World of Warcraft to add mount equipment so you can stop using that damn Water Strider all the time

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Using mount equipment, all of your mounts can walk on water—but there are other cool abilities too.

I hate the Water Strider mount in World of Warcraft. I wasn't very active during Mists of Pandaria, when it first released, and I've been too busy to go back and grind to get it (or any of its alternate versions). Every time I'm forced to slowly swim to my destination and some player blitzes by atop his water-walking Water Strider, I silently curse their existence. Thank god for WoW's upcoming 8.2 patch, then, because one of its many excellent features is a new system of mount equipment which includes "Inflatable Mount Shoes" that gives whatever mount you choose to ride the ability to walk on water.

Revealed during a livestream for World of Warcraft's upcoming 8.2 patch, called Rise of Azshara, mount equipment will let you earn a variety of passive buffs that apply just to your mounts. They'll make traversing Azeroth much less frustrating.

Currently, some mounts like the Water Strider have innate abilities like water walking that make them extremely useful in almost any situation. As senior game designer Jeremy Feasel explained during the livestream, this created a problem: Everyone was using the Water Strider all the damn time.

Mount equipment is Blizzard's answer to that problem. Though it's unclear how you'll obtain these different pieces of equipment, each one will offer you a unique passive that is applied to all of your mounts so long as it is actively equipped. The most desirable of those will undoubtedly be the Inflatable Mount Shoes, but Feasel also revealed a Saddlechute that will automatically deploy a parachute if you fall from a great enough height, as well as Comfortable Rider's Barding that prevents you from being dazed by enemies while mounted.

"We feel like the mount equipment slot is an awesome new way to allow you to pick whatever mount you want in whatever context," Feasel said.

It's one of several very exciting features coming to Battle for Azeroth in patch 8.2. It's worth watching the full livestream to get a rundown of the two new zones, raid, and dungeon, along with all the dozens of smaller updates World of Warcraft will be getting sometime this summer.

Though no release date for Rise of Azshara is confirmed, it will be available to beta testers on the Public Test Realm servers next week.

Steven Messner
Steven Messner

With over 7 years of experience with in-depth feature reporting, Steven's mission is to chronicle the fascinating ways that games intersect our lives. Whether it's colossal in-game wars in an MMO, or long-haul truckers who turn to games to protect them from the loneliness of the open road, Steven tries to unearth PC gaming's greatest untold stories. His love of PC gaming started extremely early. Without money to spend, he spent an entire day watching the progress bar on a 25mb download of the Heroes of Might and Magic 2 demo that he then played for at least a hundred hours. It was a good demo.