Pathfinder Exists Because of Players' Lack of Moderation

[Mary-feathermoon (Mary)]

What exactly is there in Pathfinder to make anyone stray from regular play?

Because I wont do Nazatar past Pathfinder, I dislike all Naga content, I hate the zone design, and the Rep Grind in that zone is a waste of time, and felt forced.

[Cyniel-dentarg (Cyniel)]

I Really miss downvote sometimes.

I miss it more than sometimes.

[Crenne-blades-edge]

Pathfinder was created because blizzard is arrogant and cannot lose gracefully.

Pathfinder is spite for the playerbase for not “understanding” blizzard’s no flight stance. Because why else would they only add it in at the end of the expansion requiring you to do most of the stuff you wanted flight for to begin with.

Time gated content with even more time gating is terrible design. add in rng and that’s even worse.

Maybe you should look at bc and wrath for examples of content compared to later expansions to see what the standard used to be before assuming its the playerbase at fault.

[Ahhsatan-whisperwind (Ahhsatan)]

Well I never had the ho hum of some people saying “I have nothing to do,I’m all geared out–now what?” and now I can’t get past the to do chores of the game because I can’t do what I liked.I’ll probably do my flying achieve then unsub because they took too long to introduce it and I fell behind in gear and azurite;not that it matters because every single piece of 400 gear rolled poorly in secondary stats for unholy dk.

[Chilandry-stormrage (Chilandry)]

If x amount isn’t high enough for flying mount, what is to stop them from wantind 10k gold for 60% ground and 100000 gold for 100% fast ground mount.

It needs to be something earned via a simple quest and done.

They should not use gold nor time nor anything else to gate people from basic transportation.

Just a simple low cost for the RP folk but something not daunting to a new toon just leveling up either.

Wow would surly benefit from having new blood come into the game.

Just as 120 levels is a bit intimidating, learning how to farm gold is same same, and many folk don’t even have a 100k gold on many alts.

Might just as well require people to get a raiding liscense to do more than LFR raids.

and since it is so prized by players who want to do it maybe 1,000,000 gold for normal and up for heroic and mythic liscnese, each raid?

See how silly it gets when taken to its blizzard usual extreme?

[Sellerodori-sisters-of-elune]

No, pathfinder was designed to make flight less and less appealing, by making it more and more difficult to get, so that eventually they can look and say “see, less than 50% of players got pathfinder, this proves no one really wants to fly.”

I can see that a possible motivation, too, but it seems too conspiratorial to accuse the devs of being that petty about flight. So I think it’s safer to assume there are other less devious reasons for keeping Pathfinder in the game, based on tip messages in loading screens coupled with player sentiments, in the past, about the lack of endgame content.

Bro, stop your Sunday trolling. A significant portion of the playerbase cancelled their subs within a week of the original announcement of no more flying, before WoD. We know it must have been a lot of us, as Blizzard went into emergency ‘brown pants’ mode, and suddenly Pathfinder was born. As we later learned, it was nothing more than a way to punish players for daring to prefer something the dev team didn’t like. Pathfinder is not and never was a compromise. It’s our punishment that we must endure to play the game the way we prefer.

[Mony-earthen-ring (Mony)]

Besides the compromise

what compromise? where did this come from, and why do people keep calling it a compromise? pathfinder is NOT a compromise. it is ion’s childish response from having to put flight back in the game. pathfinder was foisted on the players. it’s a punishment, and a tool to slowly remove flight from the game for good. we had to wait 11 months for flight this expansion, how long on the next one?

get one thing straight once and for all, pathfinder is an affront to most of the players that play this game now, and use to play but, got tired of ion’s crusade on flight.

[Troodrood-zuljin (Troodrood)]

Besides the compromise of keeping flight in the game despite Blizzard’s desire to remove it entirely, I believe Pathfinder was also created to curb most players’ appetite to consume content quickly, only to be bored because there’s “nothing left to do.”

Given that Pathfinder requirements are mostly trivial, boring, repetitive stuff, how many times would YOU have repeated them were you not forced to? Did it lessen YOUR appetite for fun in the game being forced to do content you hated and then being forced to wait almost a year before you could actually fly?

[Koloi-moon-guard]

no it exists for one simple reason and blaming the players is wrong the truth is pathfinder is purposely designed to ensure Blizzard comes out on top no matter the outcome if we don’t do it they will say players don’t care about flight and will have the excuse to remove it but if we do it they’ll then claim we love the concept and will keep adding time gates on it in every future expansion

Blizzard would spin doctor it to their advantage by saying hey look players aren’t interested in earning flight therefore they must enjoy ground travel and then they’ll proceed to remove flying once again only this time they’ll have very little opposition since people aren’t jumping through the hoops to get flight unlocked anymore

[Kalari-silvermoon]

it seems too conspiratorial to accuse the devs of being that petty about flight.

I’ve thought all along that the reason they locked flying behind rep grinds and time gating was out of spite. If all they really care about is players fully experiencing all the content (which can actually be done better from the sky) then Pathfinder Part One fulfills that. There is no reason to hold it back a year, and behind rep even yet. Plus, I stopped playing weeks before 8.2 because I was bored to tears, and just couldn’t do it any more. Now I’m flying, and dusting off my 120s, and finding doing everything more enjoyable again.

They need to stop punishing us for loving something they introduced in BC.

[Bellamas-proudmoore (Bellamas)]

Umm, you are special.

Pathfinder exists because Ion and some of his lackeys (not sure which ones) decided that they wanted flying to stop altogether. They told us just that during WoD. Hundreds of thousands if not a million players went and took their subs off auto renewal. That is why Pathfinder exists. A 100 million dollars a year would have left the company.

[Koloi-moon-guard]

A 100 million dollars a year would have left the company.

yeah and when the bean counters got over the near stroke caused by the amount of money Blizzard stood to lose by this the overlords in activision told them to fix this or else and in response PF was born out of the spite and hubris of the lawyer in charge being forced to reverse it so he made it as tedious as possible as a means of paying back the players that remained for the flak he caught because of the millions that left

[Hardwire-velen (Hardwire)]

Sorry, but it had the opposite effect with me. I sped up consuming content. My whole goal was to do whatever it took to get path finder done as quickly as possible.

Same here. I used to meander to level cap, then meander through the content, no rush but a lot of hours of “sub-optimal” play, exploring and having fun. Now, my play is focused on getting pathfinder, and since I can no longer out-level zones, I have to out gear them. So I burn through the content I once took weeks and months to travel at my own pace, while spending less time in game.

[Korgella-moknathal]

Funny that it wasn’t an issue from BC through MOP.

[Josefine-stormscale (Josefine)]

The problem is it cost more to make the world 3d than 2d. They trying to eliminate flying to save more money. That the reason for pathfinder.

This is pretty much it right here.

If they ever revert to day-one flying again, half the world content they’ve been doing since Legion will cease to be made. Either because we’re not playing it the way they want us to (ie, walking), or because they won’t be able to justify the development costs to “flight proof” everything.

If pathfinder goes, I hope everyone likes turtle minigames and escort quests, because that’s what we’ll get after the accountants are done.

[Gaillona-cenarion-circle]

No, pathfinder was designed to make flight less and less appealing, by making it more and more difficult to get, so that eventually they can look and say “see, less than 50% of players got pathfinder, this proves no one really wants to fly.”

First time I’ve ever used the bookmark option. This makes so much sense it hurts.

[Eret-hyjal (Eret)]

I believe Pathfinder was also created to curb most players’ appetite to consume content quickly, only to be bored because there’s “nothing left to do.

being grounded does not slow down content consumption. You have many flightpaths… The whistle. The only thing it might do is add a 10-30 seconds to getting to the WQ (if its not on a winding mountain)

[Êvë-illidan]

It exists to artificially extend content, I agree. If the plan was no flying, they would have no flying;

I mean… if you actually monitored how wod went they did do that. They said no flying period… over 5 million subs dropped off (granted not every single one unsubbed because of it, MILLIONS UNSUBBED BECAUSE THEY COULDN’T FLY.)

They knew not offering players a means to fly would lose more subs so they gave us pathfinder. It was a compromise for the hostage situation we put them in if millions more unsubbed, they would have dropped pathfinder too.

[Koloi-moon-guard]

pathfinder was NEVER a compromise it was an ultimatum if you want flight you do it Blizzards way or not at all

[Yonbi-illidan (Yonbi)]

You know Prohibition didn’t work right?

Get out of here with this “moderation” non-sense.

Pathfinder is a MAU mechanic. Designed to slow the pace at which you can consume content so that you stay subbed longer.

Let’s call a spade a spade here.