No Flying in 8.0 Confirmed

[SirCowdog]

That's never happened. The point was that people always threaten to unsub and yet never do...happens every x-pac. They threaten to unsub...they don't....the world has tons of people in it and millions still playing. /the end

Look at the subscription numbers in WotLK. Now look at subscription numbers and activity numbers in WoD/Legion and tell me again that people don't follow through on their statements about unsubbing.

Most people just don't say anything at all, but quit out of disgust. This is caused by Blizzard continuously ignoring the desires of the playerbase for their artistic vision, or out of arrogance, or just because they're out of touch. I don't know. I only see the result.

But by all means, keep sticking your head in the sand I guess.

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People arguing against flight often say that it hinders player interaction

That's because it's easier to create a convenient scapegoat than actually acknowledge the simple fact that many people only want to interact with others on their own terms. And they sure as hell don't want to be FORCED to interact with random people.

The entire argument that being grounded creates more interaction is based on some pretty selfish and shaky logic in the first place. "I want more player interaction, so other people MUST be REQUIRED to hang out with me." That's what players who say flying hurts their experience are REALLY saying. Moreover, it completely ignores chat channels such as /general and /zone or /say and /shout. Not to mention guild chat, friend lists, voice chat, and forums.

The idea that flying hurts interaction is ridiculous, given the current environment of digital communication over the internet. I say if you want more player interaction then you should join a massive social guild and go to guild events, and stop trying to inflict your personal preferences on the general public.

[Sorcath]

100% this ^^. just because *SOME* people (minority or majority, doesn't realy matters) don't like the idea of flying doesn't mean they should support disabling it to the rest of the community. it's a personel choice and those people can just CHOOSE not to fly.

some people like Twinking. should we gate leveling for all other players as well?

also, I'm fine with the whole "explore the world". but that could and should be done while leveling and following the questlines. as soon as you hit max level - flying should be enabled. no rep/time gating BS.

on a side note, just my personal opinion, I'm having a hard time to get those who praise QoL downgrades (including those who asks for vanilla). the moment blizz announced vaniila servers most of those said:"that's great *BUT* enable dual - spec/addOn support/allow additional content patched/etc." some veterans who played during vanilla pretty much predict that after the initial buzz ppl will abandon it due to it being obselete.

bottom line: allow flying at alunch upon reaching max level. if you object to it - just don't fly.

p.s.
no flying, at least to me, is not a good enough reason to unsub. Bad storyline, endless grinding RNG and bad game design is. been playing since 2007 and atm it seems legion will be my last ride.

The whole problem with your analogy is; What if they balanced the game around twinks?

Which was the case for flying. Where zones were dead, PvP was awful, and most importantly, xp was shitty and scattered. Flying took away developers desire to put things into the game because you would end up skipping the majority of what was put in and then go directly to the forums and complain like petulant kids.

Goodbye then. Nothing valuable lost. All the reasons why you hated the game are reasons why flying shouldn't be added. At least people who say "I don't care about the nooks and crannies" of the game aren't bullshitting others into believing they care about the status of the games content. They're being honest that their only goal is to skygank and chain run mythics/raiding.

[Deleted]

Two different types of people. Suramar was fucking awful. I HATE doing quest lines post max level. Its boring as fuck.

Flying should be available for people who don't give a shit about the nooks and crannies. That isn't why I play the game.

Every expansion I sub less and less because of the ridiculous expectations they have for people at level cap. You want me to do a quest line to unlock artifact traits? Make me do them during the leveling process so I am at least getting experience too.

I don't think I subbed for much longer than a couple of months this expansion. Maybe a couple weeks more than that in WoD. Getting worse and worse.

You guys continue to talk about how its the "minority" of players (with no actual factual basis) that want flying. Yet you ignore the fact that WoW has lost more than half of its subscriber count in the past few expansions and continues to down spiral every expansion. These are the people leaving because of things like no flying and other dissapointing things in the game that Blizzard continues to try to shove down players throats who aren't interested.

So if it is in fact the "minority" of subscribers who want flying right away, then its only because millions of subscribers have already fled.

But hey, have fun on that slowly sinking ship.

Yeh because all those millions that unsubbed wanted flying right away, and only that. The world is not black and white man, I myself unsubbed for a long time and not getting flying at the start was not one of them. So try again.

[mauserr]

except that classic is not minority... minority is your empty servers... wait until classic is released and you ll see who is the minority... also this picture is from official wow reddit on day 1 Blizzcon after they announced both classic and BfA



open your eyes... 80% servers are empty.. blizzard have announced more merges.. think again who is the minority..

lmfao, retail being a minority and classicwhiners a majority, fucking wake up son, you're delusional, subs are in the millions and ur talking about less than a 100k people? ekcs dee mate

also using reddit (FUCKING REDDIT LOL) as an argument for indicating which side is a minority, oh my pvt. joker how low have you fallen

you're in a rough awakening my friend, see for yourself in a month or two after classic is live

[Deleted]

Did people actually think there would be flying at launch? lmao

People thought Blizzard learned from the previous two Pathfinders and considers renaming it to Patchfinder to better reflect its nature.

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except that classic is not minority... minority is your empty servers... wait until classic is released and you ll see who is the minority...

Hahahahhahahhahahaahhahhahahaha

Can't wait for 2021, 1 month after the release of Classic servers. We'll see.

[papajohn4]

lmfao, retail being a minority and classicwhiners a majority, fucking wake up son, you're delusional, subs are in the millions and ur talking about less than a 100k people? ekcs dee mate

also using reddit (FUCKING REDDIT LOL) as an argument for indicating which side is a minority, oh my pvt. joker how low have you fallen

you're in a rough awakening my friend, see for yourself in a month or two after classic is live

Except that it is that simple. One argument is that people complain about flight being to safe, and they want to feel the danger in the world. For those people there would be nothing easier in case of feeling the danger in the world to simply not use flight. It is a personal choice. And it is simply non of their business if or how other people want their play experience to feel. The speed "advantage" is there but not as dramatic as people want to make it here. And gameplay wise there is no difference, simply because all things except travel need to be done on the ground. But i am not against any adjustments by default. Speed can be lowered on flying mounts and raised at ground mounts so that both meet at 150%. And no i don't see the need to make ground mounts superior in terms of speed and nerf flying mounts into oblivion. That is just a move to be a dickhead, nothing more.

Further there doesn't need to be separated content for flying and ground mount gameplay. It is a plus but it is not necessary to balance out the issue. All it needs is a little thought put into world design and additional mechanics to NPCs and monsters. You don't have to tuck away every quest mob deep into a cave or a fortess. Just a few examples:

- The cave/fortress method, just to get it out of the way first is very efficient in terms of preventing people from swooping in on a questobjective
- Guardmodes - every mob has a range within it can recognize players and approaching them, how about they have different ranges: a normal one for ground approaching players and a larger one the covers the sky. They don't need to shoot them out of the skies, but they can follow those aerial threads and the longer they follow the more allied NPCs they gather. So when the player lands he might see himself being surrounded by 10 or more NPCs
- Killorder - how about (and they did it already in the past) you have to kill certain minor NPCs in order to make the main objective appear? Or collecting keys to open/activate something. Outrageous right? What a brand new concept..... not really, it's in since classic and always needed players to be TADAAAA on the ground.
- Ring the alarmbell - just another classic concept: if you attack certain mobs and they get to be low on health, they run away and alarm others, that would make it way safer to just clear the area while progressing instead of just swooping in.
- Treasure-hunts randomness - why do crates have to have one certain place? They don't if it doesn't need to from a codewise perspective. But having an area where one crate could appear on different places makes it hard to just fly around look on your addon map where the crate should be and more possible to stumble upon one while traveling on the ground.

Those are just a few of many many many many ideas to balance out flying vs ground mounts without having to develop different content for flying and ground mounts. Besides that this is a nice addition i can tell you that a group of people will whine that THIS content is something Blizz takes away from them: the very same group that irrationally insist that flying is something bad.

But after all, as it stands as a fact: being tied to the ground makes the world dangerous for only a very very very short time. After the first few months (sometimes even just weeks) the world loses its danger and is more of a time waste and annoyance. So flight NEVER made people skip over RELEVANT content. All activities have to be done on the ground, it is only the way to get there that gets more comfortable. NOT less dangerous since there is no danger in mobs that are not relevant at a certain player progression.

And it kills world PvP.... well if you believe all those doomsayers that did not understand the upcoming mechanic in the slightest there will be no W-PvP left that could be influenced by flight. So what is left? Immersion! Other than some people might believe, immersion is nothing someone else can determine for others, not even Blizzard can tell you what is immersive to you. So immersion is pretty subjective. And Artwork? Oh come on, i have appreciated way more waterfalls, cliffs, woods and every nooks and crannies from every angle than other could possibly ever do while being stuck to the ground. In fact, i even take detours after detours just to "appreciate" the beautiful artwork of those level designers.

So all in all.... it doesn't need to take much to solve so many issues some people (even developers) have, just a little thought. Only "preventing flight for x amount of time" takes even less effort. Flight is less of a problem than some want to make it believe. And for someone that simply doesn't like flying, not using it is a very viable option.

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Well that is a tiny fraction of people concidering WoW has over 100,000,000 created accounts. Minority doesn't mean "only 50 people". In case of classic servers there could be 1 mio. players on classic servers, and still be the minority if there are 3 mio. players on the retail servers.

There are quiet a few "classic enthusiasts", but i highly doubt they are "the majority of players". I am so excited to see how this plays out but we simply don't know. There is no reliable source to show exact numbers YET. I have played WoW since classic. Will i play on the classic servers.... maybe. Will i play exclusively on the classic servers? not very likely, since to many things in classic have been a "well at least i have been through it once, no need to do it again, ever" type of thing. I actually enjoy many parts of modern WOW and prefer them over old classic mechanics/content.

Lol guys... never heard of statistics? When they do a poll for ellections how many people you think they ask? Millions? Hahaha. My reddit example have a pool of 50k players to judge from, but if hou have no idea about statistics then there is no reason continue the conversation...

[Atalai]

really, millions of ppl left the gam coz they wanted flying. seems legit
and what about those mysterious 'other disappointing things' you mentioned?

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Current flying access system is great, I like it and want to see same stuff in next expansions. Yes, I am a player and play the same game as the whiners do and want this feature to stay.
Off the topic, quite surprised with the toxicity level of these forums.

[Tyrilion]

Personally, im happy about the way blizzard does flying now, exploring the first few patches on foot and then eventually getting flying towards the end of the expansion, it allows the world to actually feel big and interesting instead of pixels hundres of feet below.

[Tholl]

Nice click bait title and contradicting copy paste

?

8.0 is the first 'patch' of the expansion.

They stated that there will be no flying at start, but will be later.

Not seeing how this is click bait or contradicting.

[Deleted]

Lol guys... never heard of statistics? When they do a poll for ellections how many people you think they ask? Millions? Hahaha. My reddit example have a pool of 50k players to judge from, but if hou have no idea about statistics then there is no reason continue the conversation...

i can only answer LOL yourself. For a poll that is representative you need a percentage of the represented overall society. That is scientifically and needs preparation. You can NOT just ask anybody to get a representative result. In case of WoW if you want to make a survey or poll that is representative you need the exact percentage of player types: 2% mythic raider, 3% gladiator arenaplayers and 95% CASUAL players..... you know, those who DO NOT vistit the forums and only play the game casually => the biggest group of WoW players. In NO survey or poll you can possibly present represents the scientific cross-section of the over all WoW-community.

Don't write if you have no clue about something.

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?

8.0 is the first 'patch' of the expansion.

They stated that there will be no flying at start, but will be later.

Not seeing how this is click bait or contradicting.

I might have missed it but where did they state that? They said they like the pathfinder approach and how it worked. They will continue and tweak it for BfA. I can't see that it won't be in at 8.0 and tweaking can also mean "earlier than WOD and Legion".

Just asking out of curiosity.

[papajohn4]

i can only answer LOL yourself. For a poll that is representative you need a percentage of the represented overall society. That is scientifically and needs preparation. You can NOT just ask anybody to get a representative result. In case of WoW if you want to make a survey or poll that is representative you need the exact percentage of player types: 2% mythic raider, 3% gladiator arenaplayers and 95% CASUAL players..... you know, those who DO NOT vistit the forums and only play the game casually => the biggest group of WoW players. In NO survey or poll you can possibly present represents the scientific cross-section of the over all WoW-community.

Don't write if you have no clue about something.

hahahahah .. you made laugh for sure lolol. I will get banned if I tell you about your intellectual capacity so I wont... in any case, casuals do use forums a lot, I am a casual.. and those 60k reddit posts are from many casuals too.. if you think that the majority of forum posters are hardcore elite players then trololol. Thats it, last post. No point to teach kids statistics. Just wait until the classic releases... until then enjoy the super empty servers that will be merged.. again... haha

[Deleted]

hahahahah .. you made laugh for sure lolol. I will get banned if I tell you about your intellectual capacity so I wont... in any case, casuals do use forums a lot, I am a casual.. and those 60k reddit posts are from many casuals too.. if you think that the majority of forum posters are hardcore elite players then trololol. Thats it, last post. No point to teach kids statistics. Just wait until the classic releases... until then enjoy the super empty servers that will be merged.. again... haha

You shouldn't be talking about itellectual capacity if you really believe what you say, ignoring Blizzard stating otherwise (that was one of the main answers to why they don't do polls on their forums). But it's ok kid, one day you'll learn.

I'll wait until classic release.... and will probably coming back here laughing at you for thinking classic servers will be soooo greatly used and even will draw the majority of people from retail servers. I tell you a secret: there are might even be people that will play classic that don't come from retail. Hint => players that have unsubbed a long time ago. Today even less than 3% of all accounts ever created are still active (that'll be over 100 mio.). But that doesn't mean that classic servers will be full of million and million of players. But it's ok lil classic troll boy. Do you really think that blizzard is creating something that could possibly harm their main game? They have data and facts that you don't have.

[Polarthief]

Totally fine if you do one of the following:
- Say it's gonna be in and you don't wait months to give it to me to irrelevant content (Broken Isles, waiting til partway through 7.2 is unacceptable)
- Tell me now it's not gonna be in the expansion at all. Fine with this; don't dangle the carrot, either cut the string or give me the carrot.

[SirCowdog]

really, millions of ppl left the gam coz they wanted flying. seems legit
and what about those mysterious 'other disappointing things' you mentioned?

Millions of people left the game because of the poor design philosophy that included no-flying, not just because they couldn't fly.

You need to look past trying to oversimplify things because you don't agree with it.

Current flying access system is great, I like it and want to see same stuff in next expansions. Yes, I am a player and play the same game as the whiners do and want this feature to stay.

Off the topic, quite surprised with the toxicity level of these forums.

Calls people who don't agree with him "whiners". Surprised with toxicity on the forums.

Right.....

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Personally, im happy about the way blizzard does flying now, exploring the first few patches on foot and then eventually getting flying towards the end of the expansion, it allows the world to actually feel big and interesting instead of pixels hundres of feet below.

You know what would make the world "feel big and interesting"? If it was actually big and interesting.

You know what would make the world feel less like it was just pixels hundreds of feel below? Staying off your flying mount.

:/

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Totally fine if you do one of the following:
- Say it's gonna be in and you don't wait months to give it to me to irrelevant content (Broken Isles, waiting til partway through 7.2 is unacceptable)
- Tell me now it's not gonna be in the expansion at all. Fine with this; don't dangle the carrot, either cut the string or give me the carrot.

EXACTLY!

Blizzard claims that not having flying allows them to provide a better experience. Then they go on to not give players any option but to slog through a bunch of garbage content.

I have yet to see anything in WoD or Legion that was superior to zones like Icecrown or Stormpeaks. Where is this magical superior experience and presentation?

[Atalai]

Yes poor design philosophy; someone is simplifying and someone is generalising. Again, your whole comment and this whole thread are ONLY about flying. I am repeating myself for you: any other game design details of such magnitude they, along with no free flying, caused millions of unsubs? And any proof please?

If 'whiners' sounds really offending and toxic for you I apologize then.

[WowIsDead64]

And even in Warth... those people arguing against flight often say that it hinders player interaction, while they also said that flying takes part of the world and makes them inaccessible for them.

This is standard "If you like it - then do it" thing. If you like interaction with other players - then interact with them. Flying itself doesn't prevent you from doing it. It just makes interaction more optional. If they don't want to interact with you - then they don't need it. And you just can't make them like interaction via forcing them to do it. Love cannot be forced.

So, Blizzard have never admitted it, but this argument has always been about PVP, cuz their previous philosophy was - PVP should be forced. Whole world design was intentionally bottlenecked in order to bring competition to extreme levels, so players would start hating each other -> PVP would happen at some point. But you know... In BFA things will change. Blizzard have already admitted in their Q&A, that forced PVP on PVP servers prevented them from designing game around PVP, cuz it could harm PVE players. I hope, that removal of PVP servers will mean finally stopping to force PVP on us. So, -1 reason to remove flying.

[The Man in Room V]

Here's an idea.

What if Pathfinder kept on, and you could earn it without waiting patches, but you could do what they are doing with PvP and opt in or out of a flyable world at major cities, where opting out results in an increase of reward gains (drops, reputation, etc) to offset the relative slowness that comes inherent to choosing not to fly?

A lot of people say "just don't use it" in response to anti-flight crowds, but that assumes there are no downsides to choosing not to fly in a world where most players will go for the convenience and efficiency. It's less of a problem now with multitap gathering nodes, but it's still possible to be fighting toward a point of interest only for a flying player to swoop in without any effort at Get The Thing.

So what would be the response if you got extra rewards for opting out of flying, and in doing so were phased to a world where you don't encounter other flying players?

A very graceful solution, I like it a lot!

[SirCowdog]

Yes poor design philosophy; someone is simplifying and someone is generalising. Again, your whole comment and this whole thread are ONLY about flying. I am repeating myself for you: any other game design details of such magnitude they, along with no free flying, caused millions of unsubs? And any proof please?

Because of your sentence structure, I'm having a hard time determining what you're actually asking. Are you asking me for proof that the design of WoD caused millions of unsubs? Or are you asking me to prove that the lack of flying caused unsubs? Or what?

[Deleted]

Because of your sentence structure, I'm having a hard time determining what you're actually asking. Are you asking me for proof that the design of WoD caused millions of unsubs? Or are you asking me to prove that the lack of flying caused unsubs? Or what?

I guess the second from reading it. The problem is you really can't prove that (millions are not needed) many subs canceled because of the lack of flying, or the sneaky "announcement" to cut it out of any future content, without having the numbers Blizz had back then. BUT on the other hand nobody besides Blizzard could prove that there wasn't a sub cancelation wave because of the no-flight-debacle.

Blizzard was ready to let flight go for WoD and every expansion going forward, and they carefully spread the news on a third party website knowing very well it could backlash. But there was the chance bigger that it will slip through for most of the people and if only a few really cared for flight they could cut it out. But then something happened that made them reverse this definitive decision within two weeks. You must be really creative to come up with any other reason for this drastic and quick change that was basically a total 180 by using the handbreak at 100 mph than losing subs because of all that.... or you just still believe in fairytales.

This Theory is just the best guess we have and pretty much to only logical conclusion. But "we listened to players feedback" aka "they listened to the whiners on the forums" is not a logic consequence, simply because if they would have done that there has been tons of feedback to not only not remove flight but also make flight an integral part of the world and player experience without making flight mandatory for all the people who like to stay on the ground. Player might not always know what "is best for them", but they surely know what game they want to play and why. ;-)

[Bumbasta]

I like their current method of introducing flying. Keep it up!