The feel of the land: no 300% speed mounts for now

One of the things about the journey from 1 to 70 these days is the travel time. Not everyone enjoys having to walk everywhere, and with the new content coming up, it seems there’s yet to be a tweak to the regular land mounts that litter the pre-70 areas of Blizzard‘s World of Warcraft.

Over on the World of Warcraft forums, Bwah has asked a similar question, wondering if 300% land speed mounts or anything faster the current land mounts will ever be implemented in game. Nethaera chimed in on the matter with a question of how such a fast mount would alter the experience of the game, at least in terms of perceiving distance:

Honestly, this goes back to the idea of faster travel minimizing the feel of the world having distance. We get that people want to get places as fast as possible and have continued to make improvements on flight paths as well as offering many different means of transportation. It’s not about whether it can be implemented or not, but about how we want the world to feel.

Azeroth is already quite a small place, when compared to the real world. Despite feeling like a large world, one can presumably traverse the entire length of a continent in under 30 minutes. This feeling of distance is lessened by the inclusion of land mounts. On the other hand, the world of Outland is presumably smaller than Azeroth yet feels bigger because of the introduction of flight. While an extremely fast mount might be cool to look at, the difficult question that needs to be answered is how to reconcile the demands of players without sacrificing the immense feel of the world at large.

One of the things about the journey from 1 to 70 these days is the travel time. Not everyone enjoys having to walk everywhere, and with the new content coming up, it seems there’s yet to be a tweak to the regular land mounts that litter the pre-70 areas of Blizzard‘s World of Warcraft.

Over on the World of Warcraft forums, Bwah has asked a similar question, wondering if 300% land speed mounts or anything faster the current land mounts will ever be implemented in game. Nethaera chimed in on the matter with a question of how such a fast mount would alter the experience of the game, at least in terms of perceiving distance:

Honestly, this goes back to the idea of faster travel minimizing the feel of the world having distance. We get that people want to get places as fast as possible and have continued to make improvements on flight paths as well as offering many different means of transportation. It’s not about whether it can be implemented or not, but about how we want the world to feel.

Azeroth is already quite a small place, when compared to the real world. Despite feeling like a large world, one can presumably traverse the entire length of a continent in under 30 minutes. This feeling of distance is lessened by the inclusion of land mounts. On the other hand, the world of Outland is presumably smaller than Azeroth yet feels bigger because of the introduction of flight. While an extremely fast mount might be cool to look at, the difficult question that needs to be answered is how to reconcile the demands of players without sacrificing the immense feel of the world at large.