Originally Posted by
Maneo
Apples and Oranges. Vanilla was the game where leveling was the bulk of your experience. Every mob you killed had purpose because it took months to level. Currently you are max level in less then 8 hours.
Since you obviously are unwilling or incapable of understanding the answer I will spell it out for you more clearly.
I play the leveling experience (non flight) and I enjoy it. The first few times I do the dailies or world quests I enjoy them. The problem arises around 1-3 months into the expac.
I do not find riding through an to a objective area for the 20th time (no different then the previous 19) dealing w/WoWs horrible collision mechanics, terrain inconsistency and Leveling mobs so tightly packed I either have to take 5 detour to avoid, 5 minutes to kill even though they offer no threat, challenge or reward, or of course I can just ride through them to leashing them to my destination hoping they don't stun or dismount me.
Do you honestly find that engaging and compelling game play? If so I promise you are the minority. Simple truth is look at any AAA open world game released in the last 5 years, Fallout 4, Far Cry, both once you discover an area you can instantly port to it again at your leisure why do you think that is? It is simple really those developers understand that reducing tedium and annoyance is a good thing. Even in games like GTAV, and Just Cause 3 games where travel is a significant part of the game (actually in the name in one case), offer fast travel once a location is discovered, again why do you think that is?
One month after WoD, w/out flight, this is what my play time looked like.
1. Log into two toons do garrison missions
2. Do daily pet battle at garrison on the two toons
3. Maybe level another toons (did it 8 more times actually)
4. Log on for raid. (3-4 hours a week)
This is what my play time looks like w/flight being enabled.
1. Log in check garrisons on 11 toons (got to make that gold to keep my sub up)
2. Do garrison daily pet battles on 11 (got to prep for the pets coming in Legion)
3. Level another toon (don't do this anymore as I have a max level of every class)
4. Kill/Collect Rares/Treasures missed on my alts
5. Finish up quest chains missed on my alts
6. Do the garrison campaign or garrison quests (harrison jones) on my alts
7. Do the daily pet battles, outside the garrison even Tanaan
8. Collect and battle wild pets (don't do this much anymore as I have every pet available to me)
9. Do some gathering, honestly one of my favorite things to do is throw on some itunes and gather for a hour to unwind. Not really possible w/out flight
10. Go out to Tanaan, kill some rares
11. Do some some dailies while in Tanaan.
12. Just fly around and landing if I see anything interesting, from a mining node, a rare, someone needing help in WPVP. Anti fly boyz seem to have a hard time grasping that you have to land to actually do those things though.
Personally I don't believe flight is content, however it does enable content. Taking a look at those two lists what one actually includes more play time? I know I know what you are going to say "You could do all that w/out flight" yes I could but I didn't want to because the tedium and annoyance exceeds the reward or fun to be had. aka bad game design and why every other open world game has a better method of fast travel then "Flight Paths" more at place in 2004 along w/SWG shuttle system.
I have determined anti fly folks fall into a few categories typically.
1. Old school MMO players that believe you should have to suffer, grind and work before you have fun.
2. Capital City campers those that the majority of the game is instanced content for them and they are unable to understand how anyone plays differently.
3. WPVP folks, even though nobody cares not even Blizzard. Lets be honest if you are playing WoW for WPVP you are playing the wrong game. First there are no rewards for WPVP, most of the player base are on PVE servers, w/the remaining being on PVP servers so horribly balanced may as well be PVE servers. Only 3-4 real PVP servers exist. I would bet pet battles see more willing participation then WPVP, hell maybe even archeology.
4. The Blizzard devotees. These are the guys that believe sans flight Blizzard will develop more engaging dynamic content, at a faster pace. I could honestly understand this one prior to WoD, but people that still believe this .. I honestly don't know what to say.
5. Trolls
So what one are you? The Blizzard message boards it is pretty easy to figure out. The anti flight people with high achievement points are the old school MMO players, the ones around 10k are the capital city camper, the WPVP folks have mostly pvp achievements, the Blizzard devotees give themselves away when talking, as to the trolls.
Now in regards to why PREACH keeps playing even though he complains about the game so much... simple cause he makes money doing it. Hell if I made 500 dollars a month playing WoW, i wouldn't mind the tedium and annoyance post level cap.