Just look at the reaction blizzard

Mounts take a fairly significant amount of time to create, and in this case the Runesaber mount was made somewhere in the 6.0 production timeframe, and I believe was complete before 6.1 hit the PTR. Creation of store mounts is intentionally consistent and takes place months before they actually release. In this case we actually waited for a bit as we wanted to ensure the Token rollout went smoothly without adding in the potential complications of a store mount going live at the same time. In short: we didn't crank this thing out yesterday as an answer to something. Production takes a long time, and we have them on a regular release cadence. You can be certain than every few months there will be a new store mount.

As for why we make mounts for the store at all: most obviously of course because there is a significant portion of players that like being able to purchase cosmetic items for real money. Certainly there is also a desire by a significant portion of players to be able to obtain the Ironhoof Destroyer from Mythic Blackhand. Not everyone will be able to, or maybe even want to, obtain either mount, but we know that a wide variety of players look for a wide variety of acquisition methods for cosmetic items. Also certainly different players will look differently at these two mounts based on their acquisition methods, and it's the main reason why we don't mix game and store mounts. If someone buys a mount off the Shop we don't want there to then be confusion as to whether it's the Shop version, or a recolor obtained through in-game means. We essentially purposely ensure shop mounts stand out as shop mounts.

05/19/2015 05:05 PMPosted by Hákon

05/19/2015 05:01 PMPosted by Antharias

...

At this point you should be paid to not post anything.

Not to sound like a "blizzard drone" as people put it, but that is a tad rude towards another human being.

I do concur with the original poster that what people want is more in-game content and that a mount is not sufficient to that want.

Yeah, of course no one said "people want more content! let's make a mount!" and that was sort of my point, these will release regularly regardless and aren't tied to other game content.

Also, of course, the crux of the complaint isn't really (I believe) that this mount exists, but just that some people think it's poor timing to be selling something while they're looking for a new raid tier, etc. I don't think there's anything anyone can say to that except for us to just keep working on and release the content they're looking for. But in any case, I thought I'd try to offer a reasoned response as to how this mount is not an answer to anything, but just a standard timed release like all the other ones before it.

05/19/2015 05:11 PMPosted by Mid

you are telling me, that to get the nicest mounts in the game, i have to buy it with real money?
and i can count on them coming out with frequency?

No, I did not say that, and gave an example of the Mythic Blackhand mount also offering a rare and difficult to obtain mount. Judging by reaction to some of the store mounts, I would argue they are not at all the nicest looking mounts in the game. :) Certainly all of the most sought after mounts are valued due to their rarity, and store bought mounts are generally not very rare. Value will differ from person to person though, I suspect.

05/19/2015 05:34 PMPosted by Öneup

You say they take a long time to create and ok that makes sense, however I think what people are getting at is the "nice mounts" more or less have to be bought.

I don't believe there was much if any difference in production time between a shop mount and, say, the Vicious War Kodo in 6.2. Or the mechanostrider for that matter. Or Felsteel Annihilator. You could argue they're all "reskins" in that they use existing animation sets, but all three are new mounts with custom geometry and textures available through gameplay. Whether you think they're as cool or not is probably up to personal preference.

05/19/2015 05:54 PMPosted by Truculentt

05/19/2015 04:53 PMPosted by Bashiok

Production takes a long time, and we have them on a regular release cadence.

its very frustrating to hear blizzard take this stance on mounts. suddenly mounts are such a big production... like wrath and bc didn't happen.

The art in the game is overall of much higher polygon and texture resolution than it was. Production "costs" (e.g. time) only increase as we increase graphical fidelity. Not to mention huge and ambitious projects like updating 20 race models, all with updated customization options, new animation sets, etc. This expansion has a huge amount of very time and quality-control intensive art in it. But I do legitimately understand it's sometimes difficult to see the forest for the trees.

05/19/2015 06:04 PMPosted by Bahren

Condescension. Nice.

I'm not intentionally condescending anyone, and I understand the desire to turn this into a battle against us. But I really don't think that's necessary, or productive.