I think this is the more frustrating part of it. The hubris is astounding. However, truth be told, the people who play off and on now will be written off as “real world is interfering” instead of, what I suspect, is WoW got less fun than real world stuff so people left not because of real world priorities but WoW became less of a priority.
Ah well.
But I stopped pre-ordering as well but that one is just a sour taste from a lot of modern games that have been a … less than pleasant experience. Lately there has been zero advantage to pre-ordering.
They’ve already recast us as a “cyclical playerbase”, while ignoring that the game itself encourages cyclical play, either because of boredom, burnout, or the simple fact that alts have become unrewarding to play unless we treat them like mains.
Wow. Now who’s revising history? Flying in BC wasn’t exactly given to the players, but it wasn’t some months long grind either.
Pathfinder is very obviously a way to stretch out the time players spend putting money into the game without having to expend additional resources on game development.
It’s just one of many cynical decisions being made to increase the time players spend in the game to get more money out of the same number of players.
Hopefully things like releasing Classic will demonstrate how to get more players and more money instead of decisions like making players spend a year waiting to fly.
Look, flying didn’t kill World PvP. World PvP, especially Hillsbrad PvP, happened only because Blizzard implemented PvP servers but didn’t include any PvP activities at launch. So when battlegrounds, and later, arenas were introduced, world PvP died down. And whatever BG’s and arenas didn’t kill, dailies were the final nail in the coffin, since let’s face it, almost everyone there wanted to get their dailies done and over with a fast and possible.
Also even if you were PvP oriented (as I was in BC), I didn’t want to waste time doing PvP in a daily zone for a handful of honor, when you could farm honor a lot more effectively chain running BG’s - especially AV back then which was just an honor pinata as nobody had the gear in Vanilla and BC to kill off Drek or Vann.
Personally…I have 4 stacked chars I could start up PF2 on my recent return. I chose this DH. She’d edge out the horde DH as main for things done. I have issues with my BE DH forced into a story a really don’t like for her so she’s done less.
Anyway, I gave this DH the nod for the same reason I did way back in argus. There I am at the top of a mountain (or similar). Am I going to walk my unhappy butt back down this thing?
Hell no. Glide on down…First day so far been real convenient in naga ville.
Some get off on the I walk it everywhere man!!! Good for you. No one is holding a gun to your head to fly. We can coexist here.
Sure. Right up until someone who doesn’t want to fly has a complaint about map design or mob density or anything that can be completely negated by flying. Then it’s “lol stop being lazy and fly stupid”.
I used to have sympathy. Not anymore! I hope the cut flying completely next xpac.
The core issue, is that Blizzard is unable to develop content at a rate at which people use it. It takes them 4 months, to make something that lasts 1. Until they find a way to fix that imbalance, their world will continue to feel empty, and people will continue to want to fly.
I think people would be very happy to stay grounded if every five feet you experienced a story that changed your life. No one ever complained about a lack of flying in Dragon Age Inquisition, or a dozen other games, why? because there was stuff on the ground we wanted to see and experience.
You know what wow, has on the ground, fifty kobolds that exist for one reason, to slow you down. That isn’t content worth paying for, or experiencing. Period. Of course people want to skip it, its terrible.
Because we are all playing a game run by petulant man-children who demand that we respect their “vision” of the one true way to play the game we pay for?
It’s the only explanation that makes sense. They don’t want to put in the time to design expansive zones like they used to, so now it’s a condensed maze that takes forever without flying.
It’s stupid and pointless, if there was an alternative game you bet your last gold coin I would be there.
no actually I’d say run druid. or rogue. Become a shadow and jsut walk right through lol.
Or night elf. Shadowmeld I love. I make it like football. I keep on driving for those extra yards. they get me “tackled”, I pop this, break aggro and its 1st and 10…do it again lol.
Its not by accident my lead off main in classic will be NE druid lol.
Well. If you design a zone that can be explored, has replay value, and doesn’t involve scaling the snot out of it, it’ll last longer.
Part of the reason I hate newer zones and possibly the reason people never want to spend any time in the new zones is because:
Scaling sucks
Character toolkits are boring
Rares and chests drop NOTHING of value
Professions mean nothing
Mining nodes, herbs, fishing, skinning, all drop NOTHING of value and contribute nothing to anything
The story is the focus and completely on rails
You can’t fly at max level
I really liked the themes and ideas behind Drustvar and Stormsong. It’s all of the above that contribute to making it so people do what they need to do and then scram.
Plus, because everything above is bereft of any depth, there’s no reason to do anything in any of the zones other than take a flight in, do the WQ, whistle out. There’s no peril, no exploration, no professional interest, no WPVP, nothing.
Towns are phased, people are sharded, the world is a gooey scaled mess.
Basically. Or the long time fan fave Skyrim. An ungodly amount of hours in this game (on 3 platforms even lol)…and even unmodded I still find new things.
Now some of those “cutting room” floor mods have you go wtf so much here. Hell I will make the joke BGS had some bad editors as it were. they cut some really good stuff imo. Thankfully BGS never throws away code (but it is code bloat…double edged blade there) to let MA’s dig this up to use.
Now to “fix” this…they could fix loot table to be better. I’d not mind mindless killing 50 trash mobs if it gave some real payout.
I am not talking that whopping 50 silver to 1 gold. I want to make this the way to my millions I can do this in legion…and fly there lol
