The premise of PF was that people do it to experience the zones and story and that is how TBC normal flying is unlocked by being grounded first.
But in TWW the entire point of PF is undermined because you can DR with no strings attached and you are not grounded.
Also if your intention is that to use DR and never TBC normal flying you do not even have to do the story or all the four zones campaigns. In fact you can level in TWW to cap doing just pet battles and still have access to DR.
But if you are trying to use TBC normal flying you can not have these options of leveling to cap doing PVP, gathering, pet battles, dungeons, etc. In fact you are forced into questing which defeats the entire point of PF since you can DR all over the place.
PF gate of "8 hours* is indeed a poor reason to gate players that prefer TBC normal flying and another way for BlizZard not to respect player time or investment in TBC normal flying mounts. I said TBC normal flying mounts because some players see some mounts only purely for TBC normal flying and some for DR. And some players see their mount collection only through the lens of DR or TBC normal flying.
And then there are player accessibility issues as others have said and brought up many times.
But the main point being is that TBC normal flying being gated by PF doesn’t serve purpose at all but punishes returning and new players that wish to use to use TBC normal flying. There is no mastery to DR and in fact it is just a preference and a tool which is why most players would like to switch between DR and TBC normal flying freely.
The toggle switch of five seconds is designed as a sever penalty switch when trying to use both tools like TBC normal flying and DR. Worse, PF is gating a tool like TBC normal flying which again is important for players that can not use DR. Gating an integral tool like TBC normal flying behind PF makes it seems like the devs do not play WoW or do not understand the questing experience. Or how players approach WoW questing. WoW questing is about playing at a pace of your liking and generating a circuit path that makes sense for you to flow and complete quests based on your choices. Choices matter in a MMORPG like WoW. And taking a way choices like gating a tool that is TBC normal flying behind PF makes it seem like the devs are disconnected from how players choose to engage the game.
For months on end players were free to fly around using TBC normal flying or switch to DR and the game wasn’t broken, unbalanced, or hindered or strained at the server level as far as we know! In fact it stayed that way months on end and we heard no complaints, concerns, or dialogue and communications from the devs that was a problem that needed to be solved. Solving a problem that doesn’t exist only causes more problems.
And the more problems that are generated the more questions are starting to be asked. Why choose to penalize players that prefer to use both tools with a five second toggle switch? If DR is seen as superior than TBc normal flying why is TBC normal flying gated? Is TBC normal flying hover more powerful that classes and specs have access to stealth? And why choose to gate TBC normal flying behind 8 hours of questing if it is trivial? If it is trivial then there is no reason for PF to gate TBC normal flying.
As always we hope BlizZard respects player time and investment in WoW but as we all know one step forward and then three steps back.
The hope is that TWW is closer to DF as an expansion that expands the foundation. However, the fear is that the lack of communication and inaction resolving these easy wins indicates we are on a collision course for another BFA expansion on the horizon.
But in the end this is why feedback always matters. My feedback is that TBC normal flying should no longer be gated by PF because DR exists.
And hovering isn’t OP because if hover is OP then why does the WoW Rogue class exist with no time limit in stealth?
Thanks for reading my short story and may we circle the wagons and improve WoW to turn it to a page to a brighter future.
A future where player choice is respected once more.
