#184 - May 19, 2015, 11:53 p.m.
Mounts take a fairly significant amount of time to create, and in this case the Runesaber mount was made somewhere in the 6.0 production timeframe, and I believe was complete before 6.1 hit the PTR. Creation of store mounts is intentionally consistent and takes place months before they actually release. In this case we actually waited for a bit as we wanted to ensure the Token rollout went smoothly without adding in the potential complications of a store mount going live at the same time. In short: we didn't crank this thing out yesterday as an answer to something. Production takes a long time, and we have them on a regular release cadence. You can be certain than every few months there will be a new store mount.
As for why we make mounts for the store at all: most obviously of course because there is a significant portion of players that like being able to purchase cosmetic items for real money. Certainly there is
also a desire by a significant portion of players to be able to obtain the Ironhoof Destroyer from Mythic Blackhand. Not everyone will be able to, or maybe even want to, obtain either mount, but we know that a wide variety of players look for a wide variety of acquisition methods for cosmetic items. Also certainly different players will look differently at these two mounts based on their acquisition methods, and it's the main reason why we don't mix game and store mounts. If someone buys a mount off the Shop we don't want there to then be confusion as to whether it's the Shop version, or a recolor obtained through in-game means. We essentially purposely ensure shop mounts stand out as shop mounts.