dismounting
Latest
Mounts now welcome in Booty Bay
Tcher on WoW LJ comes through with an interesting change in the Wrath beta: mounts are now usable throughout Booty Bay. Personally, I've never had a problem navigating around there without a mount, but apparently it's a welcome change -- you'll be able to go all around one of the coolest cities in Azeroth without dismounting.Even more interesting than the change itself, though, is the thinking behind it -- apparently Blizzard is still tweaking where mounts can and can't go. And though it's a small complaint, this has always been an area that's been a little confusing -- why were mounts fine to use in Ironforge but not in Booty Bay? Why weren't ships ever considered "outdoors," but the crates on them are?At any rate, if Booty Bay stays changed through the updates on the live realms for 3.0, it'll be clear Blizzard is still tangling with their strange definition of "outdoors," and the rules on where mounts can and can't go, even in old Azeroth.
The perils of crossing water on a mount
This is something we've all dealt with: my Hunter is traipsing through Terrokar right now, and nothing makes me more frustrated than hitting those little rivers on my mount and having to dismount in water. When you think about it, the logical reasons for our mounts disappearing once we hit water are pretty sound -- you don't want that cat or wolf you worked so hard for to drown. But on the other hand, it's a huge annoyance -- not only does it slow you down while crossing the water, but you have to wait another second afterwards to resummon the mount.On larger bodies of water, this isn't so bad, but those little rivers are nothing but trouble (and Gnomes have it even worse). Even cowboys knew how to ford with their horses -- why can't we do the same with our mounts?Zarhym, the new CM, doesn't seem very empathetic, so odds are that this won't change anytime soon. We can only hope that in future designs, Blizzard stays away from putting the deeper water all over the landscape, where it acts as nothing but an annoying roadblock in front of our next quest. It's not like we don't have enough problems with the water as it is.
