Adding flying mounts was the worst thing Blizzard ever did with WoW

[Gephyrophobia]

Flying while leveling made Cata one of the most fun leveling experiences. I still think flying is too slow, even. FFXIV has flying + the ability to teleport all over the place instantly. I still have no idea why after all these years, flightpaths aren't just mages that can port you to other flight paths instantly. There is no gameplay to be had by watching an on-rails rental mount fly you meandering through mountains for 2 minutes or more. The amount of time it takes you to get anywhere in WoW makes me weigh out in my mind how much I -really- want to go do anything out in the world, even with flying.

People think that flying over and skipping mobs is some horrendous issue but don't stop to think that the reason people do it is also because killing mobs in the world has never, and will never be fun; they don't live long enough for you to really play your class in the first place and some classes excel at AoE and others do not. I don't want to engage with more mobs than I'm required to because combat out in the world is unsatisfying 2 button spam and feels like a pain in the ass when your mount (even on the ground!) cast gets cancelled 3/4ths of the way through because a mob that spawned runs to you while you thought you could Tokyo drift it's aggro detection time.

And even if the mobs weren't as easy to kill, that only further inflates the issue of how long it takes to get around. I don't need the world to feel threatening; this isn't a real world simulator.

[bufferunderrun]

Blizzard bigger mistake was to leave flying has only a different way of transportation instead of expanding the game on the z axis and enlarging the world exploring different type of contents; instead we get people who prise those canyon like instanced maps filled with stupid convoluted routes in which 99% of the terrain is just scenery as year passed zones become smaller and more claustrophobic.

[Deleted]

I would welcome a change, where you would be able to fly, but slow like in BC. And everyone has an ability, that allows you to fly fast for maybe 2 min. And it has a cooldown, forcing players to quest on the ground, which I agree with OP is the way to go. Pathfinding could unlock a faster cooldown.
I actually haven't played WoW in years, but I'm about to start again and stumbled over this post.
What do you think?
It would encourage "best practices" when questing and still allows players to feel a sense of scale in zones, that are designed for flying and make shortcuts when needed.
And on a sidenote, I would love to see flying implemented in boss fight mechanics.

[ComputerNerd]

So in your world, the more tools Blizzard added and the easier Blizzard made it to build a community the worse the community became.

Clearly you should take the time to reassess your argument because your current one is bollocks.

Your should reassess yours too, because correlation does not equal causation.
In fact you didn't even present one, you simply said mine was wrong.

Look at the facts.
Flying and a lot of other conveniences introduced over time made it easier to help others.
But the community sucks now in its willingness to do so.

There is no reason for that beyond personal choice.
At the point the game was as its hardest players made the decision to make it even more so when they helped someone with no motivation beyond just helping.

[Wildpantz]

So you're basing your viewpoint on the notion that randomly encountering players while doing quests builds "community", and that somehow flying prevents(or at least mitigates) the chances of that?

I can understand the point, but I disagree. Mostly because I believe what you're describing is merely a symptom of a greater problem: Poorly designed quests that ignore the existence of flight, and fundamentally un-interesting and un-challenging content. The situation you described is also largely mitigated by cross-server technology as well as phasing.

Let me ask you this: In the first eight months of Legion, and during the first year or so of WoD, did you experience the types of encounters you described above? Do you get those kinds of encounters currently, on Argus? Or do people simply ride in, tag the objective, and leave without saying anything or interacting with you? I would wager that it's the latter.

I suspect that the real source of declining random interactions with random people has less to do with flying, and more to do with the introduction of other tools and mechanics to the game. LFG, cross server tech, phasing, better guild tools, and more of a focus on instanced content rather than open world adventure. I wonder what you would think of a single-server design that actually used flying as part of its content design, where monsters were actually threatening, intelligent, and dangerous.

I agree thats why in my first point i said that flying isnt bad thing just as you said the way its implemented is bad. In tbc its still feelt like flying was nice.

[Dormie]

This actually sums up the situation nicely. But we also have to remember that cross server tools like LFD and LFG were a direct response to player requests, and attempts to combat the problems created by the smaller communities of single server communities. There was a LOT of rampant elitism and cliques. Tank/healer shortages, complete denial of certain classes and specs, ostracizing of players who didn't play perfectly, etc, etc, etc.

We like to look back on the advantages of smaller server communities with nostalgia and rose-colored glasses, but things really weren't perfect. But regardless, it sure as hell wasn't flying that had any kind of significant impact on the situation, one way or the other.

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What you're describing is, as I said a couple posts ago, a symptom of a larger problem. Flying only invalidates quest difficulty or challenge when that content is designed as though flying doesn't exist. I've said this countless times before, but: OF COURSE flying is going to break content which wasn't designed for it. That's the nature of the entire argument, after all.

Those of us who really want flying to be part of the game have been repeating this over and over: Flying should be included in the design, not simply dropped in as an afterthought. I really hope you can understand the difference between that and how flight is currently being misused.

Lmao you and your posts are such a fucking joke. give it up. You're just like a child coming up with reasons why he should have cookies for dinner.

Infracted.

[Kazgrel]

Highly doubtful you played vanilla from what you've written. But if you made no connections while out in the world during vanilla, perhaps you did play back then and you were just part of a tiny minority that didn't interact at all.

Before flying, you were so more likely to stop and buff / ress / help someone out who was fighting near the side of the road and that usually sparked up so many conversations when I played.

Maybe they were on the way to the same quest as you and you party up, on the friends list they go.

Maybe you come across a pair of lowbies being camped by a ganker and you help them out, before you know it you've spent the last 2 hours playing guard / guide and you've made 2 friends.

So very many interactions were lost when people can fly in absolute safety from quest to quest, more than they realise.

You get the point, flying removed so much and gave almost nothing that I honestly can't even comprehend how people think it's a good idea and whinge when it's gone.

But please, tell me how flying didn't decimate the community. How even before they introduced cross realms the TBC community was a shadow of what vanilla was. And also tell me how you can justify losing so much for pitiful trinket of being able to fly.

Bold emphasis mine.

I've actually been flying over and saw someone in a spot of trouble, dropped in, healed them/took aggro/etc. (depending on what I was playing). This happened in my years of WoW and still happens in FF14. With the latter, I've seen folks who died for whatever reason post in /sh (/1 in wow speak for the zone general chat) "Hey can anyone res me? I'm at (x,y)". Click on the coordinates for it to flag their position, zoom over, pick them up, and get a welcome "ty " or something to that effect.

Oddly enough, the only people I'd say developed a sweet tooth for asshattery would be the (would-be) gankers who decide to dive bomb in on people to scoop up an easy kill. But, as often said of pvp servers, that's what you signed up for.

Anywho...seeing some of the recent posts here, it looks like this thread's starting to come back to full circle (jerk) between pro and anti-flight posters; same arguments, eventually boiling down to flat out trolling on both ends.

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I would welcome a change, where you would be able to fly, but slow like in BC. And everyone has an ability, that allows you to fly fast for maybe 2 min. And it has a cooldown, forcing players to quest on the ground, which I agree with OP is the way to go. Pathfinding could unlock a faster cooldown.
I actually haven't played WoW in years, but I'm about to start again and stumbled over this post.
What do you think?
It would encourage "best practices" when questing and still allows players to feel a sense of scale in zones, that are designed for flying and make shortcuts when needed.
And on a sidenote, I would love to see flying implemented in boss fight mechanics.

While it didn't feature flying mounts, Al'akir's final phase basically had you flying around beating him up while he tried to squish people with lightning or such. Then there's Occulus, which while I personally found it to be an interesting dungeon, from what I recall reading/seeing, I was definitely a minority, especially with how many auto-quits it would cause soon as people zoned in and realized where they were.

[Verdugo]

Lmao you and your posts are such a fucking joke. give it up. You're just like a child coming up with reasons why he should have cookies for dinner.

So, you agree that you are wrong?

[Whitedragon]

When was the last time you were blown away by something in the game that wasn't forced upon you(with some sort of cinematic)? I'm thinking of stuff like entering blackrock mountain for the first time, going to ungoro crater and seeing your first devilsaur, etc. I had countless experiences like that while on a ground mount and maybe one or two on a flying mount.

excluding cinematic and events is kind of an odd omission but, I have a list for you.

Vanilla: Walking into Stormwind for the first time, Finding stitches walking down the path in Duskwood wrecking everything he came across, getting my first dragon whelp pet from a lucky drop, Getting my mount at level 40, Killing the Lich in Andorhal, Wining an AV BG for the first time, finishing the Onyxia's lair attunement, fighting rag for the first time.

BC: Walking through the portal into Hell Fire for the first time, Hunting down all the Zangar Kill quests monster hunter style, Learning flying at level 70, Killing Murmur in Shadow labyrinth, Killing all of Gruul's kids, Hitting 5k gold after months of saving to buy epic flying, Going up Kara tower for the first time, Finishing my grind for Netherwing rep and getting my Azure drake, The starting event for WotLK.

WotLK: Arriving in Howling fjord for the first time, Finding the Worgen out in grizzly hills, killing Loque'nahak 15 minutes after entering Sholazar only to find out that most hunters REALLY wanted him , Learning flying at 78, Flying into Icecrown for the first time, Flying into storm peaks for the first time, Finding the Gunships in Ice crown, I don't know if this counts as a forced cinematic moment but killing Arthas's heart at the end of a quest chain, Playing my first battle for Wintergrasp, doing the purging of Stratholme dungeon for the first time, Doing the Oculus (Yes i'm one of the few who loved this dungeon) for the first time, Getting to explore Nax 25 because my guild only ever beat two boss in it in old wow, Getting the loremaster for WotLK, The staring experience in Ulduar (guild only got 6 bosses down befor TotGC), Doing the HoR dungeon for the first time, Doing the Gunship battle in ICC, Doing the Sindragosa fight in ICC, Fighting the Lichking.

Cata: Getting the Worgen as a race, Exploring the new world, Exploring Deepholm, Exploring Uldum, The revival of Nerf and Ony, Fighting the madness of Deathwing for the first time.

MoP: This may be considered a cinematic experience but the intro quest to destroy the Horde base, Getting to start the farm in Halfhill, Killing the Giant Ker'chong at the end of both Valley and Karas, Holding the gate from Towlong to Kun Li from the Mantid, Seeing the dread wastes for the first time, Finding Hugalon the heart watcher, Fighting the grand emparis for the first time. Fighting the Sha in the endless spring for the first time, Getting to explor the IoT, Large chunks of ToT, Large chunks of SoO, Finally finishing my legendary cape.

WoD: Exploring Spires and doing some of the quest chains there, doing Grimrail for the first time (At least until you run into the flack gunners....), Getting a level 3 garrison, Unlocking flying after being stuck in some of the worst places to travel ever.

Legion: The Nightfallen quest chain (even if it was very poorly gated), Unlocking flying again... (This area looks kind of barren because a lot of legion's grate moments are cinematics.)

None of these where hampered by flying and a good chunk where enabled by flying so..... no flying is a grate thing so stop trying to gate it.

[Dormie]

So, you agree that you are wrong?

So, you agree that you are wrong?

[SirCowdog]

I agree thats why in my first point i said that flying isnt bad thing just as you said the way its implemented is bad. In tbc its still feelt like flying was nice.

OK, cool. It's funny how the more people actually stop to think and talk about the issue, the more apparent it becomes that flying itself isn't really the problem. It's Blizzard's overall design philosophy going downhill and away from creating an interesting world with lots of opportunities to explore and adventure, and more towards a big fat skinner box designed to milk players for money.

EDIT: It's also gratifying to see most of the long-time opponents of flying being revealed as straight up trolls who are now getting banned. I really hope this trend continues, and people start to realize that flight really can be a good part of the game again, and that the people arguing against it stop hating fun that other people want to enjoy.

[Costa]

This actually sums up the situation nicely. But we also have to remember that cross server tools like LFD and LFG were a direct response to player requests, and attempts to combat the problems created by the smaller communities of single server communities. There was a LOT of rampant elitism and cliques. Tank/healer shortages, complete denial of certain classes and specs, ostracizing of players who didn't play perfectly, etc, etc, etc.

We like to look back on the advantages of smaller server communities with nostalgia and rose-colored glasses, but things really weren't perfect. But regardless, it sure as hell wasn't flying that had any kind of significant impact on the situation, one way or the other.

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What you're describing is, as I said a couple posts ago, a symptom of a larger problem. Flying only invalidates quest difficulty or challenge when that content is designed as though flying doesn't exist. I've said this countless times before, but: OF COURSE flying is going to break content which wasn't designed for it. That's the nature of the entire argument, after all.

Those of us who really want flying to be part of the game have been repeating this over and over: Flying should be included in the design, not simply dropped in as an afterthought. I really hope you can understand the difference between that and how flight is currently being misused.

Yes what you put here makes sense 100% but as of since day 1 that wasn't / isn't what blizzard intended when implementing flying, they just put it in so you can fly yet people still want it in that form.
To put it in with the way you want it is going to take them along time right? It takes them long enough to make a zone and what not know, it would make the process take even longer if they started looking into how flying quests would work per se.
Now i might be all for that but it also might infuriate a few people when expansions and patches get delayed for months on end.

So the easier option is just to not give it haha

[tankbug]

Flying? Lmao no it's just QoL with admittedly a small effect on the overall gameplay.

Insane Welfare and Catchup mechanics is the worst thing added to WoW. It basically invented the term content drought in WoW, which were sometimes years of boredom. Blizzard basically strangles their own content, making it trivial, obsolete and making character progression feel pointless and unrewarding, just so a few can 'feel good' for a week before getting bored again.

Flying you can deal with and mitigate on your own terms, the game playing itself - not so much.

I disagree.

Flying is a personal, slow teleport to anywhere, turning all zones to a 2D map, and where you can avoid interaction with the world, npcs and other players until you place your feet on the ground. Increasing ground mount speed should have been enough, flying is just too fast, agile and convenient. No immersion.

On the other hand, catch up mechanics are necessary unless you want to play the same toon all the time. You experience the story and quests on your main, and you spend less time doing the same thing over and over for your alts, so you can focus on doing the end game content with a different class. I don't think anyone would like to farm heroic dungeons, and have to start raid progression all over with the emerald nightmare on their alts at this point in the expansion.

[Deleted]

I disagree.

Flying is a personal, slow teleport to anywhere, turning all zones to a 2D map, and where you can avoid interaction with the world, npcs and other players until you place your feet on the ground. Increasing ground mount speed should have been enough, flying is just too fast, agile and convenient. No immersion.

On the other hand, catch up mechanics are necessary unless you want to play the same toon all the time. You experience the story and quests on your main, and you spend less time doing the same thing over and over for your alts, so you can focus on doing the end game content with a different class. I don't think anyone would like to farm heroic dungeons, and have to start raid progression all over with the emerald nightmare on their alts at this point in the expansion.

Your personal slow teleport is more comparable to the flightmaster. It's a glorified loading screen. Flying takes time, you need to steer your character, and it is totally neutral in terms of interaction.

To explain this for you: People who want to interact, will do this regardless if they ride or fly. They don't fly up high, because they will spend less time with landing, and because they can see things on the ground better. They stop for nodes, they stop for rares, they stop for treasure chests, and probably also when they see someone struggle in a fight. And then there are people who only have their goal in mind, and they will ignore everything else, no matter if they ride or fly. Some people fall in one camp at one occasion and in the different camp on the other occasion, depending on how much time they have to play, and what is on their to-do list. If I am in a hurry to finish my objective, then I will pass things by, no matter if I fly or ride. And if some random mob happens to dismount me, I rather easily dispatch it, or continue movement until it drops aggro. This is a TOTALLY IRRELEVANT experience and might as well not be there. Such things belong into the category random annoyance.

Yes, this is kinda realistic. I have dozens of random annoyances in my day, from different sources. The question is, do we need this in a game?

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Yes what you put here makes sense 100% but as of since day 1 that wasn't / isn't what blizzard intended when implementing flying, they just put it in so you can fly yet people still want it in that form.
To put it in with the way you want it is going to take them along time right? It takes them long enough to make a zone and what not know, it would make the process take even longer if they started looking into how flying quests would work per se.
Now i might be all for that but it also might infuriate a few people when expansions and patches get delayed for months on end.

So the easier option is just to not give it haha

I see most of a zone when I level up. This is not a valid argument.

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I have so many memories. One is the old cauldron quest i met another mage we ended up grouping up doing it was super hard kiting killing mobs. With flying can just fly ober land loot items fly away . I havent really had that feeling since then. Hopefully classic is vanilla and that feeling comes back . We will see about that.

Not if all mobs aggro you when you land and hand your ass back to you. Honestly, these things only speak about lazy developers who don't know shit about gamer behaviour.

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Flying while leveling made Cata one of the most fun leveling experiences. I still think flying is too slow, even. FFXIV has flying + the ability to teleport all over the place instantly. I still have no idea why after all these years, flightpaths aren't just mages that can port you to other flight paths instantly. There is no gameplay to be had by watching an on-rails rental mount fly you meandering through mountains for 2 minutes or more. The amount of time it takes you to get anywhere in WoW makes me weigh out in my mind how much I -really- want to go do anything out in the world, even with flying.

People think that flying over and skipping mobs is some horrendous issue but don't stop to think that the reason people do it is also because killing mobs in the world has never, and will never be fun; they don't live long enough for you to really play your class in the first place and some classes excel at AoE and others do not. I don't want to engage with more mobs than I'm required to because combat out in the world is unsatisfying 2 button spam and feels like a pain in the ass when your mount (even on the ground!) cast gets cancelled 3/4ths of the way through because a mob that spawned runs to you while you thought you could Tokyo drift it's aggro detection time.

And even if the mobs weren't as easy to kill, that only further inflates the issue of how long it takes to get around. I don't need the world to feel threatening; this isn't a real world simulator.

Mobs are also totally useless today. Whoop-de-do, I got some cloth scraps from a mob if I am lucky and some silver coins or grey chunk which is worth some silver coins. This is it? If mobs on Argus would at least all drop Argunite, they would be worth my time. But they are nothing more than annoying road bumps.

[SirCowdog]

Yes what you put here makes sense 100% but as of since day 1 that wasn't / isn't what blizzard intended when implementing flying, they just put it in so you can fly yet people still want it in that form.
To put it in with the way you want it is going to take them along time right? It takes them long enough to make a zone and what not know, it would make the process take even longer if they started looking into how flying quests would work per se.
Now i might be all for that but it also might infuriate a few people when expansions and patches get delayed for months on end.

So the easier option is just to not give it haha

Yes, it might take longer to design and implement, but it would come along with making a larger portion of the player base happy. More zones like Stormpeaks and Icecrown can't really be that bad, right? And those were built years ago, without the benefit of all the technological and design advances Blizzard has available today.

And nobody is saying it has to be every zone, either. After all, even cataclysm and MoP had their fair share of No-Fly islands to balance things.

The only real problem is only using one type of content design for EVERYTHING, when there's clearly room for both.

[Emmique]

Imo just need to do what TBC/WotLK did with flying, where it was unlocked when you hit cap, and there was content/zones created specifically with flying in mind

TBC
Skyguard - Skettis & Blades Edge, unlocked via having flying, and sure you can fly around and do your dalies but it's also hazardous, canons would shoot you down in Blades Edge if you went too far and you had to zig zag between the Kaliris in Skettis to not get dazed off your mount etc
Netherwing Rep - For the Netherdrakes, on it's own little island, had some fun little quests like the sky-racing

WOTLK
Icecrown & Storm Peaks - Two whole zones created around flying, you could get a 'temporary' flying mount from Storm Peaks if you didn't have flying yet

[Dastreus]

Why is this thread still around? Troll thread delete.

Infracted.

[SirCowdog]

I disagree.

Flying is a personal, slow teleport to anywhere, turning all zones to a 2D map

Only as long as the content is designed to ignore the existence of flying. The primary reason why flying turns the game into a "2D map" is because flying is simply being tacked onto content which was designed only to be interacted from the ground. This is a glaring flaw in the argument against flight, primarily because it doesn't account for content design which not only acknowledges that flying exists, but INCLUDES it as part of the experience.

You'll notice that older zones like Skettis, Ogri'la, Stormpeaks, and Icecrown had hazards for flying players. There were also many areas in Cata that had mixed indoor and outdoor transitions, some where you could fly, some not. Unfortunately we don't have any such zones in recent expansions to compare. The most recent expansion that had zone design that actually sort of included flying was MoP, and even that wasn't really all that hot. Legion and WoD have flying available, but the design is clearly built only for grounded players(which is why it feels like flying breaks it).

I'd be VERY interested to see what a zone, using current tech and design capabilities, looked like if Blizzard pulled the stick out and actually used flying as part of its experience.

[Costa]

Yes, it might take longer to design and implement, but it would come along with making a larger portion of the player base happy. More zones like Stormpeaks and Icecrown can't really be that bad, right? And those were built years ago, without the benefit of all the technological and design advances Blizzard has available today.

And nobody is saying it has to be every zone, either. After all, even cataclysm and MoP had their fair share of No-Fly islands to balance things.

The only real problem is only using one type of content design for EVERYTHING, when there's clearly room for both.

So you would be happy with say, using LK as a map basis. Northrend you can fly in Storm Peaks and Ice Crown but no where else? So 2 out of 9 zones in LK are flyable but the rest aren't and you think majority of the flying fans would be subdued ? I think that would be fine to implement like that no doubt. However i still think would be complaints and even funnier would be when you flying and go across a boundary to another zone and get insta de-mounted lol!
Still this solution i would be ok with if it is indeed viable to do, a couple of flying zones with added quests and the rest of the world none flying sounds fine.

[Ailyana]

Wrong. Flying is awesome. I love my dragons.