WOW slashes mount requirements

Blizzard has revealed on the official World of Warcraft forums that it's dramatically decreasing the cost and increasing the accessibility of the mounts that allow players to get around the game world faster.

Regular mounts will now be available at level 20 instead of 30 (it was originally 40), "epic" fast mounts will be available at level 40 instead of 60, and flying mounts will be available at level 60 instead of 70 and have their speed increased.

The gold costs of the riding skills and the mounts themselves have been slashed, with apprentice riding at level 20 costing just 4 gold, and a basic mount costing 1 gold (the original cost for both was 100g back in the day).

Mounts will take half as long (just 1.5 seconds) to summon, while class-based travel skills - such as the Hunter's "aspect of the cheetah" that increases run speed - will be available at level 16.

Blizzard poster Zarhym explained that the changes would help make the game more accessible and shorten its intimidating length without affecting difficulty too much.

"The game has gotten quite a bit longer, and allowing players to get from A to B faster only very minimally decreases difficulty; more so, it decreases time spent travelling," he said.

"We don't want to discourage players from trying out the game if they have not yet, and we especially don't want to discourage existing players from trying out new characters because the levelling process from 1-80 seems too daunting after flying around Northrend grabbing purples for a while."

The changes will be applied in the next major content patch alongside a new battleground and the Crusader Coliseum mini-raid challenges.