Except when the game was at it’s peak we had flying. 12 million subscribers in Wrath, tons of world pvp, we were able to get around faster using flight. CRZ killed world pvp. Mop had flight, again a very successful and fun expansion. Cata was designed with flight in mind, you couldn’t even complete zones without being able to fly.
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Yup. 3 months in last expansion we could use it in the content we were actively doing and this expansion if 8.2 is a underwater one I am not sure we well ever be able to use it in ‘current’ content and if that is the case, this will be the last expansion I actually work at getting it which means my other account won’t even buy the expac
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This thread is so depressing and sad. I love flying irl, I wish my eyesight would let me be a pilot but I’ve been in lots of small planes (when I was younger) with friends and family members that were pilots. I LOVE IT. You get a perspective of the world from the sky that you don’t from the ground. At least I get to fly in my dreams.
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Flying really killed Wrath. Only 12 million subs. You can really see the destruction flying brought to the game from BC.
It takes all kinds I guess…
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Every expac so far, it is 6 months no-fly and 18 months fly. Calling 3/4 of the 2-year xpac “near the end of the xpac” is dishonest.
Luckily, you put this at the start of your post, so I didn’t read the rest.
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I actually wouldn’t be surprised if this was part of a plot to make it so people no longer want to fly so they can remove it completely. Considering the devs apparently see the ability to fly a mistake it’s understandable that they’ve taken to only allowing it on sufferance in recent years.
For the record I still think the MoP method was best.
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Wrong
In BC you got it at 70
Wrath at level 77, even that changed you got a flight master tomb that allowed you to let your alts fly at 70 in Wrath
Cata at the start
MoP max level, now MoP is immediately upon enteringt he zones.
Warlords was 6 months, and Legion so it’s not been every expac just the ones since WoD where they strung us along and then announced it causing an exodus of players that was large enough for them to change their minds within two weeks.
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The lack of flying is really annoying because they design the world to be really annoying without flight. On purpose.
The lack of flight in Elwynn Forest as a level one character isn’t a big deal. The changes in elevation are for the most part minor, and you can see “oh, walk this way or that way and get to the top of the hill”.
The lack of flight in Legion or BfA content is jarring and painful. World quest is upon the top of the hill. No road marked on the map. No obvious way up. You search for a while. Sometimes a long while. Sometimes you never find your way up.
I remember a world quest in Suramar that I really wanted the reward for that I decided to log off rather than continue trying to reach. When the world is designed to increase time played by transportation difficulty, you get some “I will look it up on wowhead instead of try to find how to get there” and some “maybe I’ll just give up, this sucks”.
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yes, that’s the ironic thing, having flying wouldn’t actually speed things up that much at all
it’s just a huge MASSIVE qol “make players happy” thing
so why the eff don’t they do it? it’s really weird
like most people I’m mostly ok with pathfinder, the travel-ban delayed unlock is stupid though
(and unlock doesn’t need to be account wide at the start of xpac!)
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I could be ok with the delay in flying IF it wasn’t where for EVERY DAMN CHAR I LEVEL, almost half the flight points are gated behind quest lines.
Either unlock the FPs if I have the achieve for it, or give me flying so I can get around without having to waste my time doing quests I no longer care about cause I dont want to have to ride around a mountain that the FP would send me over in a 5th of the time
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And yet when we had flight the game was peaking in numbers of subscriptions. Now they make all their money with expansion sales and subscriptions nose dive in the months after release. I won’t even try to say flight is the root of this, because I think there’s much more involved, but it kind of shoots your theory in the foot. They’ve effectively removed flight for all intents and purposes, but the game has completely lost it’s staying power in terms of subscriptions. So removing flight didn’t fix that.
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Some people want flying with gold at max level, others want to keep pathfinder part 2. Lets just split the difference and let it unlock at the end of pathfinder part 1. Problem solved, lets move on to class design…
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As I said earlier in this thread, I think that flying isn’t the cause, but a symptom of the current “make everything a carrot to lure people into jumping through hoops” design philosophy. Flying has gone from a standard QOL feature to a reward for “beating” the game. Class design has been stripped to the bone, and we make our classes playable by endlessly chasing some external source to regain our abilities. Instead of having expansion long goals that can be achieved by just playing the game, we have to rush to the finish line just to have our baseline abilities back…and then, as soon as we reach the finish line, the devs move it again.
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It has a pretty significant impact on the things you do in game. You’re simply choosing not to care. Which is 100% fine, you’re entitled think so.
1 Like
No, it is inconsequential to me. All I do is rated arena, raid, and keys. Flying has no bearing on any of those. Does it get me to a key faster? Or a raid faster? Probably. Does it mean anything to me or have some kind of impact? Woohoo, 30 seconds off travel time.
Means nothing.
Like I said, you’re entitled to think so.
I know what you mean. I wished from the beginning that we had devs who, once they allowed flight, made it a standard part of the world, like walking and riding. Will, imagination, cost - seems to have worked against having consistent world rules and that has given us a worse not better experience.
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I’m afraid that the people saying they are delaying it longer and longer just to finally ease out of it altogether are correct. Maybe Blizzard doesn’t realize how many people will flat out quit the first time an expansion comes along with no flying, or when they suddenly announce there will be no more flying in any of the zones. I personally think it is just a cheap cop out so they don’t have to put as much effort into the zones and so they can try dragging slimmer and slimmer content out longer and longer.
It’s like your favorite canned bisquit brand that used to have 12 bisquits in it, but over time they cut it down to 8. Or like the toilet paper companies making the rolls of toilet paper shorter, not by much, but enough that over time they are saving a slew of money by cutting down that 1/4 inch of paper on every roll.
Companies think consumers are stupid, and they wont realize they are getting ripped off. Blizzard thinks we are stupid, and we wont notice what they are doing.
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its good for end expansion leveling alts.
I find it odd when people say that flying killed the game. Flying is an absolute choice. No one forced anyone to fly, but being forced not to fly until you covered most of the developed storyline by completing most of the quests is just annoying.
A game as well developed like WoW should be able to offer the freedoms like flying at the start of the expansion, to everyone. Taking away that freedom forces everything to feel so linear, albeit with a multitude of paths.
Flying should have never been restricted, once it was earned in Burning Crusade. That was a huge mistake restricting it at the start of each new expansion.
Heck, why not just reset everyone’s riding skill at the start of every expansion. Make everyone walk until they can relearn basic mount riding skill. Or just forego using any of the previous expansion’s gear and weapons at all. Start all players in a new starting zone with basic new player gear like they did in Vanilla at Level 1.
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