Originally Posted by
Arrclyde-79
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.