They actually said this a long while back but was forgotten. But, we don’t know this other stuff fully. Either way it won’t be bad and pf2 has never been bad. BfA it took some 1 week to unlock, and most 1 1/2 weeks to unlock and those who spent more time crying on the forums about what was needed to unlock took 2 weeks.
completely disagree that 10 rep grind pathfinder wasn’t bad
it was actually so bad that the majority of players never got it
Yall dont honestly believe they’re going to not make flying account wide when even measly little things like Torghast layers and upgrades have been made account wide already do you? Please don’t tell me you’re actually that dumb.
It’s actually worse now.
With Pathfinder you’d unlock flight to your entire account just by playing the game normally. Seriously, what screwed it up was the artificial timegating, because the requirements themselves were stupid easy, almost effortless and you would get both the account-wide flight and a free mount.
Now, thanks to whiners I must say, the grind will continue but instead of doing it once and benefit forever we will have to grind on every single character we have, probably even after the expansion ends, so, yeah, thanks for that whiners, you ruined yet another thing that was perfectly fine!
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If its not account wide anymore, there will be more unsubs. What if I took threads of fate and joined my shaman into kyrian which my DH has completed? Will she be unable to fly and be forced to catch up on reown? A lot of the player base will not like to grind all their characters individually just to fly.
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Yes, and if this turns out to be a degradation to “per character, with grind” then it’s far worse than that ever was - since the introduction of flying in BC - for alts. Fine for single-character players, brutal punishment for those with alts. And this, in the supposedly “alt friendly” expansion (spoiler: we knew that was a lie within weeks!)
Flying in FFXIV is effectively “account wide” since you can level, gear and play every class on a single character - there’s no need for alts.
Except it isn’t.
Come on now. If this goes ahead, we’re going from the past 6 years of flying being something your main earns and then your alts - present and future - can benefit from… to a concept of ALL YOUR ALTS being made to pound the ground while levelling while “earning” the flying you already earned.
It’s not acceptable, it’s not okay, and it WILL cost subscribers - perhaps not so much out of outright protest (the millions lost in WoD) but more just the fact that people won’t want to play their alts anymore because yet ANOTHER thing has been taken away from them that used to make the game fun.
Sure, the DO THE WORK DO YOUR JOB crowd will laugh, but this is a serious topic for many, many players. They already took away our ability to solo two-expansion-old content… if they turn flying into a “DO THE WORK” thing then I’m sorry, after ten years, I’m done.
And I’m sure I’m far from the only one.
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Unlocking flying in FFXIV and WoW are entirely different.
FFXIV: You only need one character, alts are optional. Your one character can be every single class and profession. When you finish a zone’s main quest and collect some orbs around the map(your given a compass to locate them), you can fly in that zone. This is 1-2 hours tops. Not 1 year to fly. Move onto the next zone, repeat.
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the 
Which, while expected, is a massive disappointment, as it removes the one positive of the Pathfinder system.
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Yes, with gold, at level cap, with no further hoops to jump through.
If we still have to jump through the hoops, then the unlock should be account wide. This is giving us the worst of both methods and taking away the one positive of Pathfinder.
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They didn’t. People just making crap up to stir people up and it is pitiful.
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For my money (or gold) the only possible reason blizz have not confirmed or mentioned a/c wide flying unlock, is…
because there is NO a/c wide flying unlock.
Just think about it for a second. If SL flying was an a/c wide unlock , Blizz would be very quick to make this known as a carrot to keep people playing.
The fact that haven’t stated flying has an a/c wide unlock, (and there is NO pathfinder achieve) means the only logical reason is because there wont be any.
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wow, how hard did you work to come up with that ‘rational’.
They would have done no such thing since people will assume account wide unlock.
the only logical reason? really you can’t think of any other reason?
Blizzard saying that flying isn’t based on Rep is disingenuous gaslighting, when the method to level Renown is the same grind.
You basically did 90% of what you listed before you even chose your Covenant, and the rest you’ve likely already finished by farming your weekly Anima to keep your Renown capped.
I’m Exalted with all Covenants and BfA Pathfinder only required Revered.
The word “Pathfinder” was never mentioned in the 9.1 preview. “Flying” was.
Personally, I’d rather have Pathfinder, because if it’s not, it’s the same amount of grind for far less flying if it’s not an account-wide unlock.
If it’s not account-wide, I may have to find a new game, I’ve never been so bored so early in an expansion.
I hate the premise of this entire expansion. I hate The Maw. And there’s no way I’m leveling alts on the ground to unlock flying when I’ve no real desire to spend time in other Covenants and am bored with the only one I don’t find repulsive.
I keep trying to like Shadowlands, but I find it intensely depressing. And now with the Devs obviously attempting to pull another theft of our flying by cleverly omitting the word Pathfinder when referring to Shadowlands flying, it’s peeling it away step by step, and making it so much worse.
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This is a fun narrative but it misses a lot of the nuance. People had been leaving en-masse before the announcement.
In all honesty the announcement came just prior to a quarterly. The reality is likely that the majority of those lost subscribes had little to do with flying. That doesn’t mean a sizable portion couldn’t have been about that, but if 60% left due to lack of content, 10% left due to thematic issues, 10% left due to simply being bored for other reasons, and 20% left over flying, that’s a very different message.
The trick is that investors are maybe being told that, but players certainly would never be.
We won’t know anything until the 9.1 ptr (maybe).
They’ve made such a mess of flying. I don’t think they know what to do with it anymore.
Nothing suggested that Flying unlocks would no longer be account-wide, but only that the unlock would not require reputation but renown instead.
For those who weren’t paying attention, the special mounts for covenants that unlock are quest rewards as part of the covenant campaigns to unlock flying. You get the mount from the quests just like the ground mounts for your covenant. This does not mean that you have to unlock flying via the quests on each alt. You merely have to finish the right quests with each covenant to get the mount for that covenant (not the ability to fly on each toon).
Geez you guys. This is the meanest troll attempt I’ve seen in a while.
There is no grind. Not at all. Pretending otherwise is being disingenuous.
Not true at all, in fact, it’s better to have multiple alts. Yes, you can pick up and do every job on a single character, but that also takes an extremely long time not just to level said characters, but also to gear them up so that they’re ready for content in any role that you need to fill. Time-wise it’s more efficient to level 2-3 characters.
This doesn’t really matter of course, because the reality is that flying in FFXIV is still character-specific, whether you have one character or several.
??
You can catch up on renown extremely quickly. I have multiple alts that have caught up to the current renown cap with ease. Sure there’s a daily limit on how much you can earn, but that’s a non-issue, since there are multiple sources to gain renown from if you’re behind.
Your attempted historical rewrite is shameful.
The announcement was on May 22, 2015, in the middle of a quarter:
~https://www.polygon.com/2015/5/22/8645293/world-of-warcraft-no-flying-tanaan-jungle-warlords-of-draenor-mmo-pc-blizzard
Yes, they’d been bleeding subs prior but it was only 19 days later when nothing else happened that they reversed their decision to kill Flying, and announced Pathfinder.
The forums has been on fire for 18 months prior about no flying at launch of 6.0 when Morhaime let it slip out on the Directv stream between Main-stage events at Blizzcon 2013.
19 days.
A year and a half of angry players, many like me who refused to buy the expansion without flying, and still they were determined to kill flying.
And yet, they finally announce definitively there’s no more flying… and it only took 19 days before someone in finance alerted the board that the devs had suicided and set fire to their Cash Cow, and a call was made to stop the sub hemorrhage immediately or seek other employment.
The thing that redeems the punitive nature of the Pathfinder grind is the account-wide unlock.
The way Shadowlands has been setup with having to tour-quest through all four main zones before choosing your Covenant, is the same as the Pathfinder grind. Having to gather Anima to gain Renown for your Covenant campaign gets you to Exalted with all four main factions, yet BfA Pathfinder only required Revered, and you end up Exploring and doing 100 WQs as well.
If they suddenly decide it’s not an account-wide unlock after this time-gated grindfest, people are going to realize their partners (Blizzard devs) have relapsed and the last two expansions of therapy and rehab (accepting Pathfinder) was all for nothing, and we’re all back in an abusive relationship.
I don’t see it ending well, because our current quality of life (Shadowlands), may not be worth putting up with it at this point.
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