The alliance Chopper will be available through gold!

[Stormspark]

I'm quite pleased that they are adding the Alliance bike for gold, much better than buying it on the store. I still think the bike would have looked much better with some big chrome wheels instead of tracks.

As it stands now Alliance get an extra if somewhat odd looking mount to ride in exchange for some gold, whereas Horde get a welfare mount that looks like its the bastard child of Johnny Five and a vibrator.

Or put another way, Alliance will have to put in a little effort to earn their mount in game, whereas Horde players will get their mount for free without any in game effort. If you thought it was bad when every casual scrub was riding around on the shiny star pony, just think how bad it will be when every casual Horde player will be sat on the fugly trike.

Ok, that made me laugh. That is a pretty apt description of the horde trike. My main is horde, and I voted for the alliance one because I thought it sucked less.

[Variny]

It looks bad seriously :/

[MrExcelion]

Bit curious about needing to "login between now and September 30th" for the Horde bike, whereas the Alliance one might be available indefinitely from a vendor. Like others have speculated, probably a sub number thing, but you'd think the Horde one would be available for at least as long as the Alliance bike. Yeah, they'll probably be on the same Paul Jr-homage vendor

[Wildtree]

Do people really think they added the alliance mount after caving to the qqfest? It was incredibly obvious that they would add both mounts in otherwise it would just be a waste of time building the bike in the first place.

The purpose of building both bikes as real bikes evades that of the pixel game..
There's a lot more to it than that.
Those bikes are consumer magnets for a variety of things. They even work for media events related to the upcoming movie.
Alliance vs Horde... So plentiful useful.
And in the end, I would not be surprised if they auction the real bikes off for charity reasons.

But to think how they've spent all that money just to have 2 pixel bikes, that's a bit naive

- - - Updated - - -

Bit curious about needing to "login between now and September 30th" for the Horde bike, whereas the Alliance one might be available indefinitely from a vendor. Like others have speculated, probably a sub number thing, but you'd think the Horde one would be available for at least as long as the Alliance bike. Yeah, they'll probably be on the same Paul Jr-homage vendor

Quite simple...
The accounts getting auto flagged between now and Sept 30..... After that, no more flagging..
Chances are.. Horde bike too shows up at a vendor.
They will never have only 1 bike available in the game. They are both in.
The winner bike is just for free for those that are actually subscribed...

[NoiseTank13]

What ends does faction pride in general go to? What point does getting people fired up along in-game faction lines serve in general? I'm not being rhetorical here, I don't really know what purpose it serves, but it happens quite a bit.

There is nothing to assume about how a contest works. It's one of the oldest cultural conventions in history. There's a winner and a loser, the winner gets the glory, the loser goes home empty handed or tries again. I'm not saying remove the bike, I'm saying "why the hell would you make this contest, get everyone fired up over it, and then say 'jk guys here's your consolation prize too, yay everyone wins!'"

Seems a bit disingenuous.

It's not really a consolation prize if you have to pay out the wazoo to get it, is it?

[MrExcelion]

I think it'll look something like this:

Sept 30th - Last day to "claim" free Horde bike
Oct 7th/14th - Systems patch 6.0, free Horde bikes awarded
Nov 18th/Dec 2nd - WoD launch
Holidays/January 2014 - Bike vendor added to the game. Perhaps around the same time Winter Veil starts on Dec 16th. Holiday spirit and all, an opportunity to give a close friend a mount (sold a lot of mounts/battle pets to people looking to give them to a significant other)

[thunderdragon2]

only thing that remains is to find out what blizz deams "a hefty sum of gold"

- - - Updated - - -

I think it'll look something like this:

Sept 30th - Last day to "claim" free Horde bike
Oct 7th/14th - Systems patch 6.0, free Horde bikes awarded
Nov 18th/Dec 2nd - WoD launch
Holidays/January 2014 - Bike vendor added to the game. Perhaps around the same time Winter Veil starts on Dec 16th. Holiday spirit and all, an opportunity to give a close friend a mount (sold a lot of mounts/battle pets to people looking to give them to a significant other)

ur timings off for wod try oct 14th, wod will be out before november most likly (tbc at gamescon)

[Huntaer]

Will it go faster in the snow?

well that would be awesome. even if its 5% or so

[Deleted]

I think both bikes are quite ugly.

[Eliot123]

Both bikes are meh. I really hope they won't be more than like 10k gold or so - if they were the only bikes in-game, more than 10k would be ok but as it is WotLK bike look rather similar (if not better) so I don't really see the reason to price the new one(s) very high.

[Buildapanda]

Hm, hats off to Blizzard for not selling this for $25, I'm surprised.

So there, now we have both Horde and Alliance bikes in WoW now. Can the Alliance fanboys stop crying about this now?

Pretty sure this has nothing to do with your beloved blizzard, it has everything to do with the headache of setting up royalties and paying them out.

I swear people take every chance to bitch at fanboys when in reality it's concerned playerbase.

[RoKPaNda]

It caused an issue because it NEVER SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED. Blizzard has spent years making this divide in the player base and they know the rancor the players have for each other. Just look at the abuse that the Horde give Alliance at Blizzcon. People who wear Alliance gear are verbaly abused and threatened. They CONSTANTLY make fun of Alliance players on the forums both official and here. Any time an Alliance player has a valid complaint they are treated like shit by Horde players and called crybabies. And there was NOTHING fair about it. People were allowed to vote multiple times (which was never communicated) and there were Horde players using voting scripts, so we don't know the votes are accurate.

The only fair thing to do would have been to make an Alliance version of the trike so that everyone gets the winning bike, not exclude a significant portion of your player base an force them to pay for theirs.

So Alliance players never abuse Horde players and only horde players are capable of using voting scripts?

[Deleted]

The alliance chopper is the real winner, it will be a rare and limited mount for the alliance only compared to the mount everyone will use for a few days playing horde.

[MouseD]

You can't just dismiss the contest and then propose a new solution as if the current one is suddenly invalid. Do you honestly think that not a single Alliance voter didn't use scripts to multi-vote as well? Do you honestly think that Blizzard was unaware of who was going to win, unaware of the lengths that specific individuals would go to fuck about with the contest, just like every single in-game system they've ever implemented? You're underestimating Blizzard if you honestly think they're blind to such things. It's the internet, manipulation to a certain degree should always be expected, whether it's from a guild or two running scripts to vote, whether it's from a YouTuber getting his legion of fans to vote for one, whether it's something as natural as the larger, more vocal playerbase voting more than the smaller one.

Fact of the matter is that the Horde won and attained first prize, their mount being added for free. As the losing faction, Alliance SHOULD get nothing, but instead (and most likely planned when considering the whining of the playerbase[I don't mean just Alliance players]) Alliance gets the consolation of being allowed to buy their mount. Both sides still get the mount, so the contest is already more generous than most by rewarding both the winners and losers. If you take issue with having to pay for something you didn't earn, don't forget that you honestly don't deserve it at all BECAUSE YOU LOST, and should be thankful for the opportunity to attain it.

You're whining about nothing, like a beggar who criticizes the food he is given, like a busboy who groans at a $5 tip. You could have nothing!

I play Alliance and only voted 1 time.....there are some of us that are adults and don't cheat unlike the horde.

[Tucci]

I'm betting 20k. 30 if they feel like using a weird number.

Too bad Paul Sr. didn't work on the bikes. I'd say put him in the game as a Tuskarr.

[SinAscendant]

I play Alliance and only voted 1 time.....there are some of us that are adults and don't cheat unlike the horde.

Pretty sure nobody cheated, because that's child's play and easy to detect?

Maybe stop being butthurt and realize that even Alliance players voted for the Horde bike (and said so on forums here) because it looked better

[Deleted]

the in game model cover pretty much what I did not like about the live version (it looked "too" shiny) if I'l get an alliance character I may pick it up