Perhaps you are one of the lucky one million players who have tried out the beta for the upcoming WoW expansion, Mists of Pandaria.  Or perhaps you have mastered the art of looking at words and comprehending their meaning well enough to know what the Hell is being said.  In any case, you might have clued in that Blizzard wants you to see all the new content at ground level, and flying on the new continent will not be allowed until level 90.

Calm down.  Take a deep breath.  We’re all in this together.  I know you’ve been farming flying mounts because they’re a) roughly three times faster than the fastest land mount, and b) you can fly everywhere else in the damn game.  That means that, for five long levels, you will be cruising around Pandaville on a land mount.  So you’d better make damn sure you can stand looking at the mount for five levels.

Enter the Spectral Wolf.

I have actually heard people try to compare the Spectral Wolf to the Celestial Steed for some reason, and the words stomped part of my brain to death.  Sure the sparkle pony was the hotness for all of ten minutes, and it could also double as a land mount in a pinch when it wasn’t busy flying around looking pretentious.  But I’m talking about a Spectral Wolf, not the bastard child of a Twilight vampire and a My Little Pony reject.  Spectral Wolves drag sparkle ponies out to the alley behind Pizza Hut and pimp them out for five bucks and pocket lint.

So much wrong with this picture.

To get your hands on these ghostfaced killers, you need two things.  First, you need to be Exalted with Hellscream’s Reach.  If you run the twelve Tol Barad and Baradin Hold dailies every day, it should take you roughly three weeks to hit Exalted reputation.  That’s twenty-one days of straight-up killing things – people, gators, demons, ghosts, and giants.

Spectral Wolf calls that “a nice start.”

By the time you hit Exalted, you’ll have easily met the second requirement to getting your Wolf – 165 Tol Barad Commendations.  You can use those extra tokens to buy yourself a Tabard (which has a clickable teleport to Tol Barad) or as a headstart in case you want to get the Tol Barad flying mount – Drake of the West Wind.

For now, don’t worry about other purchases.  If you have the rep and the tokens, get one of the best looking land mounts in the game and show that bad boy off.

Beats the Hell out of riding the Swift Springstrider.