No flying in 7.0 confirmed

[rda]

We will not be equally crippled. People, who get the first part of the achievement done earlier, will be riding faster. There you go, a 2 classes society already there, before flying is even unlocked. How is this creating equality?

I don't think that's a problem - I mean, I'd like them to put flying onto the achievement, not a riding speed increase, that'd be even more dramatic. Maybe I am wrong.

[Pua]

The same thing is with forking out the money earlier than people who are either too broke or too greedy to pay for the skill.

Anyway, what is more important, reward or equality? You can reward achievements without creating player inequality in their transportation.

I'm sorry, I must be missing your point - can you clarify it for me?

It seems as if you're disagreeing, but I don't see anything that disproves my first point (that locking flight is needless).

[Raiju]

What caused your stance to change?

I get that, and am looking forward to it, but I'm not sure why you'd think that meaningfully changes the approach to the flight meta-achievement. Help me out a bit, bud.

Gliders, actually thinking about how you use flight paths, speed boost items (old goblin rocket boots?) - I look forward to the idea of discovering methods that have an impact on my gameplay (which as much as I can discover a spot that gets me a good glide chain it's irrelevant if we're all flying anyway.)

This is a form of content I don't believe will be there if we can fly 2 weeks into the expansion. Now maybe the campaign quest chain / reps will take significantly longer than that - and there's the *hope* that world quest content will last longer - but I have no idea when exactly I feel for me flying's benefits would outweigh the general gameplay diversity losses.

This will die off, long before new content I imagine. I think there's a large expectation from me to have flying pre-implemented so we don't have another 6.2 fiasco as well.

[Deleted]

I actually understand the point of the meta-achievement. What's funnier is that I completely agree with it; flight is a convenience that it's appropriate to gate behind playing the game as intended. What saddens me is that it wasn't really flight that caused the issues in Warlords - it was the changing message, the misdirection and deceit, and the complete failure to give players control over when it was earned.

And they're doing exactly the same thing again.

I understand loremaster and explorer achievements as a requirement. 100 world quests seem a bit much, though. How many of these can you finish per day/week? I hope that reputations turn out as the Blue told us. I will be probably farming them to Exalted, anyway, but I would rather do that at my pace and with intrinsic motivation of having the reputation, and not because I need this for flying.

[ls-]

Why are people surprised? Didn't they say that flying unlock via multi-tier pathfinder achievement will be a standard, when they introduced it in WoD?

I totally understand why they dun want to have flying right away. It's much more difficult (nearly impossible) to show/introduce the world/content/quests/etc to players.

And then players whine that world feels small and there's no immersion whatsoever, smh. What do people want? Huge half-empty locations much bigger than IC and storm peaks, cuz our mounts are much and much faster than they used to be? Nah, fuck it.

[mikkis2k]

Great! maybe we actually get to explore the new places this time aswell! im on the team #NoFlying, itr removes the "exploring" part we had in vanilla

[Deleted]

Gliders, actually thinking about how you use flight paths, speed boost items (old goblin rocket boots?) - I look forward to the idea of discovering methods that have an impact on my gameplay (which as much as I can discover a spot that gets me a good glide chain it's irrelevant if we're all flying anyway.

This is a form of content I don't believe will be there if we can fly 2 weeks into the expansion. Now maybe the campaign quest chain / reps will take significantly longer than that - and there's the *hope* that world quest content will last longer - but I have no idea when exactly I feel for me flying's benefits would outweigh the general gameplay diversity losses.

This will die off, long before new content I imagine. I think there's a large expectation from me to have flying pre-implemented so we don't have another 6.2 fiasco as well.

I never liked these type of things. I also hate jump & run in WoW, because the engine does not support that.

There is only hope that they don't fuck up with terrain design and mob density in Legion like they did in WoD. The zones were pretty, but OMG the design was awful. Every Vanilla zone was better, and I am not a great Vanilla fan.

[rda]

Great! maybe we actually get to explore the new places this time aswell! im on the team #NoFlying, itr removes the "exploring" part we had in vanilla

Right. Somehow having flying after completing the achievement for exploring everything would remove exploring. OK.

[Deleted]

Why are people surprised? Didn't they say that flying unlock via multi-tier pathfinder achievement will be a standard, when they introduced it in WoD?

I totally understand why they dun want to have flying right away. It's much more difficult (nearly impossible) to show/introduce the world/content/quests/etc to players. And then players whine that world feels small and there's no immersion whatsoever, smh. What do people want? Huge half-empty locations much bigger than IC and storm peaks, cuz our mount are much and much faster than they used to be? Nah, fuck it.

But the world feels small when you have to travel it on the ground and take flightpaths between zones! You can make people run for a long time if they have to navigate a labyrinthic path, and thus artificially "increase" a zone. Have you seen "Inception", the scene where Cobb gives Ariadne the task to design a labyrinth in 1 minute which would take a person 2 minutes to complete? This is the perfect summary of WoD zone design.

[Raiju]

I never liked these type of things. I also hate jump & run in WoW, because the engine does not support that.

There is only hope that they don't fuck up with terrain design and mob density in Legion like they did in WoD. The zones were pretty, but OMG the design was awful. Every Vanilla zone was better, and I am not a great Vanilla fan.

From alpha impressions:
Valsharah / Aszuna are fairly flat and easy to navigate in any direction, Highmountain is practically 2 giant slopes with small bluffs/cliffs which should make certain travel methods rewarding. Stormheim is pretty rough, and will likely reward flight path use for non DH's significantly.

But this could change, I don't know which world quests I'll be focusing on 2 weeks into hte expansion and intentionally not doing all the content.

[Pua]

Gliders, actually thinking about how you use flight paths, speed boost items (old goblin rocket boots?) - I look forward to the idea of discovering methods that have an impact on my gameplay (which as much as I can discover a spot that gets me a good glide chain it's irrelevant if we're all flying anyway.)

This is a form of content I don't believe will be there if we can fly 2 weeks into the expansion.

But the meta-achievement provides all of these opportunities.

You can't fly two-weeks into the expansion, unless you can grind everything out two-weeks into it. And if you can, or choose to in order to unlock flight, then I say "have at it". That's why the meta-achievement is a pretty elegant solution to the issue - it retains the gameplay you enjoy, and allows those who don't a clear way to move on from it.

Or it would... If the meta-achievement did unlock flight. Unfortunately, it doesn't, and there's absolutely no reason for it not to (at least in the launch zones). This is, ultimately, what's forcing players to conclude that it's just a re-run of Warlords attempt to string players along.

I will be probably farming them to Exalted, anyway, but I would rather do that at my pace and with intrinsic motivation of having the reputation, and not because I need this for flying.

I'm pretty sure, though not 100% as I'm not in alpha, that you can do as many world quests a week as you have time for and that reputations will be ground up passively by using the daily faction caches to guide you. I'm not sure if there's a way to speed that process up (though Hazzikostas mentioned zone quests) but, even if there wasn't, then there's another soft cap to how quickly you can fly.

So why the developer-decided hard cap? It's completely needless if design intent were the real reason for it.

The meta-achievement ensures that the design intent is met.

[Deleted]

I'm sorry, I must be missing your point - can you clarify it for me?

It seems as if you're disagreeing, but I don't see anything that disproves my first point (that locking flight is needless).

I agree that locking flight to a later patch is nonsense.

My 2nd paragraph is a general question, a contradiction in the stance of anti-flyers. They either play the card of player equality - and if you show that this is not a valid reason, they shift to the reward stance, and vice versa.

- - - Updated - - -

Right. Somehow having flying after completing the achievement for exploring everything would remove exploring. OK.

Yeah. Having flight usually increases my interest in exploring - because before flight, I do only the least amount of travel required to achieve things. When I have flight, I have the leisure to travel more, because I am free to go anywhere, anyway, any direction I like.

[Pua]

I agree that locking flight to a later patch is nonsense.

My 2nd paragraph is a general question, a contradiction in the stance of anti-flyers. They either play the card of player equality - and if you show that this is not a valid reason, they shift to the reward stance, and vice versa.

Ah, okay - thank you.

Interestingly, the "player equality" stance is something I can appreciate. If flying was powerful enough to make a substantial difference in player efficiency, then there is an issue of inequality... But the meta-achievement solves that! If you want the efficiency of flight, you go and do the achievements required!

Where I can potentially sympathise, is the consideration of alts or players coming in late. But even then, you can make the meta-achievement shift to the new zones and reward players for roughly the same amount of work. So, for example, the Thal'dranath achievement that rewards flight includes 50 world quests on Thal'dranath itself, completion of its heroic dungeons (assuming it has any) and you can use its reputations to substitute for the launch ones.

You know, that kind of thing.

[Raiju]

But the meta-achievement provides all of these opportunities.

You can't fly two-weeks into the expansion, unless you can grind everything out two-weeks into it. And if you can, or choose to in order to unlock flight, then I say "have at it". That's why the meta-achievement is a pretty elegant solution to the issue - it retains the gameplay you enjoy, and allows those who don't a clear way to move on from it.

Or it would... If the meta-achievement did unlock flight. Unfortunately, it doesn't, and there's absolutely no reason for it not to (at least in the launch zones). This is, ultimately, what's forcing players to conclude that it's just a re-run of Warlords attempt to string players along.

The point is that world quests are 'meant' to be fulfilling content for a lot longer than that. Warlords issue (irrespective of flying) was that content was worthless after 2 weeks, largely due to lack of rewards. We had no reason to go for reps and they were just mob grinds anyway. We had no reason to do anything because the best source of anything was our garrison. Being able to fly in WoD would not have made it any better since we had nothing to do in that world out there once you had done things like collecting treasures.

Apexis events / campaign quests were once a day/week things that were tightly clustered objectives very far away. Even with flying they largely reward flight path use as it was faster for nearly all of them.

If flying is available in 2 weeks and everyone knows it due to the time it takes to get the rep / campaign quest done it immediately removes the incentive for working out shortcuts. It's going to be irrelevant soon and the immediate loss may make it frustrating and not worth it.

As a general note, I also agree with the notion of unlocking the main world content once it's done, rather than leaving us unable to fly in it while all new stuff is focused on a new island anyway. I'd prefer if just that area was flight locked for now once again to promote similar gameplay.

[mikkis2k]

Right. Somehow having flying after completing the achievement for exploring everything would remove exploring. OK.

i ment as in we can actually run around and do shit instead of just autofly everywhere. Exploring the game was alot more fun in vanilla,tbc it was a great immersion unlike now.

And yeah i know TBC had flying.. but back then it wasn't that fast or the continent was bigger so it didn't feel as fast :P And it took u a very long time to even get flying.. because gold was actually "hard" back then compared to now.

[Pua]

As a general note, I also agree with the notion of unlocking the main world content once it's done, rather than leaving us unable to fly in it while all new stuff is focused on a new island anyway. I'd prefer if just that area was flight locked for now once again to promote similar gameplay.

But then you can amend the meta-achievement in order to stretch out the acquisition of flight into a task that's more palatable to this type of gameplay. Let's say you need to complete 50 world quests in each individual zone; 250 in total, IIRC. That would then preserve the type of gameplay you're advocating for longer, without giving players the shaft of being told their achievement will only be meaningful when the designers arbitrarily decide.

Additionally, you have to accept that what you're describing is an extremely niche desire for the game. Not only can the meta-achievement be adjusted, it would be being adjusted for next to nobody. The problem, therefore, isn't the meta-achievement; the problem is your desire to see the game designed exclusively for yourself. Arguably worse than that, you're advocating the removal of a more reasonable decision for far more players.

I'm not trying to rubbish what you're saying, or argue that your point isn't valid. What I'm saying is that the meta-achievement solves all of your issues (assuming adjustment), thus still forcing us to conclude that there's no reason for a developer switch to be flicked.

If you make a reward something to be earned, you should let players earn it. Pseudo-rewards, and stringing players along, is a horrible way to design a game. Everybody got fucked off with it in Warlords, and they're doing it again.

There's an easy fix, and ignoring it could bury Legion.

[ls-]

But the world feels small when you have to travel it on the ground and take flightpaths between zones!

Eh? No. The world feels really small, when you fly across the globe on your super-sonic mount at ~500% speed.

You also tend to skip shitton of things, I had hard time, while doing TBC loremaster on my alts recently, because I was flying from point to point, I thus skipped quite many mobs that drop items that start quests. However, in TBC I'd get those items naturally by simply running into mobs on my way from one point to another. They tried to address this issue, by adding such items to other quest mobs, you'd definitely kill, and by introducing various zone quests, but it feels quite artificial.

[Raiju]

If you make a reward something to be earned, you should let players earn it. Pseudo-rewards, and stringing players along, is a horrible way to design a game.

The whole point is Blizzard has no idea when will be a good time to call it, so they are holding back. I'd prefer an achievement I can actively work towards too but the issue is flying is a pandoras box. Once that achievement is there it can't be added to or it's a shit storm. You have set your upper limit the moment that achievement criteria hits live.

[Pua]

The whole point is Blizzard has no idea when will be a good time to call it, so they are holding back.

Then, as I've been arguing since the start of this intercession, let players decide.

Make the meta-achievement as passive or torturous as you like, but ultimately give players the power to decide whether or not they want to unlock flight or not bother with it. The blunt railing of player activity has got. To. Stop. This is an MMORPG, for fuck's sake, an open-world adventure where players are meant to have choices and play the game how they like. Putting flight behind an arbitrary blocking point (that they won't share) is the opposite of that, is frustrating for players, and does nothing to achieve the design intent.

It's a monumentally stupid thing to be doing, again, after it exploded in their faces a single expansion ago.

Jesus Christ.

[EDIT: After reading that, it sounds like I'm raging at you; I'm not. I'm raging at the stupidity of designers who abjectly refuse to learn a painful, and obvious, lesson from the recent past.]

[Raiju]

I get that, and that's why I want flying implemented beforehand so when they feel it's time flip a switch, rather than make excuses, delay, and then miss the given date by a month long after it should've been in anyway.