first Horde/Alliance division in the profession. I suppose dividing the bikes by Goblin and Gnomish Engineering wouldn't make them as awesome looking. They're not quite Orange County material by any means, but they're still pretty slick. Let's be honest though, some races riding these things will be hilarious. Biker Tauren? Really? I suppose I can see a Dwarf riding the Alliance bike, but a Male Draenei driving it would probably be the silliest thing I've ever seen.

Basically, what I am saying is, is that these are completely awesome no matter how absurd they may be. If you want to see the Alliance ride, check it out behind the cut.