Dev Interview - No More Flying, May 22 Hotfixes, Blue Tweets, WoW Marathon Record

[Thelonicus]

Flying enabled in Eastern kingdoms, kalimdor, pandaria, outland and northrend. But Draenor has a classic design with waystones and other items to stay mobile around that realm. Im glad they went in this direction, and i love that they stand by their descission. They listen to player feedback, but designing zones without flying isnt punishing players. Its a different approach to given content, and much like how wow originally started out.

Flying was only in outland to begin with, not the classic zones. Its been a design descission all the way, and the developers chose to roll it back. Its strange to me that so many find this punishing to players, cause what do you gain from flying other then upper hand in ganking, disconnected questing (ofcourse quests can design with flying in mind, but i mean the mobility of flying ruins quests that are into traveling of sorts), farming and freedom from revamped flightpaths. Yes, they have been tremendously improved.

As for the farming part, with no flying, resources would be distributed in a design friendly to grounded mounts.

[Tomana]

Flying enabled in Eastern kingdoms, kalimdor, pandaria, outland and northrend. But Draenor has a classic design with waystones and other items to stay mobile around that realm. Im glad they went in this direction, and i love that they stand by their descission. They listen to player feedback, but designing zones without flying isnt punishing players. Its a different approach to given content, and much like how wow originally started out.

It's a crap way to given content. You want people to quest their way to 100 on foot, fine. You want to do a long quest chain to get flying (which was one of the scenarios for WoD), fine. But locking you on the ground for a whole goddamn expansion is pants-on-head retarded.

Flying was only in outland to begin with, not the classic zones. Its been a design descission all the way, and the developers chose to roll it back.

Once you milk the cow, it's a bit complicated to get the milk back in the udder. We had 4 expansions with flying at max level or even before that, going 180 on that will not get the devs a lot of friends.

Its strange to me that so many find this punishing to players, cause what do you gain from flying other then upper hand in ganking, disconnected questing (ofcourse quests can design with flying in mind, but i mean the mobility of flying ruins quests that are into traveling of sorts), farming and freedom from revamped flightpaths. Yes, they have been tremendously improved.

Flying gives me the freedom to go from point A to point B by whatever ****ing way I want to, without submitting myself to all the retarded ground mazes the developers designed to slow me down (hi to you, Nagrand and the elemental plateau). Or get from one archaeology spot to another.

I'll grant you that since WoD has almost 0 open-world content, the loss of flying is not so bad as it would have been in, say, MOP. But if they want to add open-world content (hint: they should), they need to bring flying back.

[Redecle]

One of the sole reasons for the no flight is the questing and treasures. Not allowing people to skip straight to the final part.
That point of the devs i understand, but even that has a pitfall, at least in my mind.
Personally i'm all for it that people should see the quests the devs have worked on and "forcing" people to do them is the only way, if there's already a shortcut in existence people will take it even on the first go, i myself aim to always do and read quests all of them on the first go, but no everyone is like that..
Cause it's part of the story. Even the treasures such as the Nagrand goblin ones.

They are nice for the first time around same as the first time leveling with mazed zones, the problem comes when you level your 2nd alt or 5th or 11th.
I don't want to do every quest thingy all over again and kill a bunch of mobs i've already killed and seen on my main.
It's not why i'm there again, at that point i'm there to 8-minute speed run from level 0-100, to get my alt end game going as i've already seen and read the story. I have to admit that the 'no content' claim has it's upside at least if you play several alts. Finally i'm spending my time playing and catching them up. Just by doing all of the weekly alt related stuff can easily take 36-48 hours per week.
So it's not like there's no content, there's just no new content. It's things you've already done, things you wish you could do faster, things you wish didn't take that 36 hours to do if there is new content present. Specially if you spend only a small portion of that on main. My main played time is probably something like 4-8 hours a week on top of the combined time used on alts and currently that's only like 3-4 alts, if i'd played all of them i'd easily play 100+ hours a week just to play alts, i wish i could do that. hence why every second even if it's just flying from a to b makes them valuable to be able to play more characters.

The sole point of alts to me is to skip as much as possible of the leveling process, via flying to the last quest mob, avoiding any unnecessary mobs, not spending hours on going back and forth for some heavy xp goblin treasures to get to the gliders, when you could mount up fly and get'em and get your max level alt and go level your next one up. Same as my stand point why garrisons should have been account wide. Alts are there for end game content or possible main rerolls for next expac, you do the entire playing through and experiencing the game on your mains. That was one of the good things about WotLK for example the flying tome to be used on alts, once you've done the stuff your main.

Content is relevant as long as it has not been done once on your main character and i agree that to this point not allowing flying is perfectly fine.
Replaying it is whole other ballpark though. It's extremely nice to have that possibility, the replaying that is, but unless it's actually dynamic content that changes everytime, and not just from couple of options, which in my knowledge hasn't been done yet since an actual dynamic self thinking AI has not been invented yet (nope no skynet), it only becomes a time consumption prolonging method. Yes people are complaining 'no content', but prolonging/keeping the releveling process as long as it is for the first toon or in this case removing the 360 freedom of movement that is flying is not the solution.

[Tomana]

One of the sole reasons for the no flight is the questing and treasures. Not allowing people to skip straight to the final part.
That point of the devs i understand, but even that has a pitfall, at least in my mind.
Personally i'm all for it that people should see the quests the devs have worked on, i myself aim to always do all of them.. On the first go.
Cause it's part of the story. Even the treasures such as the Nagrand goblin ones.

Also, the problem is that ground approach is terribly biased towards classes who have stealth.

[Unholyground]

Well, here's me doing all I can do as a player of the game: complain about it.

I really think Flying once you reach level 100 should be allowed. If you don't want people flying in Tanaan, then just disable it there, like Wintergrasp back in WOTLK...

My sentiments were similar about the disabling flying, honestly it would not be hard for them to put a no flying zone over all the places and major quest areas that flying would break. Simple and easy but they are too damn lazy.

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Also, the problem is that ground approach is terribly biased towards classes who have stealth.

Or tanks, they don't die.

[Deleted]

Also, the problem is that ground approach is terribly biased towards classes who have stealth.

Or any class at this point, really.

Unless it's one of the few areas in WoD that's incredibly full of mobs, like Shattrath and the other apexis zones. Every single class is going to be able to either use some drop out of combat trick or just fear / charge away / snare the offending mobs and run right to the objective.

[Virgo]

I've been with wow for quite sometime starting in vanilla and when TBC and the netherdrakes and flying came about that was amazing the feeling of earning the ability to mount rare drakes just made everything amazing----skip to today.

So WoD...i bought the game couldn't play for a solid week garrison meltdown anybody forgotten this? almost cancelled but my friends said im sure they will fix it fine. I got to 100 in a short time..quite peeved i couldn't fly at 100 but i figured it is ok few patches..and now they come out with they are removing it totally???? im laughing my ass off i honestly think blizzard is only company who removes features instead of adding them....i mean for me its just as others have put it a final nail in coffin ""bare in mind i cancelled my sub 2-3 months after WoD went live"" but this just goes to show that they are trying to make as much cash as possible and at the same time having as minimal people working on it as possible there for saving money...you can clearly see every decision made is purely made out of money..

one last thing

""WE HAVE LOTS MORE CONTENT TO ADD""

Yet they seem to add less every new expansion my tin foil hat is vibrating.

[Thelonicus]

Roll engineering and get teleporters, activate the waystones, loot the feather that launches you into the air, get the toy that propells you far away :P This isnt a human rights violation, its a design descission the community is throwing a sort of childish tantrum over Wouldnt be a game if it didnt have any depth to it

[Redecle]

Nope it's not human rights violation or the end of the world.
But having gadgets and trinkets with cooldowns is completely different what '360 freedom of movement use whenever' provides.
Not to even speak of the waystones, that's even more passive than flight points, besides even this far in the expac i haven't even once considered building a mage tower, there are still far more superior buildings that are more useful to have. Clearly Draenor is prepared to have flying in it, otherwise the 10 minute cd feather wouldn't exist.

It's not just about the game it's one of the basic human curiosities, for decades centuries even men have gone to the skies and have multiple times in history tried to invent personal flying machines and commercialize them. So in that sense the player desire to fly has not changed. Something a video game can quite easily do, a man can fly, specially when you're in a vast large scale mmo.
Yet not a lot of them go with this route, even though many of them don't have faction based open world pvp outside specific pvp zones, they don't have things like air ganking, cause you cannot attack anyone. Most still have a quest design as WoW does, kill 15 of these along the way to the last "boss" mob, which neutralizes even the skip to the last mob mentality, since you have to kill the others before the quest progresses.

[Ghostmage]

I just love how people are getting so mad that there is no more flying. If flying was the only reason you bought this game than I feel sorry for each and everyone of you. I bought this game 10 years ago to play it with friends, to do dungeons, level, and raid. Flying was nothing more than a convenience to me to get places faster. I still remember when it took literally 20 minutes to fly from Darnassus to Taneris. If there was any reason to quit a game it would have been the amount of time that fight took. Yet the millions of people who experienced that part of the game didnt quit.

Flying did not make the game more fun for me, or less fun it was just there. I may have not liked Flying in Cata because you could cheese every quest you had being able to just fly around for days doing quests so quickly. I still played though because I didnt play for the flying.

Like I said if you bought this game because you could flying on a pretty bird than I feel bad for you because there are many of us if not millions of us who play this game to play with friends, to do dungeons, raids and PvP which as you all know. Do not require flying mounts.

So my final thought here is if you bought this game for flying and no other reason then cancel your subscription now and go play some other game that lets you fly around with no other real reason but to fly like an eagle.

[Bizarre Monkey]

I like that they are being adamant about the no flying decision, I've been able to get more invested in Warlords of Draenor's outdoor questing than I have in the games outdoor questing Experience ever, even in Vanilla, though then it was mostly because the grand majority of quests were kill x or get y or a combination.

I'm particularly a fan of the Spires of Arak zone, from the moment you walk in stakes are raised, characters are introduced, and a plight you aid in. It's all really well put together, I think Spires of Arak is my favorite questing zone hands down.

Flying would absolutely ruin it. I've liked actually having to work for things again, I enjoy using the gliders in Nagrand to secure that loot that a flying mount would trivialize retrieving, because they haven't been forced to design the game around an endless abuse of the triple Axis, they've been able to implement so many neato things, the nagrand gliding, platforming, etc!

And yeah, if 3 million people seriously left out of flying not being in one continent in the whole game, I think it's more or less affirmed they weren't very awesome people to populate the game with anyway.

I think the subscriber drop is more in relation to how quickly dungeons and particularly, heroic dungeons-- have been completely undermined in favor of garrisons and LFR. Personally, I don't mind that, It's guaranteed I'm still gonna have to do Heroics at some point, but I can't really speak well on the matter since I'm a fairly casual player, doing heroics everyday just isn't my gig, i like to play in intense but short bursts. Granted, I can usually raid and easily outplace the need for heroics, for some, this is probably a real game changer, and has left folks who aren't obsessive about transmog/mount farming like I to leave the game until new content comes around.

With the respectable callbacks and some decent boss design a decent portion of those 3 mil will likely be back when this patch goes live, I wouldn't worry about it. If anything this error will only somewhat motivate Blizzard to produce content quicker. That said, the pace they've been updating things on P.T.R is pretty phenomenal already. As an indie dev myself I really can't name a company who puts out quality content on a more consistent basis than they do. I sure as fuck don't. :/

[Tomana]

I'm particularly a fan of the Spires of Arak zone, from the moment you walk in stakes are raised, characters are introduced, and a plight you aid in. It's all really well put together, I think Spires of Arak is my favorite questing zone hands down.

Flying would absolutely ruin it.

No one is talking about introducing flight for leveling (only Cata had that, and for a reason). Just give people flying at max level, that is all.

[9Nails]

No one is talking about introducing flight for leveling (only Cata had that, and for a reason). Just give people flying at max level, that is all.

Hmm. But flying for leveling is very useful. I, for one, liked being able to use the old mount and hover as a pause button to prevent respawns from aggro'ing on me. It's also a good way not to die when you're tabbed out to research something or otherwise occupied. Alas, it's not to be so any greater discussions on this are pointless. Vote against "No Flying" by withholding your subscription dollars.

[Tomana]

Hmm. But flying for leveling is very useful. I, for one, liked being able to use the old mount and hover as a pause button to prevent respawns from aggro'ing on me. It's also a good way not to die when you're tabbed out to research something or otherwise occupied.

I agree. However, it would seem that flying at max level would be a good compromise between "I want to fly" and "flying ruins questing".

Alas, it's not to be so any greater discussions on this are pointless. Vote against "No Flying" by withholding your subscription dollars.

I already did.