Flying... Here's the truth

It’s definitely a way to keep people subbed longer with less actual content and land area to create. Has anyone noticed how small Mechagon and Nazjatar are?? I thought Broken Isles and Argus were small, but these new areas are tiny. They’re smaller combined than most past expansion single zones. It’s pathetic. So they make the terrain twisty and full of mobs whilst simultaneously requiring daily grinding for weeks to get flight in that area.

Remember the Outland and Northrend zone sizes that were designed for flying? They made the game feel expansive and something you wanted to explore. These new areas, tied directly to time gating flight, are minuscule and a chore compared.

Don’t even get me started on all the unnecessary time gating.

Does it really cost more to pay a dev to go “click click” and create a larger land mass than to go “click” and make a smaller one? I don’t get it. It’s not real physical acreage they’re buying. I honestly don’t understand any of this. Frankly, I don’t think Blizz even knows what it’s doing either except holding to the “we must increase the time-played metric” mantra they feed to investors.

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I remember there being a werid groundswell of anti flying one day before blizz publicly posted about “no flying” as thst was what the community wanted. It was really odd. Almost as if it was created for the sole purpose of getting “no flying” push through.

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So we’ve resorted to lying, then?

The only reason the Argus zones might feel bigger than these is because, you guessed it, you can’t fly in them. But did anyone complain about how small Quel’danas, the Molten Front, Told Barad, the Isle of Thunder, and the Timeless Isle were? I think the only zone they “added” in a patch like this that was comparable in size to those that were available on release was Tanaan.

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And that’s the whole idea/motive for the company anymore.

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I’ve seen a lot of people okay with Pathfinder Part 1, which I am fine with it too. And then you have the following comment that either says Part 2 should not exist, or that Part 2 takes way too long to be released. I find this to be completely reasonable feedback, and what’s irritating is that Blizzard does nothing with it.

Heck, you could have Part 1 from the beginning and any following part of Pathfinder to unlock any new zones. Even that is better than what we have now. I hate that Blizzard is so obstinate that they refuse to make any changes to this ridiculous system.

Feedback constantly being tossed in the trash is honestly what upsets me most in this game right now. As a player, I feel irrelevant.

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So one person supported by 178 people suddenly speaks for the entire playerbase. You are deluding yourself. Flying did NOT make BFA better, it only made it better for the diehard people whos sole reason in this game for existing is because they can eventually fly. For the raiders, for the PVPers for basically everyone else Flying has very little impact on the flaws in BFA. Step outside your echo-chamber.

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Whole point of rep grinding was to access vendors for whatever you need for professions, etc. I don’t have a reason to access vendors so I didn’t care about grinding rep. Since Pathfinder came out my only reason to grind rep was to get flying not buy stuff from vendors except for the tabards. Pathfinder was a mistake bcuz I don’t have the time to get flying in BFA. When I do have time I was in Nazjatar for about 4 hours doing dailies, WQ and killing rares and didn’t have time to do Mechagon. I thought to myself is 1) I can take my time doing this no matter how long it takes, 2) Not do pathfinder at all for this expansion, 3) Play classic when it comes out and stick with it or 4) When subscription ends in Sept. I wont resub and quit after 13 years of playing. Today Blizzard only makes content for people who have time for WoW whether they are youtubers , twitch or no lives. This is why they are losing subs.

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A lot of this. Well said.

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They hate anything that requires them to do work or make any type of effort.

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Dissident voices are never heard my friend.

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WoW has always been a time sink. But it was a time sink for me in the way I wanted it to be. I would spend hours farming rep, running old raids, farming mats. that’s is one of the thing I loved about this game. I could do what I wanted when I wanted for as long as I wanted. I farmed Loremaster twice, once before cata and once after. I have the seeker title on 4 or 5 different Characters, I’m at 94 exalted reps and counting. I have 2 of every class at max level. I love to play this game, and would spend hours playing it. I never once felt like I had to do any of that, I did it because I loved this game and wanted to.

Then Blizzard added pathfinder, locked the story and many other things behind reputation. That made it feel mandatory and like a job, instead of the optional content I was going to do any way. I totally under stand them wanting us to experience and explore their beautiful world that they have created. Pathfinder in its self never bothered me, I was going to do all that stuff any way. But Now I had to do it on their time table instead of mine if I want to move on and raid with my guild. I loved going and doing all the quests then farming what rep was available, but at my leisure. Run every dungeon because i wanted to. I did not have to have it done to move on with the story. like I do now.

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You sound like one of those people. Which in that case you take your opinion and go raid. Because this topic obviously doesn’t concern you.

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Pathfinder was nothing more than a temper tantrum by the developers since they had to add flight back into the game after they gave an interview to a 3rd party source saying they won’t ever add it back. They didn’t even have a spine to tell the players themselves, they left it up to a 3rd party lol.

We were never supposed to get flight in WoD, they strung players along the whole time. They had to delay flight even longer because the artists never finished the terrain in WoD with flight in mind, a lot of it would have resembled what Silvermoon City looks like from the sky.

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I remember reading that article. And reading the outrage it caused in the forums. Lol

GG Blizz

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So with flying it would be about doing the same daily/WQs for months… only to wait an arbitrary amount of time for the next set of required dailies/WQs. Not really seeing how “enjoying yourself and having fun” is added in when the content of the game is still the same… cept you can fly.

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If I’m not mistaken that article also came out the day before a long holiday weekend.

Weak.

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Not too sure about that part.

But there was a war going on for awhile after it was mentioned lol

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Yep, the Friday before Memorial Day. lol

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So it WAS Ion’s stupid decision!?! I always knew it!

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No, it was always a problem. You can not do anything meaningful on 99 percent of mounts other than travel from one place to other, and flying allows you to do that far too quickly and allows you to skip any danger along the way.

Most importantly, the game does a very poor job of Y axis management.
You often times cant even see people who are flying near you or above you, and you can barely ever interact with them.
By the time you notice them they are out of range of even inspect.

There are various ways to make flying better though. Step one is slow it down heavily. Its already considerably faster than being on the ground by default so it doesn’t need to go 3x faster. Same as mount speed is all you should need.

Step 2 is make some actual content where flying is needed. Not designed with flying in mind, it must be near mandatory.

Like the floating dungeon idea in tbc. Technically possible for people without flying to do it, but it should be considered part of access.

Give flying purpose and make it more realistic for the game and then i would agree with you.

Right now, the only “problem” most people see is one that only directly affects them.

Take a moment to look at how the game and systems like flying, and you’ll quickly see the issue has always been there.

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