I am pretty sure that the lessons learned through Frozen Throne-Mists was that developing content with Flying in mind was more expensive. I am sure that, if they could get away with it, that the devs would want to go back to the time when they could get away with using art tricks to give the illusion of a fully 3d instead of having to craft one that was really 3d world.
Don’t mistake me for being part of the anti-flying crowd… I am just answering the question posed in the OP.
It is b/c they want players to experience every detail on ground-mounts and i got a conspiracy theory of them not wanting it to ruin auction house prices, b/c ppl gathering way faster with flying. I assume they want us to view the great scenery the best we can on ground, and also increase our time so we play more… something like that…
I concur. People do pathfinder, but not a lot. Clearly this was meant to remove flying from the vast majority of the population. The fact some still get it using means I would never stoop to does rankle, but I’m not the kind of player who cares too much what other people are doing in the game. I’m fine without flying, though I really hope at some time it comes back, I have a glyph on my flight form and it would be nice to use it somewhere besides three destinations in SW.
I’m not sure it does, either. I unsubbed for a long period in Legion, for exactly this reason.
My observation from playing this game for a while now is that Blizzard is trying to cultivate a particular kind of player: one who logs in every day for a certain amount of time, does their chores, and moves on. These players are more likely to spend money on the cash shop, and say things like “You should have gotten it from just playing the game!”
It’s a reflection from a slow change of philosophy, from content-oriented development to systems-oriented development.
But Blizzard did it to save money and cheap out on the game development costs, nothing more, nothing less.
It’s literally the only thing that makes any sense. Oh, they bloviated about it being about detracting from game play. But that was always a hollow and empty explanation.
If you want to know why a business does something, follow the money.
Them not putting in flight allows them to develop zones without flight in mind. They have less work to do on them. They don’t need to make them look good from the top down. They can take short cuts in the way they make the zones like how Silvermoon is created.
And even delaying flight means they can take longer to finish the development. Again, saving money on not having to spend as much on up front developer salaries. Which is why you see them still time gating flight an entire damned year before it’s out. Plus, they gain that and slow down content consumption allowing them to make and offer less game and the players wouldn’t get through it as fast at least somewhat masking the reduction they experienced.
The only reason we have flight today is because enough people quit in Warlords over it they felt forced to put it back. is once again the only thing they listen to. They weren’t going to go back on their cost saving measure unless they were forced to. Their customers forced them.
Now, it appears they are taking a more devious route to forcing acceptance of flight’s loss. They’re not taking it away entirely. They’re just making you have to put up with not having it for long stretches at a time. Still gaining the ability to cheap out to some degree on development costs.
And making it easier for their customers to swallow the crap they are peddling with it.
But don’t kid yourselves.
The flight issue wasn’t an issue until they made it one because some Executive miscalculated that they could force their customers to accept a lesser and inferior game play experience without it in order to save them some money and improve their profits by doing so. They wound up with egg on their face after about 3 weeks, and had to pull the plug on what is probably the worst mistake they have ever made in the entire history of the game.
You could be right. Seems silly to me though. Not your reasoning, I mean spending money that you aren’t going to get the benefit of enjoying because you aren’t playing.
That said, I don’t have an issue if they are intending it to be cyclical, FFXIV designs that way, but that’s more due to a different outlook on things between Japan and the US. Maybe Blizzard is trying to copy them but doesn’t have the right mindset so it doesn’t come out/work properly?
Does any other MMO have flying? I mean even Aieon where you have wings you can’'t fly for very long. Star Wars? Starships and hyperspace but no flying mount. ESO? Rift? No flying that I can recall.
I think I could get by with the whistle thing and taxi flying.
You couldn’t be more right. The way the game is structured now is “do your dailies, and maybe one or two other things” only now dailies are “World Quests” and they’re even more ubiquitous than traditional dailies. I don’t like to play like this, I LFR, farm pearls, there’s literally no reason to go back to Kul’Tiras unless I want flying, and at the rate I would get it it would probably take as long to acquire as I’d have it until 9.0. So that’s a no-go. If you could grind for it in the early stages when you’re actually stuck in the relevant zones that would be much better, the problem is there’s literally no catchup so those people who’ve been doing WQs and working on their rep since day 1 have a very distinct advantage that I’m not sure is fair. I shouldn’t have to devote weeks to content I don’t care about just to get flying for a few more weeks, probably not even a year, and at this point it’s just a lazy cheat, not used for anything interesting at all.
I meant in a general sense, not flying in particular. Meant more they design with the “goal?” in mind for people to play the content and then unsub until the next content patch rather than designing things that have the side effect of making people want to unsub. Does that make sense?
Honestly, I played all through Warlords, and still don’t have Pathfinder for it.
Is it necessary? No.
But it was something they implemented, let players use for four expansions, designed mounts specifically for including those on the cash shop… and then took away.
Cheaper to make zones since they could go back to the old “smoke and mirrors” style of zone design that looks fine from ground level but a mess from the air (outside of predetermined flight paths that have scenery made for just that purpose - think Silvermoon City).
Slows down players by making it inconvenient to get places. This is exacerbated by zones that are purposefully designed to be a PITA to navigate. Travel in Classic isn’t much of a headache since most zones are open and fairly straight forward to navigate barring a rare few sections. But zones in modern wow expansions are designed with less of a flat open layout and you often have to go from point A to point C to actually reach point B even though its technically between the two.
is once again the only thing they listen to. They weren’t going to go back on their cost saving measure unless they were forced to. Their customers forced them.