If you are asking for purchasable flight after PF 2 releases that is reasonable. I have a feeling the cost would be extremely high, but the option is fine.
If you are asking for it to be available on launch of xpac, then you are not understanding why the gate exists.
Also, no the gate does not exist only because blizzard is mean and spiteful for time played metrics…
It is evident you haven’t a clue about what the time-gate is for.
And frankly, I’m done with this conversation. We have exchanged enough opinions for me to know we disagree and aren’t ever going to agree.
Peace.
There are lots of reasons the gate exits. Some are valid.
GL in MoP.
I’m not saying this to be snarky, so please don’t take it that way. But why can’t you make flight immersive?
I disagree with this. I have fun flying, the views, for one, are outstanding. I’ll swoop up and down and around to see certain areas, buzz the ground then fly back up. Flying over water, some mounts you get close enough to the water you can see ripples from your flight path(a little more difficult to accomplish with water walking mount equipment 
). Very rarely do I just hit auto-run while flying and just sit here doing nothing while getting from point a to point b. I’m usually panning my camera around to see stuff, or watching the mini-map for gathering nodes or rares.
Please no. That’s part of the reason I’m flying, to avoid the BS that goes with ground mounts. Getting stuck on stuff, getting dazed, knocked off, taking a long time to get around idiotic barriers, platforming, etc…
Why does the gate exist? Getting to max level for purchasable flight should be enough of a gate. Leave PF(with tweaks to make it less time consuming) as an option for people that don’t want to spend tons of gold unlocking flight for alts.
Again… there people that would prefer flight not exist at all…
Since its not being removed and shouldn’t be removed, we compromise with a few months with no flight, to appease those people and then it unlocks so people can enjoy flight.
Do not pretend that just not flying is an option for them. Even from a purely economic standpoint its not feasible. And yes the world does feel more alive because you are more likely to see other players on ground mounts than flying mounts.
I don’t really want to wade knee-deep into this argument, but using the phrase “with a few months” in this sentence is very disingenuous to your argument and doesn’t inspire confidence that you are debating in good faith.
11 months is not simply “a few months” and Blizzard’s track record so far has been that they’re pushing out flight longer and longer each expansion. If you want a compromise of a “few months”, I’ll listen if it’s a reasonable number. 11 isn’t reasonable.
edit: updated numbers since flight wasn’t realistically possible for most people until the 11-month mark after 8.2 release
You can, but that would mean changing how it works. It’s how often we fly that makes flight unimmersive. If our toons themselves had wings there would be no qualitative difference compared to how the game plays with flight. It feels arcadey taking off any time we move further than 20 yards.
“Less fun” pretty much describes the flightless debacle pretty well.
So, if you give the first month for people to level we get 10 months without, 12 with. So you are right, its not a fair 50/50 split.
Are you saying the should delay it longer to make it equal?
Now you’re moving the goalposts by attempting to tie it to expansion lifecycle. I’m just going to leave this argument early since you clearly do not want to debate in good faith. Enjoy your life.
Look man, you give your money to whomever you like. I will choose to give mine to a company not run by spiteful children. We both win.
Not sure how how that changes the debate. You argue that 10 months is too long, players that don’t want flight could easily argue that a 40/60 split short changes their preferred play style.
It only changes the argument if you believe there are no players that don’t like flight
I think there is a chunk of players that play this game specifically for mindless tedium to relax and get the fake feeling of being productive
so they don’t even really understand why some players have problems with it. I don’t think the discussion between these two groups will ever go anywhere until both sides understand that the other group has a different but also reasonable perspective
I don’t care that pathfinder exists but it needs to have alternatives. Either more activities contribute to it so you can ‘choose your own path’ or their needs to be gold or cash shop shortcut options.
the questing in this game is INSANELY boring to me. My eyes just glass over and I start falling asleep at the keyboard. Just sheer mindless tedium with no reward for 30-50 hours. Its liked forcing myself to endure torture to finally have fun with the game I’m paying for.
also forced rep grinds are just devs completely out of ideas - they’ve literally given up when everything now comes with more rep grinds - dev time zero
I’ll give my money to a company that designs some good raids and dungeons. And keeps adding new features like a challenge mode tower.
I won’t pretend this is a flying sim game and that using a ground mount for a bit ruins everything. But then again I played vanilla and it took me a bit to farm the gold for it in BC.
I’ll enjoy the game without flight, with flight on level cap, and with PF. I’ll also enjoy the game with pet battles and LFR. Because I know for every one person that wants it all removed we’d lose players that want it to say. Can’t please everyone if no one will compromise an inch.
Gl in your new game.
Pathfinder exists for the same reason you have to gather honor points for PvP gear or why you have to work your way up to higher and higher mythic levels to get the best gear via PvE: having to put in effort for a reward is the basis for many games. You may disagree that an efficient mode of transport requires such an effort, but the motivation for imposing that requirement on players is the same as the above.
What changed then? Four expansions we bought flying at max level. How is it suddenly a reward requiring a different effort, coincidently happening after the developers announced they weren’t going to do flight at all, and reversed course after less than three weeks?
Didn’t say there wasn’t. I know y’all exist, and I don’t belittle your existence. So you’re saying that the sole purpose of the time gate is for the people that don’t want flight?
Why not? The ground doesn’t all of a sudden become non-navigable because of flight.
Other players that are tunneled on getting to their destination as fast as possible, that don’t stop to give a hand to someone that is looking overwhelmed by mobs. Well, unless those mobs happen to be quest mobs they need to kill.
How does it short change your preferred playstyle? Other than the psychological effect of seeing more people, giving the illusion of a lively populated game, what benefits are there to no flight?
We had it good for 8 years. Nobody complained about flying. Blizzard all of a sudden made it such an issue. All most players want is for things to go back to the way it was because it’s objectively better.
Sometimes the value or utility of content gets reevaluated and then the content ks changed. I don’t think the idea that content should be static or that it has to follow the same pattern perpetually for the sake of consistency makes sense.
People can use a ground mount if they enjoy being on the ground.