No flying in 7.0 confirmed

[SirCowdog]

I do think Blizzard is fairly reasonable when it comes to feedback, but they also stick to their guns when they have a specific design or vision. When it comes to flight, they see it as an obstacle that they have had to design around since its implementation. It's something they actively don't want to go back to, otherwise they're back to designing larger scale maps and resigning to exploitable quest mechanics. We both know this.

An obstacle that they've had to design around since its implementation? Give me a break! What has blizzard done in almost every other situation where an obstacle has presented itself? They've literally invented new technology in order to improve the situation. Cross realm battlegrounds, LFD tool, Cross Realm server, phasing, etc, etc, etc.

There are only two explanations that make any sense to me, at this point. Either Legion was being designed at the same time as WoD, and thus under the heavy influence of the no-flight plan for too long to make quick or easy changes. OR someone in a position of power made a unilateral decision in regards to flight, then attempted to retcon an explanation to keep pushing the idea.

When it comes to wanting to improve flight, there's really nothing to discuss here. It's a shifting of goalposts that will satisfy one group and infuriate another. This is indicative by ANY change done to the game. Not necessarily saying it'd be any for the worse, and it might actually be better than what we have now, but it has to satisfy the underlying 'don't interfere with world/quest content pacing' vision that Blizzard has set out so far. I personally believe it is unreasonable to try and get Blizzard to change that design philosophy just to bring forward a travel feature; one that will be added eventually anyways. It's not me defending Blizzard, it's me laying down the most realistic situation at hand.

Everything you just said makes sense....IF FLIGHT HAD NEVER EXISTED BEFORE NOW.

Have you played Legion? There are almost no world quests that would be ruined by flying. Not even the PACE of world quests would be ruined by flight. The ONLY thing that would be ruined is traveling through ground terrain that you have already covered multiple times. Where is the loss?

There is nothing wrong with asking Blizzard to return to Vanilla, or remove LFR, or remove Cross Realms, or stop the year-long content deadzones. It doesn't mean that any of these things will happen just because a lot of people all want the same thing. It's one thing to make suggestions, and it's another to understand how applicable they are to Blizzard's forward momentum.

You are absolutely, 100% wrong here. How many features and conveniences in the game RIGHT NOW are as a result of player feedback and desires? How much of the game has been copied directly from player-made addons? Blizzard does not work in a vacuum. The entire concept that you're suggesting here, that Blizzard's vision is some kind of perfect juggernaut that can't ever have flaws, almost makes me physically ill. Blizzard doesn't have to bend to every whim of the community, but they do have to pay attention to them to some degree.

I don't claim that the group of people who want flying back in the game are actually large enough to effect this change going forward. Blizzard did a pretty good job of driving away most of the resistance to that idea in WoD. But I'm not just going to stop talking about it because it doesn't match perfectly with blizzard's "vision".

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you've obviously never played a Druid.

I could do all collection quests in flight form in Cata. That was when they allowed flight early on, during leveling too. Obviously, I was first in my guild to hit max level. Server first was a druid too.

Of course that's not a flaw in flight itself, but it was definitely the catalyst. Even doing collection quests in ground travel form, I'd have to be wary of mobs nearby. There was no need to with flight when they insta de-aggro as soon as you hit the sky. Literally do collection quests with mobs running at you, and take off before they reach.

Sigh...how many times have I said the bolded text in this thread? In your specific example, the flaw lies with the weak design of trying to defend gathering nodes or collection quests with slow, stupid, ground-based NPCs in a world filled with fast, powerful, flying players. The "Boss in a base" quest design example that keeps getting brought up shows how uncreative that is.

[Beazy]

you've obviously never played a Druid.

I could do all collection quests in flight form in Cata. That was when they allowed flight early on, during leveling too. Obviously, I was first in my guild to hit max level. Server first was a druid too.

Of course that's not a flaw in flight itself, but it was definitely the catalyst. Even doing collection quests in ground travel form, I'd have to be wary of mobs nearby. There was no need to with flight when they insta de-aggro as soon as you hit the sky. Literally do collection quests with mobs running at you, and take off before they reach.

Ive played plenty of druid in the past. And flight form cant be used in combat. Maybe you're mis-remembering that part.

So, again, did you have a list of those questing mechanics exploited by flying or what? You're starting to sound as bad as the "Flying ruined world PvP" guys.

[Dhrizzle]

How many times I have answered this question to you personally? How many times others have answered this question to you personally?

How many times have people offered some sort of proof? Never I think, usually people just offer assumptions and pretend they're true.

The feedback was in response to the no-flight ever-again.
It came from people who were NOT happy with no-flight.
Patch finder is not a compromise. Try again.

People who were NOT happy with "no-flight" had been giving feedback since before WoD launched. Clearly there was a different response when Blizz announced "no flight ever," presumably from people who didn't mind "no-flight" if it would come at some point before the end of the expansion.

And you could be enjoying that while *I* fly. But you and others like you don't have the discipline to say "You know... I like ground travel and how it feels so I'll do that instead of flying."

When Blizz design the content they have a rough idea of how much the average player will progress in a given period of time. If they put flight in to make the world content easier most players will default to using it, it should be safe to assume that Blizzard intends for players to use the tools given to them. As Blizz have an idea of how quickly they want players to progress they would have to adjust the content in other ways, increasing the difficulty of the mobs, the number of kills needed or reducing the rewards from each quest. As a result people who would rather stick with the ground mount will be gaining gear, rep and artifact power slower than what Blizz considers to be a satisfying rate.

[SirCowdog]

The massive no flying threads started eight months before WoD even launched. By 6.1 it was very old news.

March 8, 2014 for the Warlords thread here.
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...ut-entire-xpac

This wasn't the first either. It was the one we ended up keeping open. There were others before.

Just as a point of order: There were threads on Reddit and the official forums as well, following roughly the same timeline.

[-Joker-]

Ive played plenty of druid in the past. And flight form cant be used in combat. Maybe you're mis-remembering that part.

So, again, did you have a list of those questing mechanics exploited by flying or what? You're starting to sound as bad as the "Flying ruined world PvP" guys.

There was a tome that could be farmed for Ashran that allowed Druids to use their flight form while in combat. You may have missed that.

Book of Flight Form

[MoanaLisa]

Everything you just said makes sense....IF FLIGHT HAD NEVER EXISTED BEFORE NOW.

By implication this says that everything that was ever in the game should still be in the game. It doesn't work that way in WoW and really never has. Expansions are in many ways new games or complete resets of the old game. Flight is fair game for that whether one agrees with or not.

[Beazy]

There was a tome that could be farmed for Ashran that allowed Druids to use their flight form while in combat. You may have missed that.

Ashran was an end game world PVP zone......
How can you forget that? It wasn't even a year ago.

[SirCowdog]

Stealth can remove you from the game. You are no longer in danger when sitting in the right spot.
Mountains can remove you from the game. Want to avoid mobs afk? Just run up a spire or hill and AFK.
Garrisons can remove you from the game. Want to avoid all danger? Just hearth.
Capital cities can remove you from the game. See above.
Want to dodge PvP and avoid danger? Duck into an instance or step through a portal and your PvP is disabled.

In the interest of fairness, a great many things can remove someone from the game. What makes flight unique is not the ability to remove yourself from gameplay, but the ability to hop over obstacles, mobs, etc which you might not want to deal with. This is why I play a rogue with a goblin glider. Vanish allows me to get my hit in, and then dump every bit of aggro on the other guy, then just afk til the mob is dead to collect my gold/loot. Flight is a very powerful tool when available, and every player... myself included, would use it at will. I don't fault people for wanting to use a legitimate in game mechanic. I fault them for not being more honest about why they want to do it. Lazyness. I fall into the same boat.

Which is why I've suggested several times that both the core mechanics of flying needs to be updated for the first time since its introduction in TBC, as well as using mechanics such as have been discussed(canons, flying enemies, harpoons, weather effects, etc.).

Nothing is going to stop a player who is determined to find a way to avoid some mechanics. Singling out one single game mechanic as the scapegoat for all the problems in the game is just being willfully ignorant and stupid, however. Part of the problem is that flight is too powerful relative to other abilities. So either change flight to bring it in line, or change the environment which flight is used in.

Or do like Blizzard, and blame flight for everything, smash it flat, and ignore the source of the problem so they don't have to innovate.

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By implication this says that everything that was ever in the game should still be in the game. It doesn't work that way in WoW and really never has. Expansions are in many ways new games or complete resets of the old game. Flight is fair game for that whether one agrees with or not.

My point was that the explanations and methods used to get rid of flight were obscenely bad. Pathfinder is a poor solution that only seems reasonable when people view it from the skewed perspective of assuming flight was never part of the game.

What if the next expansion got rid of raiding? Do you think that people would magically forget everything we've ever known about raiding, and view it objectively? No, of course not! The game should move forward, and improve upon things which have been part of it in the past. 40 man raids downgraded to 20 and 10 man, and flex technology was further used to improve the situation. Classes were more equally balanced, and raid buffs have changed in order to further equalize the composition of raids so players can be brought to the raid instead of classes.

This concept can been seen in all aspects of the game. But for some reason flying has remained almost unchanged since its introduction. It's simply had its speed increased and had various different methods of being unlocked. Why not apply the same kind of evolution other aspects of the game have had? Yes, I understand some systems have been removed or phased out entirely, such as defense rating, or expertise and the like. But those were small gears in a much larger machine. Flight is a major aspect of how players interact with the world, and a large part of the unique experience of WoW. It should be improved and evolved, not simply torn out and ignored.

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They didn't remove all tanks because defense rating wasn't working well. They didn't remove all PVP because arenas were causing problems with class balance and gearing. They didn't removed all raiding because LFR was causing players to feel like it was necessary step in gearing. Etc, etc, etc, ad nausem.

Do you see what I'm getting at?

[Thimagryn]

Ive played plenty of druid in the past. And flight form cant be used in combat. Maybe you're mis-remembering that part.

If you're in flight form and aggro, you don't get shifted out of flight form. Flight form reacts exactly like mounting, so if you aggroed a mob while mounted you aren't dismounted.

So, again, did you have a list of those questing mechanics exploited by flying or what? You're starting to sound as bad as the "Flying ruined world PvP" guys.

I joined Pandaria in its last month, right before WoD hit. I had access to flying far earlier than I should have, and used it to help in my questing. I tend to hit max level through dungeons and quest afterwards, knowing that flight would make questing easier.

Remember the quest in Kun Lai where you go up a mountain dodging avalanches and escorting the Emperor's spirit? Flight made that a complete cakewalk.

Remember the boat ride through the cave in Pandaria? Skippable with flight. That's exactly what I did, because I could. Any sort of 'talk to X' quest was completely bypassable.

See, the issue here is you think I'm against flight. I'm actually the opposite. I like flight and I like being able to exploit mechanics to my advantage to level up as fast as possible, because I powergame. I use flight to my advantage anywhere I can, and I understand it's exactly for that reason that Blizzard wants to put a cap on that in order to have people play as their design intends. Does this take away a bit of my fun? Of course it does! But I don't blame Blizzard for doing something that infringes on my fun when I fully understand that they don't want me bypassing content they designed to be done a certain way.

I deal with it by not subbing until I have access to content I want. I finished all of Pandaria's content in under a month rather than suffered through 2 years of grind and gating. My experience of Pandaria was incredibly positive because of that.

The reason I can point out the downpoints of having flight in questing is because I know how to abuse it. It's for that very reason that I can understand Blizzard's situation, even if I don't agree with it.

[Lei]

By implication this says that everything that was ever in the game should still be in the game. It doesn't work that way in WoW and really never has. Expansions are in many ways new games or complete resets of the old game. Flight is fair game for that whether one agrees with or not.

Ahem, to be fair, Blizz was always very gentle to the game till... I would say MoP. But with and after WoD, jeez, abilities being ripped out from the game after just one expansion, brutal changes to the game being handled like it was number tuning. Remember when GC (I think) said that even things like fuckign Pet Battles took them months and months to think about? Because once they implement it, and it fails, it's their responsibility and it will let people down. They had to be be ABSOLUTELY SURE that they will continue on with Pet Battles before putting it in. Nowadays? JUST RIP EVERYTHING OUT! Here goes stormlash, cascade, aspect of the fox, which we just put in 3-4 months ago, etc. Wow...
So this "we change everything radically from monday to tuesday " is a new thing, and I don't like it at all. I just hope this is not a trend now, but seemingly this is how the devs think these days... :=/

Where is the dev responsibility nowadays? Where is the empathy, knowing that sudden and radical changes like I mentioned above alienate the players? The game can have the most content, the most raids, if the players are losing touch with the game. And flying is in the same bucket.

[Thimagryn]

Sigh...how many times have I said the bolded text in this thread? In your specific example, the flaw lies with the weak design of trying to defend gathering nodes or collection quests with slow, stupid, ground-based NPCs in a world filled with fast, powerful, flying players. The "Boss in a base" quest design example that keeps getting brought up shows how uncreative that is.

It's a trickle effect. Considering how so many features are intertwined, it's not easy to unravel one thread without affecting another. Sure, there are bad, poorly thought out or boring game mechanics that exist that shouldn't be kept for the sake of denying flight; but that is a completely separate argument that shouldn't be used to promote the inclusion of flight as it stands.

Again, I don't presume to defend lack of flight. I want flight just like everyone else, and I simply deal with it differently under a different mindset. But yes, flight does destroy pacing in part to its convenience. The time I remember it not impacting me as much were the Wrath/Cata days, when the landscape was specifically designed to be larger so that travel took up more time than necessary. Blizzard also included no-fly zones like Molten Front Dailies. I liked that system. I also don't think Blizzard would go back to that system. To me, vocalizing it isn't going to do much more than asking for Vanilla servers. They already have a direction they wish to take the game and have made that pretty damned clear in many of their interviews and devtalks.

[SirCowdog]

Ahem, to be fair, Blizz was always very gentle to the game till... I would say MoP. But with and after WoD, jeez, abilities being ripped out from the game after just one expansion, brutal changes to the game being handled like it was number tuning. Remember when GC (I think) said that even things like fuckign Pet Battles took them months and months to think about? Because once they implement it, and it fails, it's their responsibility and it will let people down. They had to be be ABSOLUTELY SURE that they will continue on with Pet Battles before putting it in. Nowadays? JUST RIP EVERYTHING OUT! Here goes stormlash, cascade, aspect of the fox, which we just put in 3-4 months ago, etc. Wow...
So this "we change everything radically from monday to tuesday " is a new thing, and I don't like it at all. I just hope this is not a trend now, but seemingly this is how the devs think these days... :=/

Where is the dev responsibility nowadays? Where is the empathy, knowing that sudden and radical changes like I mentioned above alienate the players? The game can has the most content, the most raids, if the players are losing touch with the game. And flying is in the same bucket.

The thing is, I kind of understand where they're coming from. Subs had been slowly declining over the years, and they felt something was needed in order to prop the game up again. One radical change was the attempt to crank out expansions every year. As a result of that they were forced to cut corner after corner. What better way to do that than to attempt to streamline and simplify everything? Removing abilities was one side effect of that. Simplifying their quest formula and encounter design was another. Without flight their quest design could be sped up because they wouldn't have to consider the air component at all.

I think it was a horrible mistake. But for some reason they're sticking to it despite the negative reaction to it in WoD, and continuing to a lesser degree, in Legion. Unfortunately, if players don't like no-flying they're still giving implied approval of it if they don't unsub because that's the only feedback blizzard appears to actually consider. They might like other parts of the game enough to keep playing, but by doing so they're assumed to endorse the entire package because, once again, the only effective feedback is to unsub.

[Thimagryn]

There was a tome that could be farmed for Ashran that allowed Druids to use their flight form while in combat. You may have missed that.

Book of Flight Form

That's how I geared full PVP gear as soon as I hit max level. That book is amazing, and I didn't get killed once in the entire zone for a good 3 hour run. It was the best way to do the elephant race too, you could literally disengage if the other faction was swarming in for a fight.

I also used it to get to some of the bosses as soon as they spawned. Fly up to their area and divebomb in bear form. Tag, tank and kill.

[MoanaLisa]

Ahem, to be fair, Blizz was always very gentle to the game till... I would say MoP.

Cataclysm completely redid the 1-60 leveling experience.

That may be good or bad but gentle? No.

The number of people complaining about wanting that leveling experience returned are at least as vocal about it as anything to do with flying. The rest of your post I can agree with in principle. I'm not a fan of relearning a class I've played for 10 years every expansion. Pace of change and comfort level with that is subjective of course but between Warlords and Legion it's practically WoW II in many respects.

My point was that the explanations and methods used to get rid of flight were obscenely bad.

Afrasiabi's explanation was nothing more than "we think that players will like it if they give it a chance" (paraphrasing). Go look at the Warlords thread I linked a page or so ago and watch the video.

That may or may not be the case. No disagreement that they handled it very badly. It will be unpopular to say so but if they had said "We're taking it out" and stuck to their guns on it they might have been better off. Cleaner execution certainly and avoiding the two year shit show they caused by their inability to make a decision.

[Jaylock]

The thing is, I kind of understand where they're coming from. Subs had been slowly declining over the years, and they felt something was needed in order to prop the game up again. One radical change was the attempt to crank out expansions every year. As a result of that they were forced to cut corner after corner. What better way to do that than to attempt to streamline and simplify everything? Removing abilities was one side effect of that. Simplifying their quest formula and encounter design was another. Without flight their quest design could be sped up because they wouldn't have to consider the air component at all.

I think it was a horrible mistake. But for some reason they're sticking to it despite the negative reaction to it in WoD, and continuing to a lesser degree, in Legion. Unfortunately, if players don't like no-flying they're still giving implied approval of it if they don't unsub because that's the only feedback blizzard appears to actually consider. They might like other parts of the game enough to keep playing, but by doing so they're assumed to endorse the entire package because, once again, the only effective feedback is to unsub.

You are looking at this issue only in the spectrum of public forums. You say that the removal of flight was a general "negative reaction" by the player base, but really, its not a big deal to people actually playing the game and enjoying the content. Do you realize how small the active forum posting community is? Maybe at most a few thousand people. How many people are actively playing the game? Not sure since sub numbers are no longer reported, but its safe to say at least 5-10 Million. Furthermore, of those few thousand active forum posters, MAAAAYBE 10-20% care enough to post in the no-flying threads, and the rest of the forum posters don't care about the issue. In this very thread its the same 5-10 posters posting in a massive circle jerk of whining that flying isn't part of current content.

Point being, some people like flight, some don't, but quite frankly most just plain don't care either way. So no, your "negative reaction" players are a tiny minority of players who are upset, especially ones who wouldn't buy or play the game (the herpa derp "no fly no buy" crowd) because of this tiny issue. Flying will be released in this expansion. Pathfinder part 1 is a nice boost to mounted speed that leads up to flying becoming available. Its a fresh change of pace. It keeps the game interesting and lessens the staleness of doing the same thing over and over every expansion (rush to max level, drop 4k on unlocking flight, fly in circles in main city hub)

An added bonus to flying later on is that once you unlock it, you can freely level ALTS from level 100 through the continent with flying.

[SirCowdog]

Afrasiabi's explanation was nothing more than "we think that players will like it if they give it a chance" (paraphrasing). Go look at the Warlords thread I linked a page or so ago and watch the video.

That may or may not be the case. No disagreement that they handled it very badly. It will be unpopular to say so but if they had said "We're taking it out" and stuck to their guns on it they might have been better off. Cleaner execution certainly and avoiding the two year shit show they caused by their inability to make a decision.

Thanks, I've seen that video several times. Remember I've been part of the fight against no-flying since WoD beta.

The thing that always blows me away about that particular interview is that it was VERY clear that he was pushing hard for no-flying despite the feedback against it. At that point in time it had already been on the beta IIRC, or was released shortly afterwords, and the people I talked to were pretty meh about it. Remember also that at the time of that interview players were also operating under the assumption that Flying would have an epic quest line to unlock it in 6.1 as well, and that colored their responses.


But that's fine, he wanted to give it a shot anyway, and it went so poorly into the trainwreck of WoD that we'll never be able to tell how players really felt about it on the large scale. And now we're still not being given a choice in the matter.

I wouldn't be nearly so against No-flying if pathfinder wasn't such a steaming pile of shit covered by a thin layer of silk surrounded by fanatics making excuses for it.

[Connll]

How many times have people offered some sort of proof? Never I think, usually people just offer assumptions and pretend they're true.

How many times have anyone offered anything that you would not a) ignore, b) make a strawman out of it, or c) leave for a few days and then bring the exact same questions as before like nothing happened? Like you are doing now?

People who were NOT happy with "no-flight" had been giving feedback since before WoD launched. Clearly there was a different response when Blizz announced "no flight ever," presumably from people who didn't mind "no-flight" if it would come at some point before the end of the expansion.

Extremely unlikely: The most probable option is that the many players who don´t frequent forums were still believing the lie (Flight is coming! With an epic questline!)

When Blizz design the content they have a rough idea of how much the average player will progress in a given period of time. If they put flight in to make the world content easier most players will default to using it, it should be safe to assume that Blizzard intends for players to use the tools given to them. As Blizz have an idea of how quickly they want players to progress they would have to adjust the content in other ways, increasing the difficulty of the mobs, the number of kills needed or reducing the rewards from each quest. As a result people who would rather stick with the ground mount will be gaining gear, rep and artifact power slower than what Blizz considers to be a satisfying rate.

Lets ignore for a moment the number of times the current devs were bullshitting about this issue. Lets pretend they are sincerely, honestly, trying to make the game better for the greatest number of players possible.

Their experiment failed. WoD failed. Somehow, WoD managed to not only dethrone Cata as the worst expansion, but has actually done something remarkable: it got players to reach a consensus about it being the worst expack.

Were the devs tryign to make the game better, they would not repeat WoD´s formula.

This is not what is happening, and, as such, making all arguments "Blizzard wants/intends/predicts/whatever" invalid.

[Jaylock]

I wouldn't be nearly so against No-flying if pathfinder wasn't such a steaming pile of shit covered by a thin layer of silk surrounded by fanatics making excuses for it.

What makes Pathfinder a "steaming pile of shit" to you?

Its a list of objectives to complete, meaning you have to actually play the game and complete content in order to open it up. To me, thats a pretty good deal.

---> Blizz provides content

---> Blizz rewards you for doing said content

---> Everybody wins.

[melodramocracy]

The thing is, I kind of understand where they're coming from. Subs had been slowly declining over the years, and they felt something was needed in order to prop the game up again. One radical change was the attempt to crank out expansions every year. As a result of that they were forced to cut corner after corner. What better way to do that than to attempt to streamline and simplify everything? Removing abilities was one side effect of that. Simplifying their quest formula and encounter design was another. Without flight their quest design could be sped up because they wouldn't have to consider the air component at all.

I think Blizzard has it in their head that classes need revamps to make every expansion seem "fresh". Not sure why that is, and I think that every class revamp has been for the worse across the board, but hey.

I don't think encounter design is simpler in the slightest. There are world bosses with as many abilities as older 5 man bosses, and current 5 man encounters that are more technical than many old raid bosses.

As far as quest design, when has it ever really *not* been trivialized by flight? Granted, there have been "fly this, bomb that" occasional quests since at least TBC, but the majority are different.

Legion has just as many examples of objectives that'd be trivialized by flight as WoD had, if not more.... and all expansions have given flight to the player after the bulk of questing was done (with the exception of Cata, which had pretty awful questing to be fair). Now, you're no longer done with questing once you hit max level, and it's kind of a nice change.

I think it was a horrible mistake. But for some reason they're sticking to it despite the negative reaction to it in WoD, and continuing to a lesser degree, in Legion. Unfortunately, if players don't like no-flying they're still giving implied approval of it if they don't unsub because that's the only feedback blizzard appears to actually consider. They might like other parts of the game enough to keep playing, but by doing so they're assumed to endorse the entire package because, once again, the only effective feedback is to unsub.

It boils down to this: their own idea of how the game should be experienced is more important to them than the (apparent) amount of subs they lose specifically because of no-flight. They don't release numbers in any fashion these days, and certainly never did provide information as to why players leave, so it's really all just speculation.

[Thimagryn]

Were the devs tryign to make the game better, they would not repeat WoD´s formula.

WoD's failings were not due to flight alone. The most common outlier to WoD's failings are lack of content and fatigue over existing content. The addition of flight to WoD did not save it either.

It's also not logical to say the game will be better if they don't repeat WoD's formula, when the obvious factors contributing to WoD's downfall had less to do with the formula and more to do with the execution.