You might be confusing Original TBC with Classic TBC.
In original TBC, the first flying was like 1,000G. You don’t get 1000G from vendoring crap (at least, not during TBC), lol.
Now, in Classic TBC, the first flying is only like 500G. That sounds a bit more plausible.
LOL where did I say I appreciated the zones more from the ground? I said a appreciate WHY blizz has grounded us from a game design POV.
I love flying because I can bypass every mob and fly right to my objective but that’s also one of the reasons why Blizz doesn’t want us flying at first.
I’ll also repeat that a great zone like Suramar with the Illusion mechanic and the Elite areas wouldn’t work with flying as we saw once we unlocked Pathfinder in Legion.
I did. Back in 2007 I was able to buy flying as soon as I got to max level. Not the 5k fast flying. Though I was able to buy fast flying for 3 of my 70s before WotLK hit.
Eh, what?
The Illusion mechanic worked just fine. If you made but one mistake, you got into combat and couldn’t fly until you found a way to get out of combat.
Being able to fly meant that you didn’t have to spend the next 30+ minutes trying to sneak your way to the exits or the water.
[Press X to Doubt]
Half my Guild couldn’t do the TK dungeons for the first couple of weeks after hitting 70 because they didn’t have flying. It was very different in TBC Classic because we all knew what to expect and were just more savvy.
I think you missed my point or at least I hope you did.
Compare Suramar as a fresh 120 with no flying to one during the Broken shore after we had Pathfinder unlocked. With flying you could just swoop down to do any quests and completely avoid the guards who could see through the Illusion.
It was even more noticeable in the Elite area where you could fly right to the quest objectives or quest mob and avoid having to fight your way to them.
Oh, I got your point just fine.
See, there’s a difference between meaningful gameplay and just plain “annoying”.
Having to navigate a fricken mazy AF city with sentries everywhere that can remove your disguise that takes 30, 60 minutes to find your way to an objective is not what I call meaningful gameplay. I put that firmly in the “annoying” category.
And those elite areas? I skipped quests in there regularly even after flight because they were just too flippin annoying.
Suramar is a great example of an idea that sounds awesome on paper, but ends up being something that a lot of players end up not enjoying because it’s just too absurd when it comes to time wastage.
I want my gameplay to be fun, not boring, repetitive, or annoying.
Flight was the only thing that made Suramar somewhat bearable (and even then, that was excepting the elite area that I avoided like the plague because it simply was not worth the time to go there or do anything in there until I had Argus gear lol).
Argus and Suramar are two of the most annoying pieces of content ever put in the game, and it seems like even Blizz seems to realize this, because that sort of thing wasn’t repeated again.
Don’t get me wrong, I liked the premise behind these two areas, but the execution just… didn’t hit the mark for me whatsoever. Extremely tanky enemies everywhere that take minutes to kill, or mazy corridors full of sentry guards just aren’t fun.
To each their own I guess.
I get that most WOW players prefer their Skinner box to be easy and fast. I’m guess I’m at a loss sometimes what players like yourself consider fun other than getting rewards.
I enjoy most areas in WoW, at least, assuming I can fly.
And of the areas that you are forced to be on the ground…
-Molten Front was okay, I enjoyed that area.
-Timeless Isle was one of my all-time favorite areas to do content in.
-That island where Mechagon was, wasn’t too bad (mob density was a bit annoying in some places, but overall it wasn’t too bad)
-Korthia wasn’t bad either, tho the devourer mobs felt a bit cheaper than they needed to be.
Notice what all of these don’t have, that other zones do?
Oh, and my least favorite/most hated areas when stuck on the ground:
-REVENDRETH. Just… Revendreth. /puke
-Zuldazar.
-Some parts of Bastion.
-Nagrand (WoD)
See a recurring trend here?
It’s almost like forcing you through hordes of trash enemies that give nothing when killed after wasting your time for 5+ minutes and/or forcing you to travel 5, 10+ minutes to cover a gap you could fly across in 5 seconds isn’t very fun.
It just isn’t. Sorry. I have better things to do than watch my character on auto-run and/or having to change specs to tank so I can ride through enemies trying to dismount me blah blah blah.
You’ve sorta done this a lot yourself, always weird to see people say something that applies to them so heavily. It’s strange how often you will pop into a thread and say specifically something like that.
Devs are still salty about the flying fiasco plus it fits into Bobbys engagement metrics so they will keep the pathfinders.
Novel the first time going through it.
Annoying when you have to do it again and again on alts.
Doubt all you want. I know what happened.
I think they originally said that although they hadn’t made a firm decision on that, they weren’t planning to do it because BfA is supposed to be the intro expansion for new players now.
It’s disappointing because I played enough in Legion to get pathfinder for that, and they gave that one away, but I’m not going to put in a bunch of hours doing things like grinding out BfA reputations for something that doesn’t help in any current content and is basically just a nice-to-have type of thing
i think they should have doing the newest expansion flying unlock, unlock all
previous expansions flying as well.
When the player base paid for flying which was a big deal back in the day and were suddenly told, oh new expansion, you cant fly… It was an uproar of why?
Not a quote but the term was so you see the content the way it was intended.
That is fair enough and think about all the skipping net alone XP that you wouldnt get leveling if you didnt have to kill all those monsters that are in your way. How many extra quests would need to be added in the leveling process. How trivial would the content be?
The pathfinder system is painful though mostly because it has been gated in the past and is really too long. If we are not paying a gold sink to unlock a zone then sure it is probably a required evil that is universally fair for all levels of players.
But when we start a new expansion, the previous should be unlocked, ideally by a modest gold fee but still unlocked. My reasoning is if you are just leveling and there is a big push for fast leveling you will not spend enough hours in an expansion to unlock the required pathfinder.
So not a fan of pathfinder, but also glad they didn’t just decide, flying in zone, 150k gold.
My long two cents after reading everyones comments, haha.
I hate pathfinder. Its a grind I dont care to do. Its a chore. I dont have the time to smash out the achievements to get flying. It is so contrived and tedious (easy for you, but not for those who are unable to put in the same time and dedication, I look at the meta achievement and groan, because I dont have time to do this, I want to be able to experience and do the conent I need to do, in the easiest way possible which is through flying). Allow flying to be unlocked at max level with gold or just be available from the get go.
Flying is more enjoyable for me because I can get from point A to point B and cutting out the long ride to get to my destination and having to deal with mobs along the way.
Those who want to ride the ground and go through the slog of it all, keep it. I enjoy my time flying to the content. But I guarantee that if flying became available you’ll use it in a heart beat. Let the ground work be for the levelling, let the reward of flying be for playing the content at hit max. Its a win win.
If you want to keep pathfinder then open more FlightPoints, because SL was terrible for this. ZM even more so.
BFA for the horde, lvling was trash, I hated that there were different levels of ground which made questing confusing as hell.
Alliance was so much better. I enjoyed BFA so much more when I unlocked flying when I was lvling alts. And screw Revendryth for this reason!
Pathfinder is time gated. Blizz is knowningly and purposefully withholding flying and putting it behind an achievement that is released in two parts one of which is months, even a year after launch. Blizz has the expansion planned out before release, they decide and dictate when patches are launched. So saying that content not released is not time gated is false, because that can only be an argument if blizz doesnt have the expansion planned out, but since they do, its content purposefully being withheld after x number of months for the purpose of time gate. To stop players from completing content too quickly. Stop players from having flying is not content! Its different!
Lastly, the argument about the worlds feel larger without flying. Yeah, they are large even with flying. Have you seen ZM? And the teleporting is just FPs and just as sparse and annoying. And fighting through mobs is not fun or ideal. I personally dont want to spend a majority of my time travelling on the ground long distances between quests, its time consuming, time I dont have and most people dont have. So have flying be an option for those players who just dont have the time but still want to play the content, and if you want to experience the content from the ground then you have it, but give us who dont have the time, the option to fly. Hell, up the ground speed then!
Thank You for listening to me TED talk.
Uh.
There’s a problem with that.
Wrath: They made all but two zones assuming you did not have flying, and did not let you have flying on your first character until you arrived at a level high enough to quest in those 2 zones designed around flying.
Cata: One of the zones was underwater, and the other three seemed to be built around flying, and anytime they did not want you flying, they forced you to escort or go into long lengthy caverns.
MoP: Could not fly until you reached max level and pay a modest fee.
There are ways to deal with flying and the leveling experience without nuking flying altogether. Of all of the above, I think Wrath and MoP did it best; just not let you get the flying ability until you are a certain level (or max level).
That, and/or stop making us equip items just to remove the most lame mechanic in the history of WoW: Daze Dismounting. There is nothing good, compelling, fun, or engaging about getting knocked off your mount because you got love-tapped in the back from 50 feet away because somehow enemies can ignore melee distance while you’re moving at 120% (if you’re a Paladin) groud speed and hit you from 50 feet away and knock you off your mount. /eyeroll It is also so lame when that happens.
And/or maybe actually give us reasonable paths through the zones. I remember back in the days of TBC, you could go through Zangarmarsh, Nagrand, or even Terokkar on the roads, even when underlevelled and usually not find very many aggressive mobs in many places. Heck, even places like Borean Tundra, Fjord, etc you can do that too, travel along roads even with mobs are orange to you and have increased aggro range, and not get into fights.
Nowadays? Pfft, every road has a bunch of “trash packs” (those mobs without full nameplates that don’t drop loot when killed) all around them, and it’s nearly impossible to travel roads without constant aggro in some places, and quests are conveniently set up that force you to ride through lots of aggressive, and annoying enemies.
Like, for example, in Tiragarde Sound, how many fricken aggressive deer did they think they needed to stick along the roads in the southern area of the zone? And of course, it’s always 3 at a time and they do absolutely ridonkulous damage if they knock you off your mount and you’re forced to fight them.
Gee, I can’t fathom why people want to fly, as they made terrain and mob density as annoying as possible. I didn’t mind questing on the ground in Zangarmarsh and Terokkar, or even Nagrand in TBC Classic before I could fly. Well, Nagrand starts to get mildly annoying with all the valleys and stuff, but Terokkar and Zangarmarsh were fine. Or even HFP wasn’t too bad outside of a couple spots.
They need to go back to those zones and analyze them, play them on the ground, and realize why we hate no-flying in modern WoW.
Same here. Got PF unlocked each expansion when it was current and I agree flight from any expansion that isn’t current should have it auto unlocked.
The same goes for the MoP and Ordos. I have the cloak but those who don’t shouldn’t be shut out from killing him now. (Unless this you are able to now I don’t know) There is no reason not to have him open for all.