Most of the requirements for Pathfinder fall in your lap if you do much of anything at cap. There are a few requirements that are more annoying and I think those could stand to be pruned but the only Pathfinder iteration I found irksome was the original in WoD with the treasure hunting stuff. I never did earn that and just waited for flight in WoD to be free.
But I’ve never really thought of flight as essential, outside of the expansions where there was actual flight-required content (TBC, WotLK, Cataclysm). It’s more of a cherry on top. In fact it usually takes me a good 2-3 weeks after earning Pathfinder to remember that I have flight… I’ll be riding along on the ground as usual and accidentally bump my spacebar and not fall back down and be like, “oh right I can fly now”.
Flying was never an issue until the devs made it a contentious one. It used to be “meh just a way to travel point A to B” now it’s a weapon used to bait players.
BFA required revered in two different zones with two different factions. Spamming world quests every day is not something most people do. Revered with Nazjatar and Rustbolt really didn’t give anything meaningful by itself, so most people wouldn’t have done them if it weren’t for pathfinder.
Legion required revered with a new rep that was not introduced until a year later. This rep also gave nothing meaningful at revered so no one (other than completionists) would have grinded that rep if pathfinder didn’t exist.
I’ve been a mostly casual outdoor player (outside of some soloable challenge stuff like mage tower and horrific visions) for the past few xpacs so my perspective may be skewed but I hit revered with those factions just doing WQs to upgrade my gear.
Ahh yeah that’s a good point, I’m speaking from a perspective of playing while the xpac is current. I could see it being a lot more of a drag if you skipped an xpac and are trying to get PF for what is now a past expansion.
So, yeah. I started playing SL when it launched and found the questing to be super jarring. I’ve always hated this war against flying that Ion has pushed. Well, I returned today to mess around and found myself doing quests in the maw. Well… It’s not just a war on flight I see, but also just movement speed in general. We can’t even mount in the maw, without jumping through a bunch of hoops…
Talk about a terrible experience. My god. The mental anguish was unreal about just a half hour. What an utterly punitive game he has created. I just bounced right off, but not with out an actual headache.
It’s clear that they’re tying flying to stuff that they feel was rushed or substandard so that it boosts metrics for that content.
44 renown with covenant and complete all chapters of covenant campaign with first few chapters of korthia campaign.
Max renown in 9.0 was 40, so anyone who just started playing in 9.1 would have had to grind 44 renown and that would have been awful (as I stated in my previous post). Was it easy for people who played throughout all of 9.0? Sure but it was still obnoxious for new players. Think of new players in dragonflight that want shadowlands flying: they would literally have to go back and do a worthless covenant campaign and grind renown for a past expansion feature that doesn’t empower their character at all.
Exactly.
During 9.0, the only way to mount in the maw was to get a super rare sub-1% drop rate mount from the shadehounds hunt that is only active every other 7-9 days OR complete all 8 layers of twisting corridors for that mount. Each layer had 16 floors and took well over an hour…
Speaking of blizzard’s motivations for removing flying, here’s another one:
Additionally, when people can fly, they can farm gold easier whether it be through farming herbs and ore or completing world quests for callings, meaning that less people would need to buy tokens. So removing flying increases blizzard’s token revenue because less people would have the extra time required to farm gold without flying.
So when was flying removed? Ah yes in WOD, the same expansion that introduced the wow token…
The thing is, flying shouldn’t require a grind. It worked perfectly fine when people could buy it at max level. Flying wasn’t a problem until the devs made it one, andTHAT is the biggest issue of all in and of itself. That was our reward for leveling, because we had most likely seen it all. That said, Pathfinder does have its positives, like unlocking flight for all characters on your account at no extra cost. It just shouldn’t come so late in an expansion. It should be in the first major patch at the latest, if not sooner.
I like pathfinder unlocking flying. It makes people do it the long way first and then rewards them once it is done. The only real problem I see is how long it generally takes for it to be available. Having it be something we got at the end of the original covenant campaign along with requiring one to reach exalted with all of the reps and fully explore all the zones would be perfectly fair.
If I had my way, I would create a far more dangerous world and this would include the air. In fact it would especially include the air. Flying should not just be this ultra safe and cheesy game experience but instead one that gets easier as the playerbase works to improve the respective area. This is one way Blizzard can make world content relevant for the players as a whole and the solo casual a valuable player for the no life tryhards other than just a potential customer for their vastly overpriced carry runs.
Except it is. Rep, questing, exploration, etc. It’s not a BAD grind, but still a grind all the same. My point was that flying worked fine and it should have never been messed with.
I’m not asking for a replacement of anything. It just shouldn’t have been touched in the first place. THAT IS MY POINT. Geez. lol What we have now is what we have, and I’d like to see that made available sooner. That’s it.
Yeah, it actually would be pretty awful for any new player who wants to do shadowlands flying after dragonflight launched.
Grinding 44 renown and doing two full campaign questlines is not enjoyable (especially when you look at the fact that these would not assist player power or progress once shadowlands is gone)… Doing the shadowlands storyline literally serves zero purpose for a new player that is starting in dragonflight…
So the new player looks at someone wearing shadowlands tier and thinks, hey thats pretty cool… i’d like to get that… then they find out they have to walk all the way to instance without any sort of flying week after week unless they do a pointless campaign and an annoying renown grind? yeah, thats not my definition of fun…
If you love the removal of flying and doing pointless pathfinder achievements, more power to you but the overall opinion of people is that pathfinder achievements are nothing but annoying and obnoxious.
And please don’t give me the “blizzard design philosophy” argument where you say that flying is delayed to increase player enjoyment when it is quite obvious they removed flying to sell more wow tokens and increase player metrics, not to help us enjoy the game more.
