Actually they already have 2 of them at the argent tourney this one paladin boss when you defeat him he yells out “may i run away now?” and the infamous killer rabbit at the DMF killing it gives the cheeve that rabbits dynamite
Absolutely.
I suffered thru BFA to get what I wanted, as I did with Wod content…and went right back to Pandaland.
Granted, this account has PF, but BFA sucks in many other ways than just PF, so I have very little motivation to play it more than required to get a few things I do want out of it.
PF ruined my game as I play it. Even the stench of PF on BFA makes me not want to touch it.
10 Likes
Honestly, it aint.
Look at the expansions with PF. they all three kinda suck…some more than others.
I think they knew the content was just garbage enough that some form of coercion was required to get players to engage. Seems like it backfired.
Remove flight to FORCE us to play joke content, then when players rebel against flight being removed, they force pathfinder down the players throat, using flight to coerce players to run that same joke content anyway.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Im not Einstein but I do take note that since they figured out that they can use flight as a weapon against the playerbase that the content itself seems to be getting worse.
Not much point taking time to make compelling content that we actually enjoy when they can just dangle flight on the pathfinder string over our heads and get us to play anyway.
10 Likes
I couldnt agree more i mean when the content is lacking that Blizzard has to time gate flight until such content is largely obsolete thats NOT the players fault thats on Blizz and blaming flight for it clearly shows the lengths theyll go to deflect attention away from the actual problems plaguing WoW
Seems like the current development team is either not up to the task of performing as good as those that came before them or they simply no longer care about WoW beyond the money they get paid
At this point i guess its simply a paycheck for them all the desire and passion for game design stops at the paycheck
9 Likes
Not unless driving me to play FFXIV for 8-10 months is thier desired outcome:thinking:. I’m not paying blizz to punish me anymore so no pre-purchase and I’ll unsub on launch day until ~6 weeks before flight is available. 
13 Likes
The reasons of immersion blizz gave for wanting flying gone was a lie. They really just want to use timegates to eat up time.
We only got pathfinder because players hung blizzard in wod when tried to kill flying. Its too late removal of flying would destroy blizzards wallet.
For us the players pathfinder fails to create immersion or value. For blizzard as a company the have their timegate. It’s good in their book.
8 Likes
There’s nothing stopping you from being unsubbed inbetween PF1 and PF2. If enough people did it like you apparently want, things would change.
But from the sound of it, you stay subbed all the way through and post new threads weekly about how you don’t like it instead.
3 Likes
Are you familiar with the concept of friction? Even if a player enjoys something and finds it worth doing, barriers such as poor travel options can cause enough friction to make them not participate in an activity.
The example I normally use is this: You love movies. You love them so much that, every Saturday, you walk the ten minutes to your local theater just to enjoy the experience of watching a movie in the theater, even if there’s nothing new out. You sincerely enjoy doing this.
But now, your corner theater shuts down and the only option is to drive an hour to a different theater. Maybe you start going to movies once a month. Maybe you wait until there’s something you really want to see in the theater. This doesn’t mean you didn’t really love seeing movies, or that seeing movies isn’t worthwhile. Nothing has changed about how much you love movies, but time and distance are now barriers causing friction between you and the thing you love to do, and the more friction there is, the less likely you are to do it.
17 Likes
My guess is that within Blizzard the same pro/anti flying factions exist as does among players. It was probably a tumultuous back and forth to get something as game changing as pathfinder added to the game and it would be a big deal to turn around and admit it was anything but a good idea.
4 Likes
Yeah, it is. It’s basically designed to let the devs be lazy and not have to come up with content that’s accessible both for flying and non-flying. Look at WotLK for the height of the old devs way of doing things. You actually got flying before max and it was incorporated into the later quests. Not only were entire zones made for questing with flying, they really weren’t doable without it. You’ll also note, WotLK is considered by many to be the high point of the game.
12 Likes
Lots of anti flyers left but a few remain. But many pro flyers have also been let go or moved on so right now the current retail product is stuck in limbo and neglect.
6 Likes
I have no issue with keeping flight a max level perk, but this pathfinder business is just tedium added to ensure no rock is left unturned.
There are enough grinds in wow without the necessity to make pathfinder a requirement before a fun perk is unlocked. Flying doesn’t overly shorten these grinds… in fact I’d argue more players would complete them if they had flying.
I’ve played all three methods of gaining flight. Max level + gold, cataclysms unique system of just letting anyone fly and all of the pathfinder expacs. I’ve not done an iota more being tethered to the ground. I’ve just enjoyed it less.
7 Likes
The “intent” of pathfinder and what it actually does are probably pretty far at odds for most people.
What it really does is discourage people from playing the game by making it as annoying as possible to get around, when travel isn’t the point of the game. It makes you less likely to bother with alts. It makes it less likely for you to keep up repetitive daily and world quests. It makes you more likely to alt-tab out of the game when you jump on a flight point, and completely disrupt your in game immersion. And sometimes, not even come back in to keep playing.
All of that is finally alleviated by the time they finally put flight back. But the damage gets done to player populations that recover a little bit once flight is available again, but probably not to the point they could have never dropped off to if flight was back after just a couple months.
That can’t be Blizzard’s intent, they must want to make money and to do that they have to keep people interested in playing.
But in reality, the completely obnoxious year long time gate is driving people away from the game.
Deciding what they did in Warlords was probably the single worst decision they have ever made in the history of the game.
19 Likes
In a very real way this is exactly correct.
The idea behind pathfinder is that you will be constantly harassed with annoyances like time gated rep grinds and time gated quest limits such that more and more you find yourself with only the things that you don’t want to do left.
You are supposed to give up on flying and just do the content like you are supposed to, like it or not. And some people do that very thing.
But the developmental mindset that the player needs to be goaded into compliance, coerced into the “correct” play-style, means that eventually you are flightless, at the mercy of a mildly sadistic topology and the time-wasting stun-generators scattered across it, plodding towards something you never wanted to do in the first place, but now its the only thing left so its either that or log off.
Flight would give you other options including making just futzing around doing nothing more bearable.
But the idea of players with game-play options gives the devs late night crying fits, so we cannot have that.
So yes, the design of pathfinder and how it funnels you into things you don’t want to do, makes the dirt-crawl feel especially onerous. And it makes getting that bit of developmental contempt behind you a definite priority.
9 Likes
The funny part about it is the fact that people would probs be more inclined to walk in the map layout wasn’t such a F’ing cluster of dumb and the fact half the time you’re looking for a quest and it’s underground and you didn’t know cause marker doesn’t send you to door first.
With flying it helps find quest locations instead of blastin round getting every mob after ya trying to get into a place.
4 Likes
A compromise they said. It’s a tumultuous relationship between Blizz and player on this subject. Sad they can’t let us have it at first then earn to keep it. Or otherwise be grounded.
If you have time to run old raids for gold, then you have way more than enough time to unlock pathfinder. 30 minutes a day, you can have it unlocked in about 2-3 weeks. How much more simplistic can it get?
1 Like
I have less than 14 days on that account. Why would I want to spend all that time doing content I don’t enjoy at all without flying, in order to get to a point I can do content I do enjoy ?
It makes more sense to just adjust what I want to do so I can enjoy the remaining time on that account.
4 Likes
Yep. It’s the chore factor. Same thing happened in Warlords with the garrison. Players had to start out every day in the garrison attending to the daily tasks that the garrison compelled players to do. And by the time they got through them, there wasn’t much energy left to engage in other content in Warlords. Not to mention, if a player had limited time to play, it left little time for the rest of the game. So players often logged out.
It’s the same thing with Pathfinder. By incentivizing daily log-ins through world quests, the player feels compelled to get their chores done for Pathfinder before playing any other content. Not to mention, once you’ve completed Pathfinder, it feels like there’s nothing left to do in the game. Because the player’s stamina is essentially depleted at that point for the content. Hence, achieving flight comes more as a relief than an accomplishment. It’s as if the developers didn’t learn the lesson of what captive content did to players’ engagement with the garrison; they’ve committed the same mistakes with Pathfinder.
11 Likes
I doubt Blizzard even believes that. Some influential people on their team just don’t like flying. Pathfinder is their stubborn refusal to actually reverse what they tried to do with WoD.
8 Likes