WoW’s delivery on vaunted “Keystone Master” mounts has been rocky, at best. One of the best art teams in the business, surely, should be pumping out some seriously show-stopping ridable friends for one of the game’s more (but not most) difficult endgame achievements. But from the Shadowlands’ almost imperceptible recoloring of the mount reward between seasons to the new, bewilderingly landlocked Dragonflight mounts, these rewards haven’t been the most, uh, rewarding.
WoW Dragonflight Season 3 KSM Mount: Verdant Armoredon
It’s another Armoredon! Not exactly surprising, since this follows suit with the previous two seasons’ rewards, but this one in particular feels.. sad. Not just because of the fantastic rewards PvP players can enjoy (that are even dragon riding mounts!), but because for a content patch focused around the Emerald Dream, I expected a little more.
The justification for these rewards being ground mounts makes some sense, at least. The reasoning was that the developers wanted players to be able to use their dungeon-rewarded mounts in dungeons, which flying mounts don’t work in. Also, it was presumed that dragon riding wasn’t “evergreen” content, but it’s proven so popular that it’s planned to be rolled out into old content zones.
For comparison, here’s the “Gladiator” PvP mount reward for Dragonflight Season 3:
Not only is it fantastic in detail, coloring, and personality, it’s also extremely unlike the previous two seasons’ Gladiator mounts. You could certainly argue that, since Gladiator mounts are harder to get, they should be more prestigious in appearance. I’d tend to agree with this sentiment, but it doesn’t quite explain the gulf of difference between the endgame PvE and PvP endgame mount rewards.
At the end of the day, this is all subjective, of course. I tend to like these sort of doofy-looking lizards, and I want to complete my collection for completion’s sake. There’s always next expansion.
