Triumph of the Loyalty Reward Mount

Of the reasons why I signed up for WoW's annual pass, the Tyrael's Charger mount was pretty much negligable.  That said, the mount arrived with this week's patch 4.3, so I suppose you can make an argument that I now own a mount that I obtained with real money. 

Visually, it's a very nice mount - typical horse but the ethereal wings/tail are striking and unique (not entirely so, obviously, but far less common than the original sparkle pony was in my limited experience).  On the downside, I'm not entirely thrilled with the flight animation.  Viewed from the side or the front it looks fine, but from behind (which is the default perspective after all) the horse moves his legs as if he were pushing off against the ground.  It looks a bit odd in mid-air, in a way that the Headless Horseman's flying horse did not.  

Like all other mounts, the horse requires the appropriate level and riding skill to use - my level 5 bank alt can loot the mount from her mail but cannot use it.  The two perks this mount does get (which have been on previous cash store mounts) are the ability to scale to player riding skill level and the ability to make a seamless transition from flight to ground travel if you enter a no-fly zone. 

I'm not sure exactly what the rules for this are anymore now that so much of the world is flyable - I have seen people riding on gryphons on the ground - but I was able to fly the charger into the cave for the Pebble daily quests and continue on the ground, where a traditional flying mount kicked me off when I tried this last week.  This air to ground ability is not common - as far as I'm aware, there are only two mounts (the horseman from the Halloween event and the Valentine's rocket) with this capability that can be obtained through normal in-game means.  It's not a must have and I wouldn't pay $25 for it (the going rate for mounts in WoW's cash shop), but it's a nice account-wide perk.

Meanwhile, because my luck runs that way sometimes, my egg from the Oracles finally hatched into a Green Proto-Drake when I logged into game to pick up the new mount from the mailbox.  Go figure.