Objection to your objection. Since you haven’t played WoW in awhile, I’ll update you. Upon logging into the game as a new player, you receive a shadow horse… which already disproves your point. There’s quite literally a plethora of various ways to earn mounts in WoW nowadays. Achievements, PvP, the in-game store, tournaments, quests, and heck, you can even craft some mounts. So, essentially, the guy above you was right. You earn mounts by playing the main story and completing your choice of any of the listed items above.
Here’s a list of all the mounts and my source: http://www.warcraftmounts.com/gallery.php
Your list of mounts is a list of all mounts, not a list of mounts by how they are obtained. It also includes mounts that are no longer obtainable (Gladiator mounts, launch swift mounts, AQ event mount).
I haven’t played the current expansion due to vomit cam, but I had 285 mounts before WoD launched. Obtaining mounts has not significantly changed. But since you seem to be talking about boosted characters, let’s address that. Upon boost you receive a swift faction flying mount (200g, never required reputation). I think you also get a swift ground mount for your race (10g, not rep required), which would be where you got your ‘shadow horse’ from- boosting an undead character. If you play Hearthstone you may have the Hearthsteed from winning 3 games against other players (free, and not from questing or story). First login if you only bought the base game or are using a starter account gives you bupkis, as you start as level 1 and can’t ride until level 20 unless you’re using the heirloom chopper or the Riding Turtle.
Even if everyone received a ‘shadow horse’ when they create a new account, this does not change the fact that obtaining most mounts in WoW requires exalted reputation, currency, and RNG… or I guess you can make a DK of every race and and level it out of the starting zone to buy every race’s basic and swift mounts. The plethora you claim is limited and pretty much always has been: occasional quest rewards (vanilla class mounts, cloud serpents, garrison, sea horse from Vash’jir, upcoming order hall?), open purchase, purchased at exalted reputation, RNG drop, RNG spawn, PvP grind. Crafted mounts has been expensive and a grind since their introduction (Looking at you, Sandstone Drake). On top of that I guess you could include the cash shop, eBay, and Black Market Auction house if you want to include real money ways of obtaining mounts or paying gold cap.
Keep in mind open purchases can also be a grind: 16k passenger mammoth from Wrath, 150k passenger yak from Mists, 50k basic hippo from WoD, 2million spider from Leg. Even DMF open purchases are a grind- 500 fish or however many tickets from the bear and tallstrider (150? I don’t remember). The tournament mounts are 500g plus something like 5 tokens, 100 tokens, and 150 tokens. Tokens have to be ground from daily quests (14 a day once all quests are unlocked, I think, maybe 3 from the instance), and the mounts require exalted reputation on top of quest progress and god forbid you changed faction at any point since doing any of the quests because you are kittened.
I also expect the new class mounts to require several weeks of order hall questing combined with raiding and mythic dungeons to obtain, and probably a bunch of expensive mats too if they’re going to echo to original class mount quests.
Edit: Actually, I really shouldn’t include RNG spawn as a ‘common’ mount source in WoW. I admit to being particularly bitter about it after camping Aeonaxx. It’s pretty bad game design when obtaining something means sitting at one point for hundreds of hours tabbed out waiting for NPC scan to go off.
Perhaps ‘evening dress’ will not end up kittenified.
