Yeh, I am not saying it should be used outside of DF content. If it were up to me, Soar would work with the dragonriding system and would be a cosmetic choice for Dracthyr to use instead of the drakes. Same upsides and downsides as normal dragonriding, and only useable in zones with allow dragonriding.
For the old world I would have just given them a cosmetic flying skill that was usable wherever old flying was. Would have to train to use it and so on to keep it fair, and would have the same speed and cast time as a normal mount. Just a cosmetic normal flight option for Dracthyr to use their own wings. The animations already exist.
Edit: Unfortunately Blizzard likes to be different, which in this case means being the third MMO I have played with winged dragon like races, but the only one not to let them fly.
Soar should just be another type of Dragonriding, using the exact same talents and energy resources, and only usable in areas with Dragonriding available. Then, enable Dragonriding everywhere that the other flight is available. (and for people who love hovering, enable that in Dragonflight zones)
The real reason is that they conceived of the Drake customizations as a major reward system for this expansion, and don’t want their shiny new race to entirely opt out of their shiny new cosmetic reward structure.
I don’t presume to speak for the community but I do feel like - as much as I like the customized drakes - most people would probably prefer to just be able to fly on their drac’thyr than collect six different horn styles for some other dragon.
I mean does that really matter though? Mages have a massive advantage when it comes to traversing through the old world - I don’t think that’s ever been a big problem for anyone.
I counter this with
“Zen Flight” Insta Cast Flight -Monk/ Also as a monk you can Zen flight then use a Mount from the cloud.
"Flight form " Insta Cast - Druid
the CAN and have made travel Universally better for some classes.
So that? they don’t need it, in fact they aren’t even dragons, you have to step on that lizards, it was the worst that blizzard released him, he should have listened to Netharion when he had sanity.
Is legacy content really so important that one of the expansion’s box features and a major aspect of a race/class’s fantasy has to be permanently gimped for it?
And in which case, if it’s so important, why are Dracthyr still locked out of mage tower, completing the Broken Shore story, the Xe’ra storyline, literally any content involving a mission table, and The Many Deaths Of Chromie?
Hell even outside of Evoker problems, half of the Horrific Visions content has been broken for over a year because of an uninteractable bottle stopping the Uldum Accord dailies from unlocking (and even more annoyingly, the blocked content is the one that requires you to do a month’s worth of dailies), which doesn’t really scream “we care about legacy content!”
I’d propose the notion of retooling Soar into an Evoker ability and making a ‘Flying Wild’ equivalent as the Dracthyr racial. So TBC-style flight for all Dracthyr, and Dragonriding-style Soaring options for those that are Evokers.
Yeh, that’s prolly part of it and I still think it’s a stupid reason. Just because I could use myself as a mount doesn’t mean I would enjoy collecting other options less. It’s like saying if you have had a favourite mount or transmog all these years in the game, that the other options were useless to you and there was no point in playing. 0_o
(and for people who love hovering, enable that in Dragonflight zones)