Unarmored Mounts Megathread 2.0

This thread was created in response to the original Unarmored Mounts Megathread being deleted by Blizzard, as a place where players can once again share their opinions, insights, feedback, complaints, or support on the subject in one centralized location. The original forum had over 1,300 comments and over 10,000 views before being purged from the forums.

I will try to hit on an unbiased highlight of the issues from the previous megathread to start things off with, then share my personal thoughts at the end.

The subject has sparked from a Wowhead interview in which Brian Birmingham and Patrick Dawson shared Blizzard’s response to unarmored mounts being in Classic WoW:

We know a lot going into the six-phase plan now, and the decision on progressive itemization cleared a lot of remaining topics up. Is there any content that’s a grey area you’d like to clarify? For example, can you get old-school mounts up until a certain phase? Or will Classic WoW only have the current vendor exalted mounts.

“It is the current vendor mounts for 1.12. We aren’t putting back the unarmored mounts. We just talked about this recently internally. We know some people are interested in them, but we don’t want to put them in for a limited period of time, because we didn’t want to influence people through their first leveling experience. Especially people coming back for the first time. We don’t want people to feel like they have to rush. If you want to level slowly and enjoy the journey, you should. That’s how I like to play–taking it slow, running every dungeon.”

This statement has caused outcry from players for numerous reasons:

  • The first being these mounts were originally a part of Vanilla for roughly 5.5 months. And Blizzard has stated they want to recreate as authentic of a Vanilla experience, from start to finish, as they can. By mirroring the content, and items, available at that time in Vanilla’s history:
  • The statement made regarding these mounts is causing concern among players for what the future of other historical events in Vanilla’s history will look like in Classic WoW. As stated earlier these mounts were an aspect of Vanilla’s history for roughly 5.5 months. There were other events in Vanilla’s history that were much shorter, that players are looking to re-experience in Classic WoW: AQ Opening Event, Obtaining the AQ Black Bug Mount (only a 10 hour window after the first person turned in theirs), and the Scourge Invasion event to name a few examples. Players are asking will the approach taken towards these mounts, be applied to these other events, or aspects, from Vanilla’s history in Classic WoW?

  • Players will be playing Classic WoW for a multitude of reasons: PvP, PvE, questing, leveling (speed or otherwise), experiencing exclusive events in Vanilla’s history, and more. Some players feel that the way the statement regarding these mounts was given imply Blizzard is trying to dictate play-styles in Classic WoW. They feel that by removing exclusive items from Vanilla’s history Blizzard is hoping to diminish a certain type of play-style amongst its players. While also stating there are other players playing exclusively for these items and events and that they should not be removed. Furthermore, some players go on to argue other aspects of the game (such as the honor ranking system) could breed more unhealthy play-styles than obtaining one of these mounts would.

Additionally, Blizzard has stated that:

  • This statement has left players questioning, since Blizzard intends to follow a progressive itemization plan for drops and vendors why are these mounts the only exception to this rule thus far? Some players speculate, and are fearful, it could lead to a cash shop/micro-transaction in the future to obtain these mounts.

Supporters of Blizzard’s decision agree with their statement and also claim they are keeping in line with authenticity to 1.12. However, proponents of the unarmored mounts returning in Classic WoW cite the sources above stating the intention of Classic is to recreate Vanilla start to finish, content and items included, not accurately replicate 1.12 only.

Players who would like to see unarmored mounts return to Classic WoW do acknowledge Blizzard’s concerns for creating a sense of urgency among players to obtain the mounts. In response many creative solutions have been proposed that would eliminate the feeling of urgency, while maintaining their existence in the final product. Although some of these solutions do come at the cost of authenticity to the original Vanilla timeline.

My personal thoughts on the issue are I would like to see these mounts implemented into Classic WoW in some way. They were an iconic part of Vanilla that I was looking to re-experience in Classic WoW. I have spent almost a decade not playing WoW and was looking to return to re-experience past events like new again. I personally feel these mounts should be viewed as an exclusive event in Vanilla’s history much like the AQ opening and Scourge Invasion and be given a chance to see the light of day in Classic. I hope we receive a response from Blizzard regarding this issue soon blue post or otherwise, to shed some more insight on this issue if nothing else.

I am curious to hear what all of your thoughts are, on this subject, while also kicking off a new megathread on this issue!

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It’s not an Unarmored Mounts Megathread unless its made by Shimy. Did he get banned too?

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He has been yes but he said he supports someone else making a new thread.

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Man, he got banned over an unarmored mount thread? That is devotion right there!

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Wait why was it deleted, unarmored mounts are a pretty relevant topic for classic.

I support newMeta thread.

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I see you like to live dangerously too. I support this thread.

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The thread was deleted because a petition started up and I am not sure if that is against the CoC or not but it was the cause of the thread being deleted because the link was there.

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Ahh ok, it’s sucky but blizzard is pretty iffy when it comes to petitions. Kind of why I tend to avoid it in threads since it can cause moderation trouble.

Sucks the whole thread got deleted cause of a link though.

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Please cite where Blizzard said this applies to items, bugs, balancing, or anything besides major pieces of content. Blizzard never said they were going to replay the game day by day. The game is based on 1.12, with content patches coming in to keep people busy for an extended period of time with items from those major content patches.

These events were real pieces of content. The mounts were removed by the Vanilla WoW team. They didn’t want them to be there, and pulled them out of the game because they felt they shouldn’t be in Vanilla They then left an NPC for people to trade their obsoleted mounts because they knew it would be unfair to take rewards away. This time, however, there is no reason to do that.

There are two equally bad cases here where they add the mount:

Blizzard makes them a temporary award - Everyone now has to decide if they want to rush to 60 to get the mount or not. If you don’t rush you’ll be missing out on one of a very, very small number of exclusives in the game that you’ll never be able to get again in the history of Classic.

Blizzard puts them in forever - Now you have a situation where everyone has to decide between getting an armored or unarmored mount when buying their epic, which is something no one had to do in Classic. There’s no reason for anyone to go put effort into getting the Wintersaber tiger, as it’s only unique if it’s the only unarmored epic in the game. Now you can get one just for 1000g. Everyone now has to run around wondering if someone is on an epic mount or not and learn the meta of which colors mean epic and which don’t.

Read my first paragraph.

Iconic is a very strong word. A lot of players didn’t even know they were in the game until these threads were created - people who actually played Vanilla for years. Iconic is Ragnaros, which they turned into a statue for a collectors edition. These mounts were unfinished reskins that got dumped. Not iconic to the game outside of individual experiences.

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I want my Black Nightsaber without the silly armor

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They were not meant to be an exclusive event. They just happened to be dumped at some point, and became exclusive as a result. No one knew this was going to happen at launch. Let’s please avoid putting reskinned mounts that were there because the modelers were busy making an MMO with the scarab lord and the opening of AQ.

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bump. blizzard hates this topic because they know they are wrong. disgusting that they are deleting these threads.

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Yeah i cant believe they are deleting them, was looking for this thread again the other day! Come on blizzard, dont do us dirty.

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Thanks for doing this Fonzie, really appreciate the time and thought you’ve given to the new thread.

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Thank you for taking your time to open a new one, Fonzie. And very well written post!

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Thanks, Fonzie. I would like to say the reason given for not including the unarmored mounts is horrible and does seem like a double standard to me. No one will need to choose between unarmored or armored should they be included as you can own more than one mount. It is not very authentic if no one will be riding the unarmored mounts because I have noticed them (at least the white stallion) on each server I have played since '05.
Some people really do like the unarmored mounts for their art.
I’m not going to say I won’t play if these aren’t included but it was a goal I was looking forward to pursuing as I don’t pvp or raid but like a different type of challenge. If Blizz has/had another explanation I could accept I have to say it’s too late now and I will continue to support and ask for unarmored mounts.

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I personally don’t know where I sit on this issue.

I do know that deleting threads with thousands of posts of valuable discussion is wrong.

Bump of support for this thread. If the majority wills it, I can accept it.

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I support unarmoured mounts.

I’d write a more detailed post but I’ve already done that so many times in the thread that was deleted and I’m seriously depressed about the EU servers right now.

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I support this thread 100%. Unarmored mounts belong in classic. Deleting threads, Blizzard? Tsk, tsk, tsk.

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Their reasoning behind this is pretty absurd.

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