No flying in 7.0 confirmed

[Connll]

Flying takes people out of the world.

Yes, I do rememeber quite clearly how empty the world used to be during BC, WoTLK, Cata and Pandaria.

As opposed to WoD, where I couldn´t take a step inside my Garrison without bumping on some aquaintance or another.

Is that an adequate entry for Opposites day?

[Druzzy]

Look, go skim-read the thread. You're re-arguing old points and it's not worth it to walk through everything with you. The short version, though, is that the anti-flight crowd has never articulated any reasons why it shouldn't be available as we hit max level, aside from personal preference. All of the 'hurt the game' issues ignore that the game had tons of subs when flight was in. removing flight didn't seem to bring back any people. So, what's the reason again ASIDE from "I like it that way"?

I'm indifferent - I experience all the content voluntarily so I'll get flying anyway. But I can see why people prefer it behind an achievement.

The original mounts in Vanilla weren't just handed to you. You had to earn them. And back then it was just gold. Now it's the in the form of an achievement (much more fun than farming gold btw). People were proud of their mounts and would ride them everywhere to enjoy the fruits of their labor. It was a more satisfying experience. This was brought back somewhat with rewarding flying with an achievement that simply requires you to experience the world.

I get that nothing exists outside of a 20m mythic raid for a small segment of the population. But for a lot of other people, there's a sense of excitement to finally get to fly. Sure, it feels like a chore, but wow, what a payoff. It's one of the VERY FEW THINGS in the game at this point that gives that feeling of excitement the game used to have for a lot of people (myself included really).

Not everything needs to be handed to you on a silver platter. Do you want your purpz and a mountain of gold waiting for you at 110 too? Arguing for that is silly. Why would you argue that you should be able to fly when you hit 110? You still have your ground mount and flight paths to get places quickly. Why do you need to zoom past the content you never even completed? And clearly, you wouldn't have completed that content that you're zooming past because you'd have the achievement already if you did

[SirCowdog]

I *hated* the immersion break when leveling in Twilight Highlands in early Cata, when you'd work your way into the boss, only to have some flyer come in and land on the boss, tag them, kill them, and fly off, leaving you 3 mobs from the boss, and having to wait for respawn.

So, yeah, I *like* having to level on the ground. That way that crap doesn't happen, because so much of the 'I wanna fly' comes from the quest for speedspeedspeed in everything. I don't buy the 'But I love flying!'...if you love flying that much, there's much better games to fly in. No, you just want everything immediately, and don't want to wait to work your way into the quest targets. You just want to drop on them, ala Cata.

Mav

No, sounds like what you want is not a world without flight, but a world where other players don't interfere with your gameplay and immersion. How is the flier different from a rogue popping out and one-shotting the boss from stealth? Or a Warrior dropping in from above with heroic leap? Or a mage blinking in? Or a hunter tagging the boss from afar?

Like I said, people are trying too hard to come up with ways to blame flight for fundamental problems with the underlying gameplay and content. Correlation does not equate to causation. I wish more people would realize that.

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Oh, and your forum avatar fits you well. Cardassians are almost always pricks.

Read my signature.

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I'm indifferent - I experience all the content voluntarily so I'll get flying anyway. But I can see why people prefer it behind an achievement.

The original mounts in Vanilla weren't just handed to you. You had to earn them. And back then it was just gold. Now it's the in the form of an achievement (much more fun than farming gold btw). People were proud of their mounts and would ride them everywhere to enjoy the fruits of their labor. It was a more satisfying experience. This was brought back somewhat with rewarding flying with an achievement that simply requires you to experience the world.

I get that nothing exists outside of a 20m mythic raid for a small segment of the population. But for a lot of other people, there's a sense of excitement to finally get to fly. Sure, it feels like a chore, but wow, what a payoff. It's one of the VERY FEW THINGS in the game at this point that gives that feeling of excitement the game used to have for a lot of people (myself included really).

Not everything needs to be handed to you on a silver platter. Do you want your purpz and a mountain of gold waiting for you at 110 too? Arguing for that is silly. Why would you argue that you should be able to fly when you hit 110? You still have your ground mount and flight paths to get places quickly. Why do you need to zoom past the content you never even completed? And clearly, you wouldn't have completed that content that you're zooming past because you'd have the achievement already if you did

PLEASE read the posts carefully in order to understand instead of leaping to conclusions. Outside of a select few, NO ONE is arguing for flight to be quickly or easily handed out. Most pro-flier LIKE the idea of having flight be something that's earned, or requires skill and effort to unlock.

The contention is the placement of that unlock. Putting flight behind EVERYTHING and leaving nothing to use it on besides alts is terrible. Locking flight behind a bunch of stuff that has nothing to do with the open world is a similarly bad decision. Arbitrarily withholding flight until an unknown time, without testing is more bullshit. Requiring more things to be done to get flight than raiders have to do in order to set foot inside an instance is still more evidence for the ridiculousness.

Do you understand the problem now?

[segara82]

Not to mention back in Vanilla everything was going so much slower, took longer and gold was harder to come buy. With quest-chains sending all around the world from one zone to another, so yeah, we rode everywhere because it was required to do. And since flight masters had to be unlocked by talking to them once.
But it ain't 2005 any more, most players from back then have jobs and families and far less time to waste it on traveling to and from the action. We want to get there asap, and flightmasters with their detour-ridden paths and bad designed ground with stunning mob groups are neither dangerous, immersive, fun or interesting.
Not to mention it is plain ridiculous when we great heroes with our tamed dragons and other monsters slouch around on the ground when every NPC can fly around or rent us his bird.

[Kazgrel]

Then you are the minority. Because the majority of the comments were "Huh, I never realized I hate flying before Blizz told me I hate it"

Thought I was the only one to notice the massive uptick/actual existence of all the anti-flight drivel soon as that video interview where Afrisiabi hinted at the plan for flight in WoD over 3 years ago. At this point, they're trying to close Pandora's Box. Oh well. I'm perfectly happy to continue flying and actually playing in Eorzea, although I suppose Legion does get people out of garrisons...so that's good.

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Flying takes people out of the world.

Logging out takes them out of the world.

[Dhrizzle]

Only if flying and ground mounts remain in their current state of disparate utility, and only in areas where flying is available. We've been over this ad nausem.

It seems pretty clear to me that ground mounts should have their utility increased, and flying have some of it's universal movement toned down or altered. Adding some real flight mechanics would be a first start. Some real acceleration control, or maybe pitch and yaw. Or something else to make it less of a perfect utilitarian VTOL/Heli, and more of a travel tool.

There are other ways to address the issue than simply nuking one option out of existence. And not all of them require a complete overhaul of the open world.

Firstly, I was addressing the complaint that people who prefer content designed around no-flight are "forcing" people to play "their way," and the assertion that there would be no difference if Blizz did just implement flight as it has been in previous expansions.

Secondly, you're still suggesting that the devs effectively develop two different games, a fantasy MMO and some sort of dragon-based flight-sim with a bunch of gimmicks that ensure the two games don't interfere with each other whilst sharing the same world. I still don't think that would be a good use of resources.

Conspiracy theory? Using critical thinking skills doesn't mean you are conspiracy theorist and I am not sure how that has anything to do with the flying debate? Asking simple questions isn't hard to regarding to flying:

1. An "artistic design decision" to gate flying. They do that with raids and mythic + right? But all of that is still tested in alpha/beta even if it is not immediately available for release right? So, why isn't flying being tested if it is ready to go in the alpha/beta? We have been through this before (aka WoD), so how is this a conspiracy theory? We know the answer already (they didn't have it ready for testing in the WoD alpha or beta). Using logic, we have realized more than likely they do not have it ready for Legion either, because it requires extra work like what happened in WoD.

I don't think any expansions have tested all of their raids for later patches, I'm pretty sure those are worked on after the expansion launches and put on the PTR for testing. Have you any examples of raids that were tested before an expansion launched but were only made available in later content patches?

2. We have a clear timeline when gated content or activity will be available. Even though mythic + and raids are gated we still have a clear schedule of their release. If flying was so easy to put into the game then Blizzard would have a clear timeline of flying being released.

Again I think you're wrong, usually the first we know of when a new raid will be available is when its patch goes up on the PTR, and even then we don't know how long the testing will last with Blizz usually giving advanced warning of only a few weeks. Do you have any examples of expansions where Blizz announced a definite timetable for all the raids before the expansion even launched?

3. The fact that Legion pathfinder achievement indicates it is only part one shows that there is more to the achievement, and yet we do not have a clear time table of when it will be completed, how, and the number of parts? Does Blizzard do such things to mythic raiders or PVP players? Even the PVP players know when the new season will start.

Again I'm not too sure, do you have any examples of expansions were Blizz announced the start and end of every season before the expansion even launched?

4. Legion pathfinder requires you do content that has nothing to do with world exploration and is arbitrary for the most part. Also why is Legion pathfinder requiring so much reps when nothing else in the endgame of Legion requires heavy rep grinding? Rep grinding is simply a time waster.

Depending on whether you like the game or not almost everything in WoW could be considered a "time waster." If there was no "time wasters" in WoW we would never die so we could one-shot every piece of content and receive every possible reward after running through it once.

5. If flying was going to be put into the game so quickly, Blizzard wouldn't have wasted precious developer time making the flight whistle or that glider from High Mountain. Gimmicks that try to give you the illusion that you shouldn't "miss flight". But why go through all that trouble if flight is a flip of the switch? Or they can add invisible walls and flip on the flight switch?

Firstly, how much developer time do you think Blizz spent putting the various gimmicks of convenience in the game? Gliding mechanics have been in the game for quite a while, as have personal teleports and using flightmasters as way-points. Also why would it be considered a waste to put them in? The aim is to allow people to get around conveniently without compromising the way that the quests and other bits of world-content are tackled.

[SirCowdog]

Firstly, I was addressing the complaint that people who prefer content designed around no-flight are "forcing" people to play "their way," and the assertion that there would be no difference if Blizz did just implement flight as it has been in previous expansions.

To be completely honest, they're not entirely wrong. As much as people like to point to flying and how powerful it is and how much it diminishes ground mounts...the fact remains that a person CAN choose to just stick to their ground mount if they wanted to. It might be slower, and less useful, but the option is there. Conversely, in the current incarnation players do not have the choice either way. They can not simply decide that they don't want to experience Blizzard's ground presentation. Even after they jump through all the hoops to unlock flying and do another playthrough on an alt, their experience of the game is irrevocably altered and colored by being forced to play through the ground first.

This is what they mean by being forced.

Secondly, you're still suggesting that the devs effectively develop two different games, a fantasy MMO and some sort of dragon-based flight-sim with a bunch of gimmicks that ensure the two games don't interfere with each other whilst sharing the same world. I still don't think that would be a good use of resources.

Actually, I'm pretty sure I didn't say that, and have provided such examples in the past: "There are other ways to address the issue than simply nuking one option out of existence. And not all of them require a complete overhaul of the open world."

Would you like me to repeat all of them AGAIN? Or can you at least stop glazing over the fact that Pathfinder is a poor solution?

Depending on whether you like the game or not almost everything in WoW could be considered a "time waster." If there was no "time wasters" in WoW we would never die so we could one-shot every piece of content and receive every possible reward after running through it once.

See the point that I made earlier about content which is enjoyable and people want to do, vs content which you're forced to do in order to get to the fun stuff, or the stuff you're actually interested in. Rep grinds that are done during the normal process of questing are fine. But rep grinds which are simply put in place as filler? Not so much. For instance, when you finish all the quests in a zone and that leaves you at honored, but you need revered to complete the stage of the achievement. What's the purpose of the extra grinding needed between honored and revered? Not much, I'll tell you right now. It's padding. A speedbump. Artificially extending the content beyond what it's actually good for.

Firstly, how much developer time do you think Blizz spent putting the various gimmicks of convenience in the game? Gliding mechanics have been in the game for quite a while, as have personal teleports and using flightmasters as way-points. Also why would it be considered a waste to put them in? The aim is to allow people to get around conveniently without compromising the way that the quests and other bits of world-content are tackled.

Except that things like stealth, leaps, gliding, and the various toys DO allow you to compromise the way that the quests are tackled. And flight has also been in the game for "quite a while" as you put it.

This is just one more example of singling out flight.

[Dormie]

Experimentally proven wrong.

lol alright


fyi, 100 meters in the air =/= in the world

[Cthulhu 2020]

Conspiracy theory? Using critical thinking skills doesn't mean you are conspiracy theorist and I am not sure how that has anything to do with the flying debate? Asking simple questions isn't hard to regarding to flying:

1. An "artistic design decision" to gate flying. They do that with raids and mythic + right? But all of that is still tested in alpha/beta even if it is not immediately available for release right? So, why isn't flying being tested if it is ready to go in the alpha/beta? We have been through this before (aka WoD), so how is this a conspiracy theory? We know the answer already (they didn't have it ready for testing in the WoD alpha or beta). Using logic, we have realized more than likely they do not have it ready for Legion either, because it requires extra work like what happened in WoD.

2. We have a clear timeline when gated content or activity will be available. Even though mythic + and raids are gated we still have a clear schedule of their release. If flying was so easy to put into the game then Blizzard would have a clear timeline of flying being released.

3. The fact that Legion patchfinder achievement indicates it is only part one shows that there is more to the achievement, and yet we do not have a clear time table of when it will be completed, how, and the number of parts? Does Blizzard do such things to mythic raiders or PVP players? Even the PVP players know when the new season will start.

4. Legion patchfinder requires you do content that has nothing to do with world exploration and is arbitrary for the most part. Also why is Legion patchfinder requiring so much reps when nothing else in the endgame of Legion requires heavy rep grinding? Rep grinding is simply a time waster.

5. If flying was going to be put into the game so quickly, Blizzard wouldn't have wasted precious developer time making the flight whistle or that glider from High Mountain. Gimmicks that try to give you the illusion that you shouldn't "miss flight". But why go through all that trouble if flight is a flip of the switch? Or they can add invisible walls and flip on the flight switch?

Moving on, again they have not done any invisible walls because why would they need to do it if flying is not even in the expansion yet? And if so, why haven't they done it already if that is the best solution to this problem? The devs have said they prefer to not have invisible walls and no flying auras, because it does cause other problems for them. Furthermore, the quest givers in Tanaan did not have a no flying auras added to them till AFTER flying was introduced in Tanaan. And this was recent change too by the way which happened a few months ago, but I think it was done as an anti griefing tool happening on world PVP realms.

You don't like asking tough questions, so you want to stick to the script? That is fine. But my popularity is meaningless if I am not asking questions about how flying is unfolding in Legion? Besides, who cares about popularity over the internets lol?

They thought it was all ready to implement, then found there were holes in the sky box and had to fix those. As I've said before, WoW is an old game with piles and piles of old code, and stuff can just break without expectation. That's what happened in WoD.

While flying requires a small amount of extra development, it's nowhere near the levels you seem to be imagining.

A lot of games have implemented gliding, and players love it there. It requires more tactical thought about where you take off from and where your destination lies. Avianna's feather was great, launches you high into the sky and lets you glide down, so it gets rid of the whole "picking a high place to take off from" by just launching you into the sky.

You haven't ever explained what needs to be developed each and every single expansion to implement flying that makes it takes several months of its own devoted development time from the entire team. It's not like they have to code every cubic inch of the sky to enable flight in each and every single one individually. BC Wrath and Cata all had shorter development times than the previous two expansions, and had flight. One from the get go. A lot of people have also compared them content wise, and BC and Wrath also had a lot more in them initially than the others.

So again, looking at everything, this claim that implementing flight on a new continent takes enormous amounts of man hours to implement is just silly on its face.

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@The Batman

He does make some good points. The only thing I can think of to answer some of them is that the open world is much larger than any raid or dungeon. However, it doesn't seem to add up, since the open world is going to be ready for release before raids, and yet wasn't tested for flying. Flying is, of course, being released later than raiding, so maybe we'll see it on the PTR soon? Hard to say.

As for rep grinds, I've NEVER liked them. I still don't know why they ever got rid of the tabard system. I thought that was one of the best ways to let people grind reps while actually doing something else they enjoyed. It gave players more freedom to do the content they want instead of being funneled into specific tasks. I wish they'd expanded on that instead of abandoning it.

I'm torn about the tabard system, since yeah, it makes you able to grind dungeons to just get the rep you want at the same time, but it's also just so passive.

I think tabards should offer a small amount of rep, like 1 per mob kill and 10-50 for bosses, while dailies still reward 100-200. Just wearing a piece of cloth to "represent" a faction while you slaughter stuff isn't really all that high up there in terms of fantasy. "We love you and will trust you with our most valued items cause you wore our clothing while slaughtering night elves!" vs "We love you because you helped us a lot with tasks we needed completed."

I do actually enjoy talking with you, you have some pretty cool ideas and remain fairly level headed. Meanwhile some others either resort to insults, and I just can't believe that this thing about Blizzard trying to get players used to not flying so they can drop it all together when WoW goes into long term survival mode so they don't have to put it in. It would take less work to not develop flight inspired content, but it's not exactly difficult to just enable it. The bug in WoD that delayed its released had to do with the skybox, which is the one thing I said they had to work out. They can test that along side everything else in the beta with little extra effort if they want. To me it just seems this team likes a ground-up development approach.

[Druzzy]

PLEASE read the posts carefully in order to understand instead of leaping to conclusions. Outside of a select few, NO ONE is arguing for flight to be quickly or easily handed out. Most pro-flier LIKE the idea of having flight be something that's earned, or requires skill and effort to unlock.

The contention is the placement of that unlock. Putting flight behind EVERYTHING and leaving nothing to use it on besides alts is terrible. Locking flight behind a bunch of stuff that has nothing to do with the open world is a similarly bad decision. Arbitrarily withholding flight until an unknown time, without testing is more bullshit. Requiring more things to be done to get flight than raiders have to do in order to set foot inside an instance is still more evidence for the ridiculousness.

Do you understand the problem now?

It's already a pretty easy unlock... it's not like flying is a rare sight in Draenor. That said, sure, strip a few requirements. It just depends on what's more important, the feeling of achievement that you can finally fly, or the convenience of exploring the world from the sky.

[SirCowdog]

You haven't ever explained what needs to be developed each and every single expansion to implement flying that makes it takes several months of its own devoted development time from the entire team. It's not like they have to code every cubic inch of the sky to enable flight in each and every single one individually.

BC Wrath and Cata all had shorter development times than the previous two expansions, and had flight. One from the get go. A lot of people have also compared them content wise, and BC and Wrath also had a lot more in them initially than the others.

So again, looking at everything, this claim that implementing flight on a new continent takes enormous amounts of man hours to implement is just silly on its face.

Simply prepping the terrain and sky for flight isn't the nature of the issue. It's the entire quest design WITHIN that terrain which assumes that a player will approach using a single method: The ground.

The quest formula for the ground has less variables. Verticality doesn't need to be accounted for nearly as much. Separating areas and controlling progress is easier to do because you don't have to account for a player flying over an obstacle(walls, monsters, water, whatever).

With the current version of flight(virtually unlimited movement on all axis at 400% speed) added into the mix the quest design has to change dramatically to account for the amount of freedom of movement that a player possesses. The design has to change from players obeying terrain and moving in a mostly 2D manner(with some minor concessions to gliders and leaps), to a players moving in a full 3D fashion.

This isn't necessarily game breaking, as any people would have you believe. As has been pointed out by several people, the game did just fine in TBC, WotLK, Cats, and Mop. Largely because those expansions had their quests built under the assumption that players would have flight.

But WoD is where things got sticky. The open world terrain of WoD was clearly capable of handling players moving in the vertical axis, as shown by aviana's feather. But the quest flow is obviously intended to be consumed from the ground. Anyone who's leveled an alt in WoD with flying will tell you how stupidly fast and easy it is.

That isn't evidence that flight itself makes the game easier or worse. It's just evidence that it makes a GROUND BASED design easier. That's a very important distinction.

And switching between a ground only design and one that accounts for flying isn't something that can be done quickly or easily without pretty severe consequences to the intended presentation or rate of consumption.

So..we already know that Legion has been in the works since the launch of WoD. And that makes me wonder just how much of its quest design assumed flight wouldn't be there. Probably all the zones available at launch. They can't easily change that without spending a LOT of time to go back over every quest and encounter, and completely reworked them so they aren't broken by flight.

I highly suspect that's why pathfinder is the solution Blizzard went with. They don't have to change their quest design because they know it will always be done by a non-flying player first. They don't have to spend dev time retooling progression through the zones, or even designing quests for flying in the first place. By the time you gain flight they've already gotten the playtime they wanted out of you. Their content has already been exhausted before you have the power to skip it. If you're on an alt, that's just gravy.

But future content after flight is available? THAT will be interesting to see what blizzard does with it. Are they designing for the 3D movement of flight, or will it be no-fly islands?

God, that was a wall of text. Gratz if you read all of it.

I do actually enjoy talking with you, you have some pretty cool ideas and remain fairly level headed. Meanwhile some others either resort to insults

Several rules I try my best to follow(even if I don't always manage to):

Always argue the subject, not the person.

It's OK to believe you're right, but be willing to adjust your opinion if new evidence is presented.

Be willing to admit you're wrong if you are.

Just because you dislike or disagree with part of something doesn't mean you have to hate all its other parts(especially Videogames).

Try not to take things personally.

Think before posting, and proof read.

[Zalamander]

It's already a pretty easy unlock... it's not like flying is a rare sight in Draenor. That said, sure, strip a few requirements. It just depends on what's more important, the feeling of achievement that you can finally fly, or the convenience of exploring the world from the sky.

Flying would be the first thing I aim for after reaching level 110. Please don't say its easy to get, because its impossible. Its' not even in the game in legion...

[Klingers]

It's already a pretty easy unlock... it's not like flying is a rare sight in Draenor. That said, sure, strip a few requirements. It just depends on what's more important, the feeling of achievement that you can finally fly, or the convenience of exploring the world from the sky.

I think the principal failing of the Draenor flight achievement was this: Who actually felt good after unlocking it as opposed to relieved? Very subtle but crucial difference in the success of design and implementation.

To be fair the Legion requirements do look far more well-intentioned. It's more "go out and experience this rich and varied content" and less "fill up these bars and grind out this crap you were previously avoiding like a hole in the head". In the case of WoD they were just using the unlock achievement requirements to vindicate their design philosophy by boosting participation in poorly designed content.

I will say however that I, like most other people, want a timeline. It doesn't have to be a day or a month. It just has to be Blizzard saying "This is our intentioned patch cadence. You will be able to unlock flight on the Broken Isles mainland in patch 7.x".

Of course they'd never do that though, because that would effect subscription numbers.

Being honest though I'd never bought this whole restricted-flying-at-endgame thing. I'm all on board with a carefully-pathed leveling experience on the ground prior to 110 but I'm not seeing how the game is in any way made better, more fun or more engaging when I'm completing my in-game daily chores by having to wade through mobs to get anywhere.

[Elim Garak]

I'm not seeing how the game is in any way made better, more fun or more engaging when I'm completing my in-game daily chores by having to wade through mobs to get anywhere.

If you are not immersed by that experience on daily basis - you are playing it wrong. Go play Microsoft Flight Simulator.

[Mafic]

They thought it was all ready to implement, then found there were holes in the sky box and had to fix those. As I've said before, WoW is an old game with piles and piles of old code, and stuff can just break without expectation. That's what happened in WoD.

And why are there holes in the sky box? And why wasn't it tested like in all previous betas (Burning Crusade, WotLK, Cata, MoP)? And as an old game WoW has a hard time with flight in every expansion as it does take time to test. So what are you arguing with me again?

While flying requires a small amount of extra development, it's nowhere near the levels you seem to be imagining.

It took a whole month and a half of fixing holes in the skybox geometry, and other bugs relating to flight. It takes months of alpha/beta testing in previous expansions to fix flying issues. They even launched MoP with a whole slew of flying bugs.

A lot of games have implemented gliding, and players love it there. It requires more tactical thought about where you take off from and where your destination lies. Avianna's feather was great, launches you high into the sky and lets you glide down, so it gets rid of the whole "picking a high place to take off from" by just launching you into the sky.

Now your thoughts are scattered and everywhere. First, the games that use gliding are also designed diametrically different from WoW and often have a teleport system to support gimmicks like gliders. WoW does not have a mass teleport system, and it has the archaic flight paths, so the removal of flying exposes huge flaws in the games core design.

Avianna's feather was the most broken thing ever added to the game.Flying isn't broken or game breaking, because it requires you are out of combat and there is a casting sequence. Avianna's feather is instant and can be used during combat.

You haven't ever explained what needs to be developed each and every single expansion to implement flying that makes it takes several months of its own devoted development time from the entire team. It's not like they have to code every cubic inch of the sky to enable flight in each and every single one individually. BC Wrath and Cata all had shorter development times than the previous two expansions, and had flight. One from the get go. A lot of people have also compared them content wise, and BC and Wrath also had a lot more in them initially than the others.

They must address the holes in the geometry and the skybox. They have to make sure that there are not any fatal errors or sudden dismounts that lead to death. They tested flying during the alpha/betas of those previous expansion. They did not do it in WoD to the public or Legion, and as a result they lack feedback from alpha/beta testers which speeds up the testing process and fixing of major issues.

For example, they tried to do aerial combat in Wintergrasp, but it was too difficult so they scrapped it. This is why the WotLk physical box shows a mini biplane flying above the Wintergrasp battle and it was advertised as a feature in WotLK.

This isn't hard to follow. Had they started testing flight in WoD in WoD's Alpha that would have been nearly one year's worth of testing till the uproar happened the following year. I believe they knew that they wanted to remove flying forever from the WoD alpha, so they didn't test it internally or even openly to the public beta.

So again, looking at everything, this claim that implementing flight on a new continent takes enormous amounts of man hours to implement is just silly on its face.

You lose! You get nothing! Good day sir/madame/etc! I said, good day, sir/madage, etc!

It does take time, and you expose yourself as not understanding the alpha/beta process of how flying was tested in previous betas and it was not in WoD or Legion. Thanks for trying but you failed once more! Hey, at least you have earned popularity creds over the internets lololol.

[Mafic]

These Zone names do not lie. In Highmountain for example there are actual high mountains who block your path and force you to walk a significantly longer way than the distance between you and the target to inflate playtime and get that subscription monies.


Saw it on stream and all but double_jump DH cheaters have this issue. Sure the scenery is nice but it will be getting old soon. I'm giving it a pass until Legion releases flying patch, gonna try it then if the requirements are not obnoxious.

The High mountain glider and grappling hook are all gimmicks which is why Blizz has put them in to mitigate this issue in that zone. But yeah there is a reason why I call them gimmicks because they lose their fun factor within a week as they do not have lasting power as a useful tool for players.

[Maudib]

Starting in a bout a week we will start hearing about how World Quests need flying... the whisper will become a roar as more and more people start farming AP.. for multiple specs, for multiple alts.

They better be ready sooner than later to add the second (and better damn be the last) part of the achievement.

[Dhrizzle]

Simply prepping the terrain and sky for flight isn't the nature of the issue. It's the entire quest design WITHIN that terrain which assumes that a player will approach using a single method: The ground.

The quest formula for the ground has less variables. Verticality doesn't need to be accounted for nearly as much. Separating areas and controlling progress is easier to do because you don't have to account for a player flying over an obstacle(walls, monsters, water, whatever).

With the current version of flight(virtually unlimited movement on all axis at 400% speed) added into the mix the quest design has to change dramatically to account for the amount of freedom of movement that a player possesses. The design has to change from players obeying terrain and moving in a mostly 2D manner(with some minor concessions to gliders and leaps), to a players moving in a full 3D fashion.

This isn't necessarily game breaking, as any people would have you believe. As has been pointed out by several people, the game did just fine in TBC, WotLK, Cats, and Mop. Largely because those expansions had their quests built under the assumption that players would have flight.

But WoD is where things got sticky. The open world terrain of WoD was clearly capable of handling players moving in the vertical axis, as shown by aviana's feather. But the quest flow is obviously intended to be consumed from the ground. Anyone who's leveled an alt in WoD with flying will tell you how stupidly fast and easy it is.

TBC and WotLK are also a hell of a lot easier to level alts with flight, especially zones like Howling Fjord which have a lot of cliffs and other things. MoP I imagine would also be easier with flying as it allows you to ignore the terrain and snipe targets/objectives without having to worry about any other obstacles. Personally I think it's clear that TBC, WotLK, and MoP were all designed to have the quests tackled from the ground, even Cata has parts that appear to be designed for ground play which makes me wonder how late in development they decided to have flight available immediately.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Hahaha, Khadgar taunts you.

Archmage Khadgar says: I prefer using the greatstaff Atiesh's raven form. Nothing's worse than saddle sores.

- - - Updated - - -

Simply prepping the terrain and sky for flight isn't the nature of the issue. It's the entire quest design WITHIN that terrain which assumes that a player will approach using a single method: The ground.

The quest formula for the ground has less variables. Verticality doesn't need to be accounted for nearly as much. Separating areas and controlling progress is easier to do because you don't have to account for a player flying over an obstacle(walls, monsters, water, whatever).

With the current version of flight(virtually unlimited movement on all axis at 400% speed) added into the mix the quest design has to change dramatically to account for the amount of freedom of movement that a player possesses. The design has to change from players obeying terrain and moving in a mostly 2D manner(with some minor concessions to gliders and leaps), to a players moving in a full 3D fashion.

This isn't necessarily game breaking, as any people would have you believe. As has been pointed out by several people, the game did just fine in TBC, WotLK, Cats, and Mop. Largely because those expansions had their quests built under the assumption that players would have flight.

But WoD is where things got sticky. The open world terrain of WoD was clearly capable of handling players moving in the vertical axis, as shown by aviana's feather. But the quest flow is obviously intended to be consumed from the ground. Anyone who's leveled an alt in WoD with flying will tell you how stupidly fast and easy it is.

That isn't evidence that flight itself makes the game easier or worse. It's just evidence that it makes a GROUND BASED design easier. That's a very important distinction.

And switching between a ground only design and one that accounts for flying isn't something that can be done quickly or easily without pretty severe consequences to the intended presentation or rate of consumption.

So..we already know that Legion has been in the works since the launch of WoD. And that makes me wonder just how much of its quest design assumed flight wouldn't be there. Probably all the zones available at launch. They can't easily change that without spending a LOT of time to go back over every quest and encounter, and completely reworked them so they aren't broken by flight.

I highly suspect that's why pathfinder is the solution Blizzard went with. They don't have to change their quest design because they know it will always be done by a non-flying player first. They don't have to spend dev time retooling progression through the zones, or even designing quests for flying in the first place. By the time you gain flight they've already gotten the playtime they wanted out of you. Their content has already been exhausted before you have the power to skip it. If you're on an alt, that's just gravy.

But future content after flight is available? THAT will be interesting to see what blizzard does with it. Are they designing for the 3D movement of flight, or will it be no-fly islands?

God, that was a wall of text. Gratz if you read all of it.





Several rules I try my best to follow(even if I don't always manage to):

Always argue the subject, not the person.

It's OK to believe you're right, but be willing to adjust your opinion if new evidence is presented.

Be willing to admit you're wrong if you are.

Just because you dislike or disagree with part of something doesn't mean you have to hate all its other parts(especially Videogames).

Try not to take things personally.

Think before posting, and proof read.

I LOVE the zone design so far, and it's great from the ground. This is the first time since Wrath that I am actually looking forward to seeing it all from the air, and wouldn't mind pathfinder giving us flight in 7.0.

And yeah, I did read it, but simply put, it wouldn't take much dev time at all to implement flight, which is why Mafic's conspiracy theory that they're trying to get players to "accept" not flying so they can be lazy is just that, a conspiracy theory.

[Mafic]

Flying would be the first thing I aim for after reaching level 110. Please don't say its easy to get, because its impossible. Its' not even in the game in legion...

Legion patchfinder is very hard to finish "quickly". I feel sorry for those that fall for such misinformation from players trying to obfuscate the damage Blizz has done and the trust that has been betrayed.

- - - Updated - - -

Starting in a bout a week we will start hearing about how World Quests need flying... the whisper will become a roar as more and more people start farming AP.. for multiple specs, for multiple alts.

They better be ready sooner than later to add the second (and better damn be the last) part of the achievement.

Preach said the same things in his videos a while back and a lot of beta testers agree with that. Simply put, Blizzard has painted themselves in the corner with ground and pound gameplay.