Blizzard have effectively gotten rid of flying

[Cwimge]

They really have more or less removed flight. It keeps getting the pathfinder bullshit and blizzard, in their limited wisdom has worked out that if they make getting it a long and pointlessly drawn out affair fewer and fewer people will bother. Meaning they can slowly push it back further and eventually drop it entirely.

Pathfinder is not a middle ground. Blizzard is trying to ween us off flight since throwing a tantrum about it and pulling it didn't work

[Dhrizzle]

Cleverly pathing past enemies....really? Have you played WoW at all? You don't cleverly do anything, you just run past them on your mount. Any of them that don't leash can be dealt with using AoE.

That's cool for you and I guess you're lucky, but there's quite a few people in flying threads who complain about the daze mechanic who would be better served learning how to avoid enemies where possible/

And if Blizzard wants me to take out lackeys, then maybe they should make that one of the quest objectives, hmmm?

It's weird how you have a preference for the two extremes - either flight so you can totally avoid anything you feel is irrelevant or orders from Blizzard so you're forced to fight the irrelevant mobs before moving on. Personally I think it's more interesting to take a balanced approach - freedom to choose whether to engage or avoid the mobs but less powerful tools to do so. Hmmmmmmm?

[Murph2391]

I like the current system, makes you appreciate flying even more when it is an option

[Idge]

Unless you're the one driving the bus, you're not really interacting with anything.

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I didn't realize flying mounts disable chat.

Flying doesn't disable chat, but it removes the player from the world where we all interact with eachother. It's basicly the equivalent of LFR and Groupfinder but for world-interactions.

[Spiren]

Flying was good in the past for multiple reasons. When it was introduced, it was something new making us feel special. It was useful to skip some large areas (e.g.: Azeroth during Cataclysm) or areas filled with hostile mobs when you were heading for something else to spend time on (e.g.: Icecrown). It was great to have things on higher ground levels inaccessible without flying (Sholazar). But how the time went it became so common we used flying to get to certain point without killing anything except of the only npc to get kill credit or loot an object to complete the quest. We lost the interest in the world itself. I think current system is great as we are forced to slow down, not skip everything and explore the world and all of its obstacles (damn, how much I hate hardly accessible terrain but that makes the magic of this game). It's perfectly ok to allow flying to speed up things when we are approaching to the end of the expansion.

[kaintk]

i can support the fact we can't fly but damn.... blizzard should stop doing only island environment or stupid spiral mountain to hide the fact that the land they create are really small

i'm sorry guys to told you that, but blizzard are so lazy now , it's so pathetic. Spiral moutain and loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooot of water to hide their lazyness seem to be the way now;p

[Stormspark]

I believe they just released new info on WoW subs. They seem to have gone up - it's on the front page.

They say monthly active users have gone up. But they aren't saying how many, nor are they stating subscriber numbers.

They can't ever state subscriber numbers again without looking like hypocrites.

[Deleted]

Flying doesn't disable chat, but it removes the player from the world where we all interact with eachother. It's basicly the equivalent of LFR and Groupfinder but for world-interactions.

What world interactions?
I do interact whith other players when killing a world Boss or doing a WQ that requires more than one player, something i am perfectly fine doing through the groupfinder.
Other than that the world-interactions are gankers in PVP realms and other players doing the same quests i do or just passing by, that have the exact same effect on me as if they were NPCs.

[unbound]

So, then we also can't say subs have gone down.

Here's some of the quotes:

So, read those quotes closely.

MAUs grew 10% in 2016 - this is a comparison to earlier in the year when MAUs are extremely low at the end of the previous expansion; and keep in mind that WoD had no new content for a very, very long time

MAUs grew 20% YoY for 4th quarter - again, this is a comparison to the worst 4th quarter on record. 20% improvement is really not impressive with that in mind.

Increase in total play time for the quarter / 4th quarter play time surpassed previous record set in 3rd quarter - while they brag about more than any non-release quarter, keep in mind that the Legion launch was only 1 month prior to the start of the 4th quarter. Blizz is being disingenuous here.

Record levels of quarterly and in-game revenues, driven by WoW in-game content and continued strength of Overwatch customization items - the WoW item is not subscriptions, it is the shop; and Overwatch is not WoW at all.

In-game content revenues - $3.6 billion in 2016 vs $1.6 billion in 2015...again, this is not subscriptions, this is people paying money for shop items.

Nothing Blizz has provided actually points to more subscriptions...the majority of it is about getting more money from a lower volume customer base. The fact that Blizz is not coming out and directly saying their subscriptions are doing awesome is actually pretty good proof that subscriptions are indeed down. Blizz hasn't shied away from bragging about subscriptions numbers when they spike due to expansion launches.

[MiseryIndex]

Flying being disabled at launch I'm OK with, ostensibly to make you feel more engaged with leveling, terrain and creatures/questing. At this point though, it's like they're delaying it for the sake of delaying it. FP to nearest flight point, beeline to WQ, whistle/hearth/glider out. The whole "but world pvp!" concept is a joke too. I play on a pvp server, and with the exception of a lowbie alt leveling through zones getting 2 shot by someone, I haven't seen any world pvp at all.

[pfbe]

the WoW item is not subscriptions, it is the shop;

again, this is not subscriptions, this is people paying money for shop items.

if you think about WoW Tokens as in-game items, they would both fit in with higher "in-game content" revenue and "higher subscriptions" (or playtime or whatever metric they mentioned). Meaning that while there may be less people willing to pay for a wow sub, the whales are offsetting (and, in a way, obfuscating) those numbers through the Token.

Wow is alive and well, in any case, it just isn't the 12 million sub juggernaut it once was.

[netherflame]

Can any anti fliers give a good reason as to why blizzard continues to sell flying mounts in store for $30 however restrict flying in current content?

Seems like the height of abusing their playerbase financially.

This is also excluding the time cost people have invested farming mounts in some cases for years

In every zone that isn't broken isles you can fly additionally those mounts are also ground mounts, they are not exclusive to the air.

[phyrlord]

Subs are down and it will be cheaper to develop the game in the future with unfinished environments. Flying will be gone completely at some point, except for old world content.

Oh well. Enjoy the game, I suppose...doesn't sound like I'm missing much...

What? Subs are UP.... From last year. By a long shot.

[BadguyNotBadGuy]

In all honesty i just want them to give you flying 100% when dead. im so fucking tired of running for 5 minutes just to get to the spot i died, like when doing the falconsaur WQ in Stormheim, and the closest fakn spirit healer is at the village being attacked by the Forsaken.

[SirCowdog]

What? Subs are UP.... From last year. By a long shot.

You mean PROFITS are up. That's not the same thing as subs. Blizzard no longer releases sub numbers to the public.

[Saucerian]

They have, and so have I effectively given up playing a WoW expansion past the first few months. :P

The delay is bullshit. I would be fine with Pathfinder but further withholding flight until a fucking year later, when the original world content is completely obsolete, is bullshit.

Hope their bean counters look at how many don't even bother coming back for flight and weigh that loss against just fucking enabling it at the time it should have been.

[Deleted]

I don't understand why people are still arguing. Some say stupid stuff like always, others quote Ion Hazzikostas stupid statements on why flight is bad.
Obviously if he really things with flying there will be only swooping in on NPCs he A: is not really creative in creating environments that prevent that Which is part of his job to have people creatively working on that and B: makes me wonder if he understands what "getting flight AT THE END OF LEVELING, like it has always been" actually means.

I personally like the no flight mechanic in Legion. It saved me a ton of money. No money from me for the x-pac and no money from me for the (outdated) monthly sub-fee. Guys you have to look on the bright side: it gives you time to play and try other games. Me and my friends don't miss anything and play a ton of different games together.

I (and probably others) might come back if Blizzard decides to reduce the amount of "chores" (no flight is not the only thing that's wrong with WoW atm) and replaces them with fun-things again. Maybe some time after 7.2, maybe after 8.0. But until then i know Blizzard probably knows how "good" this no-flight / restricted flight / dragging customers really has been for the game..... after all they know the numbers.

Until then..... have fun people. Play whatever and how ever you like. ;-)

[Thage]

You mean where instead there's no reason to be on the ground.

Excepting that you have to do main story quests, sidequests, and exploration to unlock flight per-zone, so by the time you've unlocked it in, say, Azys Lla you've done everything of note except for bounty hunting logs at which point it just serves the purpose of getting you from A to B. It's a more streamlined, more organic form of Pathfinding in that you have to do most of what a zone offers before it lets you skip the terrain for convenience.

The only difference is it's not herding you into badly-designed activities like trying to platform on a 17-year-old engine for treasures and there isn't an arbitrary time gate on it.

[phyrlord]

You mean PROFITS are up. That's not the same thing as subs. Blizzard no longer releases sub numbers to the public.

From this website...

"World of Warcraft saw an increase in total play time for the quarter, surpassing the Q3 expansion launch quarter and all non-launch quarters in the last four years."

That means subs are up.

You guys are so silly.

[Stormspark]

if you think about WoW Tokens as in-game items, they would both fit in with higher "in-game content" revenue and "higher subscriptions" (or playtime or whatever metric they mentioned). Meaning that while there may be less people willing to pay for a wow sub, the whales are offsetting (and, in a way, obfuscating) those numbers through the Token.

Wow is alive and well, in any case, it just isn't the 12 million sub juggernaut it once was.

If I had to guess based on what I see around me on the servers I play on, I'd guess WOW is currently somewhere between 6-8 million. There was no way Legion would hit 10 million on launch, no matter how good it was...not after the stunt they pulled with WOD where they basically scammed everyone. They were LUCKY that anyone was willing to give them a second chance after that. Legion is delivering on promises so far though, and that's a good thing.

Of course subs are up from where they were in WOD. They stopped reporting when it hit 5.5 million (at that point it was in freefall). We don't know how low it got, I've heard estimates of around 2 million (it definitely dropped below FFXIV at the low point).