1.12.1 was the patch that swapped mount and training costs making the training the expensive part. Yet that seems to not have been included in Classic
Here is the text of a blue post that discussed the changes:
Poster: Hortus at 2006-09-25 10:03:16
Subject: Mount Changes Questions and Answers
Hi everyone,
Because I keep seeing these questions pop-up, and because some of my previous answers have been lost to the forum monsters I’m going to post the info I currently have regarding the mount changes. This is how the mount changes work as I understand it, they may change before 1.12.1 goes live.
After 1.12.1 goes live there will only be one riding skill that will work with all mounts. The skill currently has 2 ranks Apprentice(75) and Journeyman(150).
Apprentice(75) skill will be required for all superior(blue) level 40 mounts, the Rank 11 PVP mounts and the superior(blue) AQ40 mounts.
Journeyman(150) skill will be required for all epic(purple) level 60 mounts, the AV faction reward mounts and the epic dropped mounts (Deathcharger, Raptor etc.).
Warlocks and Paladins who complete their mount quests will be given Apprentice(75) and
Journeyman(150) upon completion of the quests.
All mounts will be bind on pickup and have a level requirement.
Purchasing a non-racial mount will require exalted reputation with that faction.
When the patch goes live the following changes will take place:
Characters who have a mount in their inventory(backpack or bank) will be granted the skill level necessary to use it even if they are not yet the level necessary to use the mount.
Players with the Rank 11 PVP mounts will be granted Journeyman(150) skill.
Players with Riding skill but no mount will be granted Apprentice(75) skill.
Paladins and Warlocks who have already completed their level 40 and level 60 mount quests will be granted Apprentice(75) and Journeyman(150) respectively.
Mounts in the mail or on the auction house at the time 1.12.1 goes live will not grant skill to anyone, so I would suggest making sure you have mounts in your inventory or the bank.
There is currently a bug that is preventing players lower then level 40 who transfer to the PTR with a mount from getting the correct riding skill, we are aware of this and working to resolve it.
[ Post edited by Hortus ]
Hortus Blizzard QA Gnome Shaman FTW!
Overall it’s not really a huge but I’m curious why the decision was made to not port this change to classic
They were working with a 1.12 reference client. Guess it was the 1.12.0 version.
Personally I kind of prefer this way. It makes it feel like the mounts are something special to work for, especially if someone wants to pick up more than one.
Kinda sucks for people who want more than one type of mount, though. Makes it all the more expensive on top of adding in a riding training cost for every mount, right?
Yes, which makes it a gold sink. Those who want more than one type of mount don’t need the additional mounts right away, so it becomes something to work later on.
(The part I find painful, actually, is that my taurens won’t ever be able to get a troll raptor or a skeletal warhorse - unless they get the ZG raptor or Deathcharger from Baron in Strat.)
Kind of amateurish of them not to have kept every release they ever made … guess professional development techniques weren’t required in Blizzard at the turn of the century.
Vanilla isn’t a game for mount collectors. Pretty simple.
Same for people who need to always match via transmog.
I like both of those things, but I’m fine without them as well. I really like the idea of working up to getting my epic raptor on an undead character and having that be somewhat special.
Very simple answer. We are on Patch 1.12. Trust me, I wish they wouldn’t have used this patch(I prefer an earlier version).
Mounts weren’t meant to be for collection to get an achievement at this time in the game. If you want another mount you’ll need to “pony” up the gold.
Get it “pony” up …get it… I crack myself up!
The code running the server/client is only one part, a surprisingly small part, of a game. There are art assets like models and textures, environments, audio assets, scripts, and even more importantly the toolchain: the tools, scripts, and sometimes tribal knowledge necessary to create/edit/modify (generally known as “cut”) these assets.
In other words, even if you have the code base, do you still have whatever graphics tool that supports the corresponding graphics files? And can you guarantee that it will output the same format that your code expects?
A few years back I worked on a project that involved processing models only from a very specific version of Maya (3D modeling software). Most of the developers involved were not game developers so they didn’t have it in-house, and unfortunately, the scripts that this project used only supported an older version (not the latest version you could download as a demo). Making the models would have been easy… getting the tool wasn’t.
So when you say they should have “kept every release they ever made”, remember that is a much taller order than just dialing up the specific release in your VCS, you have to keep every version of every tool that you ever used… if that’s possible (and if the third party licenses allow it).
That was the general assumption. They are treating riding and mounts like how it was at the beginning of the game, to somewhat recreate as best they could the leveling process.
However they don’t want people to rush to 60 during phase 1/2 and thus that is why they didn’t put in the unarmored mounts as an overbearing reason for you to level quick.
All i see in this post is a Mutant Demonic Spawn player trying to sweep their own mistakes beneath the rug
and have you NEVER asked yourself why there isn’t keyrings yet?
They will pull out the “authentic classic Progression” with the phases, with each on being the QoL changes from vanilla as the time went on.
from wowpedia’s riding page Prior to that patch, Riding was an [ability] rather than a secondary [Profession], and had only one rank. Each faction had its own riding skill (tiger riding, horse riding, mechanostrider piloting, ram riding) and the cost was 20, available at level 40. [Exalted] reputation was required to learn cross-faction riding skill, but mounts were [Bind on Use] and purchasable by anyone for 80g. This meant that characters who were PvP rank 3 or higher could pass on the 10% discount directly to other characters by buying the mount for them. This is no longer possible because all mounts are now [Bind on Pickup], and the majority of the cost is built into the riding skill training (which is no longer faction-specific) rather than the cost of the mount.
Even stuff like the winterspring frostsaber and the un’goro raptor needs both animal specific training.
I Have nothing against, but blizzard could had explained that better instead of Hiding and saying nothing thanks you and the retardismo group who never replayed the game over the years, and now its crying because of “difficulty” when all of us were stupid kids.
In the abstract, as a copious source code hoarder, that makes sense. From a cost perspective, the WoW game client and server rolls on relentlessly.
There are NEVER old versions running in the wild, anywhere, except in the case of illegal software pirates. Or there never have been, until they decided to produce a Classic snapshot.
It is important for Blizz to be able to roll back or correct recent changes, but anything that has aged 6 months is of zero value.