Rock Paper Shotgun has an interesting piece up looking at travel in massively multiplayer games, and while the analysis is really about travel in all MMOs, of course World of Warcraft gets placed front and center -- with the notable exceptions of Mages and Warlock summons, it's a game that squarely places you in its vast world, and asks you to make some solid decisions about where you want to be. While travel has certainly gotten easier (and will continue to do so), it's still an important part of the world -- sometimes, when you're in a backwater zone and your hearthstone is down and there's no summons available to you, you've just got to get on a griffon and put the time in to fly around.

Why is that? Why can't we just teleport around at will to places we've been before (a la Fallout 3 or Fable 2, if you've ever played those games)? Why does Blizzard make us traverse the wide world? RPS lands on two solutions: either they just want you to play the game more (certainly possible, especially since big worlds with long travel times and subscription fees are a trademark of the MMO genre), or they're just being jerks about it. But their panelists, and Blizzard, have offered one more suggestion: they want this world to feel vast, and one way to do that is to make you move around it rather than warp anywhere you want at a moment's notice.

Then again, that's some deep psychology, and sometimes you just want to get in an instance with your friends and fight (hence the recent changes to summoning anywhere, queueing from anywhere, and so on). Travel definitely serves a purpose in MMOs, but the genre has shown in the past few years that while instant travel all the time might shrink the world a little too much, sometimes you just need to get to where you want to be.

[via Slashdot]

I'm sure lots of you guys who trust datamining saw MMO Champion's list of changes in the latest PTR update for Patch 3.2 and raised an eyebrow at the Headless Horseman's Mount being instant cast. "And lo, thus did the Horseman's steed become the de facto PVP mount!", you exclaimed, prostrate in exultation.

Well, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that you may have just found out what "prostrate" or "exultation" mean. The bad news is that the mount isn't instant-cast. Zarhym explains:

The Headless Horseman's Mount has a variable cast time depending upon how it is used: 1.5 seconds as a ground mount and 3.0 seconds as a flying mount. However, due to technological limitations the tooltip reads as if the spell were instant.

The question of how the cast times will function in areas where flying isn't allowed came up, and he clarified that as well:

Yes, the cast time will depend on your riding skill and the area you're in. So, if you're in Outland or Northrend (no-fly zones excluded), the mount will require a 3-second cast time. If you're in Azeroth, a no-fly zone or do not have a flying skill, your cast time will be 1.5 seconds.

Well, cool! It's not instant-cast, but it'll do. Nice to see that Blizzard is making sure your vanity mounts kept up to speed with the rest of the rapidly-evolving World of Warcraft.

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Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!

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You're a pet and mount maniac. You've hunted down every noncombat pet you can find, gotten a lucky roll on every rare mount you can possibly pick up, and after long last, you've earned both the "Lil' Game Hunter" and "Mountain o' Mounts" achievements. But still, you want more for some reason. More pets, more mounts, more achievement points.

Good news: Bornakk says that there will still be more to find. While he says they won't be upping the achievements every time they bring out a patch that has more pets and mounts to collect, they will definitely add in new achievements periodically for collecting both noncombat pets and mounts (and, though he doesn't say so, we'd assume they'll add in extra rewards besides the achievement points, including extra pets or mounts to be earned at each level).

So if you are in fact a collecting master and have already earned the 75 pets and 100 mounts (a much easier feat than it used to be) for both maximum achievements currently in the game, just be patient. There'll be new goals to go after soon.

Ahh the smell of fresh loot in the air, it must be summer. Well, fans of loot cards and the official Trading Card Game, I bet you have your calendar marked. Tomorrow sees the release of the latest - and possibly greatest - TCG expansion Fields of Honor. Yes, you too could have your very own El Pollo Grande, the greatest mount in the entire history of Azeroth. We've mentioned this thing was rarer than a spectral tiger's tooth, right? Indeed our very own Turpster has been raving about his (insert slightly rude giant chicken joke here) all week.

The best part that is the cards were activated in an earlier patch so you can use them as soon as you find one. No more waiting for 3.1.x or even 3.2. Just to recap, the Fields of Honor loot consists of El Pollo Grande, the Ogre Pinata and the groovy Path of Cenarius. You can also take a peek at Upper Deck's loot card preview page for some really cool screenshots.

But here's the best part. After the success of our last EU giveaway, Upper Deck International here in the UK have very kindly given us a set of shiny European loot cards. Isn't that nice of them? We certainly think so! We're going to give them away during this week's maintenance so check back then.

The roller-coaster of "will they or won't they remove the Ulduar raid drake rewards" seems to have come to a definitive answer. The rusted and ironbound proto-drakes will be removed, but they will give us "about 1 month of warning" so you can make a final push if you really want it. The drakes are rewards for completing Glory of the Ulduar Raider (and the 25-man version).

Bornakk points out the parallel with the Arena mount rewards, and says that this is no accident: these are supposed to be rewards for the "top tier" of raiders, and letting people earn them with more powerful equipment from higher raids would defeat that purpose. Therefore, he says we should expect it to go this way in the future, as it was with the Naxx drakes.

As a side note, he says they may be removed when patch 3.2 comes out or some time after. This suggests to me that they think there's a decent chance patch 3.2 will come out less than a month from now. If they knew it was going to come out later, they'd just give the one month warning a month before they expected the patch to drop.

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Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!

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Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today.

Patch 3.2 is bringing about a lot of questions. Many cannot be answered yet, however we know the general direction of things from comments left by Ghostcrawler and others. I don't think that we have heard all the surprises in Patch 3.2, and we probably won't for a little bit.

So today's Queue questions are compiled from comments left around the site. Hopefully the answers will help clear some things up.

And today's reading music has two selections. One is Johann Strauss' Blue Danube Waltz, and the other is Pink Floyd's Great Gig in The Sky. They are connected, and have to do with today's content.

Jjbrophy111 asked...

"What will happen to saved Emblems of Heroism and Valor whit patch 3.2?"

The WoW CMs continue their polling of rare and hard-to-find items: first, we got queried on Mr. Pinchy, and now the forums have a poll about that more recent bounty, the Reins of the Green Proto-drake. As you probably already know, you have to first get revered with the Murloc faction of the Oracles, and then you have to buy a "Mysterious Egg" once every seven days from their quartermaster... that probably hasn't yet given you the mount you want. Personally, I've gotten plenty of Aged Yolks and quite a few noncombat pets, but not my Proto-drake.

And my experience is hardly singular -- according to the poll, a full 55% of respondents have not yet opened up their Cracked Eggs to find the mount. 4% found it on their first try (bastards -- that number seems incredibly high), and almost 14% went for the joke "Oracles?" answer, or maybe just have no idea what the question is about. Obviously this is hardly a scientific poll, so we can't calculate drop rates or anything like that (most database sites put the drop at around 2%, which means on average 50 eggs to a drake, or almost a year of farming), but it's pretty clear that the Proto-drake is a supremely rare commodity.

Great news for collectors of pets and mounts in the Patch 3.2 notes! Not only will the long-desired Ravasaur mount finally be available -- for Horde players only, mind you -- but dinosaur fanatics will be pleased to discover that they can find Raptor Hatchlings from rare and elite raptors throughout the world. For those unwilling to farm, you can also buy Obsidian Raptor Hatchlings from Breanni in Dalaran!

But that's not all. Besides those two, Blizzard says that there are six other new unannounced non-combat pets available, not including Argent Tournament rewards.

But even that's not all! Northrend Children's Week will start with the new patch, which means that we're likely to see the Gorloc and Wolvar orphans we've known about since Wrath launched.

All that's on top of the new paladin mounts from the Argent Tournament, the Sunreaver and Silver Covenant mounts, and the new as-yet-unnamed Argent Tournament pet. Nice patch for you pet and mount collectors, eh?

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Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!

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Traveling through Azeroth used to be a real pain (especially if you were -- like me -- Alliance) but Blizzard's latest round of changes has been directed at traveling. This means mounts and travel forms are about become accessible much earlier, even if they cost the same. This isn't the first time a travel form has been changed to make it easier to get, nor is it the first time the level at which you can get your (insert racial mount here) has been nixed. This is the first time there have been dramatic changes across the board, regardless of class and the reason is simple: to make it easier to hit 80.

So, constant readers, I'm curious to know if you think this is a good or a bad thing? Will it encourage you to finally get that alt of yours past level 22? Have you just entered Azeroth, perhaps, do you think this will make it easier to move through the old world on your quest to 80? Tell us in the box below.

Patch 3.1.2 brought it with the usual slew of undocumented changes, but here's one that appears to have flown under the radar for a while -- Mei Francis, Dalaran's exotic mount vendor, now sells basic Outland flying mounts (read: gryphons and wyverns) at both regular and epic speeds. This is great news for, well, anybody who doesn't want to go to Outland! I know that when my shaman hit 77 and I bought all of my flying skills, it was a pain to have to go to Shadowmoon Valley to buy my mount, so I can certainly appreciate the change.

Of course, there are even more mount changes in store -- a 150% speed flyer at 60, for example -- so this is obviously part of the devs' mission to streamline the leveling and traveling process for players of all levels. A welcome and unexpected change for quality of leveling life -- that's what I like to see.

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today.

Long long time ago...
I can still remember
How that music make me smile, Alex.

And I knew if I had my chance
That I could make those people dance
And, maybe, they'd be happy for a while, Alex.

Tim asked...

"When discussing new content coming out, why does Blizzard always play so close to the chest? For example, the mount changes are due to be "in the next major content patch" which everyone knows is going to be patch 3.2, why don't they just say it?"

They're reading my mind! Just an hour or two ago I was thinking to myself, "if I can get a mount at level 20 in patch 3.2, what's the point of all those level 20+ speed-increasing skills?" Zarhym has solved my conundrum: they're all going to be reduced to level 16!

This includes Druid Travel Form (was level 30), Hunter Aspect of the Cheetah (or as I like to call it, Aspect of the Cheater; was level 20), and Shaman Ghost Wolf (was also level 20). Also in this post, the skull confirmed that class-specific mounts will come at the same levels as generic mounts will: Paladin and Warlock ground mounts at 20 for normal and 40 for epic, Druid Flight Form (now enhanced to 150% speed, like the other normal-speed flying mounts) at level 60, and Swift Flight Form at level 70.

So the days when Ghost Wolf or Travel Form was all you had to go faster for 20 levels may be over, but at least it will be useful for four. There has been a lot of debate back and forth about these changes, but for my money, if they're not going to let us start alts at high levels, this is the next best thing: making leveling much less painful.

Oh, Brewfest mount. How much you have taunted me over the ages. I still recall last Brewfest, when a guildy of mine was quite distraught that he was not going to get the mount before the festival ended, only to get it on his very last Direbrew kill (and remember, we used to kill that sad dwarf five times a day). I've never gotten one myself, but that may change this upcoming Brewfest.

Bornakk has just announced that "there is quite a possibility that a change is in the works" for how the mount is acquired, and that "it will most likely be easier to get." A return to a token-based system, perhaps? Just a higher drop rate? A reward for the meta-achievement? I don't know, but we'll be sure to report as soon as we find out.

The token based system might be unlikely, actually, since earlier in the thread he said "I doubt we will make them purchasable with tokens, if we want to make changes to this we will likely go a different route" (comma splice!). How do you think they're going to make the mount easier?

Recently, I wrote about a scam involving selling Spectral Tiger Mounts, but I never thought I would be able to actually interview the guy responsible. Luckily, this particular scammer was willing to discuss the scam candidly with my husband and I. He ended being very like a Ferengi in his attitude toward what he calls "business". Here is the story.

Late last night, The Spousal Unit saw someone spamming Trade Chat, supposedly offering a Spectral Tiger Mount for sale. Since he knew two people that had been scammed by this, he called the seller a scammer in Trade Chat. The scammer sent him a tell and they proceeded to debate the issue in whispers. TSU called me over to show me the conversation, so of course I had to log on and pursue the interview further. Following are both interviews, copied over from in-game whispers.