I think flying ruined the game, the world was a mystery before they added flight in Eastern Kingdom and Kalimdor. Now you can easily access anything, before you could climb mountains and find hidden areas.
ElvenArcher, the game has changed since last expansion. MoP isn't alt friendly, but rich for mains (which puts emphasis on class balance). The problem is perhaps your lack of ability to adapt (and trust me, as someone who played every class in Cata I know all about it because my was I in for a change).
Introducing flying mounts was a mistake from PvP POV, but now this advantage bites back those who are leveling in MoP instead.
Heirlooms meant players facerolled from 1 to 80 (and 85) without knowing their class, but now players have to grind from 85 to 90. Heirlooms also marginalized the importance of gear drops which is traditionally an important aspect of an RPG.
I never liked flying in WoW much, but I don't know an alternative. I like the waypoint system in GW2 (it is instant, who would want to waste their time watching themselves fly on FP?) but in a multi-faction game I cannot see it work well.
Either way, you can always wait with leveling up your alts until you enjoy it again.
---------- Post added 2013-01-20 at 05:11 PM ----------
Awww *gives a flower*
Hate me for saying this, but the "no flying till lvl 90" was one of the best things they implemented in this expansion.
4 level 90s so far.... 2 more approaching the cap.... No flying had zero impact. They have flight masters to get around, and smart use of hearthstones helps too.
Smart game play trumps.... What I do every time is to do a "maintenance circle" before I continue with questing. I ride through the zone once, to pick up every key FP I can get. That's one circle, takes me about 15 minutes or a little more, and I am set..
With a whole batch of quests, mounting up is moot anyway, most stuff is so packed in close proximity that mounting up would be nothing more than a time loss. I walk that distance faster than waiting 1.5 sec to be sitting on the mount. Once the batch is completed, I can ride that little bit of distance back to the NPC. If I get sent to a new quest hub that's farther away, no problem, I've picked up the FP, the flight master gets me there...
They should just remove flying mounts from the game.
---------- Post added 2013-01-20 at 05:31 PM ----------
It's easy mode since you can avoid a lot of mobs etc and just dive down and kill the one you need.
Are you arguing that it isn't easier to level with a flying mount compared to using a ground mount?
Last edited by zephid; 2013-01-20 at 04:32 PM.
I didn't even quest on my alts. I waited for AV weekend (given mostly alliance) and queued for AV and in the meantime watched a movie or read something. Playing Wordfeud in between was also fun. And, given I like healing, I just queued LFD as a healer and in the meantime watched TV or a movie, e-mail. One time I was even cooking while in a dungeon. If someone died it was usually their own fault, and I don't heal people who stand in the fire anyway, or if I do, in a lazy fashion. If rarely got kicked tho fire dancers did try to shift the blame and if I had a group of "freindz" who were "funneh" with me, I was funny with them in one way or another. The queue time for a healer is so low, its no biggie, and while waiting can combine 2 tasks instead of 1 + WoW. Now, for a DPS, it is an entire different story given queue times, and it is therefore appropriate to pull your weight which also influences the time it takes to do the dungeon.
SWTOR didn't have flying either, and in contrast to WoW, had huge loading screens as well as lots of travel between planets going on due to said loading screens. Even on SSD the loading screens are big, whereas in WoW they're barely noticeable.
Thing in SWTOR was also many servers quickly died and then you don't stay looking for a group (while in the mean time you cannot do anything) for 2 hours. That's not something players like to do in the year of 2012 in MMORPG world. Merging realms and adding LFD was done so players could easier engage in playing content.
Problem with convenience it comes with a price. The skipped content is of value. Ie. no heirlooms and elites and no teleport into dungeon means more difficult leveling, as well as groups preferring to stick together once they're in the instance whereas by contrast the x-realm LFD allows easier bailing. The opponents of LFD in SWTOR have well argued this case before it was implemented.
Except that players qqing about flying aren't forced to use their flying mounts, while people who want to use flight are being denied that choice.
As for everything else you said...yeah, sadly people most of the stuff people complain about are nonsense. I've never seen level capped toons during wrath, etc using ground mounts because they enjoy them more, or people who consistently use /2 to put dungeon groups together (and then manually fly to the instance) instead of dungeon finder after the feature was implemented, or players complaining about ease of content who already had a clear of current HM content under their belt. You'd think developers would have figured this out by now, but they continue the cycle of eventually giving in to the qq about things that they implemented due to qq, where the current qq is in direct contradiction to the original qq, but no....
Last edited by Celista; 2013-01-20 at 08:04 PM.
Actually, there's initiatives which involve using no heirlooms (other examples include the various ironman challenges) and we surely used ground mounts to get to Onyxia.
You can dismiss all you wrote as qq but it is just that a change has unintended consequences. Its a rich and complex world. You can add a feature to the game and by heart you believe it is a positive feature, and then you receive criticism. It is inherent to a complex world. We see such IRL as well. Laws, for example, often have unintended consequences.