Several months ago the Grove Warden mount was data mined and people were excited to see that we’d finally get a moose mount. It was also tagged as a store mount which made people happy as anyone would be able to get it.

And you can see why people were excited to see the mount – not only is it the only moose mount in game, but its rather pretty to boot!

And then the 6.2.3 PTR patch notes came out.

People were surprised to see the Grove Warden was no longer a store mount.

Instead it required you to kill Archimonde on Heroic difficulty or higher and the mount would only be obtainable for a short time – until the 7.0 Legion systems patch is released probably.

Once 6.2.3 is released, Archimonde heroic and mythic will drop a Mysterious Fragment of Dark Power which, when taken to the druids of Moonglade, will reward players with the Grove Warden and teach them more of what Azeroth will face in Legion.

Understandably people were surprised by this change and there were comments along the lines of expecting to see “LF moose run” shouts when 6.2.3 is released.

Most of the concerns were around what was originally a store mount turning into something which requires heroic raiding – no matter what people say, Archimonde on heroic is no push over. You need to follow tactics and execute the fight correctly. Combine that with there appearing to be fewer people raiding in Warlords now and it may be the Moose Mount isn’t as common as you’d expect.

People were also unhappy with the short time window which they had to get the mount – this wouldn’t be something you could farm once you could solo the place!

However this is not the first time Blizzard have had a limited availability mount. Not only do we have the Naxxramas achievement drakes from Wrath, but we also have the Kor’Kron war wolf

This wolf mount was a reward from the Feat of Strength Ahead of the Curve: Garrosh Hellscream, gained when you killed Garrosh Hellscream in what was then normal or heroic Seige of Orgrimmar – those are heroic and mythic difficulties now.

So in one respect the Grove Warden is much like the Kor’kron War Wolf – it too will only be available for a short time and in getting an Ahead of the Curve feat of strength you’ll get a mount.

However the way it has been brought in – via an item which drops – is different. Its also somewhat annoying that they’re going to give you some lore for handing the item in. Whilst I’m sure YouTube will have the video at some point, its rather nice to actually see it in game for yourself!

The wolf mount was also already in game – at the time you’d only have one if you were in the Horde and now in Warlords there are several mounts which use a wolf model. eg Dustmane Direwolf leatherworking mount or Armored Frostwolf from the stables garrison building. Right now there are no other moose mounts in the game. This may change, but the uniqueness of the model does mean it’ll be sort after.

I think a lot of the unhappyness with the moose mount is the way in which it first seemed it would be available to all – via the store, yes – but if you wanted it, you could buy it. And they’ve not yet retired a store mount, so you’d always be able to buy it down the road if you wanted it.

Perhaps some of the blame here falls on the data mining which first showed the mount to the world, tagged as a store mount. Unfortunately mounts do get moved around by Blizzard as plans change; eg the Infernal Direwolf was marked as the 150,000 apexis crystal mount on the 6.2 PTR. Only later did it change to being the reward from the Glory of the Hellfire Raider meta, with Reins of the Corrupted Dreadwing being the “My, what do I do with all of these Apexis?” mount.

If you’re after the moose mount in 6.2.3, what are the ways you’ll get it?

• Be part of a raid team – thanks to how the legendary ring is upgraded using the Crystallized Fel Archimonde drops on normal and above, a lot of guilds are still killing him each week. And thanks to the Diablo-style roll of sockets, warforged, etc often they’ll do the highest version they can do. The 60 extra ilvls you can add to the ring boosts the power of the proc from 25% to 50% which is a major help for raiding
• Use /trade or the Group Finder – not for the faint of heart and its likely people who make such groups would require you to already have the Ahead of the Curve achievement anyway!
• Use OpenRaid – there is a strong raiding community in OpenRaid and a number of top tier raiders have said they’ll be forming groups on OpenRaid to help people get their moose mounts
• Pay for a moose carry – running a raiding team is expensive; my guild has spent ~1,000,000 gold in guild repairs over the course of Warlords. A lot of that gold has been provided by BoEs. However you can guarentee that raiding guilds will take people to kill Archimonde on heroic for a fee. On my server people are currently charging 50,000g for a heroic Archimonde kill with loot set to personal. You can bet that the fee in 6.2.3 is likely to go up. But it’ll be down to each guild as to what they charge

My raid team will probably do moose carries for a fee; it would be silly not to take advantage of another cash flow outside of BoEs! We didn’t do Kor’Kron Wolf mount carries due to the fixed raid size required. At least with the flexible raid size we have now we could take 5 extra players, have them suicide at the start and then do the fight as normal – just needing to do a bit more damage than normal. Whilst 25 player raid teams could do that in Mists, abit with 2-3 carried players. Unfortunately my raid team was 10 player and you just didn’t have the slack there.

As it stands now, if you want the moose mount then you’ll have to kill heroic Archimonde after 6.2.3 has been released. How you choose to get that kill is up to you!