I doubt they regret the money it helped generate by being a key geature in both BC and Cata. Also how much have they made selling overpriced FLYING mounts on the Blizzard store?
Pathfinder part 1 and your flying would be a proper middle ground. Most of the complaints people have with this patch wouldn’t be an issue if people were not frustrated waiting a year for something that used to be a basic feature the moment you hit max level.
I don’t understand using the word “earn” when we’re talking content that takes no effort, just time.
You don’t “earn” flying with pathfinder, you just do repetitive simple tasks over and over for days to pass a time gate in the form of a rep grind.
This isn’t raiding, or even mythic+
If they wanted to make flying something you “earn” they would gate it behind something that actually took effort and at least a modicum of skill.
As others have stated, no one cared about how flying was implemented in TBC, WOTLK, Cata, or MOP. A basic gold sink and hitting either max level or close to max level was fine for gating flying progression. Everyone is grounded upon leveling their first character, they see the zones, they enjoy the zones, and then they get flying to make endgame travel simpler and faster. For alts having to hit max level and gain the gold meant you “saw the content” again on your alts while leveling.
World PVP is a smaller part of the game then leveling alts, questing, farming for example…all things flying makes a little bit more enjoyable to do…and world pvp didn’t die out over flying, it was more a lack of interest. So this argument just doesn’t do anything for me. As far as blizzard spending time on the world, well they did, and for that I pay them, they can take my money and let me enjoy what I want to enjoy.
Screw the current Deva team, Nantucket Crunch Ice Cream is the best. Give me flying or sell me a Blizz Bot to farm for me.
Um, two weeks, more like 3-4 for me probably, after waiting going on a year with nothing to do but wait to fly.
So kinda vague argument there.
It’s the whole BFA wait nearly a year to fly and this is just the last straw in a huge pile of straws on the camels back.
Lich King gave flying at what, 77? That expansion had some of the most exciting zones to explore, a ton of wpvp, especially in icecrown, and made the world feel huge and accessible/3D. It also made it feel alive. The argument that flying ruins the game is BS. Lich king was when this game hit its peak in terms of players.
MoP was very similar. Flying at max level, I experienced a ton of wPvP and got to explore beautiful zones that felt alive. Exploring was more fun too. Soooo again idk about this argument that flying hurts WoW.
It has nothing to do with the experience, or immersion. The way of providing content at the moment is to make it annoying and do every little thing to waste players time. The plant quest where the bugs only stack to 1? There’s a daily where you pick up beatles, they stack, but this doesn’t. Fighting mobs with 1 mil health that heal every 10 secs? RIP unless you’re melee. The MO right now is to waste players time so they don’t fly through content.
Flying should never have been a grind, it should have always been gold.
If you are really so irritated by Pathfinder, why not voice your frustrations at Blizzcon during the Q&A? It’s very hard to evade questions during a live stream. Besides, do you really think they are going to call security on a person for saying: “Hey guys? This Pathfinder thing kinda sucks and we don’t want it”?
Highly unlikely. They aren’t that bad, and neither is Pathfinder.
The rep just needs a serious adjustment. 50 rep per WQ is too little. 150 is more like it.
Very few people ever want to be stuck on the ground at all.
Flying was one of their best additions to the game and the only reason Blizzard regrets putting it in is because the game is cheaper to make without it.
I would say it’s a different game. Vanilla was an absolute top tier game, and it did not have flying. The world felt incredibly huge and dangerous, and just getting to where you needed to go was part of the challenge. Flying changed all of that. Outland and WotLK are both great xpacs, but they both featured extremely sparse huge zones to make up for flying.
Flying does not feel like flying. There is no concept of lift or glide in the game. You simply act like a helicopter traveling in four degrees of freedom at 300% movement speed. Suddenly the world is not so big. Navigating is no longer part of the game.
The engine really can’t handle anything more complicated than the current variety of flying either. So at the end of the day I can’t say it’s a better game with flying. It’s simply a different game. A lot of people want Vanilla, and a lot of people want WotLK.
If you gave me the option of paying 200k gold for flying I would have taken that
If you gave me the option of no flying vs a better progression system I’d take the later
If you gave me the option of no flying vs pvp vendors I’d take the vendors
I have been playing since 11/23/2004. I recall classic well. I raided up through Naxx40 all but Saph & KT before BC came out.
We did not know what we were missing until BC added flight into the game.
Freedom of movement and speed to make travel to the content you want to do better, more efficient, and far less arbitrarily tedious and boring.
It also added a welcome addition to in game immersion. Without flight you get channeled to flight paths that play the game for you, which is incredibly boring and induces AFK and alt-tab. Or channels you to the hearthstone, or now in modern WoW the flight whistle, both of which break immersion with loading screens.
I loved classic at the time. I still have fond memories. I’ll play classic when they release it to go in for some nostalgia. And I would never want to see flight in classic, as that ought to be as genuine an experience as they can create.
But retail today without flight is a pale imitation of what the game can be. It’s lacking. And Blizzard only tried to remove it and then time gated it obnoxiously to help their own development costs while trying to sell it as some fictitious piece of immersion “helping” change, when it actively degrades the game experience not to have flight, and massively negatively impacts in game immersion.
I just logged out of the game due to the piss poor zone Nazjatar, I’ll log back on when the raid opens. I am very pro-flight but I’ve decided against Pathfinder II today, they can keep their temper tantrum grind.
guess you never been to that one Blizz-con where red shirt guy got banned because he asked a question that WASNT pre screened and approved by the Q&A staff
Blizzard always cherry picks the questions they want to answer BEFORE every Q&A in order to avoid topics they don’t wish to discuss
I did not know that happened, but you know what? That doesn’t surprise me either. Good to know, I will be factoring that knowledge into future purchases as well since I count Red Shirt Guy as a good chap. That is of course assuming that actually did happen. Will have to research it.
They should scrap War Mode & implement Fly Mode. It’s either on or off & flying ensues, after the typical grind requirement, in each new zone after the related raid tier opens.
oh yes theres a novel idea leave and then when enough people do just that Blizzard will no longer see WoW as financially producing and just shutter the entire game is that what you really want to see the game crash and burn? or would you prefer that players keep voicing their opinions and pushing for better content and changes to improve the fun instead of the same kind of tedious repetitive boring rehash every new expansion?
That’s why whether you are pro or against flying, it’s important that we all band together to tell Blizzard that Pathfinder is not a good enough solution.
Either let us fly or take flying out of the game entirely. Solve the issue once and for all.