That’s a valid way of looking at it, and it’s certainly how the change was presented to the playerbase. Conversely, if I never touch WotLK enchanting, I never know that once upon a time I had enchants with a variety of effects for almost every gear slot. If I never touch old armorcrafting professions, I never know that once upon a time multiple sockets were available by default on certain items. So it not only makes professions far easier to level - which reduces a players mental/emotional investment as much as their financial investment - it also means a lot of players will never know how watered down professions are these days.
Similarly, if I never see the full story of an expansion, either because of how quickly I level through it, because I skip that expac entirely due to combined-expac scaling, because I boost past it, or because most of the core story was removed at the end of the expansion, I never know how much more of a world the game used to have.
As I said, it’s just a suspicion that the new devs are so insecure in their current design, they’d rather we experience as little of the older game as possible.
Just that. One of the many many things The Burning Crusade expansion fixed next to finally balancing Classes and making each Specialisation viable … was the ability to fly … in Wrath of the Lich King flying was also very very successful … that’s why Blizzard even bothered to fix old Azeroth and allow flying in Cataclysm too …
To Final Fantasy 14 i have to say … the A Realm Reborn zones are so plastered with big and small Crystals you can teleport to … even if most of the Story Quests just send you all around the huge World you are never bothered.
I would guess what also helps the ground Mounted travel a ton, is the fact that not every Mob is super aggressive and can/will snare you off of your Ground Mount … which overall makes Traveling a whole different … relaxed … experience where you can enjoy the surrounding. Yes i know, we finally got a no-snare item that is not using up. Took them just close to 15 years to finally implement it.
The areas where you can unlock flying in FF14 … have usually only one Crystal to teleport to … the rest you can fly … if you unlocked it after you are finished with all quests and other things in a zone. So when you do need to come back … it is easier to get around in the zone.
In WoW Ion seems to think it is fun and engaging if you are already done with a Zone, did all the normal quests in it and are either Farming Herbs/Ore or doing World Quests that the player still need to be treated as if he is brand new to the zone.
That childish tantrum Ion throws, named Pathfinder … because people do not like his idea of no flying is ridiculous.
For me so much in WoW nowadays is bad Design. When 20+ years ago … Blizzard Designers would ask themself “is this fun?” and go down to actually play it themself … figuring it isn’t fun and immediately adjusting it have we now arrived in a time where the Lead Designer seem to have forgotten what good Game Design is. I would suggest to read a good book about that.
But whatever. I guess Blizzard of now doesn’t listen to Community Feedback … i would be super curious what a Poll result we would get, if every Player that logs into World of Warcraft would be polled on the topic Flying … or Pathfinder Flying one year later before he/she can select a Character to log in.
But than there is the crowd of players who complain it takes too long to level, that there is no point in levelling as all you are doing is getting used to your character and than getting into the max level stuff which is all that matters.
Sometimes it is not Blizzard that are destroying the game, but sometimes it is the casual playing base asking for changes that ruin the game.
LFR is a perfect example and the new raid is the perfect showcase. Take the third boss where in a guild setup you would stack and move in a circle or not pass. In LFR players end up being spread 360 to the point when I was healing there I could only get to 3-4 players at once, and during that run we were one healer down, yet we passed without a problem. Both a combination of easy and OP players makes it happen.
Yet this is what players asked for, a queue-able raid setup that can be organised and beaten by everyone without the real need to farm gear or co-ordinate the fights.
Sometimes the overwhelming player base makes things to the point we look to blame Blizzard, yes they are the ones who eventually make the content and all the changes, but it is also the players who keep pushing for it to be so and without the casual player being pleased we would not have enough of a playing base to keep this game going.
Are you sure it wasn’t the raiders that complained about the length of time to level? My memory seems to be different.
I think LFR came about due to a few things. It was the failure of the guild system as a means to see end game, uneven server progression, and that raids themselves are just hokey mechanics. In one blue post they said < 1% of the player base ran them at one time. Raiders complained that gear from LFR was too good so they nerfed it further. They make it overly accessible to try to lure people into running them, truth is it’s bad content that most don’t want to run no matter the difficulty.
I know you want to blame the casual players for taking away from your fun, but the truth is that they shouldn’t design the game around people that consume the content too quickly. They shouldn’t design the game around a minority of players who want a certain content. They should design the game around the majority of players.
At least that would help to get to the Mythic+ instance, but wouldn’t resolve farming concerns. I wonder if it would really resolve WPvP issues from flying, people are so good at exploiting systems. Off the top of my head I could see someone logging off to wait out the flying cool down.
It really sucks to PvP against someone who has flying when you don’t, it’s part of the problem with pathfinder as it segregates groups into haves and have nots. Especially in PvP since they made it all a PvE activity. From what I’ve read people aren’t doing war mode now like they were before flying. I suspect the fix will need to be increased rewards and no flying in war mode. If only they hadn’t destroyed the PvP servers, ultimately I think it was a better solution for WPvP.
All Blizzard would have to do is remove wpvp and wow would be a better place.
I mean wpvp is so successful Blizzard had to bribe people with heroic raid level gear JUST to get people to participate. That was also before flying was released.
Yeah, I’m only about 500 rep unshackled away from having flying, but I constantly hear the zones are 200% better with flying, and people play more once they have flying. So it kind of slaps blizz in the face, considering they claimed to do it to also increase peoples play time. I’m honestly miserable without it, not enjoying the game, and it allowed them to skip implementing anything interesting to farm or upgrade. For example; Pandaland : Introduced farming, WoD : Garrison (although badly implemented, still something), Legion: Class Halls, BFA… sell your soul to be able to fly!
Pathfinder 1 was done basically just leveling the right way questing till finished storyline and the 6 reps to revered was done in 2 and a half months of boxes only. Pathfinder 2 took me about 45-50 hours played toon hours on a human toon.
At this point in time, zones are like 1000% better with flying for WQ junkies like me. Only time I use fp’s now are for like long journeys on my Horde toon mainly from Dazar’alor to the Sethriss city in Vol’dun (Alliance zones seem to be a bit better oriented distance-wise and not have such long flights) or if I wanted to step away from the computer for a minute and have gotten there when I get back.
It’s not even “world PVP”, it’s world ganking. They are just mad when someone is able to fly away from their huge team of players, instead of having to fight 10v1 and getting killed over and over.
