Possibly no flying throughout entire xpac.

[Granyala]

Who fights the trash mobs?

I certainly don't. I use avianas the 3 times a week when I leave my Garrison to raid stuff. (Unless I get a teleport, that is)

But they seem to think we do.

I know it makes no sense, I don't get it either.

[Vulcanasm]

The results of catering to that kind of players over several years. Shocking.

No, it was always like that. I raided BWL on a Warlock when it was current. I and the other Warlocks would need to farm at least 20 soul shards apiece, every raid night, to deal with "summon me" mouth breathers. "That kind of players" are you and your friends.

Bringing back flying will have no effect on that.

[DeadmanWalking]

No, it was always like that. I raided BWL on a Warlock when it was current. I and the other Warlocks would need to farm at least 20 soul shards apiece, every raid night, to deal with "summon me" mouth breathers. "That kind of players" are you and your friends.

Bringing back flying will have no effect on that.

In mop I tended to find that at least 75% of the players would get to raid via flying before my warlock managed to fly there, so yes it will. I remember people in world boss groups bitching that you should get to the boss before queueing up and they obviously did this themselves. The same peopl who would flight mount out and when kicked off would glider down to the world boss so they didn't have to deal with ground mounts and boring ass flight paths. The majority of people I summoned in mop were already flying to raid/world boss, now they all just sit in garrison because they don't want anything to do with flight points or ignoring trash on a ground mount.

As far as mouth breathers go, the only mouth breathers are the ones who think they are better than everyone because of some imaginary rule they made up in thier heads to make themselves feel better. Because I am refering to pugs, not 'me and my friends'.

[Sweetpeaz]

People hate flight paths because they get summoned to world bosses / raid / instances, as they always have? No. It's been that way even with flying. All of a sudden though since there's no flying and you don't like it, it must make sense for you to blame that on no flying. Pro flyers will twist anything to fit their agenda.

I think you meant to say anti-flight people will make up, obfuscate, or ignore anything that doesn't fit into their myopic view of the world. Keep in mind you always had the ability to not fly.

ON a world boss, nobody used flight paths, they flew or were summoned. If you used a flight path you were taking a more inefficient way of travel.

[quras]

No, it was always like that. I raided BWL on a Warlock when it was current. I and the other Warlocks would need to farm at least 20 soul shards apiece, every raid night, to deal with "summon me" mouth breathers. "That kind of players" are you and your friends.

Bringing back flying will have no effect on that.

Bring flying back wont have much of an effect on summons because games will still want it. However, I know as a warlock since they want me to get there first. I'd rather fly there myself than take a flight path or run on the ground at max level.

So it does affect someone with the removal of flight.

What flying wouldn't have a big effect on is the general open world of WoW. When blizzard says they are removing flying because of some listed reasons but then doesn't actually put them in game. It kinda lets you know flying didn't need to go either.

It's really hard to claim flying needed to go because you can skip mobs and yet can skip mobs anyway and in multiple ways.

Hard to claim design of wow is hindered because of flying at max level and then Wod is no different than expansions when we had flying and for most, WoD being considered a lesser expansion to one that lost nearly 6 million subs.

It's simply not flying at max level thats wow's problem but it makes a hell of a scapegoat.

[DeadmanWalking]

Pro flyers will twist anything to fit their agenda.

Hello kettle, have you met Mr. Pot?

The reality is you do the same damn thing on a daily basis right here on the forums. If some information counters your preferred narrative you either ignore it entirely, assume it is flawed information or twist it to fit your agenda. It's base human nature, fortunately there are more enlightened people out there that are capable of seeing beyond thier own nose and understand that there are two sides to this story and are willing to understand that someone who they disagree with is entitled to thier own opinion even if it doesn't jive with thier own opinon.

There are no facts here, your opinion isn't fact it's just an opinion just like my opinion. My opinion isn't shit just because it doesn't match your opinion-fact.

[Sweetpeaz]

Bring flying back wont have much of an effect on summons because games will still want it. However, I know as a warlock since they want me to get there first. I'd rather fly there myself than take a flight path or run on the ground at max level.

So it does affect someone with the removal of flight.

What flying wouldn't have a big effect on is the general open world of WoW. When blizzard says they are removing flying because of some listed reasons but then doesn't actually put them in game. It kinda lets you know flying didn't need to go either.

It's really hard to claim flying needed to go because you can skip mobs and yet can skip mobs anyway and in multiple ways.

Hard to claim design of wow is hindered because of flying at max level and then Wod is no different than expansions when we had flying and for most, WoD being considered a lesser expansion to one that lost nearly 6 million subs.

It's simply not flying at max level thats wow's problem but it makes a hell of a scapegoat.

It was the reason for me.

I can deal with the other things that are wrong with the game. There are many nights I would log on to the game with no plan at all, and just do what I felt like doing at the moment. I'd fly around and eventually I would make up my mind on a course of action.

Taking flight away has affected my game play in a major way. So for me it's not a scapegoat, but for some it may be.

[Maneo]

It was the reason for me.

I can deal with the other things that are wrong with the game. There are many nights I would log on to the game with no plan at all, and just do what I felt like doing at the moment. I'd fly around and eventually I would make up my mind on a course of action.

Taking flight away has affected my game play in a major way. So for me it's not a scapegoat, but for some it may be.

Not sure scape goat is the right term. I know for me flights removal is a significant contributing factor as to why I will not be playing anymore once my sub is up, if you can really call playing sending followers out on missions while I wake up.

That being said however if Blizzard had actually made a engaging dynamic open world end game I can see the merits of not having flying. If the world was dynamic and engaging I think this conversation would be very different.

A.A. said they could make a game w/out flight and people love it. Well so far everything should be telling him the exact opposite

[quras]

It was the reason for me.

I can deal with the other things that are wrong with the game. There are many nights I would log on to the game with no plan at all, and just do what I felt like doing at the moment. I'd fly around and eventually I would make up my mind on a course of action.

Taking flight away has affected my game play in a major way. So for me it's not a scapegoat, but for some it may be.

It's affected my game as well.

As far as scapegoat goes, it makes a good one for blizzard to throw some blame on. Just how blizzard presented flying as a harm to their design. Removing flying and them saying how it hindered them made a great scapegoat for blizzard. However, them doing really nothing different in WoD that we haven't had in expansions with flying really does show it's not flying at max level causing problems. blizzard just wanted to do less and sell for more.

blizzard has learned they can do nothing for 14 months and still sell a higher priced expansion that has flying mounts to buy based on the very expansions content you cannot flying in. Why do more, when you can do less and sell it for more.

Starve a wow gamer long enough and apparently they will buy anything for an inflated price even if it removes your ability to do things blizzard is still selling you.

Flying was the prefect scapegoat for blizzard to do less, claiming removing flying allowed them to do more unhindered (and arbitrarily set an expectation level of them actually doing more) and then not actually produce more but sale for more under the guise of how great it will be with afk flight paths and revisiting mobs you no longer give a rats ass about over and over and over.

[Wingspan]

Hmmm... WoW subs (or at least player activity) seem to be plummeting. Then again, I would bet that they just picked up some older subs for gold, so when stats for this quarter come in they are going to be crazy... like probably a big loss of subs, but higher profits despite it all.

In any case, it seems likely that the overall numbers are down harshly.

We could potentially see a change in attitude over Flight if the numbers continue to dwindle. I notice that a lot of people that were holding out hope for Flight seem to have finally left the game, so the numbers could be beginning to stack.

Sadly, we will never know the real numbers, but the whole situation is fascinating.

[Mafic]

IMVHO I think WoD will be viewed as a success from an earnings point of view.

But from a player retention point of view it is trending in the wrong direction. Player's creating alts is at an all time low because Blizz took way two big tools in a player's arsenal (flying mounts and justice/valor). Garrisons were supposed to off set this with the sheer gold generation. But to maximize the garrison timers requires a large time investment like free 2 play games ask for. P2P games don't do that because you are a subscribed customer and you are given freedom on how to play on your own terms. Blizz is trying to mend together two different business ideas that simply don't mesh.

Time gating garrison resources with timers would be fine with a free 2 play MMO but for a sub game? No thanks.

And no flying mounts simply isn't even really a model used by any new MMO's that are free 2 play anyways.

[Wingspan]

Oh we absolutely will know the real numbers, the token came out too late to fix the Q1 numbers.

The earnings call will tell all, either WoD is a resounding success and us naysayers are in the wrong or the white knights win out and their beloved Blizzard-Senpai knows what's best.

I'll put my money on a 4million+ sub loss from the 10mill reported at launch.

Even though there are legal issues about lying to stockholders, there does seem to be some "wiggle room" concerning sub numbers and timeframes... for instance, I think they went with the 10 million number at the end of Q4 last year and I find that amount of retention (even for then) EXTREMELY unlikely. More likely, they just used the best (previously announced) number.

No denying it though, they have obviously taken a big hit to the numbers.

The new tokens open up all kinds of crazy with sub numbers and profit margins. The Q2 report could potentially be record profit then followed by an actual loss in Q3 because so many people have effectively paid in advance for, in some cases, years. A lot of money is front-loaded like this... and a lot of those players will not pay Blizz any more money (other than new expansion money) for years.

Sub numbers will actually kind of lose meaning for those that have paid so far in advance.

- - - Updated - - -

IMVHO I think WoD will be viewed as a success from an earnings point of view.

But from a player retention point of view it is trending in the wrong direction. Player's creating alts is at an all time low because Blizz took way two big tools in a player's arsenal (flying mounts and justice/valor). Garrisons were supposed to off set this with the sheer gold generation. But to maximize the garrison timers requires a large time investment like free 2 play games ask for. P2P games don't do that because you are a subscribed customer and you are given freedom on how to play on your own terms. Blizz is trying to mend together two different business ideas that simply don't mesh.

Time gating garrison resources with timers would be fine with a free 2 play MMO but for a sub game? No thanks.

And no flying mounts simply isn't even really a model used by any new MMO's that are free 2 play anyways.

It pretty much HAS to be a financial success at this point. Even if you take out the obvious surge of dollars from the new tokens, which had to make a ton, they have basically given the players extremely little traditional (free) content since 2013 when Timeless Isle hit. In all that time, they gave us WoD (a smaller expansion at an increased price point), some selfies and twitter stuff and part of a raid or something... not entirely sure on the last one since I haven't played in a long time.

Even with the sub losses, they have to be ROLLING in profit for this one.

[rda]

IMVHO I think WoD will be viewed as a success from an earnings point of view.

I doubt it. Average money per player will raise, thanks to tokens and other monetization, but total per month / quarter / year??? I think it will fall.

[Mafic]

I doubt it. Average money per player will raise, thanks to tokens and other monetization, but total per month / quarter / year??? I think it will fall.

It really hinges on rate of player loss.

If it mirrors Cata or MoP it will be viewed as a success from Blizzard's point of view. Right now it seems that the rate of player's lost is closer to Cata than MoP because MoP was very front loaded with content. WoD they are backloading the content presumably but that doesn't seem likely at this point.

Flying mounts best bet to return in WoD is not really based on subs lost that are typical in an expansion cycle. It would have to be cataclysmic for Blizz to pull out all the stop to bring back players.

[sorrownight]

Blizz wants to make WoW returns to vanilla, no flying mounts? Of all the ideas of vanilla, they chose this one?

[Deleted]

Blizz wants to make WoW returns to vanilla

Not really. They just wanted to slow down content pacing.

Which didnt work. As people are unhappy about missing content no matter if there was flying.

[Drytoast]

Oh we absolutely will know the real numbers, the token came out too late to fix the Q1 numbers.

The earnings call will tell all, either WoD is a resounding success and us naysayers are in the wrong or the white knights win out and their beloved Blizzard-Senpai knows what's best.

I'll put my money on a 4million+ sub loss from the 10mill reported at launch.

Naw...you are over estimating the average WoW player's need for compelling gameplay. This is a social media game at it's core. It's no different than the Sims or any other facebook chat game (Yoworld) where people play dress up and chat with eachother over the latest fashions in game. In this regard, the twitter integration and selfie camera alone should be enough to keep that kind of player base "busy"...

This is what video gameplay has sunken too. And that's fine. It's no longer for me and I'm ok with it. So long as their are other companies to make better games with more compelling gameplay!

[CheeseSandwich]

Not really. They just wanted to slow down content pacing.

Which didnt work. As people are unhappy about missing content no matter if there was flying.

I am of the growing opinion that people are just unhappy. A recent thread on the forums suggest Blizz is directly conversing via GM to people who are unsubbing.

The changes that result from this unhappiness will indeed be interesting, and I still kinda think the lack of any info on anything going forward means serious scrambling in the ranks to cover the failings of WoD. What this means to flying, who can tell, but imho I think they will announce flying coming back in 6.2 with a ptr test realm, then a couple of days later put the flying purple panther for sale on the shop.

[quras]

I am of the growing opinion that people are just unhappy. A recent thread on the forums suggest Blizz is directly conversing via GM to people who are unsubbing.

That thread is interesting.

MoP lost wow nearly 6 million subs and blizzard didn't pull off more customer service to find out what was up with direct chat to ones leaving.


I'm also reading a fair amount of gamers that are no longer thrilled about no flying that might have once been ok with it or evn 50/50. No flying just didn't help wow or WoD like blizzard hyped it or how some thought it might.

[Deleted]

That thread is interesting.


I'm also reading a fair amount of gamers that are no longer thrilled about no flying that might have once been ok with it or evn 50/50. No flying just didn't help wow or WoD like blizzard hyped it or how some thought it might.

Maybe some are seeing it as it is. A time gate. Sure the travel time increases are minimal in the short run, but over the course of 6 months, I wonder what the average player has lost running on the ground when they could have flown, or taken a winding flight path that could have been direct.