A shield to fend off any potential criticism/counterargument that could be leveled against them.
“Oh, you don’t want regular flying. You must want to inflict pain on physically disabled people!”
Case in point: Your comment above.
Yeah, man, because people definitely aren’t compulsive liars on the internet and don’t greatly exaggerate the problems they may have with the game.
Maybe dynamic flying is an issue for them. Again, it’s not any harder than anything else in the game, which is where this issue lies for me. If you don’t have any issue playing the rest of the game, then I don’t see what it is about dynamic flying that would be exponentially harder for you to do.
And to be honest, I don’t think the answer should be regular flying. I think the answer, if we’re discussing accessibility, is to have a robust menu option that enables people to tailor dynamic flying to compensate for their physical ailments. Regular flying should be an option simply because it has always existed and should continue to exist. It shouldn’t be the “accessibility” option here.
I acknowledge that some have issues with it and not the rest of the game. Source: me and my neurological disorders and Rheumatoid Arthritis. It took me all of beta and most of season 1 to finally learn how to dragonride. But I had other methods of getting around if needs be, just like people will have until they unlock normal flight one week or so into War Within: flightpaths, passenger mode and ground mounts.
And I agree: I’m not an excuse anyone should be using for anything. Nor should the amount of ridiculous drama that one is causing be acknowledged further, imo.
I think most people who prefer standard flight would say that the requirements in TWW for it aren’t onerous, they are certainly far better than most previous Pathfinder requirements.
The issue for most of us is: why do we have to do it at all?
Why make one form of flight immediately available and the other form not immediately available? If you get my drift.
I can’t recall anyone at Blizzard ever answering that question, and I’d love to hear a response from them. Because nothing I can think of justifies it.
As someone that has psoriatic arthritis (similar to rheumatoid arthritis) I find the older version of flight much more manageable than I do utilizing Skyriding.
I’m guessing their reasoning for locking old-school flying behind achievements is so that a first time experience through the expansion is done in an organic vision that they want and see for their customers.
I can understand and respect that, but having to utilize faster flight to maneuver in tight areas for questing and resource gathering doesn’t make it more fun or exciting for me, it makes it a more tedious, cumbersome and unenjoyable experience for me.
It’s okay if others disagree with my take on this, but I feel it’s an unnecessary roadblock that won’t really change people’s experience of the world. Most people will still use Skyriding for shooting down through the planet or vast distances where slow riding wouldn’t make any sense.
I will power through it to unlock it as fast as I can as I loathe Dragonriding (Skyriding) when I’m sticking around a small area questing or resource gathering, it’s not fun, it’s tedious for me.
So no my focus will be on unlocking this as fast as I can so I can play the game enjoyably like I should be able to do day one.
You’re oddly selective in the context of that comment, considering the posts surrounding it. But what else would you call it? There are posters in these threads who make it quite clear they don’t want an even playing field for the start of TWW. The reasons they give range anywhere from “muh bots” (which don’t need flying) to “muh immersion” (in which case they should advocate for no flight at all), and even to “muh skills” (because basic transportation in a video game is the true endgame flex).
One side of this argument wants accessibility from the start, to fly the same as everyone else. While I agree they need to make the new flying friendlier, it isn’t there yet. TBC is all we have if we can’t tolerate the new mode.
The other side wants to gatekeep just that one mode of flight, because reasons. It just happens to be the one Blizzard recognizes as an accessibility tool.
Should I have used a witty emote instead?
To what end? Having both methods of flying available at the same time?
Unless people are outright stating they hate disabled people and don’t want them to have fun, then inserting your own interpretations onto what they say is just that: An interpretation. It’s a bad faith argument and one that’s designed to spin the conversation into something else entirely, because the person making the point is now forced to defend themselves from an opinion they may have never even held to start. It’s much easier to state “you’re just ableist” because painting someone in that light discredits their perspective on the matter.
Just because Blizzard recognizes it as an accessibility option does not inherently make people ableist for being opposed to its addition to the game. You and I may disagree with their reasons for why it shouldn’t be added (and believe me, I certainly do), but lobbing baseless accusations against them is actually more dishonest than anyone else in this thread.
Or maybe just to stir the pot. Is it really beyond your scope to believe that people exist on the internet to start drama and blow things out of proportion because they like instigating those sorts of things?
Why do you think people don’t have issues playing the rest of the game? In my case, I had to give up raiding with my guild as I could no longer do high intensity game activities for an extended period of time, and I didn’t want to make things difficult for my guildies. I do what I can, and standard flying makes it just that bit easier to play. I can sit on my mount and relax as I fly somewhere. It’s not truly that much to ask of the devs.
I really wonder sometimes, if they had said “ok, Gimmick flight (our new name for it) will be available at cap in TWW, after you have completed the storyline and explored all the zones” would every one taking the low road for standard flight have been ready to leap up and down and complain? Of course they would.
There was no argument attached to that to be bad faith about, though. As you said, it was my observation. Case in point, I can’t help but notice you completely ignore posts that call people asking for accessibility liars, “virtue signalers”, or people who think it’s hilarious.
Only people with “shields”. I just find it odd. Call it a quirk. I don’t even recall you in this thread before that, but it’s a big thread.
Somehow, I find people who are asking for an accessibility feature (that has always been available) to not be randomly singled out and locked behind an achievement just a little more easy to trust than people who post witty emotes or call speaking of disabilities a “shield”. Again, a quirk.
Honestly, at this point I am almost ready to say just lock both flights behind the campaign. I had been previously on the let both come from the start train, but all the whining is starting to get super annoying. So, let us skyriding people get the same treatment. Everyone gets a ground mount until we level and unlock the campaign too.
Everything is fair then. No more whining.
And to answer your question, if they had gated my preferred version of flight behind a campaign, I would have just done the campaign and thanked the stars it wasn’t over a year later like all the pathfinders had been since I started the game.
Y’know, ultimately its probably not a bad idea. Sometimes the almost-immediate introduction of dragonriding feels like a bribe to get people into the game. So why not have it as an end-of-campaign-at-caplevel reward? Same for standard flight. That way, everyone would be using ground mounts to explore the zones and see them at ground level, they would be using the flight paths and whatever other quick movement aspects were available.
So many talk about immersion and experiencing the world and so on - well, why not go back to that, let everyone start on a level playing field and be rewarded for participating by being able to fly at the end of the levelling journey.
I love flight, I look forward to using it, but it would certainly get rid of all this kafuffle (beyond people just complaining that it wasn’t available sooner…)
While I agree that at this point it would be the most fair to just lock both forms of flight behind the campaign (you could use the argument that they would shoot us down until they trusted us), I have always hated the thought that trudging on the ground is somehow more immersive. Being stuck on the ground doesn’t make me appreciate the scenery, it just makes me annoyed that it is taking so long to get through areas I would much rather be flying through.
Even when I did pathfinder I had the map open to get the exploration points, but saved my actual exploration until I could fly and I didn’t feel inherently annoyed just trying to get around. Skyriding was a boon for immersion for me, actually. I was able to swoop and play through the scenery and actually explore. No more did I have to suffer a year of going “oh, that structure on the cliff looks interesting, but I do not feel like trying to find a weird path up to it.” No, I could just fly up and check it out.
I only suggested to gate both because it makes it fair. All us skyriding people have been saying it is no big deal to do the campaign so okay, we could do the campaign. All the people complaining they had to do the campaign to unlock old flying could then stop complaining because we would all be in the same boat of suffering through the boring leveling until we got to travel in a fun way.
Oh, Im not saying that Blizzard would revert both forms of flight to an extended Pathfinder, its obvious they want to have one form of flight available at the start. I guess its more a philosophical consideration of what immersion actually is. Zooming through a zone to catch that exploration achievement isn’t immersive really, its just ticking a box. I never found using dragonflight to explore was all that informative. The only way I really found what was actually there was when I was on the ground, or hovering above it.
I can still remember roaming around Kalimdor when I started playing and finding all that stuff, and how pleasant that was - as well as occasionally terrifying - to this day I hate hyenas as I remember running and shrieking like the little girl I wasnt anymore as they chased my first character. But it was more…I dunno, intense? Involving? More something, for sure.
There isn’t much of that intensity anymore, because we can just zoom over it all. Again, I’m not saying to take it away (flight is fab) but it does distance the player from everything below, and turns it all into just navigation.
Fact is, they won’t change it, they are too set on doing flight this way, despite its lack of concern and logic. It is what it is, I guess.
I wasn’t arguing for an extended pathfinder, just to make the requirements for both the same. Heh, even though I would much rather prefer skyriding from the start still. It would shut up the cries of unfairness if we had the same requirements. The requirements to unlock old flying in TWW are so easy that I could suck it up and do it for skyriding too if it would quiet people down.
Perhaps it is just a different point of view, but I have never found being on the ground inherently more immersive or interesting. I do not bother exploring because I hate having to spend an annoying amount of time trying to figure up how to get up that 5 foot cliff. Danger is meh too as I just go around the things that bother me. I explore more and see more of the world with skyriding than I ever do on the ground because I can just explore. With ground mounts I am focused solely on how to make the journey less tedious and boring.
That said, everyone has their own perspective, and that is fine.
Once again spreading the rhetoric that the war within zones will require or forces one to use skyriding when all of the zones in the war within are ground mount friendly to traverse through. But hey lie about that you need to use skyride to traverse the war within zones when you don’t need to.
That is why I have not and will not purchase TWW. The rest of the broken pillars don’t help, but I have played through bad class/spec design, terrible story changes, and broken crafting systems in past expansions and the difference is that we were all in the same boat.
Pathfinder no longer has any reasonable justification. It makes one population privileged at the cost of another.
So you have personally been to all of the new zones and are perfectly happy to be walking through them while the dragonriders fly?
Nope. Not another expansion like DF. I will not buy this game if it makes me walk while others fly. I hate dragonriding, even if I could use it, it is graceless and ugly.
Being on the ground is slow and tedious. Trying five different apparent paths that go nowhere is just not fun. Pathfinding is not justified if it only applies to one form of flight.
It is unjust and unfair and Blizzard and Microsoft should know better than to split their audience over nonsense like twiddletastic flight systems.
Skyriding is an ugly tedious system that would not be used at all if it wasn’t either faster or the only game in town. It killed retail WoW for me and my family.
How is it that hard to traverse in the new zone? When the fact is the new zones are ground mount friendly 100% of the time versus that of Dragonflight.
