Based on recent expansion, flying doesn’t become available until most of us have already conquered all the quests, dailies, etc… so I like the idea of taking the land in subsequent vertical - putting flight-related challenges above as well as those on ground.
I am not unwilling to jump through hoops/reps/quests to get flight. I will take the time and do it, because I love flying. And I agree that Blizz’s developers could leverage flight more.
I enjoy flying. I like the above ground perspective. I like taking my own path. It actually makes me play more… I like being unbound in the game.
I’m struggling to understand how Pathfinder could be the “final” decision on flight. As if it’s been carved into stone and they can’t ever make any changes to it.
No, it’s merely the current design for flight, it is not some “final” decision that can never be overturned.
You’re crazy if you are trying to convince us that despite the enormous outrage against removal of flight, there was no connection between the mishandling of the issue and the loss of so many subscribers.
Each expansion adds another, longer pathfinder to grind through to get flight. And each expansion not only do new and returning players say, “this is stupid, I’ll go play a game that’s fun!”, but existing players end up being pushed over the edge and leaving.
Everyone I know who has left mentioned pathfinder as the first of their reasons.
Life does not oversimplify complex issues, even though there are people who need to believe that every result has one and only one cause, and every cause one and only one effect.
How many players have left since the wod flight debacle began? 6 million? More? Less? They can’t tell us because the numbers look so bad.
And how many new players have joined because they heard of pathfinder and thought it sounded exciting?
according to Forbes Blizzard is actually faring worse than they really appear after all not only did they lose Activision’s CFO to Netflix but now Blizzard’s CFO has jumped ship too and took a job with Square which ironically was the person solely responsible for laying off those other 800 staff recently
you notice almost immediately after that happened Blizzard STOPPED making actual sub numbers public
if things were fine then why the sudden change? companies that are doing great don’t hide this kind of info which is clearly obvious things are not going well
I don’t mind grinding the rep of a particular faction if it has a cool item that I want. That cool item doesn’t really effect gameplay…it’s usually just a purple piece of gear (that you could likely get with a different look by doing something else), a sexy mount, a few toys, some optional recipes for crafting, some pets, etc. stuff that is nice to have, but not part of basic gameplay.
And, you can pick and choose what reps to go after. MoP was great for this. Each profession had a different faction to focus on…you didn’t need to grind all of the factions to get the recipes you needed. Same with the timeless isle…nothing on that island was mandatory for gameplay, but it was fun simply because of the cool things that dropped.
Whether people agree with it or not, flight is a basic part of gameplay. Taking it away is like taking away professions or talents.
…and that leads to another question…why make the new areas so much smaller?
If I was Blizzard, each expansion would have huge continents. Beautiful, large zones where you truly feel like you’re in the middle of another world. Simply have more flightpoints for folks to get around while leveling, and stop with the stupid narrow terrain paths…let us be able to climb hills and explore 95% of a zone on foot.
Those big zones provide so much opportunities for adding so much more character to the game. Hidden nooks and crannies all over, lots of RP areas, plenty of space to add extra quests as an expansion progresses, etc.
Seems like you are the lazy one, unable to actually think for yourself on this topic, merely preferring to think of everyone who disagrees with you as “lazy”.
If you don’t see developmentally how wrong it is to require players to grind eight reputations just for flying I don’t know what to tell you.
IT’S NOT FUN and it’s a pathetic way to up everyone’s time played with very little actual content.
I don’t really want to L2P anymore because the rewards in this game rarely equal the amount of effort you put into it.
We’re over rewarded in certain areas and under rewarded in others. Blizz doesn’t quite know what they’re doing anymore. They’re doubling down on bad ideas, putting in things we don’t want and it’s a completely different game from the one I originally began playing and loved.
Keep saying big deal… things are fine, bye Felicia! But it’s showing in the subscriptions #'s that only they can see now, which later will be reflected in the next expansion that comes out and it’s going to be even worse than BfA.
They’re systematically seeing how little they can do while seeing how much $ they can get from their remaining player base with mounts, pets and toys.
Pathfinder is fine. Obnoxious time gating of flight is not.
Trying to remove flight is probably the single worst decision they ever made.
There has rarely been an issue that must have been threatening to cost them as much money as that debacle did given how rapidly they ate crow and reversed the decision.
pathfinder is merely a way to forcibly get their no flight plan to be accepted after the utter train wreck it was the first time
we jump throw all their hoops or do their chore list to earn flying they’ll say het look the players love it and keep reusing pathfinder as model each new expansion
however if players refuse to do it out of spite or whatever Blizzard will use that as an excuse by saying claiming we don’t care enough about flight basically greenlighting its removal without opposition which is what they wanted to do in the first place
its a carefully designed devious plan which cant fail Blizzard either way in fact the only way it can backfire is by driving away players which is what in fact is what it is doing more and more players are starting to see through their attempts and are actually leaving for other games because of it
WoD being a bad expansion had a lot to do with that, I would think more than not flying. Not to mention Cata and MoP were poor expansions in comparison to TBC and Wrath.
of that I have no doubt but still there’s no denying the fact that the 180 turnaround came a little quickly after the no flight announcement
less than 2 weeks after Ion saying WoD would NEVER have flight he was right back online saying they reconsidered in light of the overwhelming response by the player base
truth be known he was probably having his arm twisted by his bosses with a little help by the share holders and the Blizzard president told him to fix it or else