Advantages of Buying a Flying Mount at 60

In patch 3.2 of World of Warcraft, the mount skill level requirements were significantly lowered. Now you can purchase the basic ground mount at level 20, and the faster one at 40.

Having a mount at 20 is a great boost for the low levels. At this level, you tend to finish quests quickly, so there is a lot of travelling to be done, with many of the quests designed to make you explore the lands, resulting in even more traveling. At level 40, when you purchase your next mount, the change does not seem that significant. This is because the quests take longer, and you spend more time in dungeons. Also the speed increase from 60 to 100 percent is not a major change from just walking to 50 percent.

Flying mounts were a great addition to World of Warcraft in The Burning Crusade expansion, costing 1000 gold, and could only be acquired at 70. This has been reduced to 600 in patch 3.2 and the level requirement dropped to 60.

Although, the lower level requirement is a welcome change, the cost of the skill seems very expensive for some, especially if the character is the first char on the server. Also, the points made above about the lack of gain from level 20 to 40 mounts may also seem applicable to the level 60 mount.

However, one obvious point that is overlooked, is that flying mounts can fly. Not only does this let you travel a lot faster, as you do not have to navigate terrain, skipping hills, ravines and rivers, but you avoid all the agro mobs along the way.

But, even more advantageous is that you can complete some of the time consuming quests very quickly. These are the type of quests where you have to kill a number of mobs in order to get close to the mob you have to kill for the particular quest. With flying mount, you can skip all the trash mobs, and kill the quest npc almost immediately. These quests are designed to be difficult to do, so blizzard rewards a high amount of experience for completing these.

Other quests, that require navigating up steep hills and mountains to reach you destination, can just be flown to instead. With a flying mount, you can complete these with ease. Quests that took half an hour or so , can be complete in minutes with a flying mount, which means more quests completed, and an increase of your xp per hour rate.

So if you want your 60 plus levels to fly by, then a flying mount is a worthy expense.

Of course, generating the gold required to purchase the mount maybe a daunting task, so perhaps a wow gold guide will help.