As dear Wryxian announced earlier today, we're getting a new build on the PTR. The unofficial notes for this build are already making the rounds, and they're... not very interesting! Perhaps the most notable change is that the change to mount casting speed, previously only applied to ground mounts, now affects flying mounts as well.

When the casting time change to ground mounts in Patch 3.2 was announced, Eliah Hecht, Michael Gray and I had a long debate about why they wouldn't have applied the change to flying mounts as well. We ended up coming to the conclusion that they were avoiding it for PvP reasons; only needing to be out of combat for a second and a half to mount up and zoom off to escape a fight that's not going your way would be a little... cheap. The outlier here was the Druid Flight Form, which is an instant cast spell. Everyone but Druids hate that though, right? It's pretty freaking annoying when you get into a scuffle, you gain the upper hand, and then the Druid just runs in circles like a headless boomkin spamming their flight button and hoping it eventually takes. So we figured that didn't count. It was a perfect example of why being able to fly away quickly was a bad thing.

Boy, are our faces red. Flying mounts get the 1.5s cast time now as well. Sometimes trying to figure out Blizzard's reasoning doesn't really pay off. I'm not going to complain that much, though. I certainly appreciate being able to get into the air faster!

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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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A little surprise on the Patch 3.2 PTR was discovered this evening. The Cold Weather Flying training, which previously had to be purchased for each character that wanted to fly in Northrend is now available as a Bind on Account book purchasable at the exotic mounts vendor in Dalaran.

The Use text is a little odd in that it notes the "tome is consumed when read." To me that means that the book is only a one use thing, which is a departure from current BoA items. And why have a level 68 requirement on this and not the normal Cold Weather Flying training? If you're 68 you're likely to be able to get to Dalaran anyways these days.

But wait Did you see it? You might have missed it.

It shows level 68 being the required level, not level 77.

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]

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.

After yet another Cracked Egg with nothing but a Cobra Hatchling in it, and the bigtime raiding proto-drakes constantly getting dropped out of the game, there's really only one other option: the Red Proto-drake, a reward for the Glory of the Hero meta-achievement. It's not easy: you've got to not only beat all of the heroics in the game, but all of the hard mode achievements for each of them. Guides like our OverAchievers can help, and a really great group to go along with helps more, but some of the achievements are so tough they need extra attention.

The Oculus' achievement, however, is one that needs an even closer look. And 4 Haelz kindly provides exactly that, with an in-depth guide to toppling two achievements in one, both the Emerald and Ruby Void, by doing the boss with five Amber drakes. The Amber drakes are usually meant as DPS, which makes this fight extra tough: you can't take much damage at all, because you can't get any damage back without healers. So what it requires, instead, is communication and coordination. Basically, you use the drakes' Time Stop ability to slow the fight down, and then try to do some coordinated kiting while DPSing like mad, all the time hoping that you can bring him down before he takes one of you out.

As Bell says, once you get the idea (and have wiped a few times -- you should probably be riding the drakes naked, since not only does your gear not affect their performance, but it'll save you repair costs), the fight's not actually that hard to pull off, but it's the learning that's going to hurt.

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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Patch 3.2 is currently in development, and not yet on the PTRs. We've been told that it will focus on expanding the Argent Tournament that was introduced in patch 3.1, and we've also learned that it will feature new Druid form art and a new battleground, Isle of Conquest.

Today Blizzard posted a preview of some of the Argent Tournament updates, and it looks pretty cool. There are going to be two new Tourney-related quest hubs in Icecrown: a Cult of the Damned camp overlooking the Tourney, and a Vrykul outpost on an island to the north. The Black Knight will also be returning; I guess it was only a flesh wound after all.

There are also going to be new dailies and new rewards for players exalted with the Silver Covenant/Sunreavers, as appropriate. Silver Covenant and Sunreaver tabards, their ground and flying mounts, and a Shimmering Wyrmling pet are all mentioned.

Furthermore, those who have earned the Crusader title will get some more dailies, and some exciting rewards, including new heirlooms (!), a banner, a tabard that ports you to the tourney, a squire with a mount, and a Paladin-only charger mount.

New heirlooms, you say? Nice, but I wish they weren't at the end of five tedious rep grinds. Oh well, time to get to work, I suppose.

Update: Blizz have edited the page to say the new squire will cost 150 Champion Seals to upgrade, will be summonable for 3 minutes every 8 hours, and will perform one of thee services: mail, bank, or vendor.

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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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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.

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

Todays edition of The Queue should be read while playing Boom Boom Pow in the background. It's completely irrelevant to WoW or anything discussed today, but I haven't been able to stop playing the song for about a week now and it's really starting to drive me crazy. If I can't stop listening to it, I'll just make other people listen to it. Schadenfreude is just as good as a cure.

Jfofla asked...

"My question is about the 100 Mounts Achievement. With the introduction of the AT, this is more doable than ever before. Is there a current database of all available mounts to help those seeking 100?"

One of the things I never forgot in the run-up to patch 2.3 was seeing the photo above from MMO Champion. This was before the Cenarion War Hippogryph went live, and it was the faction's new (albeit expensive) reward for reaching exalted. Boubouille, as so often happens, datamined a bit more than what Blizzard actually permitted to go live, and the skin at the top left was what wound up being the Cenarion Expedition's flying mount. Sprinting for the CE quartermaster when the patch hit and discovering that that was the only model available (and that it couldn't walk) was a bit of a let-down, to the point where I decided to wait on buying the mount in the forlorn hopes that the other mount colors and animations would go live. Quoth the female Tauren, moo hoo hoo.

Since then it's become apparent that the hippogryph at top right became the Argent Hippogryph (score!) and the one at bottom left is now the Silver Covenant Hippogryph. That some of the Tournament daily quests award Silver Covenant/Sunreaver reputation makes me suspicious that the hippogryph and Sunreaver dragonhawk are eventually going to be rep mounts. That still leaves two hippogryph skins "left over," and you've got wonder if they're going into the game -- and if so, in what capacity. EIther way, there aren't words to describe my happiness at not being consigned to the ugliness of a wyvern (the airborne version of Tauren cat form) forever. I'll grant that my main is a Druid so I had a ready escape anyway (and I thank thee daily, Blizzard, for thy boon of total win in the guise of swift flight form), but sometimes a girl likes options.

Patch 3.1.2 has added another entry into our list of things that are completely freaking adorable today. We didn't notice this on the PTR for some reason (likely because everyone was busy playing premades that lacked turtles) but jumping in place on a Sea Turtle does something really quite cool. Your turtle hides in his shell.

The video embedded above comes from reader Enaress. There's not much more to say about it except that it's crazy awesome. Anyone who disagrees has no heart. Fact. YouTube frame is green to celebrate the turtleosity of the video.

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

The Queue is generally a weekday affair, but since this Saturday is going to be a busy day for us WoW players, we're going to be doing a special edition this weekend. You didn't forget about BlizzCon tickets going on sale this Saturday, did you? I hope not! If you have any BlizzCon related questions, get them in over the next couple of days, and we'll see what we can do for you this weekend.

Erogroth asked...

"What is the status on the Warcaft movie? I have not heard anything in a long time. Is it even in production? Will we ever see it? Is there even a website?"