How Timewalker Mounts should have been handled

[Saffa]

So you would get them I assume.

[Raugnaut]

It really doesn't take long at all though. I will start the grind for them on Saturday, and have them Sunday Morning. Both of them. There is also toys and heirloom items and upgrades to get from this, instantly making Timewalking a better rewards driven Dungeon type than Heroic or Mythic. You may not like having to grind for things, but on top of your grind you have chances for mounts and pets to drop off the appropriate bosses and you get decently item leveled gear from it too. Timewalking will be one of the only features that makes it out of WoD being called positive.

You get 30-40 badges per dungeon (5 per boss, 10 end boss, 10 for que). The 5 mans have 4 bosses on average, with some having 3, some having 5, so with 5 bosses, you get 20 for the first 4, 10 for the last, and another 10 for the end.

Thus, the least number of runs you have to do in one week to get a mount is 113 runs. I've noticed that the average time to complete 1 dungeon is about 15 minutes on average. So, you have to spend 1695 minutes, or 28.25 hours. Thus, the average person will have to spend OVER a straight day to get 1 mount with just grinding.

Now, you may be able to quicken this time to ~6 minutes providing you just get a full premade group to steam through them. With this, it will take ~13 hours to acquire a mount. So, yes, if you have a group like this, and spend the full day grinding, you CAN get the mount in a day.

I personally like OPs suggestion. Assuming that Timewalking lasts until the end of WoW, its quite possible that blizzard will add a good number of extra rewards. Theres a HUGE number of unused mount models (The total number exceeds 700 last I counted). Theres no chance in hell that Blizzard will add ALL of the models, but a good chance that they will add ~50 of said models over time, as they have been doing over time. (So far, this expansion, we have gotten ~7 of the older unused models)

[Coconut]

-snip-

You are projecting your own preferences on me as well. I don't value mounts on how hard they are to obtain. I'm a collector, I want to have as many as possible, but from my own sentiments, and those of my non-collector friends, if a mount looks cooler or is more unique (as a model), it will be worth doing more to get it. It's also more exciting to spend time in new content, rather than old. I go in old content on my own to farm mounts already. If something really difficult or extremely dumb rewards you with a flying turd, it would be very low on the list for me.

Likewise, if I do something stupid for a cool mount, like wake up at 5 a.m. on reset day to catch the Voidtalon, I will be fine with my choice as a collector, but I won't say I'm "proud" of my "achievement" (even though it's less dumb or toxic than camping and realm hopping), and I will be able to objectively say that the Voidtalon system is bad design, because it rewards/encourages unhealthy behavior.

To me, a mount isn't a badge of honor for players who feel proud of wasting time, it's an incentive for them to run content, which should ultimately translate into subscriptions for Blizzard. Because that's the logic behind their design. The content should still be generally fun, varying in difficulty, diverse and sanely paced.

20 mounts for the same total effort as 2 can still contribute to your playstyle though, since few players will have all 20, and you will be closer than most to the latest mount collecting achievement. On top of that, there could be an achievement with a title/different mount for completing the entire Timewalking Collection. So you could still show something off.

But, considering you speak about "real effort" when it comes to grinding timewalkers and "quality over quantity" speaking of a dragonhawk recolor, I'm not sure if you should be taken seriously or you're just looking to bash or have an argument. Try to think of things more relatively.

[Tirilka]

This site is ridiculous. You have people arguing good business sense against people who are passionate for... no discernible reason other than they like to argue.

5 REASONABLE months for a mount is ridiculous. That's enough said on the matter.

No one gives a flying rats ass that you could grind this mount in a week by literally not going outside or eating or drinking. Take a statistics class and come back with an argument that isn't asinine.

I don't know what you are trying to say overall with your passive agressiveness, but let's take the only straightforwardly-discernible statement.
5 months for a mount is ridiculous. 5 reasonable months, which I suppose means in a relaxed pace of gameplay.

By that logic, every raid mount is ridiculous, because at 1% it sure as hell isn't going to be as easy as running ten dungeons over the course of 8 months. Even bruteforcing the boss with 5 characters each reset will only get you so far.
Holiday mount is ridiculous, because it isn't physically possible to get it in less than a year.

Yet people farm them, and have no complaints whatsoever. So your "that's enough said on the matter" is hardly true, because your argument doesn't look very robust too, especially to your 'opponents' on this matter.

[Raelbo]

You are projecting your own preferences on me as well

No I am not. I was pretty clear in that different people have different preferences. I fully accept that my preferences are not the same as yours.

Your argument is that the rewards are broken because they do not suit you. I am saying that your argument is invalid because fixing the rewards for you will break them for other people for whom they are just fine the way they are.

No reward in this game will ever suit everyone. You need to accept that. And while I do accept the possibility of rewards which suit no-one, this is not one of those.

I didn't come here demanding changes to features I don't like which you might like. I am simply trying to give you some insight into the fact that there are people who are quite happy with the rewards you are targetting and as such there is value to them, even if not for you personally.

- - - Updated - - -

I don't know what you are trying to say overall with your passive agressiveness, <snip>

Well said!

[Coconut]

No I am not. I was pretty clear in that different people have different preferences. I fully accept that my preferences are not the same as yours.

Your argument is that the rewards are broken because they do not suit you. I am saying that your argument is invalid because fixing the rewards for you will break them for other people for whom they are just fine the way they are.

No reward in this game will ever suit everyone. You need to accept that. And while I do accept the possibility of rewards which suit no-one, this is not one of those.

I didn't come here demanding changes to features I don't like which you might like. I am simply trying to give you some insight into the fact that there are people who are quite happy with the rewards you are targetting and as such there is value to them, even if not for you personally.

Suddenly there is a meaningful portion of the player base who specifically likes earning grindy vanity rewards over several months, in easy but limited seasonal content, to the point that decreasing the grind per reward and adding more rewards "breaks the content" for them.

Seriously?

Even though nothing this extreme has existed before in WoW (no, Violet Proto Drake does not count, since each holiday in itself adds plenty of intermediate rewards, and a vast richness of gameplay compared to just grinding dungeons)... And if you're gonna say "raid drop mounts", then you have plenty of content already, you don't need more when all the casuals are in a drought.

Please tell, what kind of content have you been doing all this time that satisfied your craving for torturous grinds? Because it's way too easy to posture on the internet and claim you like anything if it helps you win an argument: "Sir, how dare you sue the restaurant for finding a dead rat in your soup?! Why, drowned rat soup is exactly what I wanted to have for supper! And you are ruining this precious opportunity for me! Begone, pest, begone!"

[Lei]

You know what would make me say "I'd grind this sh*t even for 8-10 months with a smile on my face"? If they added an Infinite Dragon as one of the mount rewards, for the BC event. They could add a bone dragon (Sapphiron model, not the frost wyrm from icc) as the wotlk one. It fits the theme, it looks unique...

As alliance player, I'm so tired of "Someone said mount rewards? Give them a horse!" - crap. I have MANY horses. Black horse, brown horse (even the armory can't handle this many horses, this one is banned from there... ), horse on fire, vampire horse, chilled horse... I almost hope the pre legion event will look like an apocalypse. Then at least I could make good use of these horses laying around.......

I think - but I guess I'm alone with this - they could easily get ahead of the "we have many alts, what can you do to stop us from getting all rewards in one event?" thing: Account wide quest. Most of the pet battle quests are account wide, people seem to be OK with it. These are pure cosmetic things so there'd no need to involve alts. Like in old times: you and your main. Go, GL, HF! (I'm not talking about the cache + bonus roll quest, + the catchup gear. I'm speaking about acquiring the rewards)
Of course they'd still need to do something about the (overwhelming?) impression when someone opens the vendor window and they see a bunch of stuff in front of them that takes 2 years to acquire, and they - naturally - want all of them (now, when it's fresh, not 2 years later, when they are cba, before they could even get them)...

To be ontopic:
Recently I've realised that when I click on the vendor frame to buy my 121112121th Boar mount after a grind, it doesn't really fill me with excitement. +1 in the mount journal. Woohoo! I don't think I summoned these boars at all.
Make no mistake: getting the camels in cata felt good, while they are not really exciting visually, at least they were new models... adored the serpents, but when was the last time when I worked towards something that felt amazing when I finally got it, and i actually used it as my mount of choice? Hmmm...
So I don't know how would I feel if blizz started to throw more and more recolor/reused/re-everything-ed mounts at us.
The less is more + quality over quantity. At least for me.

tl;dr: I'd rather them giving us less, but more unique mounts that would make you feel excited to grind and get, and you'd actually use them as your mount of choice, not just shove them in your bag, and with that, completely forget about them.

[Coconut]

Heh, the Infinite Drake wasn't on warcraftmounts so I completely forgot about it. It's a good catch, though they may be saving it for whenever the infinites have a more relevant role to play... And it does need a saddle.


I think recolored mounts are fine because this is old content... it's a nostalgic experience first and foremost, and here are these old color variations maybe you wished you could have had back in Vanilla. And something like this is pretty much their only chance, the models are too old to be used for current content, they're almost done making new versions of the racial mounts now...

The horses in particular may be a little "meh" (I like the blue one though, I think it's pretty unique looking), the wolf as well, but the Sabers and Mechanostriders are pretty nice, and so are some of the others. Would you say "bleh" to this? Remember, it's all about nostalgia and diversity!

Recolors are fine, it depends how you use them. The boars felt bad because there are a dozen of them and you get them one at a time from different sources in the same expansion. But we haven't had an old Saber recolor since they remade ZG. Even I would feel weird if they started making fresh new models for timewalking (they used the horse because they had it anyway).

As far as the alts go, you can only make use of alts now because the weekly quest gives the majority of the badges. This would be changed ofc, so you actually have to farm the dungeons to get most badges (but you'd get a mount every 15-40 runs, depending on how many there are in total).

[TacoCatt]

I just saw someone on my server with the Ironwraith... Dafuq. That kid's been up for a few days I think.

[Coconut]

I just saw someone on my server with the Ironwraith... Dafuq. That kid's been up for a few days I think.

Somehow I didn't get the chance to run a single one yet (would have been all over them if it was realistic to get a mount). Is the weekly item a guaranteed drop? Or at least high enough to get it in 5 runs?

[flepser]

I really don't see the problem. I doubt it's meant to 'lure' people back into the game before Legion, but it does give people another thing to do while waiting.

[jishdefish]

So, Blizzard wants these monthly events to keep people busy for the entire content drought until Legion, and beyond.

Two mounts, both reused old assets, each taking roughly 5 months with event quest and a reasonable ~15 runs for each available week. Can't play during one event? Tough luck, it's gonna take you even longer.

How is this enough to keep the average player interested? With such a long wait, the rewards become meaningless. When they could have been exciting if you could just sub and get one of them now, they are just off-putting. Even I, an avid mount collector who stubbornly pushes through grinds, think this is way, way, way too much.

It's so unreasonable that people are just not going to care. "Screw it, if it's gonna take that long it might as well take longer. I'll get it anyway while I sub for better content." Or, "I was willing to give the game a chance for this dangling carrot, but I know I won't stay subbed for 5 more months, so I'm not getting it anyway. Pass on WoW." This is what the average players will say.

So, if you came up with this system, and you want it to be long-lived, why not dig deeper into the sack? Let people earn enough tokens each month for roughly one mount, and simply add a lot more of them! People will not farm 5 months for a single mount, but they might farm 5 months for 5! That sounds more fair, doesn't it?

There are a lot of unused or not implemented mount models already in the game files, and let's face it, those models, even the absolute best of them, are showing their age. When are you going to end up using them? And there is very little cost of adding them, all the models already exist!

Here's a list for more possible Timewalker mounts for several expansions, taken from http://www.warcraftmounts.com/:

*snip*

And whow, that's a lot of mounts! All Blizzard has to do is implement them and add them to the vendors, and then, even if players aren't interested in farming them all, it's certain there will be something here for everybody's liking. Even if they're all reskins, and more than half are ancient.

Edit: Added in the Yaks.

This is the best post I've seen about the subject. It's offering a very constructive criticism. I agree 100%. More unused mount models for less of a grind (heck they could just make the 'weekly crystal' have a low chance of dropping after the initial one off of any boss).

[Matt0193]

While I don't think that what Blizzard have done with current Timewalking rewards is a mistake, I do feel that this would have been a better solution.

This sums up my feelings about this. I wouldn't mind the grind if Timewalking was a permenant feature, obviously you'd have to cut the loot out when it isn't the event or nerf it down to 630 so that Heroic dungeons aren't negated but at least then you wouldn't be limited to a specific window of opportunity.

[TacoCatt]

Somehow I didn't get the chance to run a single one yet (would have been all over them if it was realistic to get a mount). Is the weekly item a guaranteed drop? Or at least high enough to get it in 5 runs?

Yeah it's a guaranteed drop. So far I've done the one dungeon on like 4-5 toons so 1-2 more and I can get al the rewards in what, 8 months?

Seeing as that's Blizzards suggested way to get all the rewards in less than two years.

RIP people with 1-2 characters.

[SteveRocks]

There are people on my server that already have the timewalking wraith charger mount so your argument is invalid. If you want it that bad you can get it pretty damn quickly

[Coconut]

Yeah it's a guaranteed drop. So far I've done the one dungeon on like 4-5 toons so 1-2 more and I can get al the rewards in what, 8 months?

Seeing as that's Blizzards suggested way to get all the rewards in less than two years.

RIP people with 1-2 characters.

I did 5 dungeons last night, mixed group with friends and a couple of pugs. Overall, they took us over two hours and a half to complete. They were easy, with a few fun moments (usually when the tank died), but nonetheless boring. I don't have the drive to grind 15 of them just to speed things up from 8 months to 5. My two max level alts will be doing one a piece.

That being said, the 500 badges quest feels very skewed to me. It's so insanely high compared to what you get from doing more dungeons, it feels like Blizzard doesn't want you to run them more than once per char. I mean, even when it comes to loot... these dungeons drop 660, 675 if warforged, and it would probably take quite a few runs to fill every slot. But no, if you just go ahead and do the first one, you can get 8 ilvl 675 items basically for free... and you'll have currency to spare.

There are people on my server that already have the timewalking wraith charger mount so your argument is invalid. If you want it that bad you can get it pretty damn quickly

Yes, because 60+ hours /played in less than 4 days is sane. Doing the same thing over and over, too. Yeah, that's how the game should be played, everyone.

[Fawkess]

There are people on my server that already have the timewalking wraith charger mount so your argument is invalid. If you want it that bad you can get it pretty damn quickly

Those must be some hardcore people

[TacoCatt]

There are people on my server that already have the timewalking wraith charger mount so your argument is invalid. If you want it that bad you can get it pretty damn quickly

Yeah if I want to do 27 hours of Timewalkers, assuming each run is 15 mins or less..
Which, you know... I don't.
Hate for Timewalkers > want for re-skinned mounts.

I'll just wait it out.

[Delaios]

That being said, the 500 badges quest feels very skewed to me. It's so insanely high compared to what you get from doing more dungeons, it feels like Blizzard doesn't want you to run them more than once per char. I mean, even when it comes to loot... these dungeons drop 660, 675 if warforged, and it would probably take quite a few runs to fill every slot. But no, if you just go ahead and do the first one, you can get 8 ilvl 675 items basically for free... and you'll have currency to spare.

Just one dungeon for the quest item or completing the event quest is probably what Blizzard wants/expects you to do. Has the benefit of keeping Timewalking relevant for a longer period of time. The general playerbase mentality of "get stuff done asap" is fairly unhealthy for an MMO. If Blizzard doesn't gate content you'd end up with even bigger spikes in player activity.

Have to agree that the gear pricing/quality is a bit off when you account for the weekly though. The prices seem more appropriate for 660 gear and a slightly higher price for an upgrade token that's also usable on drops from the dungeons.

[Polarthief]

I have over 270 mounts and these mounts are among the "fuck it, I'm just gonna do one Timewalker per event for the +500".