No they did not it was not until after launch via a 3rd party web site that people found out Blizz was planning to take out flying completely.
Warlords came out November 2014 the news about no flying came out May 2015.
I was there I remember the uproar .
The first wave of sub drops during WoD was because of that and that is what forced them to come up with Pathfinder.
Edit : BRF opened Feb. 2015 . 3 months before the No flying was back door announced.
D&D and WoW have very few similarities. I barely call that a comparison besides the fact they both are generally considered RPG / RP
I have nothing to add to that. I never played EQ and my knowledge is very limited.
Talking about lack of arguement… 
Yes, that’s why the entire expansion of BFA was dedicated to the idea of a poor mans sub race which is purely cosmetic (besides racials) which probably made Blizzard bank on Race changes. Which is saying something because of how the overall expansion was a 
show.
But no, players don’t care about cosmetics. (sarcasm)
I agree in terms of quest dialogue though.
Players are trying to play the game their way. Didn’t know that was a bad thing now?
You did, by comparing the sub drops post-Cata for the reason why this system exists.
They reported 7 million or so subs in q1…
In BfA we sure didn’t, no meaningful tier sets for transmogs just Goodwill BArgain Rack gear items.
I mean your not wrong, but there’s something to be said about Allied Races. 
Which besides their racials are cosmetic in nature.
And after q2 and the announcement of no flying it dropped down to 5.6 mil and they stopped reporting subs after that.
There is always going to be an initial jump in subs when an expansion is launched. The full 11 mil that were subscribed at the time probably didn’t all play at launch so lets say 9.5-10 mil show up for launch in November . Holidays come let’s say .5 get busy around that time and don’t make it back . New year comes (q1) 9-9.5 still playing the quarter ends and it’s down to 7 mil could be various reasons . No flying isn’t one yet because no one knows yet and raid or die really hasn’t hit yet .
So you don’t have an answer.
I’m on board with them untying the skills from the transmog, and have been consistently so yeah.
I had a ST spec that avoided Wrecking Crew and Bladestorm, and went deep into the Fury tree for Deathwish as an extra DPS cooldown.
I had an AoE spec that did get bladestorm and prioritized things like Cleave modifiers.
Arms spec in either case, but mathematically superior to the “cookie cutter” arms spec in both situations. It just required me to use both of my dual specs for arms, instead of a spec for prot or fury.
OK but the massive drop off in subs happened with Cata and MoP beforehand and those did have endgame flying. So flying exacerbated the severity but isn’t sufficient to explain the post Cata sub / drop pattern that happened after each expansion.
This is true.
Oof, people don’t really like rep grinding, and people don’t really like character power tied to rep grinding, as they found out in MoP.
I actually agree with a comment on one of Preach’s videos that says that the covenant abilities should just be replacements / augments for existing abilities that make your core rotation play a bit differently. Would be much more fun.
In Wrath you could have the same spec in two different talent trees. Swap AoE for adds, ST for bosses.
Yeah but that’s begging the question. The categories aren’t arbitrary, and you know that. I’ve already explained it like 3 times, and at this point you’re either incapable of reading or intent on wasting my time.
Argument, genius. And yes, Blizzard has explained their definition of meaningful, in public, several times. This is just a fact about whether X said Y, not a set of premises justifying a conclusion. Try to keep up.
Can someone translate this? Is he really saying the ENTIRE expansion of BFA was just about allied races? I don’t want to be uncharitable, so someone should help clarify.
Who says they can’t now? This talking point has no substance.
Show me where I said LFR was the cause and not a predicted / correlated symptom with raid design. I’ll wait, probably a long time.
Aren’t we worried about a looming faction imbalance due to racials? Seems like racials are a pretty big deal.
Reasons which happened AFTER Cata but not in TBC or Wrath, given neither expansion had this problem. What did the devs drastically change from Wrath to Cata to explain the change? Only massive systematic thing on the table started with GC’s “Wow! Dungeons are hard!” blog into the first raid tiers of Cata.
These “other reasons” are starting to look like a post hoc “reasons of the gaps” argument.
You, this system, you seem keen on defending. Yet you keep saying it’s a waste of your time and keep bringing up things that barely have anything due with this. 
The limitation and the need for the 48 Class specific covenant abilties to be balanced, barely allows a player to switch specs without having the worry that the covenant they chose and the new ability they have, might just be there. No point, no use, just there tied to your Covenant for no reason and all you did was switch specs.
Forcing them either to go through whatever timegated hell Blizzard is setting up to switch or play their former spec, with a in-optimal to useless covenant ability.
Sounds like fun! (sarcasm)
Blizzard has also stated in the past they don’t think talents that are % increases are interesting, yet we had the Artifact system, the Azerite system and the corruption system.
Blizzard has also stated that the Alliance wouldn’t be getting blue eyed Void elves and that they are for NPC’s only, yet they are in the game avaliable to players.
Blizzard has also stated that, there is no ripcord. But if that was translated into what a ripcord actually is, that means whoever is wearing that parachute would go splat. Which in this comparison the parachute is Shadowlands.
Blizzard has also stated that, they listen to their playerbase but yet they are keen on making the same mistake that have had made in Legion & BFA, again in Shadowlands. When the players have repeatedly told them, this doesn’t work yet all three systems it seems, will have made it to the live game.
Don’t think their explanations, really count for much.
“And at this point your either incapable of reading or intent on wasting my time.” 
Have a nice day. 
CAN I GET A #PULLTHERIPCORD IN CHAT, YO. LET ME HEAR IT. cranks up the rave music
People don’t mind rep grinding when it isn’t time gated and can do at their own pace.
Rep grinding for mounts or cool gear people like . Repgrinding a race to play that race or being able to use that cool flying mount you got from another races rep is not.
This form would be more organic in the sense of you are being sent by your chosen covenant to do wqs to build up your renown . While you are doing those missions for your renown you are also earning rep for the forces in the zone you are helping.
Think of it like doing the Legion Kirin Tor Emissaries and not having to turn in to get the rep token .
They killed off probably the biggest villian from the rts games in Wrath .
BC we see Archimonde defeated . Kil’jaeden is prevented from coming through . So legion is kind of out of the picture .
Cata we had Deathwing who in the past did more manipulation then actual damage and had been gone for awhile . So anyone that came in say Wrath didn’t really know about him at first.
So in laymans terms they kind of wrapped up the WC3 F.T. lore and the people that only cared about that left.
Why doesn’t the forum have a strobe light feature?
Probably because people would get seizures.
They had to flip soul binds to make it work in the last build, but honestly it isn’t working. I wouldn’t be sad if they prune or completely remove soul binds.
Legendaries, conduits, covenants and trinkets are more than enough borrowed power along with gear.
Soul binds and sanctum upgrades don’t really move the needle in terms of fun factor.
This is because who wants to visit multiple tables per log in session.
Complete flip of a system that has been getting tested for months. Sounds reasonable when expansion was supposed to be out in less than a week.
Blizzard just pull the ripcord, this ain’t gonna work.
We said ripcord , they thought we said tripcord so they went ahead and started tripping over it
*do with this
No, you’re going to have to argue for that claim. How does making it so you can’t change your loadouts every 10 seconds imply the player has no choice in picking them “at all”? I’ll wait.
They don’t need to be balanced. If they do need to be balanced, we can always ask the question “for what exactly?” And there’s no rule that says they have to be balanced around the same content.
Fun is subjective. Again this is just incredulity.
Yeah, guess that tells you they changed their mind. What does a statement Blizzard made years ago to justify a change in talents, that it looks like they’re in the process of trying to walk back have to do with statements made in the present to justify an upcoming expansion?
Your point?
I think you’re confused (even more than your usual state of confusion, which is shocking). I’m not claiming that Blizzard won’t pull the ripcord just because they said they wouldn’t. I’m claiming that Blizzard said that sources of player power are more interesting / meaningful to players than mere aesthetic choices.
What you’re talking about is a statement of intent, what I’m talking about is Blizzard’s take on player data. Do I have to explain the is/ought gap to you like you’re 5? It would be a waste of my time to do it, but someone ought to sit you down and discuss this with you in the future.
I don’t get it, do you think taking 3 snips out of context justifies something? Here let me help you get started.
Premise 1: Out of context snips
Premise 2: … ?
Conclusion: … ?
I’ll wait.
But that doesn’t explain why subscriptions were at least as large as they were at the end of Wrath, at the beginning of Cata. If this were right, you’d expect people to quit playing as they beat Arthas, not several weeks after the launch of Cataclysm once people started hitting 5 man’s.
It also doesn’t explain why Blizzard emergency nerfed dungeons, and why Firelands was bloodied with the nerf hammer if the people were quitting because they killed the last expansion’s villain. Again, any reasoning you provide for this must explain the whole context of Cata and declining subs or it lacks explanatory power.
Everyone gets excited over a new expansion at least they did in the past .
Another thing that happened was a lot of people were not happy with the changes to the old vanilla zones. There are people asking for pre cata vanilla zones for Chromie time.
I also said people that only cared about that lore
But you said that some talents were dead because there was no rush to balance them, since we can easily swap to good talents.
Why would swappable covenants be any different? =(
Keep waiting because this conversation is pointless.
^ Cause you said this to Yogsothoth and yet we’re debating against each other. When we both want the same thing.
Either your playing a poor game of Devil’s advocate or trolling. Don’t matter to me either away.
#PullTheRipcord