Fair enough. I would literally kill all the gnomes to have zones like Storm Peaks and Icecrown again, where they were designed with flying in mind.
I disagree
the need for it, to me, has nothing to do with the content you have to go through to get it
to me, the best part of flying is that the achieve is account wide, once I unlock flying on my main, I have it on my alts and I can level faster because I can travel around through my quests faster
1 Like
See you didnt go far enough. You would argue that it’s made certain aspects of the game more convenient, and convenient isn’t always better…AND? Where are the specifics? How is more convenient not better? Make your audience believe you by actually stating those areas of the game that would be worse off with more convenience. No one can support or believe in an argument that isn’t supported with details. Support your argument with those details. Maybe some of us will buy into the argument. Otherwise you argument lacks any real legs and just kind of withers on the vine.
2 Likes
You are woefully incorrect. If your argument were true then they would have to explain to the shareholders why flying was being removed and what impact that could potentially have to the bottom line. Getting caught lying on a 10-K or 10-Q form or to the shareholders during a quarterly earnings call or annual stockholder meeting can get you fined quite a lot by the SEC and if found that you broke your fiduciary duty in the process can get CEO’s sent to jail for lengthy prison sentences. Of course lots of people have forgotten Jeffrey Skilling.
2 Likes
LOL! Cause they dont listen to forum goers? This a joke?
This place breeds hate. Its people who cry to accomidate there way of playing the game. Yes there is people who can provide constructive feedback, but 90 pct of these threads are the same people spamming.
I dont believe you manage clients prof, and if you do its on a extremely small scale. These guys have to take into account MILLIONS, not a dozen or less. Big diffrence, especially since what, maybe 3? 4 pct of the pop actually come to the forums? And with that, its usually split down the middle, so even a smaller pct are preaching.
Flying in TBC was their main selling point but they did this crazy thing where they actually designed content around it.
Wrath’s announcement they mentioned flying being something that was going to be limited which they later backed up on and it wasn’t as hated because it clearly had a place with some areas requiring flight to access.
Cataclysm they designed the world around flying but it stopped there. Notice how once they quit building content around flight and it basically was “It’s like riding your ground mount, but you see no danger and don’t have to actually navigate the terrain and it’s twice as fast!” then the problems became glaring.
If flying ever goes back to something like it was in TBC then it wouldn’t be an issue. Except they’ve chosen to design the game from the ground because the biggest gripe with the games when flying came to be were: “There felt like less people in the world” and “It completely destroyed what little was left of world pvp after they shifted the focus to bgs and arena.” Even that net thing you have now requires you to cast it before they fly over you to get the cast off otherwise they outrange it pretty easily.
Perhaps the flying community would accomplish more by asking for flight specific content like the Netherwing Ledge or Skettis again instead of just screaming that they can’t zoom through the questing experience of an expansion in three hours and they have to actually quest for six hours instead.
Side note:
I love how people are now pretending like Preach is the be all, end all stance on WoW as if these very forums didn’t froth at the mouth when he said other things like: “The LFR has been bad for the game.” (The Problem is in the Mists video) or when he talks about how Classic WoW he finds more appealing than retail and closer to the game he fell in love with playing.
Disregard those, but he said this one thing we like so he’s okay now. Holy cherrypicking.
Both of these were 100% wrong. I easily see far more people in the world flying and I was on a PvP server this entire time. World PvP died the moment they added Bgs. After that wPvP was almost entirely just ganking.
5 Likes
world pvp was almost entirely ganking before the honor system as well
there was a small window between the honor system and BGs where world pvp flourished
up until WQs started to bring it back, incentivizing players to mass in the same areas in the open world brought back a lot of world pvp
in fact, in BfA with the assassin buffs and pop up pvp quests I’ve engaged in far more frequent, and far more fun world pvp skirmishes than ever before, including vanilla
1 Like
I remember groups camping cities for a long time before BGs. Once dishonorable kills were added that instantly stopped and it was just the BGs. Of course I played on an Alliance dominated PvP server (which most were) so maybe I saw the other side of it more.
Yet in tbc they built content around world pvp for the first few zones. A good example of two instances of this damaged hardcore by flying were the Hellfire and Terokkar ones. Terokkar it was worse because spirit tower control was for 6 hours and a massive buff while leveling. People with flying mounts would just zip to the next tower and for a while you could land on top of it and still cap it. It really ruined the fun of it.
can you guys keep this spam to one consolidated thread? thanks.
Preach?? The guy who got banned for advertising an Exploit?
Nobody cares what he says bub 
If only the folks who continuously spam the Lfr, classic vs retail, vice versa, or divorce the player above you threads could control themselves, and do the same lol. Ya if only lol.
- Introduce fatigue the higher you fly (similar to swimming out of bounds)
- introduce mobs that can net/dismount/grip or have very very heavy Air based attacks (like in mechagon).
- Engaging gameplay.
I don’t know that they had a choice at that point. The Cataclysm was going to take place in new zones embedded into old vanilla zones. The developers at that time were not the crew that developed WoD Legion and BFA. Have to remember that prior to July 25th 2013 Blizzard was still separated from Activision by Vivendi. Blizzard had much more autonomy under Vivendi (even though that financial relationship was trash again imho) and they didn’t have green grocers and accountants micromanaging the development guys. Cataclysm launched Dec 7th 2010. So the developers for Cata were still looking to make great games as a first principle rather than making great profits as a first principle. Honestly I doubt seriously if the crew of developers then had even had the thought cross their mind about removing flight.
Oh boy. Lot of inaccuracies here but I am going to gloss over them in favor of concentrating on the last point. The developers NEVER expected ANYONE to get Pathfinder in Warlords of Draenor:
- May 22nd 2015 at 4:30pm Pacific Time Polygon published an 8 paragraph article on Tanaan Jungle that just so happened to include Ion Hazzikostas telling the interviewer that there would be NO flight in Warlords of Draenor or any future expansions. Then 17 days later on June 10th they backtracked on flying coming up with an off the cuff plan to actually introduce flying to WoD after the forums blew up and subscription cancellations shifted in to triple overdrive and someone pointed out that the advertising done to entice pre-orders of WoD would in fact have flying in Warlords of Draenor. They weren’t “still figuring it out” They fully expected from the beginning to not have to implement flying in Warlords of Draenor at all nor in any other expansion. They were trying to stuff the Djinn back in the bottle. They failed.
As for the rest you are not right in all the details but you are close enough for government work in my opinion. Sad to say it but my pragmatic streak says you are not very far off the beam as far as predictions about motivations are concerned.
2 Likes
TBC flying was cool cause getting it meant unlocking additional elementals to farm
You know what? You’re absolutely right. How silly I was to think that the higher-ups had any control over what the Devs do. I mean come on, it’s not like a company can control what it’s employees do (or, daresay, tell them what to do), right? I can’t believe I was so naïve. Thank you for showing me the light, Narcissia!
On a more serious note, if you can actually provide some proof on the need for the removal of flying to be explained during a shareholder meeting I’d be more than happy to concede the point. However, following that logic it would mean that every skill removal or nerf or buff would need to be recounted and explained during these meetings which (at least to me) would seem to make the meetings needlessly tedious.
I believe the shareholders don’t care what is added or removed from the game. They care about how the company is doing financially. Most people don’t invest into a company because they’re fans; they invest because they believe it will make them money. Explaining gameplay changes from just one of multiple IPs is entirely unnecessary.
Edit to add (just in case it isn’t obvious):
Ofc Kotick and Morheime (most likely) weren’t involved in the decision to remove flying. I would imagine the CEO of a giant company with multiple IPs doesn’t micro-manage and make decisions about gameplay throughout the IPs. That’s what Ion is for (in WoW). And I think it’s fairly obvious that Ion would be considered “upper-management”.
Nobody did those because they did not give rewards. Nobody cared about spirit tower control except for doing the daily to get badges (which was always a fairly small group). What killed Hellfire were also when people hit max level and one or two max level camped the leveling people who tried to get the towers. Max level people didn’t care about a hellfire buff…
Heck I remember how long it took me to do the zangermarsh PvP quest because nobody was doing those and it awarded a pre-raid bis hunter trinket. At the end of the day what stopped these from succeeding was that the rewards for BG and Arena were far better then them and it turns out most people PvP for rewards and not for insignificant zone buffs.
2 Likes
Proof? How about this: Upper management has a fiduciary duty to its shareholders to provide them with reasonably accurate projections based on known or knowable circumstances for the next quarter. If Upper management gets involved in the day to day details (flying is a day to day detail) then they have knowledge of it and by law must REPORT that on red herrings, on 10-K on 10-Q and during earnings calls as part of opening remarks. Much easier for them to pass the buck to their employees (the development team) and have them work the details rather than the executive committee having to pass on information that might potentially tank the stock if they have to report it. If the Executive Committee can plausibly deny knowledge of the details then they do NOT have to report it.
Only if the Executive Committee members have detailed knowledge of it sufficient to make that change to the product reportable.
And this is where you would be wrong again. Ion is NOT upper management in the sense being used in my post or your post that I replied to. Upper Management means Executive Level. Ion is not an executive level employee. He is not responsible in a fiduciary manner to shareholders (unless he is also a board member which I do not believe that he is) he is a Director level. As such when the Business Owners and the Executive Members say we need to cut costs by X or increase revenues by Y to meet our projections Ion says on it boss and sets in motion a tactical plan to make that happen. Sometimes it works. In the case of Flying it did not.
Perhaps Ion is not upper management in the context of your post, but he most certainly is in the context of my post. This is a WoW forum, discussing WoW-related game mechanics. I even explicitly noted in my response to you (right above the third portion you quoted) that the CEO (and by extension, other executive management) was obviously not involved with the removal of flying. I also stated that it’s improbable that executives would micro-manage gameplay across multiple IPs.
I would also say that it’s fair to assume upper management in the context of the OP is not referencing executive-level management, again considering we are explicitly speaking of a mechanic unique to WoW. Therefore, your argument is outside the scope of this discussion.