Possibly no flying throughout entire xpac.

[CrusaderNerò87]

People try to attribute way way to much of this shrinking world syndrome to flying. We could fly in BC and WotLK and the world didn't feel small and uninhabited. There are a lot of reasons for it, but flying is a very trivial piece of the puzzle.

Convenience is the name of the game in WoW these days. Just compare questing in vanilla, or even BC, with questing today. When you level quests are all neatly organized in a single location. You go out and complete them and the NPCs send you to the next set. All the quests are completable by a single player facerolling his keyboard with greens/greys equipped. The map shows you exactly where to go and where to find each item. There is no running around the world trying to find the mobs you need to kill or the random plant you need to collect. No adventure required. You just go from dot to dot and move on to the next dot when the quests run out. You don't need to explore or find NPCs off the beaten path that might have several quests. You don't need to ask for help in general chat because you can do everything on your own quickly and easily. The biggest problem now is you might have to wait for a respawn. Leveling is fast and painless. People finish it and get out of the world quickly now. You don't even need to look up from your quest log as you run from quest to quest. It's easy to miss the world, and the people in it, these days.

Think about running a dungeon back in vanilla, bc, or early wrath. You found a group, and sometimes had to travel huge distances to get there. I can't tell you how many times I did SM during vanilla or bc. Running all the way from IF/SS to SM was crazy at low level. You ran right past UC! Not to mention you almost always had to fight or run from horde at the summoning stone. Now you just queue up. Even in WoD with no flying that's still going to be the case. Fewer people out in the world. You don't even need to know where dungeons are anymore.

World pvp isn't going to make a sudden comeback either. People who really care about fighting you are still going to be in arena, bgs, or Asharan. As long as blizzard puts the incentives in those areas that's where the pvp will be. You might manage to gank a few more people while leveling, but after that it's going to play the same way. Pvp will only happen outside of those areas when blizzard forces lots of players into a small area. That still happens today. Flying hasn't killed that at all. You can put more blame on the severe faction imbalances than you can flying. I rarely see horde on my server because there aren't very many. Some people find lop-sided servers to avoid pvp and others for the perks of easy pugs and bigger auction house. None of which will be fixed by losing flight.

Declining player numbers also contributes to the empty world. We don't have enough people to fill all the servers. Blizzard is trying to remedy that, but there are still tons of dead servers, or servers with mega population on one faction and nothing on the other. The latter they aren't even trying to address.

The world is going to continue to feel small and empty no matter how you travel around it. There are fewer people outside of town because there are fewer reasons to leave town and when you do it's much faster to get done and get back into town than it used to be. As long as convenience and casual gameplay is this important to Blizzard you're not going to get a full world with lots of things to see and people to kill. Flying, or not flying, isn't going to change a thing.

Your first paragraphs got me thinking.. Right now im playing ESO. The questing there works as in wow now. You get a quest and a marker tells you where to go. I dont need to read what the NPC tells me or check journal to find out what to do. The marker is there, run to it. At the same time, those who created ESO encourage us to go out in the world to explore, search, find stuff. Sure, this is how you find the quests, but still.. Its handheld.

Back in classic/bc you had to read the quest text, ask in chat or search on the web on how to complete quests. That shit dont fly anymore. People(the masses?) want fast paced, easy, nobrainer content. Easy storytelling, easy mobs to kill and fast transport. Look at ESO again. You dont have a flying mount but you can teleport your ass around the world. People want to consume content FAST. They want it done QUICKLY and with as little interuption as possible. With flying mounts, this is done fast(er).

[urasim]

I dont mind it, as long as the new xpac feels alive and theres alot of stuff going on. The game sure feels more alive when you see players running around and not fly away in the distance.

Blizzard has always gotten alot of hate on how the questing(dailies to) and other stuff works out in max level besides raiding/dungeons. I believe they are spending alot of time improving this ALOT, therefore a later xpac then expected. As a result of this, they realised flying had to be cut atleast until 6.1.

If we really want a immersive and alive draenor we need to be "grounded" for a while.

Please, for the love of god, stop using immersion as an argument. I get FAR more immersion from the air than the ground.

[Ordinator]

Please, for the love of god, stop using immersion as an argument. I get FAR more immersion from the air than the ground.

Immersion is subjective, an therefore i would agree it is bad reasoning for this topic. Yet you ask people to stop using it, then use it in your favor in the very next sentence.

[Buu]

Please, for the love of god, stop using immersion as an argument. I get FAR more immersion from the air than the ground.

Thing is they can't. Their brains are physically unable to absorb the concept.
All they can do is believe that "ground mounts equal immersion" because APPARENTLY Blizzard said so. But they can't point where.

[Bepples]

How dumb of an argument... No one wants to fly in raids or instances. Why did you even come up with this shit?

The only "trashless" raid was disliked because the encounters were badly designed and it was so heavily gated... It took six weeks to unlock the heroics. But, you probably don't know anything about that. You probably never raided it.

The boss design of ToC was actually pretty decent (albeit undertuned). What made ToC bad were a number of other reasons, including:
-Forcing an unnecessary extra tier which was too short
-Gating of EVERY boss on normal mode
-Limited attempts
-4 different lockouts
If ToC were released as a side-raid like Zul'Aman in BC, WotLK would have been much better.

Ultimately, the encounter design wasn't the problem. It was actually pretty good (Twin Valkyr especially).

[urasim]

Immersion is subjective, an therefore i would agree it is bad reasoning for this topic. Yet you ask people to stop using it, then use it in your favor in the very next sentence.

I was showing that it IS subjective. Why can't you see that? Just wondering what sort of mental block you have to not see it.

[wow2011]

How dumb of an argument... No one wants to fly in raids or instances. Why did you even come up with this shit?

You obviously didn't read what I typed previously about flying does not fit all activities in WoW. The argument is: not all activities fit flying so not having flying is better for those particular activities (I brought up raiding as example). So in WoD, there might be new activities at max level in open world where flying does not fit so it would make sense to not allow flying in that sense. Next time try reading first before responding.

[urasim]

The boss design of ToC was actually pretty decent (albeit undertuned). What made ToC bad were a number of other reasons, including:
-Forcing an unnecessary extra tier which was too short
-Gating of EVERY boss on normal mode
-Limited attempts
-4 different lockouts
If ToC were released as a side-raid like Zul'Aman in BC, WotLK would have been much better.

Ultimately, the encounter design wasn't the problem. It was actually pretty good (Twin Valkyr especially).

Really? I think 3 of the 5 bosses were terrible boring. The "PvP" boss being the best, but it was still terrible because it was so easy.

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You obviously didn't read what I typed previously about flying does not fit all activities in WoW. The argument is: not all activities fit flying so not having flying is better for those particular activities (I brought up raiding as example). So in WoD, there might be new activities at max level in open world where flying does not fit so it would make sense to not allow flying in that sense. Next time try reading first before responding.

You still don't have a good argument if it boils down to "things might be cool while leveling". Because WE DON'T WANT FLYING WHILE LEVELING. We want flying after that shit is done.

[Giscoicus]

Thing is they can't. Their brains are physically unable to absorb the concept.
All they can do is believe that "ground mounts equal immersion" because APPARENTLY Blizzard said so. But they can't point where.

mountains being mountains and bridges serving a purpose.

[wow2011]

You still don't have a good argument if it boils down to "things might be cool while leveling". Because WE DON'T WANT FLYING WHILE LEVELING. We want flying after that shit is done.

Did you happen to miss the part where I mentioned possible new activity at max level in the open world...? Like I mentioned earlier: try reading first before responding. I don't feel like repeating the same thing over and over so I will just let you blather away.

[urasim]

mountains being mountains and bridges serving a purpose.

When I fly bridges and mountains no long are anything. Makes a lot of sense. Thanks for sharing.

Or maybe bridges serve a purpose for those that are leveling, and mountains are obstacles that flyers have to ascend to avoid. Which does give me immersion. Sorry it doesn't for you. Maybe you shouldn't fly so high?

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Did you happen to miss the part where I mentioned possible new activity at max level in the open world...? Like I mentioned earlier: try reading first before responding. I don't feel like repeating the same thing over and over so I will just let you blather away.

No one is going to do level 91 content at max level flying mount or not. Even if there was flying doesn't mean you skip over it if you want to do it. With a ground mount I skip past all the stuff on timeless isle that I do not need.

[Callace]

Flight was the most requested feature in 1.0.

It will be the most requested feature in 7.0 if they remove it.

[Giscoicus]

When I fly bridges and mountains no long are anything. Makes a lot of sense. Thanks for sharing.

Or maybe bridges serve a purpose for those that are leveling, and mountains are obstacles that flyers have to ascend to avoid. Which does give me immersion. Sorry it doesn't for you. Maybe you should fly so high?

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No one is going to do level 91 content at max level flying mount or not.

When flight exists, bridges are pointless. Why the construction exists does make sense when flying is a possibility. Yes, they serve a purpose while leveling, but hitting max level shouldnt suddenly mean all bridges are just pretty.

Mountians take very little movement to avoid, while flying. On the ground they pose a major obstacle, in the air they are nothing. You aren't going to seriously pretend going 3 feet to the right is the same as crossing half a zone to ascend a mountain, are you?

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Flight was the most requested feature in 1.0.

It will be the most requested feature in 7.0 if they remove it.

Yea that claim isnt made up.

Flight was not super requested. Why would it be? It wasnt in many existing games.

[Callace]

Yea that claim isnt made up.

Flight was not super requested. Why would it be? It wasnt in many existing games.

You'll have to wait a few months for my evidence, unfortunately.

[urasim]

When flight exists, bridges are pointless. Why the construction exists does make sense when flying is a possibility. Yes, they serve a purpose while leveling, but hitting max level shouldnt suddenly mean all bridges are just pretty.

Mountians take very little movement to avoid, while flying. On the ground they pose a major obstacle, in the air they are nothing. You aren't going to seriously pretend going 3 feet to the right is the same as crossing half a zone to ascend a mountain, are you?


Yea that claim isnt made up.

Flight was not super requested. Why would it be? It wasnt in many existing games.

They are not pointless if they are used. Most, if not all, content that was released in 5.0(dailies) are not being used. Are they more or less useless than things that are used all the time for people leveling through it?

[Serenais]

They can still place level 100 content in level 90 zone.

That would require lvl100 content being in most, if not all zones, and either locked away (because you don't want a lvl91 stumbling upon a lvl100 area where all that awaits is mountains of repair cost) or phased away (which I believe quite a lot of people complained about). Also, having lvl100 content divided among most areas makes it somewhat a broken design; incoherent one, if you will. Generally, you want to keep similar content in a similar area. Imagine being sent on a questline that spans several zones (similar to the ones removed from the game with Cataclysm), which would reward nothing but gold. That's a case of flawed content, because the more you break it apart, the less amount of people will do it. And therefore against the "no-flying" design, which was as many people doing as much of the content as possible.

[Callace]

All the cool games have some sort of flight. GTA XYZ, Skyrim, even WS will have it. It's a matter of excellence, because it's costly to develop.

I'm not paying a $15 sub for a game that clones itself after the shit that is free.

[Giscoicus]

They are not pointless if they are used. Most, if not all, content that was released in 5.0(dailies) are not being used. Are they more or less useless than things that are used all the time for people leveling through it?

Bridges are not used in any way in a world with flight. Period.

[Serenais]

They are not pointless if they are used. Most, if not all, content that was released in 5.0(dailies) are not being used. Are they more or less useless than things that are used all the time for people leveling through it?

Content gets obsolete with time, that's simply how it is. If you want to force content that is percieved as obsolete/old, you are not creating more fun for anyone, you are enforcing a stereotype.
Stereotype is what turns a game into a job.

[Callace]

People want to consume content FAST. They want it done QUICKLY and with as little interuption as possible. With flying mounts, this is done fast(er).

And that is the nail on the head. People aren't going to pay the same amount to play at a slower pace. That just isn't a deal you can go back on.