I didn’t think that I would again find myself writing about the Celestial Steed, or Greed Steed as it has come to be known, but I am. I read somewhere this week on another blog that these micro transactions of pets and now the steed are fine because they are not game changing. Pets, of course, are not game changing. They can annoy the crap out of you if nine out of ten people take out the same one in a raid, but they don’t change the game-play experience. You don’t have any advantage with a pet.
But the comment got me thinking about the pony. Gevlon wrote a few weeks ago about how many of the players in his ganking guild were levelling through Outland without a flying mount, and how dangerous this was on a PvP realm. The reason that they didn’t have a flying mount was that they couldn’t afford one. Maybe they managed to get the gold together for the training but the mount was just out of reach. Let me now quote the Blizzard store:
“Once activated, this World of Warcraft in-game mount key applies to all present and future characters on a single European World of Warcraft license.”
So if you roll a new toon on a new PvP realm, you have your mount, both flying and land. I don’t know if this would be available at level 1 or just when you train each level of riding, but either way this is game changing, make no mistake about it. This micro transaction has a direct effect in game. It could also have an effect on the WoW economy, as players will now have more gold left over during the levelling process to spend on other items instead of mounts. Perhaps this is a small point, perhaps not even worthy of a post, but I just thought that I would mention it.
April 24, 2010 at 10:00 am
Celestial steed behaves like the best mount you have access to on that char. So at lvl 20, after you buy skill, you’ll be able to ride it at 60% speed, when you buy next riding skill, it’s speed will increase to 100%, same goes for flying skills. So all the benefit you gain from it, is not having to buy the mount. But regular mounts are cheap, it’s the skills that cost so much and you still have to buy those. You should do some research before writing anything.
April 24, 2010 at 10:04 am
The mount needs appropriate riding skill.
So it saves you only buying the mount (100G for epic flyer) and not the training (4250G with revered rep)
So it have a tiny utility, but 99% fluff
April 24, 2010 at 10:33 am
“You should do some research before writing anything”
There goes that “should” word again, none determinate judgement designed only to make the writer look superior.
If only you’d done some research Adam, if only you hadn’t written about this, then, well… nothing actually.
April 24, 2010 at 11:05 am
Actually I was going to tell him that he should just go fuck himself but I couldn’t be bothered.
April 24, 2010 at 6:31 pm
oh noez it saves you 10 min of questing on foot before you have the 45g needed to buy the mount!
April 25, 2010 at 12:40 am
I still have to wonder when you say game changing, what do you mean? As in I am assuming you mean this in a negative aspect, but I do not see where the negative side of it is and I usually am the single most negative person I know.
You can have up to 50 characters per WoW account. So if you buy one mount you can save a substantial amount of in-game gold if you are like many players who tend to have multiple characters scattered across several servers. If it were an unfair advantage that would be one thing, but it really does not provide any in-game advantage, or at least I do not see the in-game advantage other than saving some gold.
To me it is like a piece of heirloom gear. Completely unnecessary, but provides a little boost. I think the drive here is for the new players who may not have established characters and therefore are the true winners with this mount. Blizzard has gone on record stating that they want the leveling experience to be a positive thing and they also want to speed it up, think heirloom shoulders and chest. It fits in with their overall goal and earns them some valuable revenue.
It also plays to the masses of the casual (no offense meant) players who have the “I want to be able to do/get everything that the hardcore players do/get” mentality .
I think everyone who knows me or has read anything from me, knows I hate the dumbing down of this game. There is nothing that you can do save quit playing or accept it and move on. Focus on playing the game for the reasons that you enjoy. For me I play to spend time with my friends that I have made in game. So while I disaprove of many of the changes and making all content available to everyone, I have to suck it up and deal with it.
April 25, 2010 at 10:10 am
I agree with everything you said, except for one point: I never said whether or not I thought it was a positive or a negative effect. I was merely stating that this was a micro transaction with an in-game effect, as opposed to the mini-pets.
April 25, 2010 at 11:32 pm
I’d say even pets are game changing as it does have an impact on what players spend, how much profit the company makes and what direction they inevitably take it in. I wonder if whether the original WoW pets had been less successful if they would’ve bothered making the horse.
Plus, I suppose a horde of players could use pets to try and lag their opponents to death
April 26, 2010 at 12:59 pm
If only the alliance would try the same thing. Since they generally seem to lose in my battlegroup.
To the blogging OP, honestly the gold savings from having that garbage mount are minimal at best. Just let the idiots have their fun with their stupid mount. Someday they’ll realized they aren’t as special as those with REAL mounts earned through hard mode achievements or PvP ratings.