WoW Petopia Community

As for grinding, well I guess if one does not want to do it, don't? But then one can't expect the rewards if you don't right? There are people that really enjoy that kind of slow eventual grind and blizzard has to put some kind of reward in the game for those that do I guess Personally I am getting a little over this type of grinding as the concept as it is a little old now, but it's an "effort = reward" system that still kind of works. There are other ways of doing this but not many that are a successful or visually/continually rewarding as this old formula.

For me the only grinding formula that I think is total BS is a RNG Grinding, like Sky Shards. You still need to grind (as you need to collect multiple) but you can do it for weeks, and quite possibly with absolutely no reward what so ever if you don’t have good RNG. It's literally putting in hours/days/weeks/MONTHS of grinding and you have NOTHING to show for it, it's kind of BS.
And then with a little good RNG someone can get 2-3 in a few hours... it's just EVILNESS that has no place in WOW imo.

MOP has been full of this type of "reward" compared to prior expansions. It's all been very chance/luck driven.

~ Warbringers only having a small % drop chance on the mount, If you find one and can kill it, not one 100% drop chance this expansion. (eg Timelost, Posiden, Aeonaxx)

• (I’d also like to add that they were only added very late in the expansion, but before the Warbringers and Houlon were added, there were no rares to drop/gain mounts from the entire expansion. Also MOP has been the only expansion including Vanilla to not have a rare mount drop in one of its 5 Man Dungeons, which I was pretty sad about too.)

~ Most of the currency needed for the Legendary cape, only having a small % drop chance from bosses? (yeah I get it, it’s a way of gating people, but with bad luck it’s really awful)

~ Game currency slowing moving from a saveable/useable resource, to a "Flipping another Coin" to have another small % drop chance from a boss.

I understand luck can be exciting, but too much left to chance can make one disillusioned if your luck is low.

Anyways, that’s just my gripe regarding grinding and the rewards associated being mounts

I don't mind the rep grind it makes my ocd mind happy what I don't like is when some jackoff agros the whole area and then runs past me so that they agro on me and kill me ;_; but I know others don't I'm not silly

Also the last 6 times this has happened it's been a human or a blood elf @.@ I like to farm the yak guys because of the rep but man once a bunch is on you there is no escape!

Stumbled upon this video tonight and got a laugh out of it, thought it fit well with the topic.
Grounded (WoW Machinima by Mooclucking)

Ty, just what I needed

:LOL: holy crap that was awesome. Did they just film the WoW forums? XD

That is funny and there have been people in the forums like that. I'm perfectly fine with delaying it until the first patch and I really hope there is a fairly involved quest line involved. What I'm concerned with is the possibility that we may not get it back at all.

Danielfboone wrote:That is funny and there have been people in the forums like that. I'm perfectly fine with delaying it until the first patch and I really hope there is a fairly involved quest line involved. What I'm concerned with is the possibility that we may not get it back at all.

Oh, I would absolutely *love* a challenging quest chain. The epic raven form chain was so fun (I was a little disappointed when you just trained flying for normal flight form, except for the massive discount). I'd like to pit myself against whatever Arakkoa sorcerer or Draenic Elemental Air Lord or whatever is keeping the majority of the denizens from flying.

I do enjoy quest chains as well, they're more immersive and it's always fun to feel like you earned the mount. I mean rep grinding is similar, but I really like it when there's meaningful quests and not just straight up "kill 8000 mobs until you're exalted" type of thing. The Cloud Serpents were a great example, I really loved the feeling of hatching and caring for it until it was grown up.

Agreed, the cloud serpent model was done so very well. You really felt like you'd earned you place to be riding one through te skies, not in an elitist way either as anyone from any walk of the game could earn this prestige as well.

I always felt like the Nether Drakes, and to a lesser extent Netherrays, had a nice similar mount related quests that built up to them. They were also character specific back then as mounts weren't account wide.

Anymore of these types of immersive mount grinds are most welcome!

SpiritBinder wrote:Agreed, the cloud serpent model was done so very well. You really felt like you'd earned you place to be riding one through te skies, not in an elitist way either as anyone from any walk of the game could earn this prestige as well.

I always felt like the Nether Drakes, and to a lesser extent Netherrays, had a nice similar mount related quests that built up to them. They were also character specific back then as mounts weren't account wide.

Anymore of these types of immersive mount grinds are most welcome!

I can agree with the Cloud Serpent and to an extent, the Netherays. Netherwing? Not quite. Only because you had hardly any dailies and you spent most of your time taking eggs. x.x; Those races were evil too.

Also regarding the "Unlocking" of the skies of Draenor, (Yes yes, if they ever do.) I wonder if there will be a specific reason given as to why the skies are unusable up to a certain point? (Yes yes, if they ever do unlock them.)

The Thunder Isle addressed this in a pretty clever way via incorporating it into the theme/story with the storms in the area where so volatile and deadly and you would be fried out of the skies if you tried.

I'm guessing the Arrakoa will be pretty prevalent in the skies, in some places in Draenor, but how far that stretches we don’t know, we know so little about them really. What would be neat is if there was some kind of sever event/battle/story or something that took place to regain access to the skies.

It could be similar to the Isle of Quel'Thalas that required time and team work of the sever to gain enough resources or remove enough of the threat. Or it could lead into a raid tier, or a new part of the WOD story, whatever. I just quite like ideas that bring severs together to achieve a common goal. I also think a solid lore reason and a clever way to reinstate (or to even limit or never allow) flying would be much better than.....

"Oh yeah it's harder to flying in cold wind in case you didn't know, so yeah... you can't just yet, sorry" or "Oh we have like four winds or something in Pandaria and you need to know them all before you can fly here..."

I get that it's what was needed to bar flying before level cap and to sink some questing gold into, but that’s not to say it can’t be done in a more clever way in the future

Junrei wrote:Those races were evil too.

Races were evil? As in the Nether drakes and the Ogres themselves?

Also admittedly the Nether Drake Rep Grind and eventual reward of being allow to select a drake of your own was the 1st of its kind, but the idea/concept was there regarding the final reward being a mount after a long rep/quest grind. And the quests and rep were fairly interlinked with the Nether drakes and their story too.

SpiritBinder wrote:

Junrei wrote:Those races were evil too.

Races were evil? As in the Nether drakes and the Ogres themselves?

She means the Dragonmaw racing you could do for rep. After hearing all the horror stories about them, I never even bothered.

I actually enjoyed the races for nether wing, lol. So much so that I, quite literally, carried my friend for the quest as well. Using the sandstone drake.. All he had to do was get on my back and let me complete it for him xD

ah yes those Netherwing races were fun. I love all the little "mini games" in wow (ever played the games in Azshara?)
As for flying, I'm fine with not having it right away. The idea of all mounts becoming ground mounts is a bit meh for me though. With 200+ mounts not everyone gets face time and I often look forward to rediscovering old ground mounts during leveling but I have a feeling my dragons are doing to worm their way into the spotlight now.
I hope some mounts get ground animations but I doubt it will happen. Nota big fan of big clunky flying mounts running on the ground. I'm not too worried about mounts standing on Npcs since there are mammoths for that anyway and I use tab target macros.

Yeah I meant the ones where you race the dragonmaw orc on a flier. It was so evil. I hated doing that. I love the Pandaria races though. I have a blast with those!

The Cloud Serpent line was fun although I never did do the racing. I liked the Netherwing stuff too and the races weren't that bad if you learned the shortcuts and strategies. The Nether Ray quests were okay but I still haven't figured out how those things stay in the air.

Everything in Outlands hovers/floats. I just accept that Nether rays are evolved helium balloons.

Oh man, the Netherdrake races....they were intense! I actually really enjoyed them, even while they were frustrating, because it was the best feeling ever when you completed them all.

I'd really rather more mount earnings in those styles. ^^

As for the rays, I think we have this floating around, though it's fringe canon:

Nether rays have a unique way of achieving flight; their "wings" being tiny in comparison to other flying animals. They use the special gland on their underside to excrete spores that produce lighter-than-air gas. This gas produces a pocket under the ray that keeps it afloat, and the ray uses its "wings" to keep the gas pocket under its body. To achieve propulsion, the ray uses its "wings" to squeeze the gas towards its tails, where it streams the gas with its two feather-like tails, and undulates its third paddle-like tail through the stream, giving the nether ray added lift and propulsion. Since the nether ray uses gas to counteract gravity instead of "fighting" against it using lift, it is able to perform just as well as other flying animals, despite its small size.

Wowpedia has that under "Speculation". But it is a wiki and wikis can be edited.