This new mount says it all… or more specifically, the description.
Fastest flight speed and a passive buff that allows flying (without the use of Azart Elixirs) on Exodor once a character completes the main story line.
I label this as a blatant cash grab because while Bluehole/Krafton did have a mechanism that eventually allowed flight with existing mounts, the above telegraphs how the Exodor content was purposely made inconvenient (in order to leverage a QoL feature that isn’t temporary like the Azart Elixir buff) where there are going to be cash shop solutions. I wouldn’t expect anything less from a product manager that worked on Black Desert Online (BDO) at Pearl Abyss, who has been leading the TERA design team for over an year now.
When you complete the main story line, Exodor reputation merchants are unlocked where you can perform the Exodor dailies in order to earn points. With some of the merchants, completing their dailies gives you varying lengths of this flight buff (and also allows using the jump platforms). You can also purchase Azart Elixirs for 200 reputation credits which provide a shorter (15 minutes if I recall) buff that also stacks with same buff given by the reputation NPC’s. These purchasable potions can be stacked for up to 2 hours (you’ll just need to buy a lot of them).
Moving around Exodor on the ground is inconvenient not only due to its layout, but also because you will easily aggro mobs due to how tightly they are placed in some areas where there are choke points (and unless you are geared towards the higher end, is a slow going process to take them out). The above IMHO, is just the beginning of the QoL improvements (monetized via the cash shop so that players can buy back that functionality that was either removed or made inconvenient enough) that will be introduced going forward. This is one of the key reasons why I refused to even buy into BDO even at its low price because I find the entire “nickle and dime” to buy back your RNG or QoL approach, to be near the top (loot boxes will always be the number one though). In TERA, we’re about to see both dominating its business model (since loot boxes are still abundant as is tossing this sort of content specific QoL mount into RNG boxes).
This new mount lacks the actual power buffs (like existing ones that increase crit power) which likely will be introduced in the future to not only build on the increased flight speed and flight ability on Exodor, but to also enhance power for the new gear system. For NA publisher En Masse Entertainment (EME), this new mount is being introduced via their Christmas time Golden Gift Box event which is not guaranteed (the jackpot items you could receive are RNG). I believe the price for a single box is around $20 US (can’t recall exactly and the gift shop is not up yet for me to check). It nonetheless is still one of the more blatant cash grabs in recent months (on top of the loot box with the new feedstock for enchanting the new gear).
This unfortunately is not how you retain long time players (especially ones like myself who have limits on what I consider as acceptable when it comes to monetization). The current team managing TERA at Bluehole/Krafton has also lost the plot as far as I am concerned while EME has managed to fall below EU publisher Gameforge starting in full earnest since 2017 (and are probably close to Trion Worlds level). The usual suspects will spend a lot of money trying to get this (and they are free to spend their money whichever way they chose to do so) but doing that does nothing to help improve the game; it only incentivizes both publisher and developer to release more of these type of cash grabs and to do so in ways that takes advantage of how much those folks are willing to bear (and as I mentioned before, this is one of those games which has a portion of the player base that has way too much money than actual sense by helping to perpetuate these sort of business practices). So once again, here I am willing to spend money BUT not in this way (so the wallet closes and remains shut).
My actual engagement of the Exodor content has been minimal since its launch (I did complete the story line and still have to edit together clips of the post 65 quest chain so that I have a video showcasing what little actual new content has been holding things over the past 1.5 years) and I see myself at the start of a slow disengagement from the game itself (which can be easily overtaken by ArcheAge Unchained since even though I have issues with the management of the game, that aspect has been nothing new in recent years – I’ve still found ways to enjoy the actual games themselves despite the lousy oversight).
This is again, a major problem with the game industry where far too much of it is low quality effort on the part of both the developers and publishers because they have a willing group of customers that pay into such garbage (which is why I am writing about the poor experience with ArcheAge Unchained because I should’ve known better that it would not even be primetime ready, and I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt when I hit the purchase button, thus becoming a part of the problem).
