The vote is in, and World of Warcraft players have chosen their new mount. With a vote that wasn’t close, it looks like the Wandering Ancient will be the mount that Blizzard designs for players. This will be free for everyone after World of Warcraft: Shadowlands releases at the end of October.
One of the best ways to interact with a community is to get their input on a design element. In this case, Blizzard put up a poll asking which mount fans would want designed. The options were: Wandering Ancient, a large walking tree; Soaring Spelltome, an enchanted book that flies; Nerubian Swarmer, an icy undead spider; Curious Caterpillar, a large and overfed caterpillar; and Gooey Slimesaber, a quick cat that is covered in goo. With 34% of over 160,000 votes, the winner is the Wandering Ancient.
While the lore of World of Warcraft is often very deep and complicated, especially to casual players, Ancients are fairly simple to understand. Much like the Ents of Lord of the Rings, Ancients are powerful and incredibly old trees. These are demigod-like and important to Night Elves, making them a little more Alliance associated than Horde. They are protective, good-hearted, and excellent at bringing wrath down upon those who would harm their forests or allies.
The upcoming Shadowlands expansion seems to be adding plenty of new details to the game. Aside from introducing a new mount, there is also a huge revamp of the diversity in World of Warcraft. Blizzard announced that some NPCs will get changes to reflect greater diversity in the world. This is in addition to player characters getting many more diverse options for customization, allowing for more expression and a more honest variety of people.
In addition to the new Wandering Ancient mount, Hunters will have access to some new pets as well. While these were not voted on, many players are very excited about new tamable beasts including a new alpaca, a mammoth, and a courser. Naturally, World of Warcraft players are already looking forward to taking on powerful raids with the assistance of a small alpaca friend.
While the official release date for World of Warcraft: Shadowlands is not until the end of October, the pre-patch is available for pre-download right now. Much like downloading a game before it is playable, this allows players to be as ready as possible to jump right into the pre-patch when it hits. Until it officially releases, there are plenty of current things to complete, from the Ahead of the Curve mount to finishing some raid farming while they still can.
Source: Blizzard