Of course they can introduce static flying on launch. It is just awful for the game. WoD players just don’t care. They want to afk fly to something, tag it at 10%, loot, leave and do it again on the next alt. Then repeat. Exactly like timeless isles and garrisons.
Group? Nah. Join a guild? Nah. Mission table for epic loot? Sign them up.
You can do this without old flying already, completely afk, and completely afk levels 1-70 not engaging with the game in any way. Then get summoned into raids clicking one button m+, afk some more… all allowed.
Oh, he hates those guys, too.
He hates most WoW players it seems. We don’t pass his purity test.
That includes the CEO/Leader Ybarra who sells boosts and gets boosted
How dare you sling veiled attacks at one of those fine folks responsible for this marvelous creative vision that is dragonriding!
Blasphemer! Stone the heretic!
Have you perhaps forgotten a couple of things:
Blizzard recently changed the method of gaining flying for new characters - you now get it automaticlaly at level 30. No quests required, no license, just hit 30 and bang, you can fly. They don’t seem to feel that doing that is ‘awful for the game’.
Prior to that change and prior to WoD, all that was required was to achieve a certain level, sometimes do a couple of quests and then purchase a flight license. That’s it, done and dusted. And apparently they also didn’t see that as being awful for the game, for a very long time.
So why is it suddenly so awful?
Nobody would have objected if they had said that standard flight would be available at level 70, while dragonriding was available very early on - dr is a gimmick, a type of flight that isn’t so much flying as leaping up, pressing buttons and skimming around at a high speed. Reminds me of the hoverboard from the Back to the Future film. For me, its more ‘awful’ than standard flight. I get that is subjective, but then much of life is.
Luckily for me, that decision is not your’s to make. 
And the people whose decision it is CAN be influenced.
(woot post #1337 
)
until next expansion, where Dragonflight will be the “default” leveling expansion and you’ll have access to Dragon riding at level 10, then old flying will be just… pufft. Something that only botters and multiboxxers (and a very handful people who actually suffer from motion sickness) will be asking for “normal” flying.
I am amazed at how many people use ignore.
We are truly happy in our echo chambers, huh?
Making big points to people who we made sure already agree with us, right?
Interesting way to live
Everything people don’t like it supposedly for a “time played metric” or a “retention metric”. lol
Many people aren’t able to deal with a differing opinion other than their own, some of them feel like they are “attacked” if presented with a differing opinion. lol
Right?
Do you know how many people I think are literally the worst on these forums?
Not a single one on ignore.
I LOVE seeing crazy people say crazy things, it’s how you pick out the crazies.
I don’t mute or block anyone, even people that drive me crazy at times.
Watch people play classic or hardcore. They group. They talk to each other. They join guilds. They are social. They are social because the games forces social behavior.
Retail is largely the opposite. It started with lfr and escalated with many of the qol changes that enabled solo play. Some solo play is fine. But this is still an mmorpg. There is a reason kids still read if you give a mouse a cookie.
Flying just enables the tag, loot and scoot mentality. It cheapens the world experience. And that is why you see so many threads asking for nerfs to dungeons when they went on the group finder, or to lfr whenever people have to do a mechanic, or to the rares in caverns when they can’t be easily solo’d.
This isn’t that kind of game.
Just like pathfinder, and keeping it on topic, using ignore is completely optional.
I used ignore to prove the point that nearly half of this thread is the same 8 people, meanwhile someone said ohhh ahhh over 1k responses means over 1k people support topic…
But reality is, some folks trolling the same troll over and over it takes too long to scroll past them, much easier to ignore.
Ymmv
I honestly will be skipping path finder this way: Old flying is just in air clunky slow swimming that needed to be done with and, I am happy its pretty much done with.
People just want “old air swimming” to afk in the sky or not have to dismount when herbing: yeah look not sure if you ever tried to pick flowers in real life while on a horse but it doesn’t work. So it shouldn’t work when your riding a dragon either or whatever you are flying.
The next issue will be: “OlD FlY Is So SlOw I CAn’T GeT to RaRe’s BeFoRe ThEy DiE” if old flying returns with “dragon riding” it should be slow, out paced by dragon flying, and used as at most a filler form of flying.
A superior dragon rider: which there are many will always: Get to the area faster then you, rare faster then you, treasure faster then you, herbs and nodes faster then you, and you will do nothing but complain and “demand” old flying gets faster speeds: which it should not and hopefully never will, Honestly hopefully as mentioned it just gets phased out all together.
What has that got to do with the price of pizza? Or, indeed, my comment and topic at hand.
You talk about flight and then you switch topics to how unsocial WoW has become (in your opinion). My opinion is the opposite - I tried Classic and I had less interaction with people in that game than I do in retail. I chat to my guildies, we go do activities together, we put stuff in the guild bank for each other, we do crafting for each other. You must have a very isolated and limited idea of ‘social’ if you can’t see that, or don’t have it in your gaming day.
By that criteria, then you would like to see ALL flight removed, including dragonriding. Maybe you should make it clear exactly what you are asking for or, indeed, talking about.
Because right now you did such a 90 degree tangent I’m not even sure YOU know where you are going with it…
While there are no doubt people who simply prefer static flying to dragon riding arguing against needing to grind pathfinder, there are also people who cannot dragon ride due to physical limitations. In an expansion which was built from the ground up to be experienced from the air, this makes doing basically everything except instanced content more time consuming; there are some things they cannot experience at all without hitching a ride with another player. You are wrong with your assessment that anyone who does not want pathfinder is someone who wants to AFK in the sky.
Given how optional pathfinder is for those who can dragon ride, this calls Blizzard’s motivations into question for requiring it for static flying. If those who have the easiest time grinding pathfinder also get the least out of its reward, what conclusion should those who aren’t dragon riding draw about the reason for its existence?
To make sure my point is clear, I am not arguing whether static flight should be in WoW. Nothing can be designed with all accessibility scenarios in mind, and trying to do so can compromise the intended experience. If Blizzard decided to completely remove static flying for artistic reasons, I would fully understand their motivation.
The issue here is that even if that was their original intent, they chose not to do so. They announced static flying would be coming within the first couple months of the release of Dragonflight. Given they didn’t elect to phase it out and dragon riding makes static flying obsolete in most situations for players who are using it, the original stated intent for pathfinder is truly not applicable. Everything Blizzard has claimed they wanted pathfinder to accomplish has been upending by dragon riding. If static flying is going to exist in an expansion where an alternative which is better in many ways for most players, it makes no sense to force players who need (or even want) the generally worse option to jump through hoops.
It isn’t only about people who have difficulty with dragonriding; it can also just be that some of us don’t enjoy it. I have never enjoyed it and even if I was 100% fit I still wouldn’t enjoy it. I consider it a gimmick more than a method of flight.
And that is more or less precisely the point. It’s not like dragonriding is going away, or that people won’t use it. There is no logical reason not to make standard flight available, even if players have to wait until they reach level 70 (as happened with many flying requirements in the past). And if people choose to use it, what impact does that have on anyone else? Nothing, of course.
Sure, but I was responding solely to a person who seemed to think the only people wanting static flight to be unlocked are people who can dragon ride but choose not to. You’re right the reason shouldn’t matter, but I wanted to make sure it was clear it wasn’t just people making a choice not to dragon ride.
They would make more money by having TBC flying day one alongside DR but BlizZard is trying to force their one way to play mantra and it backfired with poor upfront box sales.
