Why can’t the team build content that uses flying mounts to reach? Dracula’s castle? floating necropolis? Ghostly isles?
Why does flying have to be treated as this thing that ruins world immersion? Why not use this cool ability like it was in tbc or wotlk but take it further.
We’re going into the land of the dead, yes? surely they don’t have everything on the ground. We’re going into the afterlife full of spirits and ghosts! If anytime is a good time to fly and build content around that idea, it’s now!
My two cents.
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We’ve had zones which were very close to being what you’d get with flying (combat) content. While I liked Vashj’ir, many people hated it.
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uh…because that would require TALENT?
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Ya remember how vash was a magnificent success
All the cata zones were built around flying and they are the most hated zones in the game
yeah…because suck content HAS to be suck because of FLIGHT, not because its just suck content, right?
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Pandaria was built around flying mounts and that expansion is fondly remembered.
I’m not talking about content being built around flying or forcing some kind of vash’ir like mounted combat, I’m simply saying to include flying in the content, it’s treated like a red headed step child at the moment.
Flying doesn’t have to be this after thought. It can be fun and it can immerse you in the world if used right.
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Because that’s not why Pathfinder was needed. Players kept sitting in trade hubs and dungeon running to max to buy flying and essentially skip the majority of expansion content because it was the easier than playing the game. It’s not that flying is bad, it’s that it became a reward for not playing the game. Blizzard wanted to remove flying since it was being abused, players said no, this was the compromise.
So that’s it. You have to play the game. The content has to be relevant for longer than the week it took you to bum rush to level cap.
Icecrown and Stormpeaks required flight.
As did some areas of Cata.
And some level 70 areas of Outland.
And a few areas of Pandaria.
So each character in these expansions could attain flight with a gold purchase.
Nothing from WoD onward requires flight.
So these areas have the pathfinder system for “optional” flight.
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If they did, it would be released with pathfinder 2 patch.
Cata zone content was not built with flying in mind. The zones were only built to be flying functional and visually cohesive from the air.
Content designed with flying in mind is akin to Blade’s Edge in BC where cannons or dragons would knock you out of the sky if you were flying there. Or the Skettis area where the birds would aggro you and knock you out of the sky and attack you. Or in wrath where both Storm Peaks and Icecrown were designed to be traversed from the air.
Blizzard can design content with flying in mind if they want to, but it requires more time, effort and thought.
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Or mechagon with that annoying lock on.
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Yea there are ways Blizzard can design content so flying can’t trivialize it… but that requires more effort than standard “go here, kill this/collect that” quests.
Flying in ICC was undoubtably a cool experience, they built a entire world full of legions of zombies and undead that you could fly over that just built over a breathtaking “Wow… This is amazing…” factor every time you flew over it. Flying didn’t obsolate fighting and diving legions to obtain that shiny saronite ore or plant vein.
You used flight to get over, and when you got to the ground you had jousting missions, leveled in grizzly hills, rocketed, etc. People dueled in dalaran sewers. I think one of the things that many people miss of bifaction quest hubs and questing continents was meeting the other players and competing with them for rares or helping, or emote /dancing or /flexing on undergeared /crying horde lol while dueling the other faction pvp players in the sewers. They were good times and no one complained about it being splintered until they did single faciton abandoned hubs.
Dueling was actually quite fun on pvp servers and pve with bifaction pvp and bifaction cities. They should bring them back again imo with flight and have us duel in the bifaction cities and continents. What’s the point of a war themed expansion where the only time you even meet a hordie is when they’re grinding 1v6s with pathfinder mounts to fly away from fair fights?
Deepholm required flying for some of its areas, including the dungeon entrance I think.
Hyjal was definitely designed around flying.
I leveled through Hyjal consciously not using flight and it’s a bit of a pain in the neck early on. You thought Argus was bad, drag a L80 through Hyjal.
Once you hit 82 it was a lot easier.
And, as mentioned, Vash’jr was all about flying, just slower being under water.
Oh really, so I could just wait for all the achievements come to my account on all the previous xpacs? What I’ve done my god, why did a waste my time flying farming, getting reputation, raiding, doing daily quests. What a wasteeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
Why didn’t I know that before? 
Uldum also required flying to reach the raid and a dungeon. And Bastion of Twilight in Twilight Highlands was waaaaaaaaaaay up. I think people just block out stuff when they haven’t done it in awhile or didn’t like it lol
Reaching areas that require flight is not what I am talking about when I say content is not designed around flight.
Blizzard claims that the reason they want to restrict flight is because it trivializes content by letting you fly over obstacles and past mobs to get where you want to go unhindered. Personally I feel the truth is that they wanted to remove flight altogether in WoD because it’s cheaper, easier, and faster to churn out zones when you don’t have to account for flight. They can also design zones to be tedious to travel through so as to slow players down (which is what they do these days).
Hyjal was not “designed around flying”. If it were designed around flying it would have had obstacles that prevented you from flying safely or flat out knocked you out of the sky. That’s what I mean by content designed around flight. If there’s content Blizzard doesn’t want you just flying willy nilly to, they can make it unsafe to fly through that area like they have in previous expansions.
I’ve done Hyjal without flying and I am not sure why you felt it was so punishing without it. But even if mob density was an issue for you, that doesn’t mean Hyjal’s content was designed around flying, because it really wasn’t. If anything Blizzard would have preferred you to stay grounded through Hyjal so it took you longer to get through it and thus stretched that content out further.
If there’s content Blizzard specifically doesn’t want flight to trivialize, they can design that content with flight in mind… they just choose not to because it requires more work. But just so we’re clear, there is a difference between a “zone designed with flight in mind” and “content designed with flight in mind”.
every BC and many wrath zones were as well, and they were amongst the most beloved time for warcraft.
I’d be fine with pathfinder if it was just pathfinder that was needed to get flying,
Blizzard’s excuse has always been that they want people to experience the content which you can’t do if you just fly past it.
- Explore every zone; that makes sense they want us to see and appreciate what they made.
- Complete all the quests forthe zone; sure, flying makes doing the quests trivial and they want us to experience the story fully.
- Complete daily quests/ world quests/ whatever new gimmick they make for it; again understandable.
And now with that done I’ve fully experienced all the content. What does making me wait another year+ do?
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Yeah and what boredom was there? I recall just going on joyrides and taking advantage of daily and world quests that had you trelapse to the whole world to reclaim the fire lord’s flame from icecrown, fly down to the howling fjord to fight a giant undead demon for their bones,
flying to the petaled lakes of grizzly hills to visit the maiden of the lake and pick the flowers for the shrine only to see and gank another lowbie through the zone, get into a world brawl, have fierce back and forths, play and get sapped and then aoe the squealing rogue. And then fly down to icecrown citadel again to do some ring rep grinding (which people actually liked and had fun with), looking forward for those exclusive BOES and the feeling of free rewards and joy from a free normal -> heroic quality ring for a evening of fun.
Flying didn’t make you skip content, it made the world and joyriding THE CONTENT.
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