IMO, i think its because the speed breaks the game in the old world.
Lesson time, if you recall back during the start of DF, you ever get cruising on your dragon then hit a rock or something and you get DCed? Then you cant even log onto that character until you log onto another?
Well that was blizzards anti cheat system kicking in, basically the system checks to see if you are in a spot that normally you cant get to, or got to that location in the game to fast. IE You are at pos x,y,z and now at pos A,B,C but the time from xyz to ABC was not possible by normal in game ways, and in a location that is clipped through objects blizzards system assumed you were using a speed/wall hack and auto kicks you.
Blizzard EVENTUALLY got this fixed in DF, however i think this problem is much worse in old world content, and the cost to fix all of it by 10.2.5 would be to high, so rather then just out right say “Hey are stuff cant handle it” They just lower the speed.
Truth be told its an absolute nothing burger, your still zipping around at 660% flight speed, which is more then double the 320 mounts so.
Honestly surprised they didn’t slow it down more than that. Even at regular Thrill of the Skies speed without hitting the boosts that’ll put it at almost 3 times faster than static flying.
“Camera mode” isn’t gameplay. That’s the equivalent of a dev tool used to check the environment during development.
Dynamic Flying is faster so it can reward people for actually doing something. It’s gameplay that keeps the player in-game, not itching to alt-tab while their character travels towards their destination.
Its only good for long distances, precise maneuvers, hopping from place to place (like gathering), afk flying, etc tbc flying has it beat, i only dragonride when i need to cross a zone quick
I just started DF so the dragon riding is still fun for me but I can see how the lack of afk travel would be annoying as we’ve had that since tbc. I’m really enjoying it atm. Maybe they need some kind of auto pilot feature.
Dragonriding is Blizzard’s attempt at turning flying into a minigame. The reward for being good at said minigame is that you can hit speeds never-before available. You could take two different people and have them Dragonride from Booty Bay to Stormwind, and have different results based on the skill of the players involved.
Static Flying, on the other hand, has no minigame element. If both players started at the exact same time and location, they will arrive at Stormwind from Booty Bay at the exact same time, assuming they are flying high enough to not hit any mountains or trees.
That said, if you were to equalize their speeds, the majority of players will choose the path of least resistance. The minigame may be fun, but if you can get the exact same results by hitting auto-run and making sandwich as you would learning Dragonriding, why wouldn’t you hit auto-run?
You’d have gutted the entire point of Dragonriding and made it into an objective hinderance instead of a minigame with a reward.
If you want to argue that you could tell by equalizing the max glide speed to that of Static Flying, that would be a better argument, as it doesn’t negate the entire point of the feature.
None of those are even remotely “large” zones. They are still miniscule, even if I don’t know where the Barrons is located exactly. You can read more about it here:
You are required to use portals to travel between continents as they exist in their own file. None of the continents are located on a single world map. If you travel in one direction far enough you’ll either hit a wall or they added enough world for you to fatigue before you managed to hit the wall.
This is spot on! Blizzard’s goal wasn’t just to make a “better mount”, but to make a more engaging travel system. Personally, I think it worked. Animation brings the world to life, and Dragonriding does an especially good job of conveying high speeds as a reward for the player’s interaction, from air resistance to momentum-based flight, to motion streak HUD effects and adaptive FOV. If you equalize the speed, all of that just comes off as over-animated and misleading.
If we want to go strictly utilitarian with game design, you could run that back almost infinitely to the point where static flight is also pretty redundant for adding anything more than a flat speed boost to your character. Personally, I hope they add something similar for ground travel. I like when video game mounts feel alive and responsive – it’s why GW2’s mounts are so widely loved. You feel like you’re actually steering an animal, and they each serve unique purposes that interact with the world in different ways.
God no. Keep them separate. I never want to use static flight again. It’s fine how it is. Let people use whatever they want, do not make it so I have to use the form of flying I don’t enjoy.
Sorry, that was poorly worded on my part. I really just meant I’d like a mid-air toggle to transition between the two, and for them to be released side-by-side at the opening of the expansion rather than gating static flight behind leveling. Personally, I’m much more into dynamic flight myself, but static is really useful for navigating smaller areas and finessing onto certain obnoxious branches hiding treasure (Emerald Dream is a serious offender here).
