I really hope this process is streamlined in Dragonflight. Flying should be a tool to help accomplish questing, not locked behind a mountain of content that, once accomplished, renders it useless.
The volume of requirements for Kul Tiran flying is so absurd, I’ll probably never even attempt to complete them. Shadowlands flying is not quite so ridiculous, but I’ve been working on it for more than a month, off and on, and I still don’t have it. This is from somebody who plays 6-8 hours at a time. I haven’t even been doing side quests. It feels never ending. How do casual players ever achieve it? I can’t even bring myself to look up ZM flying. I’m just so sick of it.
I really hope the devs rethink this before the new expansion comes out. I miss the days when flying was a reward for leveling and not harder than raiding.
I’m a huge proponent of flying, but Shadowlands is the least grinding version of Pathfinder so far. It’s tied to doing the campaign, so as long as you’re working on that, it will unlock fairly quickly and without the reputation locks of previous expansions.
ZM flight isn’t too hard either, but does require finishing the main campaign and tracking down the initial rares which can be a bit annoying when they get burned down too quickly. I will grudgingly accept the fact the Devs require completing this stuff once while grounded, but absolutely enjoy skipping as much as possible on the alts.
I personally do not mind flying restrictions the first run through quests. I really don’t. When I am doing quests FOR THE FIRST TIME, at the beginning of an expansion, I really immerse myself in WoW and take my time, do sight seeing, smell the roses, and I enjoy doing this from a birds eye view. I am never, EVER in a rush to hit level cap at the beginning of an expansion.
However! Once I’ve done what I feel I wanted to do, I really hate going through a second time without maximum efficiency. My alts or secondary toons, I DO want to get to level cap ASAP.
I hate that for new players (which I am not) they cannot just outright buy the flying ability with gold for older content, even new older content like BFA. Restrictions on legacy content is lame to me. It’s in the past. Let us choose how fast we go through it.
(For the record, I don’t care if I have to spend gold to unlock flying or do achievements aka Pathfinder, I just like being able to fly, periodt)
In BC you actually had to save enough gold to buy a form of flying that actually got you anywhere quickly. Most people didn’t afford the 5kg purchase and were mostly locked to the ground as epic ground was faster than flying.
WOTLK was the only exception (a good expansion with flying unlocked early), but WOTLK also had one of the worst open-world experiences of any “good” point in the game’s history which sort of makes the point for me - flying trivializing open world content didn’t happen in WOTLK because WOTLK didn’t really have open-world content. WOTLK survived off the back of heroic badge farming, Ulduar, and the Lich King hype. If you released WOTLK today as a retail expansion it would bomb incredibly hard.
Especially when they did the level squish, they should absolutely lower the requirements for Pathfinder. The one for WoD especially was punitively harsh and stupid mainly because Blizz was mad at the player backlash when they tried removing flight.
Hmm
How can I make the players think I’m adding things and listening to feedback when in actuality I’ve added nothing and created the problem myself
Oh! I know, how about I say something is a problem when it isn’t and make the players turn against each other just like the government does in real life
Now what feature should I target?
The trouble I have with it is mostly that they don’t have the stuff to unlock flying in the game from the jump anymore. I really don’t want to have to wait 4 months for the devs to decide to put the achievement in. You want me to experience the content the way you want it done the first time? I can live with it the first time, but doing my callings 3 months later I’m a bit less friendly to the idea of being forced to do it inefficiently.
I don’t like the waiting period either, especially when they are long. I have no perception of time but I feel like in SL we went without flying for a long time. I immediately began enjoying SL more when I could fly. Same with BFA!
That was my personal opinion, they are doing what you say, I think there is a lot of potential in the flight system that they want to implement in DF, if it is good enough it could in the future replace the current flight system (of course this would require that the operation and animation of the old mounts is updated). I would like to be optimistic about it, but being Blizzard Blizzard, and the community as toxic as it is, I find it difficult.
I will say I would be ok with ground only if Blizzard would stop making the stupid map designs they have since WoD! I dont want mountains with only one path or hidden caves to find a way into for quests… I am not running a maze.
I think that being ground-bound to start an expansion is great; the artwork and all the things that go with it are worth seeing and appreciating.
I don’t want to sound too elitist but problems getting flying is a surprise to read. It feels like it is a 1,2,3 got it kind of thing.
Now; zones designed for flying like up in the snows of Northrend are very neat-o and I like them. Our dragonflight ablility should take us to places that are not ground-bound nor could be reached with regular flying (?). Lots of reasons to be excited about future flying. I’m sorry that past flying is a hassle to you.
go play classic wow. Also they tried it in WoD, HUGE unsubs right away. They instantly retracted with pathfinder. They also aimed to make a train how you would get around in WoD but that was abandoned after the backlash.
Can’t wait to do non stop swirls and swoops just to get from 1 WQ to another
I honestly don’t mind doing quests and stuff to earn flying (especially if I can do it on just one character and then all the others can fly automatically). What I mind is when it’s time-gated. Just let me do the things at my own pace, fast or slow, my choice.
That’s what FFXIV does and while blizz is taking ideas from FFXIV - namely the profession system for DF - they should look at that too. Every zone in FFXIV has flying unlocked individually after you do a bunch of main quests in there which(with cutscenes), takes 1-2 hours MAX and all accessible from launch as well as collect some wind orbs around the zone and a compass to guide you. They 100% did flying WAY better then blizz has post-wod. You still get to “see the art” in the zone for a while then your free to fly.
