One - Blizzard doesn’t listen to feedback. They lock themselves in their dojo and then are shocked and dismayed when people don’t like what they’ve made. Blizzard prefers to be in scramble mode after things do not go well.
Two - their designers aren’t super-creatives who possess some kind of special insight into the human psyche that allows them to create products that people just don’t know they really want to love. They’re no Steve Jobs designing the first iPod. The only teams that consistently deliver stellar products are their art and music teams. The rest tend to pinch off duds while they get dragged along by things like Classic and the cash shop.
A big driving motivator was the players on the forum throwing a temper tantrum for years about the waterstrider is what you meant to say. It’s amazing that you blame this on Blizzard when players screamed about this for so long. lol
Their war was against the water strider, not to please those who didn’t want to grind the rep. Otherwise we would have gotten mount equipment per mount, not all mounts do the same and other special mount abilities (herbing) would have been removed as well. Simple solution would have been to make a boat that floats and add other water walking mounts.
It wasn’t “their war”. Do you not recall the insane amount of cries and complaints from players who went on and on about how it’s not fair that others get to use the waterstrider and they don’t? That was a pretty big thing.
This is another reason why Blizzard shouldn’t listen to most people complaining on the forum.
What? I am a constant presence on the forums even when I am not subscribed and I don’t recall ever seeing more than a single post or two like that. Ever.
And they could have resolved it in another way as I mentioned above. New water walking mounts or equipment per mount, in both cases the water strider would have kept his ability. This nerf went far beyond nerfing ONE mount (their are other mounts with special abilities which should have been nerfed as well if it was just for equipment) and we probably will see it better next xpac since the timing on this was perfect due to flying becoming available.
People are always going to complain about mounts that provide more than just shuffling your butt around because why use a buttshuffler when I can use the buttshuffler express with cupholders.
You’re welcome to go search the old forum. Players were throwing a hissy fit because other players had an “advantage” over the ones who didn’t earn the mount. You must not have been around a whole lot if you don’t remember those spam posts.
They created a boat. How hard would it have been to make it float on water? After all they can make Mammoth water walk through the equipment. They create so many in-game mounts a year. How hard would it have been to make some walk on water? They can make them fly. There is no excuse or reason to take a special ability from any mount.
This is the same as Pathfinder, make travelling as tedious as possible.
I used to even run around zones when we had flying. And sometimes I just liked to swim through water instead of using the strider. If they give mounts with special abilities and create zones (on top of taking flying away) for this mount then why take the special ability away? They extra created a herbing mount (Looks more like for mining and therefore I never use it) who still has that ability. Although it’s far uglier, can fly if in flying zone, and makes more disturbing noises. Like I said, Kul Tiras being a Island would have benefitted from selling water walking mounts. But that makes travelling easier and therefore they chose not to create these mounts but also take water walking away from the water STRIDER. Just like the boat that doesn’t float, the water strider can’t stride on water anymore. Silly and completely killing immersion.
If you don’t see any reason to ride anything else then what is beneficial, that is sad.
I choose mounts I like to look at unless travel gets very tedious without it.
They took flying because it was to “easy” to get around and for the same reason they took the striders unique abilty. UNIQUE. Why does everything need to be the same, do the same, give the same. I think that could be another reason I don’t play anymore and why classic seems better. UNIQUEness is gone in the current game. No surprises anymore.
I would argue you’d see a bigger variety in mounts if they all performed the same thing because people would just pick the one they like the looks of 99% of the time.
Having unique mount utilities means, well, you see that mount more performing said utility. Sky Golem is a great example, thing is obnoxious but you see it everywhere because it performs a unique utility.
But they all do the same. Their is really nothing unique anymore. A bigger variety of mounts could be far better achieved by giving more mounts water walking, herbing, mining, multiseats, etc. We have a big varity on flying mounts. And that is no different then water-walking.
And there was no reason to do this either. You could always walk on water with your favorite mount using a water walking potion.
But as I said earlier, the devs have declared war on easy travel. Even our flying mounts have forgotten how to fly. Glad I left when I did. Pathfinder was just the biggest reason for me but druid auto travel (no bird form for druids in no fly zones, no travel cat in flying zones) , fill-a-bar quests, dungeon push for story and professions, lvl scaling, ilvl scaling, specs instead of classes, tedious travel, rent systems…Probably would find many more ways they destoyed the game.
I’m sorry I just don’t see the logic here. If you have 100 mounts and 5 of them can do water walking then that means you have 5 water walking mounts people are going to gravitate towards. How does having a unique utility increase variety?
Except the Strider was so common that it wasn’t unique. And it diminished the uniqueness of classes with Waterwalking. Mount equipment (if it’s balanced properly) introduces more variety.
Hmm “not a developer” and has zero skill in programming yet his official Blizzard title is development lead so by his own admission he has “no idea or experience in the job he works at” so why on earth was he given the position?