So I saw a change recently being tested about riding being required before you’re even permitted to use flight form and I’m stunned.
We become a bird, and just like all our other forms, we should have some competency as those animals at…being those animals. Flight is elementary to a bird’s nature. This is a super confusing change.
What’s going on here?
What’s the motivation for this? Why now?
You’re telling me we need to pay the same flying cost as literally every other class in order to fly?
I’m shooketh.
Um hasn’t it always been this way?
The word that has been the bane of WoW’s existence since MoP: Homogenization. They don’t want to give people the illusion that certain classes get seemingly huge buffs. For a new player 250g isn’t a small number and when they realize Druids get it for free some of them will either feel burned for not picking Druid or will roll Druid even though they may not like it.
For me it was always a perk of being a Druid, especially since we’ve been pretty weak some expansions.
For those of us who went through the 16-part quest chain just to get flight form, it was bad and a pretty big slap when some genius took out the quest and “poof” everyone got flight form at 58. (When that happened I have never yelled “F U” louder in my life.) It was a slap because we worked for that form, only to have it given away, devaluing our class and taking away the value and the pride of “earning our wings.” And THEN, we had to go and EARN our Swift Flight Form. It wasn’t just dropped into our lap, we bled for it, too.
When you went through all of that work, it meant something to style the Swift Flight Form, it wasn’t just taken for granted, it was a sign we committed to our forms as druids and we were willing to go the distance for our class.
For those of us who do have their Swift Flight Form Feat of Strength, to ask us to PAY for our ability to fly is not only insulting (because our feathers represent blood, sweat and tears to get the form), we’ve already paid for our mount training the entire time all the way up anyway for our ground mounts as well, through every single bleeping expansion.
It’s not our fault that they started giving away flight form. Those of us who have our Swift Flight Form Feat of Strength shouldn’t have to spend our hard earned gold to fly in a form that we have worked and bled for already.
I think it’s a d*ck move. It’s greedy and does not recognize who and what the class is about at its core. We didn’t get a class mount, we became a mount. Our travel form became a taxi too. So, what I am seeing is that for our utility (how many wipes have you saved with a brez, off-tank clutch move or that crucial innervate thrown at the perfect time or just busting a$$, being the very best at your form you could be, only to never get the opportunity to be the best, only satisfied with utility) we get another Druid Tax for our trouble.
They’ve declawed us. They’ve chased cats up trees. They forced female players into male tree forms. How much more do they want from us?
End the Druid Tax.
So do my druids who have not purchased flight lose the ability to fly?
In BC we got normal flight form cheap. It was akin to how paladins and warlocks got essentially free level 40 mounts at the time. Regular flight was much slower than it is now so you still had a reason for a ground mount until you could afford epic flying. Normal Flight Form was 20 gold. That’s a drop in the bucket in comparison to the flying mounts. I actually liked the look for Flight Form, but it was so slow.
Are we implying that Flight Form is not a huge benefit over regular flying mounts even with the cost being required? Flight Form is still instant and still allows you to interact with things while in form. Saving a couple hundred gold was never the main draw.
And lets be real, 250 gold IS a small number. For new players as well. Spend any amount of time at max level and you’ll have more than enough. Considering you only need to level through one expansion, many of which were not flying-enabled when we all leveled through it anyway due to Pathfinder (including BFA, the expansion new players are forced into) The same cost every other class has to pay, I really don’t see the problem here. This isn’t a Druid tax. Tax implies an extra cost other classes don’t have to pay. There’s no extra cost here.
any need teach you how fly, aslo IRL birds
In BC saving gold was a main draw. I heard enough complaints about druid flight form and cost was the tip of the iceberg with gathering being a massive complaint.
Just doing dungeons, and vendoring anything you pick up will bring you really close to affording epic flight when you hit 80. 250 gold is an unimaginably small amount of gold.
BC was also 13 years ago. So I’ll grant you I probably should not have used the word “never” but given that I’d venture a guess that the vast majority of current players have started more recently than that I’m going to keep the spirit of my argument.
Gold is simply not that valuable anymore. Look how many people have a tundra mammoth, that was a primo mount back in the day.
Part of the reason I quit retail with Legion. The death of the game’s main currency. Gold should really mean something. You should have to think before putting down a couple thousand gold on an item or items.
I like your strategy. I wish I could quit real life when the currency inflates.
I enjoy your equating game currency to real life currency. And thinking the change in gold value is the only reason I quit. 
Yeah I’m coming back to this game after a very long hiatus. I was shocked to see the degree of gold inflation the game had experienced. It made it completely impossible for me as a de facto new player to buy better gear at auction and affording basic riding took me longer than level 20. That said, I’ve also noticed it’s a lot easier to get decent gear just by doing dungeons all the time (thanks to the dungeon finder) so I guess it made the AH less important. My Druid being able to fly before I bought a flying mount was pretty excellent but I’m also not sure it was fair for me to just get the ability for free.
In general, the time spent in the leveling phase is so insignificant, that buying gear off the AH is pointless. You’d out level it far too fast for it to matter.
It’s one of the largest flaws of WoW, but kind of inevitable, when they had to stat squish like three times, and also kept adding levels. To remain accessible, the leveling process needs to be pretty fast.
Gold inflation is a different beast, and is ironically caused by blizzards efforts to make sure casuals have enough gold to afford repairs/consumables. It started with generous gold rewards on dailies in BC, and has continued with other infusions of gold that “just happen” through normal play.
If acquiring gold was a deliberate thing that you did, there would be much less inflation, but more poor players complaining about not being able to afford anything. This one isn’t really solvable, not without very heavy handed intervention on blizzards part.
To get back to the levels of vanilla or BC, they’d have to do something like the following:
Introduce two new coins:
Electrum, at a conversion ratio of 100 gold to 1 electrum.
Platinum, at a conversion ratio of 100 electrum to 1 platinum.
Rebalance mob currency drops and vendor prices to make electrum the new gold, but make repair costs tied to platinum. This would very rapidly devalue everyone’s hoarded currency, and effectively reset everyone’s wealth.
This will /never/ happen, because there would be endless screeching on the forums.
Today?
Not at all.
You pay just like everyone else.
Back in tbc?.. Absolutely.
Not only was it fair, it was deserved!
Druids suffered through a lot of injustices and mistreatment in vanila. Getting flight form for free was sort of blizzards way of sayin sorry, and most players agreed.
Nowadays you’ll see newcomers complain about how “unfair” flight form is. They dont know the struggle. They weren’t there man!
Innervate me!
Can’t. I’m Feral. (You wouldn’t believe how many times I get asked in PuG dungeons though.)