Dear Pro-Flying Players: A Question

[Deleted]

Personally couldn't care less about flying. It's the fact that they've already given us the option to use them, and are now just taking it away.
If they'd atleast just come clean and say 'We're removing the ability to fly', I'd be fine with it.
Now, if they somehow buffed ground mounts, that'd be awesome, and would (I think) make more people okay with no flying mounts.

[Aquamonkey]

Aquamonkey, I still don't understand why you feel that the air taxi is so much better for the game than flying. Would you mind explaining?

I didn't say it was. I said it served the exact same function as teleport as described by the person I quoted:

"A lot of MMO's allow you to teleport to places that you have previously visited, which sort of eliminates the need for flying (and also prevents people from flying to places they have not explored on foot)."

[Sorshen]

Threads like these make me cringe.

Infracted.

[Ihnasir]

Because they don't want to use it? Blizzard made the choice to allow flying mounts, and not every other MMO has to "adapt" to a supposed standard. WoW has had flying for longer than it didn't have flying, it's just part of the game and people have to accept that. You're completely within your rights if you want to ride a ground mount for your precious "world pvp" (if it can so be called), but don't be upset when I swoop down and take that mining node or herb you've been eyeing for the last 15 seconds and can't get to before me.

[Sett]

Dear Pro-Flying Players,

I have seen you make numerous arguments about why flying is an integral, enjoyable part of World of Warcraft, that in no way negatively affects the game. Your support of flying has been unwavering, budged by neither Blizzard's arguments nor those of your fellow players. You are adamant in your stance, and clearly believe it very much.

So, my question to you is this: If flying is so much fun, and has no negative impact on the gameplay, why do no other MMOs use it?

Is it time constraints? Lack of resources? Are we to believe that big budget MMOs like ESO and SW:toR simply couldn't figure it out? What could possibly be their reasoning for not including a feature that, according to many of you, is so essential to World of Warcraft?

Help me understand.

So condescending.


It does take time and resources to make the world open for flying. Did you not listen to them explain how tedious it was to revamp the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor for flying? They had to rebuild a lot of the world instead of leaving it as a flat display that looks pretty from afar. ( You list ESO and SW:TOR while forgetting such games like Vanguard or Aion. For shame! )


People like flying. People are passionate about flying and their mounts. It's not rocket science to understand this. Blizzard may or may not have been wrong by opening Pandora's box in regards to flying. We'll never know because they did open it. We have had flying for years now. To restrict it completely ( I speak of an entire expac session ) is just going backwards with limiting players.

[RoKPaNda]

Back in BC, it was never even asked as a feature. It was given to us as a "oh wow, that's cool!" kind of thing.

Probably because it was added in BC. In Vanilla it WAS asked for as a feature. Frequently. Since beta of Vanilla WoW, actually. And Blizzard always said that it wouldn't work because of how WoW was designed, if players could fly they'd see that Stormwind for example was actually flat. Their solution was when Burning Crusade came around and we went to an entirely new continent and buildings were designed properly, they could give us flying.

In years and years of playing WoW and reading the forums I saw many many complaints about WoW, most of them stupid, and never one time did I EVER see any thread where people said "Yeah flying sucks, we totally shouldn't have flying." - I saw a lot of "Flying should be faster.", never "Flying is terrible." Until Blizzard stated that they didn't like what flying did to the game, and then the "ZOMG FLYING SUX!" crowd came out of the woodwork.

Taking flying away from players doesn't add anything at all to the game for me, it just makes the quest grind more tedious. Whether I have to fight mobs or not, questing isn't enjoyable. This is a pretty common feeling about questing, just look at how many guides exist to quest efficiently and get it over with. If questing is your thing, great, I'm truly happy for you that you enjoy it, but for a lot of us it's a roadblock to the content we like. Whether I can fly or not, I won't enjoy "Go collect 10 rat tails.", and whether I can fly or not I'll only ever do the required stuff. So having flying and skipping mobs doesn't take away any great experience in the game for me.

If you dislike flying so much, why not just ... not fly? For those of us that enjoy it, it's just another feature that we won't have when WoD launches. Maybe for you "No flying." is a selling point, but for the people that the OP was being condescending towards, this is just a reason to not be excited about WoD. "YEAH! Questing is going to take longer! WOO!"

[-Superman-]

Threads like these make me cringe.

Best to avoid such things since you offer no input on the topic.

[ipaq]

Dear Pro-Flying Players,

I have seen you make numerous arguments about why flying is an integral, enjoyable part of World of Warcraft, that in no way negatively affects the game. Your support of flying has been unwavering, budged by neither Blizzard's arguments nor those of your fellow players. You are adamant in your stance, and clearly believe it very much.

So, my question to you is this: If flying is so much fun, and has no negative impact on the gameplay, why do no other MMOs use it?

Is it time constraints? Lack of resources? Are we to believe that big budget MMOs like ESO and SW:toR simply couldn't figure it out? What could possibly be their reasoning for not including a feature that, according to many of you, is so essential to World of Warcraft?

Help me understand.

Ok, are you using your flying mount?

Yes, obviously.

Then shut up.

[LTCrystallite]

Ok, are you using your flying mount?

Yes, obviously.

Then shut up.

If the game is designed around flying and someone doesn't use their flying mount, it's doing nothing but making things 100x more difficult, so of COURSE they'd use their flying mount.

It's about immersive design, and frankly I actually agree with Blizz on this one. I had way better times in pre-cata old world content than I've ever had farming on a flyer. You don't even NEED flying for more than half the game because most content has an insta-queue button. Don't get me wrong, flying is efficient and quick, but I can't recall the last time I felt "good" flying, it's usually like "Oh hey, it sucks that the ore I want has a mob walking next to it, ugg I don't want to aggro it, it'll take 6 seconds to kill!"

[lsnderick]

WoW has large seamless/borderless continents. This allows for flying over them.. And this is the most great feature of WoW's world design, it feels whole, unlike other mmos with bunch of maps with loading screens.

[Farabee]

To answer the OP's question: other games haven't been built around the use of flying mounts for 7 years. To be perfectly honest it's one of the reasons I can't really enjoy any other MMO. I even got max-level in SWTOR and beat all the opening raids on Nightmare, and the tedium of sitting on a speeder path to get to the places to do my dailies and then running through a ton of mobs just made me want to gouge my eyes out.

It's a facet of human nature. People don't like to have a convenience unceremoniously yanked from them. It's why you see people who go through financial turmoil pile up mountains of debt to maintain their previous standard of living.

[dPwnShop]

What baffles me is how all these discussions seem to be based on the premise of "FLYING: IS IT GOOD OR BAD DESIGN? WE MUST SOLVE THIS QUESTION"

Anyone who can take a step back and think objectively for a minute can see how flying has upsides and downsides. It enhances the game in many ways, and detracts from it in many others. A lot of players adore flying, while a lot of others don't. It is not some fundamental principle of game design, it's a system, and like any system it has very little intrinsic value one way or another at its core; it's all down to the execution.

If the recent discussions on it have proven anything, it's that flying in WoW is something that's entirely subjective to most players. Nobody's "wrong" in how they view it, they just value certain elements of game design differently to others.

The big issue with the changes Blizzard are planning to make for WoD stems from the fact that they, too, seem to be approaching flying with this binary all-or-nothing mindset that a lot of players have. I cannot fathom for the life of me why they don't strike a healthy balance between dedicated no-fly zones like the Timeless/Thunder isle and a more traditionally open, flyable world. The idea of having either a completely unflyable expansion, or an expansion that starts unflyable only to have flying unlocked after a certain point, seems to me that it will only succeed in alienating the maximum number of players possible.

There are so many ways they could design the expansion to cater to both flyable and ground-based content in a way that would make everyone feel like they're getting thrown a bone, rather than leaving one group feeling shafted. In a game with a playerbase as enormously diverse as WoW's, designing content that appeals to one niche while completely shutting down another is never a good way to make sure everyone's having fun.

I feel like this post should end all flying threads. It makes too much sense to be ignored by either side.

[-Superman-]

I feel like this post should end all flying threads. It makes too much sense to be ignored by either side.

Several people in the pro-flight camp tried to strike a balance and even provided options to balance Flight so it was more on par with Ground mounts. The anti-flying crowd knew they had Blizz in their corner and just kept their fingers shoved in their ears when it came to compromise. When this fails, and it will, I will blame Blizz for not taking a more balanced path, and its white knights for allowing them to fail by not insisting on balance.