On the other hand, the huge advantage of coming back late after Pathfinder is fully in place is that you can get flying right away once you’ve unlocked it.
If you’re frustrated with the several weeks delay while you earn it now, imagine how all the people felt who had already done all available tasks towards unlocking it but were still held back a year anyway.
The general goal is to get players to slow down and smell the roses a little instead of making a bee-line to cap and trying to ignore the intermediary levels and landmasses to the greatest extent possible. It’s understandable – they’ve invested a ridiculous number of manhours in making all of that, but if players are just going to do their best to skip it all they might as well make endgame content only and automatically boost everybody to the new cap each expansion.
That said there are definitely better ways of achieving the goal of getting players to chill than Pathfinder. PF is just the easiest option.
It is not that hard to do pathfinder I am an extreme casual that hardly plays and i got pathfinder
I’m probably gonna invoke the wrath of everyone here with this… but I honestly think the 120 boost should come with pathfinder completed at this point.
I know. Pay to win and all but it’s so late in the expansion now, and making players returning for 8.3 grind for weeks in outdated content? Seems like a bad thing to me. I’m probably the only person who would ever think that putting pathfinder on the cash shop is a good idea though. 
One of these options would be to delay raids and dungeons. these are the players that rush to cap to play the content they enjoy. Players who play in the world normally don’t rush through the questing content. After all, once that is done there is nothing but repetition.
Yes, but the thing is that in order for Blizz to justify development of content, a certain level of usage/participation is required. In the absence of Pathfinder (or something similar), only the slow-quester minority will be taking their time and enjoying the world, which would make it no longer worth investing in it as much on it as they normally do, meaning that expansions with this model would have a much smaller and less elaborate world component.
That’s only if you do everything every day and thats only for Part 2. Part 1 takes longer then that. I was current the whole time before I quit so i was always ahead of the curve but part 2 was absolutely obnoxious. It doesnt help that to unlock flying you have to participate in the worst gameplay aspects of the game(World quests).
Nonsense. Game did perfectly fine before pathfinder. They just blamed flying and other crap for the drop in subs instead of crappy game design and horrible writing.
How to Win in Mechagon:
Get the jetpack and get your easy 800 rep a day.
How to Win in Nazjatar:
Turn off warmode, use flight points, and only bother doing WQs when it has an emissary bonus.
It’s not. Not at all. Super easy, in fact.
… But it’s not very fun.
You’re not wrong, but I think if they did something like that, they wouldnt fix the problem to begin with. They already have a problem milking their current base instead of encouraging more to join.
Spot on. For Nazjatar the war mode bonus will be lost in time spent running to your corpse and getting caught up in fights unless you can sign on at odd hours when nobody is online.
Like the single fan-boy cheering Ion on and the rest booing his announcement of pathfinder for SL. If only he had enough self-awareness to realize that folks gave him one last chance to pull his head out.
Pity.
Maybe we get a competent one next time and not a raid logger?
Then fire the muppets developing the chore level content and hire a couple that can create a compelling story that is worth doing without locking core game features behind it?
There is a thing called an anti-gravity pack there. Do yourself a favor and get it. Then you can fly before you can actually fly.
I mean I didn’t put down 15 a month to play world quest just to be able to fly and get said world quest done faster, I did it so I can play PvP putting long as** restrictions on players just to make the game seem longer or zone bigger is pretty bad game design in my opinion, If I recall correctly destiny 2 you couldn’t use your mount until you beat the game only for the purpose of making the game artificially longer. I can’t complain I finally got flying like a month ago and now I literally never touch WQ’s unless their AP, I can finally play the game I want to without all the extra sh*t I need to do taking forever. In my opinion people are gonna speed through your game no matter what and then complain about how there is no content, thats always bound to happen with these idiots. Why should I get punished for playing the content that I want to enjoy and not getting on just to finish my chores that daddy blizzard gave me?
Exactly how I feel as well OP, and I used to stay subbed all the time too before Pathfinder was introduced. I genuinely tried to deal with it for 2 expansions (WoD and Legion), but it just destroyed all of my enjoyment for this game no matter how hard I tried to still enjoy the game regardless of it. The grind for it completely burns me out on the game, and the game just isn’t worth playing at all for me without flying. I didn’t bother unlocking it in BfA and I just didn’t really bother playing BfA either because of it. I don’t plan on playing Shadowlands because of it either. I’d love to be able to enjoy this game again, but no matter how hard I’ve tried I just cannot if Pathfinder exists.
Actually, what the devs wanted to do was remove flying completely. That was way “lazier”, in my mind. Only after a major outcry from players (and huge sub losses) did they relent and come up with Pathfinder.
We are lucky to have flying at all. It’s never going to come back to being purchasable at max level. And, as I said before, I prefer earning it with one character and having ALL my characters be able to fly as soon as they enter the expansion–whenever they enter it. I had a level 70 flying around Zuldazar just because I could.
Blizzard is destroying the ability to fly in flying areas already. I don’t think they are getting the message.
In 8.3 you get reduced flying speed in the assault areas.
That’s exactly what blizzard wants you to think, i.e they did you a favor giving you pathfinder.
Source? I have not seen or heard this yet.
Although I don’t put it past them to double down on stupid, that pretty much seems to be their guiding star these days.