Patch 7.2: Updated Travel Form

In addition to giving players the ability to unlock flight in the Broken Isles, Blizzard has announced that they will be adding class-specific mounts in Patch 7.2. Because the utility of our Travel Form is unmatched, the Druid “mount” will be an update to our epic flight form. Thanks to the ever-diligent MMO Champion, you can preview each our new owlish form in each of the four Druidic races: Night Elf (purple), Tauren (brown), Troll (red), or Worgen (black).

Jan 23 Edit: Data-mining by MMO Champion seems to indicate that Druids will acquire an item called a Moon-Kissed Feather with the on-use effect of “Teaches you how to transform into the Archdruid’s Lunarwing Form.” The flight form is called Archdruid’s Lunarwing Form and is described as “Shapeshift into Lunarwing Form, increasing movement speed by 280% and allowing you to fly. Cannot use in combat. The act of shapeshifting frees the caster of movement impairing effects. Can’t be cast in Tree of Life Form, Moonkin Form. Account wide. Instant.”

I understand why Blizzard decided to create an updated model for our Travel Form, but I have to admit that I’m a smidge jealous of the gorgeous mounts that the Monk and Paladin classes will be getting! Personally, I would love a quest for Druids to befriend a Wild Dreamrunner. I’ve seen Hunters asking to tame these creatures, but I prefer to think that unicorns would only agree to accompany someone equally attuned with nature.

I admit to occasional daydreams about the adventures of
Phoebe Phaelia and her Unicorn.

On a related note, can I just say how disappointed I am with the Glyph of the Doe? Players have been complaining for years that our forms were non-gendered, and many who play female characters were especially frustrated when our cheetah Travel Form became an obviously male stag. The model for the unglyphed Travel Form has a jeweled harness, decorative barding on his legs, and jewels dangling from his antlers. Applying the (not inexpensive) Glyph of the Doe transforms the blinged-out stag into a female doe with no ornamentation at all. You can see the difference below:

I’m so fancy.
I buy bottle service with my rent money.

I’m grateful that Blizzard made the effort to be more inclusive, but some enterprising model designer really ought to grab a bedazzler and fix this!

Vocola: Part 1 – The Basics

This is post 1 of 4 in the series “Vocola - Voice Command Language”

  1. Vocola: Part 1 – The Basics
  2. Vocola: Part 2 – Group Healing, Abilities, and Multiple Characters
  3. Vocola: Part 3 — Movement, Mouse, and Camera
  4. Vocola: Part 4 — Raid Healing and Communication

Dragon NaturallySpeaking is impressive software. It’s recognition accuracy is excellent. However, to unlock its full potential with macros and complex commands, you would have to purchase the Professional version for around $500, putting it well outside of the reach of many gamers. Thankfully, third-party software called Vocola can be used to replace — and in some cases, improve upon — the functionality missing from the Home and Premium versions of DNS.

Written by Rick Mohr, Vocola is available in two different versions: Vocola 2 works with Dragon NaturallySpeaking, while Vocola 3 was developed for Windows Speech Recognition. The syntax is slightly different between the two, but there is a primer of the differences available. (In most cases, you can use the same commands in either, but I will endeavor to point out the exceptions.)

Download and installation instructions: Vocola 2 | Vocola 3.

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