Possibly no flying throughout entire xpac.

[Osmeric]

Trying isn't being. We can see the exact extent of their engineering genius with the amount of content in WoD vs the time it takes.

They identified some of the reasons the previous attempt(s) didn't work, and have addressed them. So I think they're going to be closer to succeeding this time, although they may still miss the mark.

[Replica]

So. Now, after more then four years, they are admitting that they were lying to us about healing in Cata. And this fact rises very important question. Simple question. Can we believe them now? Or it's just another bunch of bold lies?

You're delusional - of course people are going to use the most healing/mana spent spell - its the nature of an MMO that has raiding in it.
No one gives a fuck about your signature either, why boast that shit? it just proves you're an entitled little bitch.
If you want tier, raid for it - just like you had to before LFR.

[rda]

They identified some of the reasons the previous attempt(s) didn't work, and have addressed them. So I think they're going to be closer to succeeding this time, although they may still miss the mark.

That's also no different from what it was before. There's no shortage of "ah, right, it failed, but now we understand", this can continue forever. Want to bet WoW gold that they will succeed? No? Thought so...

[Deleted]

They identified some of the reasons the previous attempt(s) didn't work, and have addressed them. So I think they're going to be closer to succeeding this time, although they may still miss the mark.

It's not about trying, it's about repeating the same mistakes over and over. And.. well.. blizzard doesnt learn. They make expacs hard at the start (fight with mana issues, longer questing fights, brickwalls, tedious and repetetive content at start..) and buff classes and mechanics towards the end of an expac. Blizzard will exactly repeat this scheme over and over, and part of it is that healing will be annoying at start and too easy at end. They did that in WotLK, in Cataclysm and in MoP. And i am sure, they will do that in WoD again.

They always add time brick walls at the start of an expac and remove them thruout an expac. Always the same. Predictable. Blizzard.

I wonder why they cant start an expac with the same difficulty and time effort needed how it ends. Why cant they balance the difficulty based on ilevel and current encounters correctly? Why may we always spam heals at the end of an expac and run into a mana waste at the start?

What if resources wont scale with gear? No haste to fill up energy faster. No spirit to fill up manaregen faster. Yes, gear should make more powerful. But should it change rotations completely? And should it bring up manaregen to a point where it does not matter while it did matter way too much before reaching the personal spirit break point?

Blizzards game design is binary. There is only 1 or 0. 1 = flying, 0 = no flying. 1 = mandatory dailies, 0 = no dailies. What if they would try balance thruout a complete expac? Why do they always repeat the same shit over and over and think people would not detect it?

[Barkloud]

They didn't lie so much as they were incompetent in implementing a vision. I think they're trying to be closer to that vision now. Whether they succeed, only time will tell.

Mop dailies and WoD no flying are symptoms of Blizzards true problem, which is a lack of content.

[Baconeggcheese]

My opinion is flying after:
1) Reach max level
2) Obtain loremaster for clearing all quests
3) Obtain Explorer for clearing all zones
4) Some type of quest and I would be fine with a challenging one.

I like this, very obvious and agreeable.

Akin to how fast travel in swtor or waypoints in GW2 or flight paths in wow require you to have been to all the specific areas first but once you've put in the leg work you can get around anywhere. You're also done with all relevant content at that point, so its more reasonable to be able to skip over it.

And then when they put in new quest hubs it can be like isle of thunder / timeless isle where flying is again prohibited. Though hopefully in a more elegant way.. say if they made it so you could get on your flying mount and attempt to fly and as soon as you lift off 2 orcs on wyverns spawn and net you back down until you've done all that other stuff. Or for those specific new quest hubs they had lil ground things and air things to make it so you couldn't fly over it.

Mop dailies and WoD no flying are symptoms of Blizzards true problem, which is a lack of content.

That's like saying RNG for loot in diablo is a symptom of blizzards true problem, which is a lack of content.

No, its a staple part of the game design for the game you're playing. Don't be silly.

[AVPaul]

As I can see, you started to talk about healing here. But the intent of my post is not to rise problem with healing in WOD. The intent was to show, that no matter how hard Blizzard is trying to force the idea of no flying in Draenor, no matter how hard fans are trying to defend this idea, no matter, how many doubtful arguments they are offering - at the end it may be just another bold lie.

[Barkloud]

I like this, very obvious and agreeable.

Akin to how fast travel in swtor or waypoints in GW2 or flight paths in wow require you to have been to all the specific areas first but once you've put in the leg work you can get around anywhere. You're also done with all relevant content at that point, so its more reasonable to be able to skip over it.

And then when they put in new quest hubs it can be like isle of thunder / timeless isle where flying is again prohibited. Though hopefully in a more elegant way.. say if they made it so you could get on your flying mount and attempt to fly and as soon as you lift off 2 orcs on wyverns spawn and net you back down until you've done all that other stuff. Or for those specific new quest hubs they had lil ground things and air things to make it so you couldn't fly over it.



That's like saying RNG for loot in diablo is a symptom of blizzards true problem, which is a lack of content.

No, its a staple part of the game design for the game you're playing. Don't be silly.

OPINION ALERT 1*
*The following statements are my opinions only

Vanilla through Wrath had significant content that was consumed throughout the course of the expansion. ICC was lengthy, but they continued to add mini-raids and dungeons to Wrath. I had plenty to do until Cata.

Cata had less content than Vanilla through Wrath, and people stopped playing because they ran out of things to do.

MoP had less content than Vanilla through Wrath and in an effort to make the expansion last as long as previous expansions Blizzard instituted gates, such as gear being locked behind valor + time release dailies. Blizzard removed the gates and we ended up with an expansion that ended content 50% through the product's lifecycle.

WoD from what I understand will have the least amount of content in any expansion ever. I believe they are removing flight so that it takes us longer to consume the content.

Please do not tell me they are planning to release another expansion in a year and they plan on WoD lifecycle being shorter than previous expansions. Blizzard says that every expansion. WoD will be at least 2 years at a bare minimum.

[Nayaga]

I like this, very obvious and agreeable.

Akin to how fast travel in swtor or waypoints in GW2 or flight paths in wow require you to have been to all the specific areas first but once you've put in the leg work you can get around anywhere. You're also done with all relevant content at that point, so its more reasonable to be able to skip over it.

And then when they put in new quest hubs it can be like isle of thunder / timeless isle where flying is again prohibited. Though hopefully in a more elegant way.. say if they made it so you could get on your flying mount and attempt to fly and as soon as you lift off 2 orcs on wyverns spawn and net you back down until you've done all that other stuff. Or for those specific new quest hubs they had lil ground things and air things to make it so you couldn't fly over it.


.

I like your underlined idea.

[MinTDH]

My opinion is flying after:
1) Reach max level
2) Obtain loremaster for clearing all quests
3) Obtain Explorer for clearing all zones
4) Some type of quest and I would be fine with a challenging one.

I like this idea, I just wish there were a consequence to flying, just something that would make you want to both fly and be on the ground. I believe in its current state, it's far to OP to remain the way it is.

[Barkloud]

I like this idea, I just wish there were a consequence to flying, just something that would make you want to both fly and be on the ground. I believe in its current state, it's far to OP to remain the way it is.

To fast travel in Wildstar, you held down the Shift Key. You then have a meter that lets you know how much time you have left at fast travel, once you let go of the shift key you slow down and it starts filling back up. This would be a pain, but something would be better than nothing.

Additionally, I thought the Loremaster achievement was removed from WoD.

[MasterHamster]

The Anti-Flight Q&A

Why are we being forced to stay on the ground? If one wants to stay on the ground they can do that? Choice!

This argument makes no sense in a progression-based MMORPG. A game should never be asking their players to gimp themselves in order to experience the content as it is designed. Anyone who would genuinely do this are among very, very few. Imagine a mountain with a quest-objective at the summit. Along the path there can be all sorts of things. Wild beasts, a hidden treasure hidden in the snow. Maybe a sequence where you grapple to a cliffside further up. The environment is something for you to overcome on your way to your objective.
But no matter what, if flying is available this is all nullified instantly. What value is there in overcoming the ascent if you have to choose to do it? Players can't be left with the choice to be challenged or not. Because they will choose not to, even if it's less fun.

Another of my wall-of-texts on the matter of "choice".

They are only doing this to slow down content-consumption.

Travel itself is probably the part of the game with the absolute least impact on how fast content is consumed. The difference in total time spent leveling, one with and without flight, can probably me measured in mere low digit hours. And then I'm being generous. When it comes to us progressing at level 100, gearing up and plowing through max-level dungeons, raids and whatnot the inability to fly has zero significance. If you truly want to argue about slowing down consumption of content, complain about weekly caps on currencies and raid lockouts. There are dozens or even hundreds of small insignificant things Blizzard could do to slow down consumption of content that isn't as high-profile as removing flight. Many of these have to do with tuning numbers and you'd never notice them regardless. No, the removal of flight is purely for integral design. We cannot be allowed to fly over content and then ask why Draenor felt lackluster as we 100% safely cruised towards a quest marker.

Then why don't they design content with flight in mind? Lazy Blizzard!

Do you not understand how powerful flight is and how much it disconnects you from the rules of the overall game and combat? Do you realize that the only possible way to design a path of obstacles and challenges to overcome when flight is available is to physically stop you? You are essentially asking them to construct a jumping puzzle in the open while retaining the ability to jump straight to the reward at the other end. And it's pretty obvious that if there was quest credits you had to earn every step of the way you'd complain about that instead. They tried to design open-world content with flight once... and not a single person misses falling to their death due to Monstrous Kaliris. No one. There's no way to make flight itself into compelling gameplay.

After a while world content becomes trivial, why shouldn't I be able to fly then? Mobs offer no rewards.. [etc etc] Dazed and have to fight.. Artificially slowed down..

A major part of the reason as to why we become frustrated when we are forced to fight a mob (say Timeless isle) is because we are so used to be able to ignore anything on the ground. They are trivial in our mind because we are allowed to bend the rules (fly), so when this ability is taken away we feel "artificially slowed down" by that mob. The mob isn't part of your expected experience of overcoming the environment on the way to your destination anymore, but just an annoyance. Naturally things like them rarely dropping anything worthwhile plays a role, but not as much.

I think it's quite similar to why I find leveling so much less fun nowadays (other than the fact that I've done it plenty of times), is because there's nothing challenging me whatsoever. I never have to think when leveling because everything dies in two hits anyway. Other players killing the same quest mobs as me aren't potential party-members or friends anymore, they are slowing me down. Sounds familiar?

It's interesting how much this can be broken down in different angles. I stand behind the notion that it's the ability to skip these "trivial" parts that makes them feel trivial. No, I don't fight all mobs on my way to Ordos but I can't just completely ignore them either. Or the environments, or enemy players. We're all bound by the same rules and thus I cannot just aim and press autorun. Being limited to the ground makes Timeless Isle (and hopefully Draenor) much more fun than otherwise. The world becomes more than a completely safe flight from questgiver to objective.

Well subs peaked with flight available!

Feel free to prove these are related to each other in any way.

Seriously.

In the end, this is being done to improve our experience. You may not agree, or even understand why, but it's happening and I hope they stand their ground. No pun.

[Aberzombie]

Sure your maths right. But you seriously believe you can tally up the instances and just call PvP a mini game? Sorry but that's just idiocy.

Not to mention you counted open world zones. And considering most people in this thread want to fly over them while the PvPers want to actually be in them.. Lets just count those towards the PvP side.

Still, i can't believe someone thinks thats legitimate math..

I found that math exercise rather interesting but even if you want to throw it out there's even simpler info to consider --

It's known (and easy to look up yourself if you doubt) that some 60% of the playerbase play on PvE realms. All those months and years of PvP fans chanting, "If you don't want to PvP, roll on a PvE realm!" And tons of people did -- to the tune of approx 3:2. That ~60% of players don't like PvP, don't want PvP and relegate themselves to non-PvP realms to avoid PvP when at all possible. So, right there shows that PvP is a less popular game feature that its PvE alternative.

It's also known that not everyone who still have toons on PvP realms actually like PvP. PvP realms still have riad guilds, etc and there are doubless players there who raid (or do other non-PvP-centric play) with friends and tolerate the PvP atmosphere to get that. Though it would be impossible to attempt quantifying that # they have to be admitted as fact. Then there are all those that relegate their actual PvP play to instanced content. They don't gank/camp/grief because there's no incentive/reward for it. The Censor and Bloody Coins on TI was the only non-instanced PvP reward added to the game in some time, yes? Is it any wonder some people went nuts over it? The gankers could gank absolutely anyone, including their own faction, and get something out of it besides repair bills.

[Baconeggcheese]

Vanilla through Wrath had significant content that was consumed throughout the course of the expansion.

Something people seem to gloss over every time they mention... lets look at vanilla specifically as it probably had the most content out of all of them. Vanilla on average took players 4 months to level from 1 to 60. Leveling was a massive part of the game back then.

BC took another month from 60 to 70 on average, and then eventually made its way into daily quests and what have you. Again making questing and leveling a large part of the game by sheer volume.

What would happen if they made it take most people a month to go from 90 to 100? What would people call that? Would it be well received? Would people not just throw around words like *gating* and complain?

The problem is not the amount of content, it is that they made the content more accessible / piss-through-able. If you make it so people can piss through the content 10x faster than previous, then you also have to make 10x more content to appease those people. It's just not reasonable.

[quras]

PRO -FLIGHT REBUTTAL

[SIZE=3]The Anti-Flight Q&A[SIZE=2]

Why are we being forced to stay on the ground? If one wants to stay on the ground they can do that? Choice!

This argument makes perfect sense in the way of what gamers find fun. If riding on the ground is indeed "fun" to a gamer it makes perfect sense for them to ride on teh ground when they want that particular "fun" to happen. It doesn't need to happen all the time and they can fly when they feel they need to.

Having the best of both worlds is not a bad thing. IT's actually a good thing in gamers and give gamers options. The kind of options we have had for every expansion this game has ever had.

Along the path of the game there can be all sorts of things and all those things eventually become worthless clutter. They were interesting once or even a few times (just like most content) but you eventually out grow them and skip them. Flying at max level allows you to do this. That is also not a bad thing.

If you played WoD beta you would know like the rest of us beta players, that the "wild" is not wild at all. After a few times of seeing blizzard amazing dismount mechanic from a level 93 mob on a level 100 toon, you start to wander just WTF was blizzard thinking and you wish you could just skip it. The wild in WoD is a joke and removing flying for it amounts to a comedic punchline that turned out to be not so funny.

If blizzard can't design content well enough like was done in the past that interests gamers to stay, then it's not flying thats the problem but the design and development team. The environment is not some beast to overcome nor is it engaging content. IF anything it's used as a backdrop to real content to set the stage, it should not be the meat of the quest.

But no matter what, we have had meaningful content with flying at max level and the game was better for it. Both in subscriptions and quality of content.

When it comes to travel at this point in the game and how travel has evolved over the past 7+ years, taking a step backwards is not worth more money.

They are only doing this to slow down content-consumption.

It's not just slowing content consumption in some large chunk. It's prolonging every single player to step into the game. As I have said before, it's similar to typing /played and then thinking, "WTF! I play this game that much!" It's a bit shocking when you first see it.

No flying would be similar in that same reguard. If you could type in WoD:

/amountOFtimeWASTEDtravelingBECAUSEofNOflight You would then be shocked the same way. "WTF! I wasted that much game time getting from "A" to "B"!"

It's not about adding large chunks time to content consumption. That would be obvious. Like the grinds for crystals in WoD or the initial grinds in MoP. Gamers woudla gain be in an uproar. Adding small amounts of time to every game, bleeding off your game time over months in small amounts is the goal. Easily hidden to the clueless masses.

and sure, there is a lot of areas that no flight will not hinder at max level, however, any open world content is suddenly extended due to no flight. Any of those extra activities you do will have added time to them just to get to the "fun" or the reason your out there in the first place. Thats not good design nor a good enough reason to remove flying.

Removing flying is nothing but a poor attempt to slow down content consumption and has little or nothing to do with design. If that was even remotely true older expansions with flying would not have reached the popularity they did. Every gamer will soon wonder why WoD is lacking in content at end game and there still be no flying, each asking themselves, "SO, where is all this amazing content we were suppose to see with no flying?" with nothing ever being produced but some crystal grinds, a couple jumping puzzles and bosses you can only loot once. Content well worth skipping once you did it once.

Then why don't they design content with flight in mind? Lazy Blizzard!

Do you not understand how powerful flight is and how much it disconnects you from the rules of the overall game and combat?

do you realize we have had content with flying at max level and it produced the largest MMO in the world? IF blizzard is now incapable of producing engaging content, removing flying isn't going to save them.

And sense you have to land to complete any content, you are suddenly reconnected to everything and if blizzard can't design a quest in open world that takes advantage of that, then they are truely screwed.

Do you realize that the only possible way to design a path of obstacles and challenges to overcome when flight is available is to physically stop you? You are essentially asking them to construct a jumping puzzle in the open while retaining the ability to jump straight to the reward at the other end. And it's pretty obvious that if there was quest credits you had to earn every step of the way you'd complain about that instead

Do you realize that there is no limit to blizzard ability to design a quest, obsticale or challenge that could also have flying in open world. Hell, it would have been more acceptable for many if the quest stopped you from flying VS having flying removed in all relevant content.

Plus, I don't think I have seen a single quest in WoD that also couldn't be changed to allow open world flying and still retain the quests original intent. All it takes in some create design. Something blizzard seems to be lacking in as of late.

Even in your example of a jumping puzzle, it could easily be designed to have you carry something that hinders flying. A torch that goes out if you fly. Sure, it mechanic of flying is removed for the designed quest intent but flying is not removed for the entire gaming world.

Flying doesn't need to be removed to design interesting content. A will to design creatively is needed. Soemthing TBC and WoTLK had. Hell, cataclysm and MoP had flying and it wasn't what caused them to bleed 6+ million subs.

After a while world content becomes trivial, why shouldn't I be able to fly then? Mobs offer no rewards.. [etc etc] Dazed and have to fight.. Artificially slowed down..

I stand behind the notion that it's the ability to skip these "trivial" parts that makes them feel trivial.

If that were true then you got a lot for to have removed from the game than flying. Ground mounts even need to go. You can bypass mobs do to your speed. Aggro radius need to be increased as well.

I stand behind the notion that skipping things is part of the game. It's inherant in nearly every aspect of the game. If you're going to argue skipping content from "A" to "B" is some major design flaw. You got a shitload of things wow needs to lose to stop the heinous game play of worthless content skipping.

No, I don't fight all mobs on my way to Ordos but I can't just completely ignore them either. Or the environments, or enemy players. We're all bound by the same rules and thus I cannot just aim and press autorun. Being limited to the ground makes Timeless Isle (and hopefully Draenor) much more fun than otherwise.

While the WoD cotent isn't bad. It's no more fun with or without flying. It's simply the same ole, same ole content you have been getting and removing flight hasn't brought a damn thing to WoD at max level.

The world becomes more than a completely safe flight from questgiver to objective.

At max level the world stays a joke you can easily skip by staying in your garrison. I guess that needs to go too since it has ways to allow you to skip doing things out in the world.

Well subs peaked with flight available!

Feel free to prove these are related to each other in any way.

Seriously

If flight was so detriment to the game, it would be impossible for the game to do as well as it did. No matter how good the story, how good the content was or how fun the game play was, flight would have hindered it. WOW could not have achieved it's greatness.

Flight was and is an amazing feature to wow that is so ingrained into wow that even blizzard won't fully hinder it or stop selling it in the cash shop while at the same time selling you the game where you cannot use it.

Flight has done nothing but helped wow even if it was in some small way but I belive it is what makes WOW stand out from pretty much all other MMO.

Features like that you should support, highlight them, enhance them and make all those other MMO games wish they could keep up. Features like that you don't remove and yet keep selling in your cash shop because the cash revenue is just too good.

How about you show me how flying has hurt wow?


Because from vanilla to WoD beta. I can't see it.

It did nothing but helped TBC and WoTLK. I dare say it helped cataclysm with it's broke up questing areas and nothing could have stopped cataclysm for being the less than seller expansion it was. Same for MoP, it wasn't flying hurting that expansion vs how mediocre the content and story was.

[-Superman-]

I like this idea, I just wish there were a consequence to flying, just something that would make you want to both fly and be on the ground. I believe in its current state, it's far to OP to remain the way it is.

Sadly, Blizz has no intention of adding in any "obstacles" or disadvantages. They think it is a (paraphrasing) waste of time and resources to add in items which would hinder flight in zones. Most players find things like surface to air rockets "annoying".

There are at least a DOZEN things Blizz could do to make flight more interesting, challenging, and bring it more on par with ground mounts. At this time, for them, it is either ALL or NOTHING. They have no desire to compromise. So, when flight comes to Draenor in 6.1, it will be the same calibur of what we have in the game currently, and the anti-flight folks will go back to using flying mounts for the convenience.

[Dormie]

As I can see, you started to talk about healing here. But the intent of my post is not to rise problem with healing in WOD. The intent was to show, that no matter how hard Blizzard is trying to force the idea of no flying in Draenor, no matter how hard fans are trying to defend this idea, no matter, how many doubtful arguments they are offering - at the end it may be just another bold lie.

Why do all of the pro fliers rely on conspiracy theories and calling everything 'subjective'? Your lack of trust in Bliz is your own issue.

[-Superman-]

Why do all of the pro fliers rely on conspiracy theories?

The same reason anti-fliers rely on discredit tactics. Neither side has a solid argument outside of personal perception and the need to passively insult the other side.

[Dormie]

The same reason anti-fliers rely on discredit tactics. Neither side has a solid argument outside of personal perception and the need to passively insult the other side.

There's actually clear pros to no flying that the fliers blatantly deny. A couple being a more populated world and more PvP. 'Immersion' is called subjective, and it partially is, but there are still things that are generally agreed upon to be more immersive than others.

[Ninepenny]

There are at least a DOZEN things Blizz could do to make flight more interesting, challenging, and bring it more on par with ground mounts.

We've been through that already, even steven. Kaliries, Oculus, Grim Butthole.