Going Fast

I reached another milestone in Classic the other day: I got my first epic mount. Once again, if you had asked me at the start of the year which of my characters would be the first one to get theirs, I certainly wouldn't have bet on a night elf hunter that I hadn't even created yet at that point.

I didn't even really farm for the mount money either; I just made sure to save up as much as I could after buying my level 40 mount and avoided spending on other things. Just continuing to play the game and selling whatever I gained from that eventually did the trick.

There was also a positive surprise in so far as I didn't end up having to pay as much as I expected: I remembered epic riding in Vanilla costing 90 gold, and then having to pay 900 gold for the mount itself. The cost for the mount applies in Classic too, but the riding skill is actually the same regardless of mount speed, so you don't need to train a second time. Instead each race just has a race-specific riding skill (horse riding, tiger riding etc.) so you only need to pay up again if you want to ride another race's mounts (on top of the exalted reputation requirement for that).

I found this Wowhead news article in which they quote Blizzard as explaining that this was a conscious decision they made for Classic, because while the system I remembered was indeed in Vanilla, added with patch 1.12, apparently it was mainly implemented in preparation for Burning Crusade and flying skill, so they decided to stick with the earlier version for Classic instead.

This was nice, as it meant that instead of going completely broke like I had expected, I actually had a solid buffer of about a hundred gold left over. I guess this also means that my tauren hunter is much closer to her own epic mount than I previously thought... maybe I should grind out those last few gold some time just to be able to tick off that box.

I will say though that mount speed is one area where the years have definitely erased my sense of wonder. I still vividly remember getting my first epic mount in Vanilla, and how I found the speed increase from my old tiger so dizzying that I actually had trouble manoeuvring at the start, like someone unexpectedly finding themselves in a race car instead of their usual vehicle.

Fifteen years later though, I can't really say that I found the faster riding speed all that exciting - I mean, I was still happy to get it because it's obviously beneficial, and it was another milestone that gave me a sense of accomplishment, but as I cruised along the roads of Darnassus on my new ride I couldn't help but think that at this point, I'm used to going much faster than this a lot of the time anyway.