WoW: The kite riding is so awesome, I never want to use a flying mount again – even though I have so many

Dragon riding is so awesome it should forever replace flying mounts in World of Warcraft. At least that’s what MeinMMO demon Cortyn thinks and he’s really excited about the new feature in WoW.

Dragonflight has been out for about two days now and I’ve been ‘searching hard’, playing to level 70 and enjoying all of the Dragonflight content that can be experienced through leveling.

Despite the fact that so little time has passed, I’m sure of one thing: I never want to ride a normal flying mount again.

I’ve spent so much time throwing off butts, blasting through courses, and enjoying the scenery of Dragonflight over the last 36 hours that I’ve got a permanent grin burned onto my face.

The feel of riding the dragon is just so much better than anything WoW has had to date.

This is difficult to describe in words and even a video can only show it poorly. You have to feel the kite riding, you have to experience it yourself in order to really understand the attraction.

Haven’t unlocked dragon riding yet? This can be done very quickly, as we show here.

Of course, the whole thing is only so beautiful because the Dragon Islands were designed with exactly this idea. Everything is a bit more spacious, the places are bigger and you can cover longer distances in one go. But that fits, because it doesn’t feel artificial, it harmonises perfectly.

Although I played part of it during the beta, it’s something else again in the live version. Maybe because it’s “permanent” now and because it’s really “my character” who can do it.

Almost 600 mounts in the collection – I would give up all of them

I would certainly call my draenei a collector of mounts – after all, she has a whopping 593 of them to choose from. I’ve been busy with her and have farmed some of the rarest mounts out there, which I’m also a little bit proud of.

Still, I’d happily leave all those mounts behind and trade them in for dragon riding without batting an eyelid.

I was briefly in “the old world” to get rid of an old quest from the quest log and had to sit on a normal flying mount. Nether one more thing: It’s so infinitely boring compared to dragon riding. After spending even a few minutes with the kite, the flight mount feels “wrong”, boring and unimaginative.

I understand anyone who says “Meh” after the first few minutes of kite riding and doesn’t immediately warm to it. In the beginning you don’t have much stamina, you don’t quite understand the mechanics and you have a hard time with the kite. Because you can only make progress as long as it goes downhill.

But that is changing. Give the feature a little time. Take part in the various races, keep your eyes peeled for glyphs and start developing your dragon’s talents. At the latest as soon as you have about half of all talents, dragon riding is absolutely amazing.

I’ve caught myself several times just throwing myself off Valdrakken just to see how far I can get and how long I can stay in the air. In the meantime I can say “infinite” with a clear conscience and I’m even faster than with the epic mount.

I absolutely love kite riding. Whether that’s a good thing in the end remains to be seen. Because Blizzard is – at least for me personally – now almost forced to take dragon riding into the future of World of Warcraft.

Because I never want to sit on a flying mount again, no matter how long and persistently I have farmed for it in recent years.

And finally, one last tip: The glyphs that you use to improve your dragon riding skills… do not look them up in the guide or have them displayed via the addon. You can only collect them once on your account, after which the activation applies immediately to all other characters as well. Collecting these glyphs is really fun because not only will you be alerted by the dragon, but you’ll also get a buff that shows exactly how far away you are from the glyph.

The feeling of having found all of them yourself is much nicer than simply “having ticked off a guide” again – you will also see a lot of the Dragon Islands and will certainly meet one or the other rare mob or treasure and become casually real experts in kite riding.

How do you like the dragon riding so far?