The beginning of the expansion to start for me. Reaching max level is basically the end. Cuz there’s always a content throughout no matter what and always feels like it happens as soon as you hit max level unless you do mythic dungeons.
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And lie. Don’t forget that.
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Play nearly any other MMO – transportation is wildly different than what WoW is. Teleportation to nearly anywhere which would, in WoW, look like being able to releport where there is an inn keeper. Mounts - both land and air - alter depending how much you’ve explored. With teleportation in such ways – all of a sudden flying is significantly less important, but still something to casually pursue. You spend more time DOING things than … napping at a flight. Maybe the code is so spaghetti they were only able to do it in Legion that one time and then the code wasn’t working well so they had to ditch it.
The fun is in the GAME – not in simply, and only, being logged in to stare at a screen. I’m not sure why Dev’s think it’s “fun and engaging” to have to fly right as you login or have to go through four loading screens to get to where you want to be or, worse, take a very long flight path to alt tab out only to forget you were logged in hours ago. Whoops. That is, by definition, the opposite of ‘fun and engaging’ in my eyes but seemingly not theirs. Flying should be “neat, I can trivialize things that are already relatively trivial” (e.g. jump puzzles). Transportation shouldn’t be as painful and ridiculous as it is right now.
It would also help to make the World / Environment engine a bit more reliable. I can ride a horse over a tree but a dinky rock I get stuck on? Come on… There are many reasons for flying beyond “it’s just faster” and some of which are “the game engine isn’t great for walking/land mounts” is one of them.
What would help the “I’m bored, I might as well sit in (insert place) while I wait for queue pop” is add in something people can jump in and do. Like Ashran, a Monster Bash (like Ashran but PvE - similar to the Arena in Necrolord area). Or even a combination of both. Or perhaps a brawl where people can jump on it and go to town. Or perhaps something like a Toreghast long-tunnel run that’s never ending. People zone in and zone out all the time.
Yeah, they just unilaterally made the journey much longer and more tedious (previously only had to max level, which meant completing a large amount of content).
#EffPathfinger
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I used to be OK with what it is now…until, oddly, I quit the game. The enormous slog it is to get everything done to fly is just too time consuming at this point in my life and, honestly, too intimidating/daunting. Otherwise I’ve been wanting to get back into the game.
I guess people will tell me that is the point, things need to take time in an MMO, but as somebody who has played every expansion since Vanilla I just don’t have it in my anymore. For me, personally, there is so much more to the game than the cookie-cutter stuff presented every expansion, every patch. I want to go do random achievements, farm mounts, transmog, level characters, whatever it may be. Yes, I can still do that, but I also feel the need (as somebody who does achievements, like I said) to do all the story quests, reputations, “systems”, etc. the list goes on.
Some how, some way, I don’t even know if it’s possible, but for me it has to be about having fun to get into the game again, but it seems it will inevitably feel like a chore. I guess I made it into a little more than flying but flying is part of it and will make the other stuff easier.
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Old thread is old.
Personally I don’t care a lot either way, but…
I do think that zones should be designed with flight in mind again because flight in zones designed for ground mounts is functionally just a fast-forward button, which is super boring. Convenient? Yes, but ultimately quite boring.
Also for flight acquisition, what I’d do is put it on a vendor with an expansion-specific BoP currency that’s available at xpac launch. The currency would be earned by doing literally anything (quests, dungeons, raids, BGs, pet battles, whatever). This way the players who get flight first are those who’d be getting the greatest utility out of it, and no advantage can be had from being an AH goblin or throwing your wallet at the screen for token gold.
Zereth Mortis flying achievement was the fastest, and best questline to get flying I’ve ever seen in any expansion.
I hope they keep it this way moving forward.
ZM is all about pettiness and or spite against players for having flying:
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massive aggro from the birds when flying. why?
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being dismounted by banshee blast while have mount equipment which is suppose to prevent this.
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being a tank, on a flying mount, being dismounted by banshee blast.
in the beginning we unlocked flying with max level and gold for training. now it’s about jumping thru multiple hoops
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I remember along with Pepperidge Farm when this thread was made lol. Not long before the old forum bit the dust 
Was moved over to the new forums.
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I would be okay with pathfinder if there was substantial content locked behind flying that you simply could not do unless you had it. Like a series of dungeons, some world bosses, reputations/daily hubs, and more. But no, all pathfinder does is make the chores more tedious. TBC-MOP was the peak of flying. It’s been doo doo since WoD.
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The best and correct solution for flying unlock is FF14’s system of unlocking it. They do not make you wait months until they feel like it after grinds and I love it all while for a while seeing the ground and the amazing sceneries they make for an hour or so.
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All depends on how fast you blow through the zone’s story. I personally don’t think FFXIV benefits from flying in any way whatsoever. It has good zone design. The only zone that sucks to traverse is the damn moon. WHY?
While I agree there are plenty of Dailies and world quests; it seemed to be their focus at a time… but to say there it’s not about enjoyment, you should just find another game if you feel that way. There are plenty of things to enjoy, do them… dailies and world quests don’t take long to do.
Faster farming is one. Faster traveling as well is another for whatever reason - like going back to old zones to farm the relic weapons each expansion for FATEs. Or maybe help a friend get the attunement orbs. Also beast race dailies for rep or xp.
I liked the original system. Level up, pay, fly. Simple, elegant, player-convenient.
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That works fine for a player with less than a handful of characters, but starts to get out of hand when the number of alts goes above 10 or 20, especially if expansion inflation is taken into account. Even at a conservative number like 10k, you’re looking at 100k for just 10 characters, and I’m way past that point these days. Also, since I’m not playing my max-levels all of the time, I don’t just have hundreds of thousands of throw-away gold lying around to donate to flight trainers.
Both options should be available:
- a max-level purchase, per character (could be 80k for all I care. lol)
- an account-level achievement that unlocks for the entire account
I understand the current Shadowlands methods are easier than Pathfinders of the past, but I just do not like to spend time on characters once they reach max. To me, leveling is more fun than the gear treadmill, or running the same instances over and over.
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The only people who ever complained about it were the people who claim to enjoy wpvp. On 100% faction stacked servers. With warmode off.
It was real dumb for them to ever take that crowd into consideration. Wpvp is dead and has been for a long time, and it’s only fun if you’re part of a crew deathballing individual targets. Making design choices around something that stopped being relevant years ago is pretty silly.
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Everything that WoW isn’t anymore.
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Another reason I liked Cataclysm. I could fly right away, and fly, I did.
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