Blizzard welches on riding skill promise
Patch 1.12.1 hit the servers today
, as you probably already know, and it looks like the hearthing-when-DC "fix" (our raid leader disappeared from our AQ20 raid this evening, too, and reappeared in Grom'Gol) wasn't the only thing that didn't work out quite right.
In our coverage of the mount changes, we noted that Blizzard had promised that owning an epic mount would grant you the required Journeyman riding skill to ride it-- that if players had the mount in their inventory when the patch hit, they would automatically get the skill. But the worst has happened-- it looks like a few players logged in with epic mounts in their inventories, but weren't given the appropriate riding skill, something that could cost them hundreds of gold to fix.
And here's the kicker-- the reason those players weren't awarded the skills is because the two riding skills require levels 40 and 60 to achieve. That is, if you were 59 and had the epic mount in your possession, you still didn't get the skill, even though Blizzard promised you would (they didn't mention the level requirement originally, but their official announcement has changed to include that important info).
So did Blizzard welch on their promise of providing riding skill to those with the mounts to use it? Blue poster Batta pulls a copout (IMHO) and says that the original announcement was posted on the Test Realm forums (it was), and so players should have been aware that the rules might change. But again, something this important could end up costing players hundreds of gold-- Blue should have been more specific before people started spending or saving. At this time, Blizzard has no plans to reimburse anyone who had the mount in their inventory but didn't get the required skill-- looks like if you're one of the unlucky few, it's 800g out of your pocket.
