it doesn’t matter what the patch cycle is. pathfinder was wrong from it’s very inception, a bungled attempt at time-gating that was unnecessary and completely wasted a brilliant opportunity on blizzard’s part.
imagine that instead of an achievement like pathfinder, instead you had zone by zone quests.
you get to Boralus at the beginning of BfA, and you can’t fly because they have harpoon launchers and net-cannons all over the harbor. you gotta go do the proudmoore quests and play through the story of the zone before you earn a Proudmoore Flight Permit. this permit wouldn’t even need to be account bound if they paced the questing reasonably well.
then you go to Drustvar. Do the waycrest questline and open up the order of embers. the witches have worked a massive enchantment net over the entire zone, and various elite shades and spirits fly above the cursed lands. you have to do quests for the order of embers to clear out the focal points and nodes where the witches have placed their fetishes or dreamcatcher doohickeys or shrines, there’s dozens of possibilities there. once you break enough of their stuff, it becomes safe to fly again. same as with the proudmoore flight permit for boralus, proper pacing negates the need to make it account bound.
off to stormsong. the tentacle cultists have disturbed the natural order, and eldritch powers have brought unnatural storms over the region. disrupt their rituals and restore the natural balance between the shore and the sea, and the storm recedes, allowing you to fly in stormsong valley.
then when you get to mechagon, half the work for this one is already in game. there’s already anti-air patrols there that will shoot you down if you aren’t careful. i would have put in massive anti-air suppression batteries of various weapons all over the island. then i would have added a rustbolt questline to clear them out one by one. once you get them clear, have a questline to build friendly anti-air stations to fight off the aerial suppression units, and have the prince there award you a Mechagon IFF(Identify Friend or Foe) transponder, allowing you to fly over mechagon. thanks to the nature of gnomish engineering, they could have the emplacements break down and require occasional repeatable quests on the island to repair them and keep flight working.
for nazjatar i would have had the naga using enslaved rays doing anti-air patrols, and give you quests with the ankoan, to work your way through the zone retaking the skies. once you explore the zone and do all the quests taking out the naga patrols you’d then be able to fly through nazjatar.
for zandalar i would have it where as the alliance goes in they have to establish the outposts and then do quests in every zone to gain air supremacy. you establish a beachhead, fight your way into the respective zone and take out whatever anti-air mechanics are put in for that zone. then you can have world quests to keep your flight capability for those zones.
for warfronts like arathi basin and darkshore, you could have flying be a part of that. when one faction takes over the zone, they get flying. when there’s a faction population imbalance, throw in an underdog buff or reduce the resources required for your side to contribute to take the warfront back.
pathfinder had -so much- potential, and blizzard wiped their posterior with it and gave us an achievement grind instead.
