Can’t believe this has gotten over 2k posts.
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We shall bear it together!
Someone must.
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RISE UP GAMERS
blizzard wanted to remove flying in wod
Omg… He copied my skin now…
It would be a lot higher if those pro flyer that play FF were still here.
Huge WoW refugees hang out in FF and ESO.
Flight is an integral part of WoW and at some point they will have to accept this and end the crusade against flight.
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flight made wow what it is today without it we would still be in the dark ages
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He picked the wrong face, though. You are much angrier. 
And his shield is true yellow, while yours is more gold.
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You mean like if the Wright Bros had said “im cool with land travel”? No, they invented FLIGHT.
Since they killed PvP servers I have absolutely no argument, whatsoever, against flying.
They implemented it, players enjoy it, it needs to stay.
Locking it behind rep is kind of dumb.
Why is my ability to fly dependent on a mutant frog man’s opinion of me? Does my mount operate off of faith like Santa Claus?
Illogical.
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It’s still weird. Should I be flattered?
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I have to agree.
Before BC and the addition of flight WoW was obviously inspired by other established MMORPGs like EQ.
Lets call those MMORPGs generation 1. There were muds before those MMORPGs but for the sake of brevity lets stick with that framework.
WoW was conceived based on generation 1 MMORPG principles which worked wonderfully.
However, the flaws were apparent in that loading screens for every increasing encounters had to be utilized. But to make worlds larger which generation 1 MMORPGs tried to do they had to have reasons why to make the world larger.
Continuous zone design to create massive worlds is imperative for the traditional MMORPG experience. And for those players to experience these larger zones they need a means to travel through them NOT utilizing ports and being met with loading screens. That is where flying mounts come into the picture.
WoW in BC decided to take that to the next level with flying introduction with flying mounts. And what happened to the generation 1 MMORPGs when BC and flying was released?
They had to start to change and it influenced generation 2 MMORPG design.
Aion was built upon the idea of having flying at it core base. Older generation 1 MMORPGs like Lineage 2 put in flying and flying mounts. EQ 2 scrambled to put flying mounts into their game.
The entire MMORPG genre officially enter generation 2 of MMORPG design with the introduction of flight. Bigger, continuous zones with player navigating that all with their own personal flying mounts.
At the time it was thought that generation 3 of MMORPGs would be even more massive but as we all know that never happened.
Since then, though most MMORPGs have embraced flight with vigor. Why? Because it is fun for players and content that doesn’t require curation and constant attention from devs to update is great. I would lump flying into the sandbox category in that flying itself is rewarding and allows you to reach your objectives/rewards faster without devs hovering over curating the experience.
For some reason along the way Blizz thought that WoW needed to have a curated experience because of “content droughts” like we saw with MoP.
So, they decided they needed to put everything on rails for themepark experience in WoD and also drip feed players “content” or even churn out expansions faster to avoid 'content droughts".
So, flying was on the chopping block because it has sand box elements and is not part of the themepark design.
WoW from its inception has always been a mix of sandbox MMORPG principles with themepark elements. Other than Cata “it is on rails” expansion WoW held a nice balance between themepark and sandbox elements. Players could play as they please with endgame but there still was some themepark attractions they had to go through for endgame but nothing to overbearing.
Well, that all changed with legion and BFA where the entire experience is on rails worse than Cata. And endgame has only one avenue that it can propel through. They even managed to take a sandbox feature like flying and haphazardly throw it on rails via patchfinder thinking that this is “content”. And this is a way to avoid content droughts on the back end of expansions.
But that never happened and gating flying as a retention mechanic has failed. Players want to experience the world day 1 via flying not in the twilight of an expansion.
Blizz miscalculated and now doesn’t know what to do. They say player agency matters in shadowlands but I am taking a Missouri attitude on that!
Time will tell!
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The proper Missouri attitude is “show me”.
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Why does everyone seem to forget that City of Heroes had flight in early 2004? Superhero MMOs seem to get left out all the time.
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We really need a new Game Director and Dev team…
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Complete the main story in each zone, explore the zone. That should be enough to unlock flying in that zone.
I haven’t been playing retail at all since I level capped a few guys, it’s been months. I only keep the sub to log into Classic, and I’m only returning to retail because I pre ordered Shadowlands. That was also months ago. Looking back now I kinda regret pre ordering. I have no interest in grinding rep and dailies this expansion, why in the world would I want to do it next expac?
Rep grinds should be for mounts, recipes, tabbards and maybe a piece gear. Not a gate for flying, something we’ve had to relearn how many times now?
I’m going to level my Rogue in the new expac and when I get to the point when I have to do 2 hours of the same dailies over and over… that will be it for me.
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Flying was fun but superspeed plus super jump was the real jam.
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I agree with you 100%.
At this point BlizZard is creating a WoW experience that is smaller, shallow, and not worthy to be called a MMORPG experience.
WoW, the king of kings of AAA MMORPGs is being saddled and riddled with pointless time gating on key MMORPG principles.
Imagine if WoW improved the core game while letting systems augment them?
Imagine if flight was released day one of the expansion and then you could unlock new special abilities for your flying mounts like a mini speed boost, heal over time while on your mount, etc.
Edit:
City of Heroes had flight but the zones were not continuous because of the blue Rikti war walls I played L2 and CoH religiously for many years before switching to WoW in BC.
BlizZard trying to force a ground and pound experience without understanding how it worked in Lineage 2 C1 through C 4 and original WoW is their greatest, greatest folly.
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What I don’t understand is why should we have to work for something the laws of physics should give us for free!? If a mount has wings, it should be in the air without any questions asked. The fact that we have to earn our flying is immersion breaking.
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It still isn’t an issue for Blizzard. They didn’t “make it an issue”.
It is only an issue for players who expect Blizzard’s game to have different rules than Blizzard’s rules for their game. It isn’t an issue for anyone else.
It isn’t an issue for me, or for hundreds of thousands of other players.
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According to “the laws of physics”, no animal that large can fly at all, much less carry someone on it while flying, much less do vertical takeoffs and all the other things you can do in the game.
This is a GAME. It isn’t real. There are no real Orcs, or mobs, or NPCs, or swords, or anything. There are no “laws of physics”. The game client creates pixels on your screen that “look like” imaginary things. “The laws of physics” don’t allow magic spells, but they work fine in this game. Because it’s a game, not reality.
The game has rules. The game creators chose the pathfinder rules for flying. As a player, I may want something different, but Blizzard isn’t offering me a “custom game – with your rules”. So I take what they offer, or look for some other MMO with better flying rules.
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