Just my little ole opinion. I don’t like pathfinder overall. But in saying that probably would not mind it so much, if it was implemented better. Remove the rep gate, and make the zones lore achievements, and exploration of the zones on foot the achievement, and be done with it. Because outside of maybe a couple of factions from wod up through Legion did the factions you needed rep with actually make some sort of sense. Arokoa bird people in Wod ok. What are without sky they would constantly say. Legion? Lesan Skyhorn, and his war eagles. They flew you to the legion ships. Those two factions are the only two imo that made some sort of sense to have the rep needed tied to pathfinder. BFA imo didn’t really have one. Hell two of those factions were more a sea naval type based factions lol. If you need rep to go on a cruise then cool, but for flight? Lol at these devs. Because it’s not the players being lazy, because they don’t like grinding rep with irrelevant factions that have nothing to do with flight. It is the devs that are lazy by not incorporating flight, or making flight useful to have like they used to, and having lore, or story reasons as to why you can fly on most of pixel world but cant until you reach revered with irrelevant faction number whatever. What is most hilarious is nobody ever questions them about that.
Is it just me or is BfA pathfinder harder to complete than the one we needed to do for legion?
BfA pathfinder part 2 requires 2 revered reputations where as we only needed Armies of legionfall for broken isles pathfinder part 2. I get a feeling this is only going to get worse in shadowlands.
… and they ate their words when they said that before.
well then perhaps Blizzard should start gimping people paying for mythic runs since according to you that’s just another means of using gold to circumvent the content when they pay “professional” mythic guilds to do the heavy lifting for them
www.polygon. com/platform/amp/2015/5/22/8645293/world-of-warcraft-no-flying-tanaan-jungle-warlords-of-draenor-mmo-pc-blizzard
From item four of the interviewe:
“The world feels larger, feels more dangerous,” he says. “There’s more room for exploration, for secrets, for discovery and overall immersion in the world. At this point, we feel that outdoor gameplay in World of Warcraft is ultimately better without flying.”
Direct quote from Hazzikostas. You didn’t know this? This has been Blizzard’s position from the beginning.
What, did you actually think they did it just to jerk players’ chains? It was and is an objective design decision.
That article was after the whole meltdown and Blizzard was trying to save face. They were backpedaling really hard at that point, without sounding like they were at fault for the disaster.
It’s something that is done to every generation… just miserable old people being miserable old people.
No, in this interview he says flying is out and probably isn’t coming back. It was before some of the players went full temper tantrum and Blizzard compromised with Pathfinder.
The designers still feel that what Ion said in that quote is true. It’s why they wait so long to allow flying, to keep players at eye level as long as possible to try and keep the sense of scale and immersion that comes with a zone designed around the ground level experience.
I do absolutely agree with this. However I’m not sure I’d agree that it is a counter argument to pathfinder. It was awesome in BC that there were areas of the world you just couldn’t see until you could fly. It was exciting, and gave those areas a sense of prestige. And it would be cool to have that again.
However there was still a grind for most people to get flying back in BC. Most people did not have the kind of gold they have now (or were a druid) and saving for it could take quite a bit of time. So for many there was a time when parts of the world were simply unavailable to them. You couldn’t have that now if it was just a gold requirement to unlock flying. People are too wealthy. They’d unlock it as soon as they cap, and be straight to the “exclusive” areas. So ultimately there’d be nothing special about them. They’d still want to have some process in people unlocking flying. And that would be pathfinder.
Who’s Preach and why do I give a damn about him?
Good post.
Those expansions were the best for a reason. Let me add that having content designed for flying is very satisfying IMO.
I absolutely agree about making expansion content built with flying in mind. They lose so much potential fighting it. Create something like in the movie avatar (sort of like how Nagrand could have been) and utilize those floating areas for quest etc. (granted that’s off the top of my head but you get the idea).
While true, I think this shows a disconnect and misunderstanding on the dev’s part about what they have and where they are versus where they want to go.
I think they want to appeal to new players, to find new sources of income, but they don’t understand that many of their long-term fans don’t care about the flashy new thing. They keep alienating their older players, resulting in more people leaving even temporarily, while I wonder if their new customers make up the difference.
Blizzard would probably do better developing entire new games within the Warcraft and Diablo franchises to market to the newer generation instead of trying to turn something old into something new.
Actually, I believe that was the article where they made the no flying announcement, after months of stringing us along about when we could fly.
it was the article about why there is no flying in tanaan jungle, written about half way through WoD, when we already had pathfinder, or it at least had been announced, I can’t remember the sequence of events
ion said he thinks the game is better without flying, he said he thinks no flight increases immersion
so yes, while he may have said flying decreases immersion, its still just his opinion, neither blizzard, nor ion, get to dictate to me what makes me feel more or less immersed in a game (which was avehris point that I was arguing against)
from day 1 that I stepped into this game (maybe day 3, I dunno, however long it took me to get to my first FP as a baby NE in teldrasil back in beta) being able to use a flight path (ie riding around on gryphons, bats, wyverns, etc) but not being able to control it myself, puts on the table something that would make me feel like im more a part of the game world, the ability to control the flight myself
im not saying I was asking for flight from day 1, or that I thought we would actually get it, it was more the feeling of “wouldn’t it be cool if I could control this myself” … which, is immersion
String of events:
-Blizzard said flying would come out in 6.1.
-Blizzard then said it would be a mid patch of 6.1
-Blues repeatedly say flying is coming
-Online magazine leaks an article weeks early stating that there would be no flying in WoD at all
-Blues ignore article questions and continue to state flying is coming
-EU Blue states what the article states that they have decided that there would be no flying
-EU post vanished and Blues start mass banning of anyone that brings it up while stating that flying is coming
-Blizzard releases statement that there would be no flying
-Blue continue mass bans of people that even mention flying
At this point the Devs get on the forums and online articles and basically say “we know whats fun more than the players and its only going to be our way”
-Mass hemorrhage of subs starts, 8 million lost in 6 months
-Blizzard stops posting their sub numbers and revenue numbers
Finally they get off their high horse and announce flying to be added
-the exodus slows to a crawl
That’s intellectually dishonest at best.
There was no legitimate opportunity to prove how playing on the ground was objectively better because the people playing the game were subjectively livid that they couldn’t fly anymore at max level. Nothing Blizzard could have said or done to WoD would have gotten people out of that angry headspace.
And of course, it was Blizzard’s own fault for putting themselves and the players in that predicament.
Blizzard could have, at the time, apologized for misleading by mistake or on purpose for telling us flying was in the xpac and then when it went live they said it would not be included. Being honest would have been important back then. It is too late to undo the distrust and lack of honesty blizzard has shown.
The outrage was the lie and bait and switch.
It is also frustrating and easy to see though the made up excuses used now for ground only - see the art work, world pvp and slow down the content.
Pathfinder is simply a spite mechanic at this point.
Blizzard is 100% at fault for this and they are refusing to dialog with their customer base on this.
Every interview they have are soft-ball interviews and never with actual players, just people that want to make sure they have future access to news so they never challenge Blizzard on failed systems.
Not for the first 6 months of the expansion they weren’t. People weren’t livid until after the article came out.
You know, Blizz deletes posts about flying. They don’t like when you talk about flying. Or when I talk about flying. Etc., etc.
#flying