Dataminers have found a new mount in WoW: Classic – in the Burning Crusade beta. The fear of a cash shop is growing massively.
For a few hours, players had hope that the Burning Crusade Classic beta would start, but it turned out to be a false alarm. A bug in the Battle.net app allowed some players to download the client for the beta. However, even though the beta has not started yet, data miners have already dissected some of the game data and found something interesting: a new mount.
What kind of mount is this? The mount is named “Viridian Phase-Hunter” and has the model of a visually enhanced phase stalker, as players know them from the woods of Terokkar. With a saddle and some armor, this mount looks quite impressive.
The colleagues at wowhead made a small video to show what the mount will look like:
However, this also raises the question: How could this mount come into the game?
This is the concern of the players: Many players fear that Blizzard will introduce an in-game shop selling mounts, pets, and similar items. The introduction of the WoW Token, which provides a legal way to buy gold, could also be conceivable.
Players are afraid that more and more retail elements will seep into WoW Classic, which is particularly concerning for many regarding the cash shop.
Some Classic players want to have their purist experience, in which options like the in-game shop and purchasable mounts do not exist. This would destroy the “spirit” of Classic and Burning Crusade and would increasingly resemble Retail – the game they explicitly do not want.
What other options are there? In various forums and on Reddit, there is lively discussion about this find, but other possibilities regarding what this mount could mean are also being considered. Besides a purely shop mount, several options are conceivable:
- Mount as a Promotion: The mount could be tied to a promotion, such as completing a task within the first months to reach level 70 or simply coming back to the game with BC Classic.
- New “Collector’s Edition”: A digital “Deluxe Edition” of BC Classic is also being discussed. This could include a character boost along with the mount to make the offer more appealing.
However, it seems clear that Blizzard will bring “new” content to BC in one way or another, as this mount was indeed found in the Burning Crusade game data and not from Retail WoW. However, it is quite conceivable that the mount could end up in both versions of the game as part of a “cross-promotion”.
More cash services are coming anyway: It has been clear for some time that Blizzard wants to offer more and more services in Classic and BC Classic. The character boost to level 58 sparked wild discussions and is still disliked by many players. It is intended to help players quickly get into the shattered world at the release of BC Classic to experience the “new” content.
What do you think about it? Do you think it’s good if there are a few new mounts in Burning Crusade Classic, and would you even buy them? Or is that absolutely unthinkable and should Blizzard quickly discard?
