A new shop mount in World of Warcraft is live – and the community is fuming. Doesn’t Blizzard learn?
There isn’t much going on in World of Warcraft right now. Although the Hallow’s End event is happening, there have been no new updates for years. The current content is also stale, and even the next update 9.1.5 brings only a little bit of new content.
That apparently doesn’t stop Blizzard from releasing a new shop mount.
What kind of mount is this? The “Sunwarmed Furline” is, as the name suggests, a pretty large cat in crimson color. As is befitting for a cat, it is quite playful and chases its own tail in the animations.
Like most shop mounts, the Furline can also fly and adapts to the rider’s riding skill. You can use it on all characters that can ride.
The Furline costs €25 in the shop.
Mount can also be earned “for free”: As usual, the mount can indirectly be earned with gold. You need to collect enough gold to buy the equivalent of the mount in WoW tokens. This way, players can buy the mount with gold if they choose to.
This is how the community reacts: Even though there are a number of players who find the cat mount cute and want to grab it almost instantly, the prevailing voices – at least on wowhead and in the subreddit – are negative. The problem is not the mount itself, but the timing of its release.
Many players are currently dissatisfied with the state of World of Warcraft and don’t see any improvement in the foreseeable future, as patch 9.1.5 essentially only brings the Timewalking: Legion – for many, it is a “FOMO” patch. All other content mainly consists of improvements to the existing game systems and content.
Also disheartening for some is that the mount was basically released simultaneously with a message from Activision-Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick . He listed what Blizzard has already improved after the sexism scandal and even had his salary cut. To some players, it seems like Blizzard is saying: “Look how much we’ve improved. And now give us money.”
However, it is criticized that the mount does not conform to the usual art style of World of Warcraft. Many remark that such a mount would fit better in an Asian MMO than in Azeroth.
Accordingly, the rating of the presentation video is also negative. On YouTube, there are about 90% thumbs down for the shop mount.
What do you think about this cat as a shop mount? A nice mount at a fair price? Or totally the wrong timing?
