Thoughts on WoW Promissed Mount Changes

While playing WoW I've often said that when leveling 25 to 30 it feels like a game of running. I hate Wetlands and Duskwood so much! You run for 5 or 10 minutes to kill skeletons for a few minutes then you run another 5 to 10 minutes to return the quest only to be told you have to run the fuck back and kill the slightly larger skeletons. Brutal! If I wanted to play a game that involved running across the landscape over and over I'd play Fallout 3.

Anyway, Blizzard isn't stupid and they know future players will get bored with this quickly and go back to their XBox so in a win-win move they have announced changes to the mount system and I for one am a tad excited.

1) Cheaper Land Mounts Given a Level 20: Sweet!
Now that I have a level 75+ toon mailing one of my alts the 30 gold for their ride training and first mount doesn't seem like a big deal. However, I remember how painful it was to raise that much money the first time I hit level 30. Therefore, I say cheaper is good. Plus I might not throw up in the back of my mouth a little anymore at the mere thought of Duskwood and Wetlands given in the future I'll be able to speed up all the running back and forth using a mount.

2) Cheaper Epic Land Mounts at Level 40:
I am a little torn on this: part of me thinks it's to early for an epic land mount. However, I did think 60 was a little too late and would probably have preferred the epic mounts be available at 50 but having said that with flying mounts coming at 60 instead of 70 getting a epic land mount at 40 may be a reasonable.

3) Faster Flying Mounts at Level 60:
I actually kinda liked outland so personally I think speeding up the experience by providing a flying mount that early is going to rob people of the experience as they'll fly over a lot of cool stuff. However I was pissed off buying a flying mount at 70 then going to Northrend to find out I couldn't use the fucking thing for 7 more levels, this way at least you'll get some use out of your flying mount when you buy it. The big score is they are speeding up the standard flying mount to 150% traveling speed which makes sense as it should be at least as fast as your epic flying mount.

4) Cold Weather Flying and Epic Flying Mounts still at 77:
To fly in Northrend you need to train Cold Weather Flying and that they aren't changing. As far I've heard flying in Northrend isn't going to change.

5) Faster Mount Summoning Times:
3 seconds down to 1.5 seconds hell I'm okay with that.

Summary:
The Mount changes are just another sign the Blizzard is trying to help new players level faster and get to their newer slicker game play at Northrend. I think that's a sound business decision. Video games have changed a lot and they know that getting and retaining new customers means getting them to the current content faster.