In Wrath of the Lich King a mount was almost never the result of work. It was the result of an event: you saved up gold and walked to a vendor, you got a rare drop, you closed out an achievement, you topped up a reputation. Between "I want one" and "I have one" stood either money, or luck, or somebody else's raid schedule. Mount crafting on Valor changes that relationship itself: a mount becomes something you make rather than something you receive.

What the original did and did not have

Let us be precise, because the subject has been mythologised. Professions in 3.3.5a really could produce transport - Engineers built flying machines, Tailors made carpets. But those were isolated recipes inside two specialisations, not a system. The main ways of getting a mount looked different:

  • buying from a vendor for gold, limited only by your riding skill;
  • a rare drop from a boss, where nothing depends on the player except the number of attempts;
  • a reward for reputation, an achievement or arena, that is, for an activity with no connection to the mount itself.

What all three have in common is the absence of a path. You do not close in on the goal gradually: either you already have the sum, or you got lucky, or you did not. Crafting as a system in its own right introduces a fourth option: a goal you reach in steps, with every step visible.

A mount as a project spanning several weeks

If obtaining a mount is broken down into professions, resource gathering and intermediate components, the player gets something the original WotLK endgame barely offers outside raiding: a plan of his own. A project has a list of what is needed, logistics (where to get it and what is cheaper to buy than to farm), a work queue and a clear horizon. It does not play like "farming gold for a mount": decisions get made every evening rather than once at the end.

It also matters that this kind of progress cannot be cancelled by other people's decisions: the raid may not come together, the roster may fall apart, the guild may go on hiatus - the resources sitting in your bank are not going anywhere.

Who this changes the game for

Professions - a life after gear

The main trouble with crafting in WotLK is that professions run out before the character does. While you are assembling your gear the profession is needed; as soon as the items are in place it turns into a source of consumables and a passive bonus. On x3 rates that moment arrives quickly, because the road to max level is short. Mount crafting gives a profession a reason to exist after the gear is done.

The solo player - a big goal without twenty-five people

A solo player in WotLK hits the ceiling early: heroics, reputations, gold. Everything large requires a roster and a schedule. A long crafting chain is a rare case of content that scales down to one person without becoming trivial: the timeline is set by the amount of work, not by the number of participants. For someone who logs in two evenings a week, this is often the only long-term goal available.

The guild - a reason to help each other

Mutual help in 3.3.5a guilds almost always came down to running content together, and that requires everyone's time to line up. Resources are the lowest-barrier form of participation: hand over a stack of ore or herbs and you have already helped, with no need to be online at the same time. A mount project creates a steady internal demand, and help forms around it by itself.

An honest word about the downside: grind and cosmetics

Any long crafting chain rests on a single assumption: that the player considers the reward proportionate to the time. With a mount that assumption is shaky, because a mount is almost always pure cosmetics. Movement speed on 3.3.5a is the same across the board and there is no combat advantage - you are paying for the look and for the fact of owning it. The moment the chain becomes monotonous, the question "why am I doing this" arrives instantly.

The signs of a badly built long craft are recognisable: the same resource in the same spot, a daily cap that makes the timeline a function of the calendar rather than of effort, and no way to speed things up by playing better. The cure is structure, not a smaller volume of work. A healthy long chain changes the type of action as it goes: gathering, then crafting, then a quest, then buying on the auction house whatever is not worth farming yourself.

There is also a constraint specific to a private server. Crafting leans on a market: some materials are cheaper to buy than to gather, but that only works if somebody is selling them. A project auction house with 2663 registered accounts does not follow the laws of a large official realm - for particular items there may be no supply at all. When planning your timeline, it is sensible to assume that a noticeable share of the materials will have to be gathered yourself.

Mount crafting, in the end, is not about transport. It is about the player always having a piece of work already under way. How the system is built on Valor is described on a separate page, and preparing professions and making gold are covered in the guides.