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Major content patch 3.2 for World of Warcraft is just around the corner, and it features major revisions to the game's mount system. It's another in a long line of changes to the game designed to make lower level (and even some higher level) play a bit easier and faster.
When World of Warcraft first came out, a character would have to attain level 40 before they could get their first mount (this has since been lowered to level 30), which gave them a 60% boost in movement speed. At level 60, better and much more expensive mounts were available, bumping up your movement speed increase to 100%. The Burning Crusade expansion introduced flying mounts, only usable in Outland, the new area of the expansion. Not available until level 70, the slower of these gave you a 60% movement speed increase, both on the ground and in the air, and the faster flying mounts jumped up to 280% in the air and 100% on the ground.
Patch 3.2 changes things a lot. Level requirements will be lowered again, to level 20 for regular ground mounts and level 40 for the faster ground mounts. The first tier flying mounts will be available at level 60 (meaning characters can have them for the entirety of their Outland play). The flying speed on the first tier flying mounts will also be increased to 150% movement speed, meaning they'll actually be faster than the epic ground mounts, a very nice change.
Also, cast time to summon a mount will be cut in half, meaning it will only take 1.5 seconds to be on your horse instead of a full 3 seconds. Oh, and most everything is cheaper, too.
Class-specific travel abilities and forms also had their levels lowered (the Hunter ability Aspect of the Cheetah, for example, will be lowered from level 20 to level 16 -- didn't you used to have to wait until level 30 for it? WoW's getting easier and easier.
It seems that Blizzard is trying to make the earlier parts of World of Warcraft a lot easier and faster to level through, so that players can spend more time playing the later additions to the game. Anything that cuts down on the grindy feeling of an MMORPG is fine by me.
