Just because you can’t see the rationale doesn’t mean that isn’t the case for plenty of people. Speaking just for myself, although I know I’m not alone in this based on other comments in these types of threads, I absolutely will log in to do content that I wouldn’t do without flying just because I can fly.
Flying, for me, makes everything more fun - even mundane, repetitive world quests or simply getting from point A to point B. Just because that’s not the case for you doesn’t mean it’s not a valid perspective for others.
No, I was mostly referring to gathering professions. I remember how easy it was to gather crazy numbers of herbs in legion once there was flying. Flying and actual content don’t really have much to do with each other. Flying over stuff doesn’t change the stuff, but it does make some things easier.
I’ve been trying to complete the Highmountain quest line for a few weeks now. I can’t find any quests. I just keep getting lost in caves, falling to my death from cliffs, running to the end of the map and still haven’t found a single quest.
So I’ve given up on it. I just go back to doing low level PvP or solo stuff since blizzard keep locking me out of content and making harder and harder to achieve anything in-game in an effort to prolong subscription time.
But the truth is, the amount of fun things I’m able to do in the game is getting lesser and lesser.
No flying, bad terrain, impossibly hidden quests and quest lines. It’s all a bit too much at this point.
This is the first time in the past nine or ten years that I’ve played WoW that I’ve actually considered playing other games because of how tedious and gated WoW has become.
I haven’t unsubbed but I do only play once or twice every 2 weeks now. I love wow and don’t play a lot of games besides wow. I miss being able to just toss on a TV show or sporting event and just farm herbs or mine nodes. I sunk a lot of hours into the game just enjoying making gold. I need to be able to fly to make this worth my time. It’s not as fun running around killing 100 mobs just to get one node or herb. I wish they would just give us flying when we reach max level and make us pay (x) amount to fly like the old days. Maybe an achievement unlocks flying on alts so we can fly as we level…
I bet it’s because the new zones aren’t polished enough for player flight. Some of the flight masters still clip through the ground en route. Also had a certain route ramming into terrain.
Because it was Pathfinder or no flight.
Pathfinder was a result of the VERY loud objection to no flight ever again.
It’s… not that hard of a question to answer, really.
They wanted to remove flight entirely as a cost cutting measure knowing that it would be a degradation of the game play experience. Players revolted and mass unsubbed. They were forced to put it back to save lots of lost revenue. $s were the only thing that would have made them change their mind. Likely the bean counters and corporate leadership were never happy about the fact their cost cutting attempt failed.
Delaying flight allows them more time to code the xpack for flight, so it’s also part of a cost cutting decision even knowing that it continues to be a degradation of the game experience.
Delaying flight also happens to be a convenient insult to the players that didn’t like their idea to remove flight in the first place. So the Devs probably get some psychic satisfaction from it.
Delaying flight is also a convenient tactic to set up removing flight in the future or to continue to degrade the game experience with less flight over time to continue cutting costs while tricking more people into accepting it. Trying to remove it in full all at once blew up in their faces. Setting up long times without it, while telling people they’ll get it eventually, and then putting it back but only when the zones that get it become useless is also part of their way of maliciously and deviously trying to force it on players without losing too much money over it.