And yet, my Water Strider, which has water striding in its name, will be unable to stride on water. o_O
Why does it say account bound? I take it that means does not apply to all mounts across all alts. More likely have to buy it on the one who has the rep and send it to alts.
Blizz screwed up again. They are taking away a player driven, mount equipment system already in place, and not only replacing it with one with less choice, it is also NPC item driven, which takes the player out of the equation except to spend their gold.As has been pointed out, so many things in the game currently already address many of the issues Blizz says its trying to solve.- Barding. Keeps you from getting dazed. No need to change that. It is a player crafted item. The mats are player gathered. It provides choice. It enriches Leatherworking. It requires two professions involvement, which is a good thing. It helps drive the player economy. If you are a LW, you get a bonus for using something you created, which is a nice perk. If you want to deepen and enrich the game, introduce it to lower level LW crafting which will in turn improve the profession, encourage lower level skinning, improve the quality of life and choice for lower level toons. Win Win.- Hoofplates. Grants a minor speed bonus. No need to change that. It is a player crafted item. The mats are player gathered. It provides choice. (see the parallel to above!) It enriches Blacksmithing. It requires to professions involvement, which is a good thing. It helps drive the player economy. If you are a BS you get a bonus (see above again! LoL). Again, deepen the profession which helps the players and the game, improve lower level crafting and encourage depth in your game.- Stirrups. Allows you to interact with items while mounted. No need to change that. God dam! See all of the above. Also, this is something you are not providing as an option in your "option-rich" system you have introduced. Again, taking away from a crafting profession for no reason, reducing the need for a gathering profession for no reason. You are reducing player involvement and the depth of your game. You are taking away choice.As a note. You can use none of these, 1 of these or all three of these as you choose. You can use them together or not, your choice based upon your playstyle, likes or dislikes. Again, choice.Lets also touch on the slow-fall option you provide. Not necessary. We already have an option. I believe it is a Goblin Glider, which is a Player crafted item using resources gathered by Players. Again, this enriches a crafting profession, provides usefulness to a gathering profession, helps the player driven economy and has been in the game for quite some time. There is no need to add an item as you propose since we already have an item that is used for that purpose and if we use this New option you provide, we lose out on other options we already have in game while taking minimizing the need for a crafter and a gatherer profession and diminishes the depth of those parts of the game and damages the economy. Not helpful.We have Water Walking already. The Strider does this. Water Walking potions do this. The fishing raft does this. Death Knights and Shamans have abilities to do this. This is not an issue. Just because you want to walk on water with your horse, doesn't mean you don't have choice, it just means you have to make a another choice. There are so many things wrong with this new system. It was not necessary. If you really wanted to provide Player choice, you didn't. You have now Nerfed the hell out of many things and Buffed others. You have rendered the usefulness of a unique mount, you have diminished a player crafted items worth in the potion, diminishing a player driven aspect of the game also reducing another profession, the gathering one used to supplement the potions creation. You have now Buffed DKs and Shamans abilities in a sense because now they can have 'anti-daze or slowfall' AND water walking, while others dont have that choice. Which, as I realize just this moment as I'm writing, they both could use Barding before for anti-daze and still use their water walking, so I guess that is not too much of an issue. Lastly on water walking. Why do we have to have every mount water walk? It doesn't make sense. You are saying you want to let players use whatever mount they want to walk on water, based upon the mount they like the most, which is basically, which mount they think is the coolest looking, you are providing them a choice. Well, why are you not providing special wings in this system so that players have a choice of which mount they want to fly with based upon this logic. Should players be able to fly with a ground mount? Or put wings one of the about half a dozen underwater only mounts in the game, which are unique, used only for underwater movement, and should not be able to fly. Why is that not an option, it would be player choice based on the sole reason of, I think it looks cooler than some other mount. That is nonsense. You are now elevating something cosmetic over actual game depth and real choice.Blizzard, why do you also keep taking things away from us that enrich the community and depth of the game for just another item we have to buy from a vendor, which helps nobody and creates no depth to OUR game. This was such an opportunity for you to deepen and enrich the game in so many ways, instead you just NERFED more than just the water strider, you nerfed our Options. This was not creative or innovative. This was an opportunity to make new items with new and cool effects. You could have made the entire system player driven through crafting and gathering, not just for max level crafters, but given us a reason to use crafting at lower levels, introducing items throughout the profession range so that low level toons going through the leveling journey could engage more in that aspect of the game, (we all know that profession are a joke now and useless unless you are max at the profession). You could have done so much! But instead you just told us that because you wanted use to have a choice in what mount we thought was prettiest that we wanted to use, here are 3 very limited options for us, we have to choose 1, we have to buy it from an NPC, you eliminate the options of already in game choices that do what you are giving us, but already do it and in a better way frankly.Since this announcement your communication has been terrible. First, you tell us about this shiney new feature. You are vague, as usual. There is always something your not telling us. You say you want to provide us with choice, but we already have all of the choices you are providing, you are not really introducing something new we don't have. You tell us that you want us to be able to use whatever mount we want to do whatever we want with it. That is false. You are not providing that choice really as I have pointed out above so clearly. You are just telling us that we will now be able to ride our Raptors on water or whatever, because we should be able to ride the prettiest mount we want to do whatever we want. Again, you are not. We cannot fly with ground mounts, we can't swim fast underwater with ground mounts, so well, you see where I'm going. Not really the best introduction to the feature.Second, after the backlash, you communicate again. This time to basically tell us again you are providing choice. Also you tell us that you don't it to feel like we 'have' to use the strider to walk on water, that's not nice, you are giving us choice and that's better. You also say that the Sky Golem is fine, you don't take away its uniqueness because its not necessary, you tell us that it wont be able to benefit from mount equipment, which makes sense, its unique, why should it. But lets just for a moment compare that to the Strider. If you are a Herb Gatherer, it is pretty much compulsory that you use the Sky Golem because, well it improves gathering and provides a unique benefit. Your reasoning about the strider is why should a player have to ride it for its unique ability when you might want to use that ability on a mount you 'like' better. Why not apply this same logic to the Sky Golem? Why should I have to use the Sky Golem for Herbing when I don't like how it looks, I like this other mount better and I want that special ability without having to buy the Sky Golem. Doesn't make sense. As a side note, lets be honest, the Sky Golem was not really that unique anyway. I own one, but never use it, well because I already have 'Choice' in the game. I can use Stirrups on any mount I want and that lets me pick herbs without dismounting. Also, Stirrups are an ingame item and player driven (see above, i won't beat that dead horse)Third, you admit that there will still be a Uniqueness to Death Knights and Shamans, who have water walking as an ability, but they will still benefit from this new mount equipment system, effectively letting them have say 'anti-daze' and water walking. That's cool, they are unique and we don't want to take that away... LOL, we also don't want to take away the uniqueness of the Sky Golem... LOL, BUT we are taking away the uniqueness of the Water Strider. What? Why? Why? You are not removing the uniqueness of underwater mounts, you are actually adding more to the game! What? We don't understand. And it's not because we are stupid, we are not. It's not because we all love the water strider because its some super cool looking mount or anything, its because you are not being consistent across the board. You are Nerfing something that didn't need to be nerfed. You are implementing a system that you say is providing us more choice when in reality you are removing a @#$% ton of choices that are already in the game. This is not just a Nerf to the Water Strider, this is a nerf to options, (see above Stirrups, barding, hoofplates as an example) You are nerfing professions and there value. You are nerfing the economy and player choice. You just smacked our community with a giant Nerf Bat and told us its what we wanted and we will be happy with it!Forth, when you announce this great new feature, you tell us what we are getting. Great. However, as per usual, you never tell us everything we are loosing. You make up some crazy storyline about our friendly fisherman friend basically through mad-science, has basically destroyed a species on Azeroth? What? Through his 'research', he has developed a way to allow all our mounts through an item we can buy, to walk on water, but oh sadly he decimated another animals ability to walk on water. What the hell crap is that? Who wrote that? How does that make sense? It is terrible writing and doesn't even fit with the NPCs storyline. Pat Nagle would never being conducting mad-science experiments on water striders to help all the world be able to walk on water, he just wants to fish and drink. Again, we are not stupid. Sell us something better than that. Fifth, you announce how wonderful it is that everyone with a water strider will get a free set of water walking shoes! Wonderful. We can also buy more from Pat Nagle at a reduced price! Wonderful, I will have to take a portal to Panda land, ironically the one you just moved for no reason to the Jade Forest, completely on the other side of the continent of where Pat Nagle hangs out. Seriously, could it be more inconvenient? This is not a bonus. This sucks!Sixth, in one of your Blue posts, in which you 'cherry pick' something about, its boring as hell having to ride one mount all the time, which implies that everyone is stuck riding the water strider all the time which is so dam false its commical. And the Blue response is something like it's strange to have a 'wrong choice' when picking a mount. What? Yes, there is a wrong choice when picking a mount. If you want to fly you pick a flying mount! If you pick an underwater mount, well, you made the wrong choice, you can't fly! I don't understand this logic. If you want to cast spells in the game and you picked a Warrior, well you made the 'wrong choice'. The game is full of choices, from the class we play, the race we pick, the faction we choose. My god, don't you see that. The game is supposed to be about choices and yes, you can make the wrong choice. LOL What the !@#$ Again. You are not providing more choice with this new feature, you are taking it away in so many ways.Seventh, in another Blue Post, someone asks about the Sky Golem and its innate ability that you didn't touch and the response was, well the water strider ability is just much stronger than the herbing abilty so, we nerfed the strider. Aslo adding that we want to provide the players choice based upon their playstyles and interests. That is blatantly false. You are removing choices from play-style and interests. You are removing peoples play-style of using already in-game mount equipment, which honestly provides so many more player benefits than the system you are now featuring. You are removing the play-style of people more interested in professions, economy, trade, etc... in favor of, well being able to just ride any mount you want on water. Really, are you really providing us more choice based upon play-style and interests? You are not. It just also doesn't make sense. You created a story about literally destroying a species, I'm not sure if you mean just destroying a part of what makes them a species or extinction? Either way, pretty bad. I mean, when the Sky Golem was announced, it was touted as great Engineering for the profession, cool addition, didn't destroy a species to make, is unique, provides choice based upon play-style, yada yada yada. And now, well we don't want to take away its uniqueness, but hell, lets take away another mounts uniqueness for no reason. Is a water strider so overpowered that you literally have to destroy the species?I can't even now, wrap my head around this. I have 2 accounts on World of Warcraft. I am being completely truthful on this. After reading about this, going through the comments, posting my own comments, thinking about just the last couple of weeks announcements i.e. the portals issue. I just got angry. I logged into my account and cancelled my second account outright.I am on the fence and really really don't know what I'm going to do. I don't know if I should just walk away from the game, or hold out hope that this is going somewhere good. Blizzard does not have a good track record lately and has been making some questionable decisions about the direction of the game and how it works. I am also somewhat put off by the 'you think you want it, but you don't' attitude that Blizzard consistently has. I have loved this game for a long time. Less time than many I suppose, I made my first toon around November 2007 during TBC and have basically been addicted to the game since. I think this is just how you say, dying of 10,000 cuts or the straw that broke the camels back? I really don't know. I am not a 'the game was so much better in vanilla person' I didn't play classic, but I am a person that believes that when you time and time again, take things away in the guise of giving us something, its begins to chip away at your credibiltiy and it also makes your customers question your ability, competence, sencerity (witch is huge!), etc...You have created a climate where what I think, but can't speak for anyone but myself, a portion of the playerbase just flat out does not trust you. I don't know how to resolve this and I know deep down inside, that more than likely, nobody is even going to read this, but I feel like I have to get it out. That I am just one player and my account does not truly matter in the big picture. I don't make a difference and I accept that. It doesn't mean I don't want to voice my opinion or that I shouldn't. This just for some reason hit me sideways, and I am not happy.I apologize for the wall of text. Thank you if you took the time to read. I hope I'm not just the crazy one, LOL.
I would pick hoofplates
I still think the Azure one should be left alone, I don't have one my self but damn thats a hell of a rep grind.
I'd have commented on the official forums, but my sub's up and I'm not going to drop $15 to make a point. What drugs were they on when they came up with this system? From what I can see it's not EVEN half-baked. Why does a piece of equipment targeted for a mount apply to an entire character? And why is a piece of equipment destroyed at the end? There's so much potential here and they missed so hard that it makes me question what these developers do with their time.Make mount families. Give each family a perk by default. Some can be better, some can be worse. Some can even have crucial drawbacks! Then give every mount an equipment slot that allows that perk to be changed to something else, including changing back to a "normal function" mount.Goats can scale higher inclinesFrogs can jump higherWater striders can water walk (imagine that!)Hoofed animals (horses, talbuks, etc.) can knock back what's behind themHeavy animals (kodos, mammoths, elekks, etc) can cast a stomp for a knockback, sort of like tauren war stompMech mounts can get a turbo boost akin to a sprintCrocolisks have higher swim speedProto-drakes get a wing buffet to knock back what's in front of them. Mounts that don't land (like phoenixes, gunships, nether rays, manhole covers, etc.) have a priest-like levitate effect, and the drawback to them can be that you're dismounted when you take damage, similar to the operation of said levitate.And then you can come up with a dozen more perks that can put sense to so many mounts in-game, like how dragons and every other mount with wings can't even break a fall where there's no flying. And you make items. Crafted items, lootable items, vendor items that cover the mundane and uncommon and absurdly powerful mount perks out there that you can then assign to a particular mount at the cost of overriding its family perk. It doesn't affect every mount on your character; it doesn't even affect the rest of the mounts in that family, but it could affect that particular mount account-wide.And sure, you'll have exceptions, like the sky golem or the traveler's tundra mammoth or the grand expedition yak or the longboi or the motorcycle. And they don't have a mount equipment slot to even alter them, but they remain unaffected by anything else.But you don't go and make something special by making everything the same. You do it by adding different unique perks to everything that exists. You do it by making everything else feel alive, not killing the only unique thing you have going.
I wonder how many people will be triggered on 8.2 launch day when I go water striding past them on my fully functional water strider?