No flying in 7.0 confirmed

[Connll]

They are doing what any other company does...keep doing something until customer complaints are overwhelming.

While the above statement is correct, I wonder if Blizz sees reality the same way we do. I mean, the reaction to no-flight-ever WAS overwhelming (so they changed it).

The reaction to most of WoD´s elements like Garrisons are also what I would call overwhelming (losing 5 million subs in 6 months?).

But despite all this... nothing is really changing. The WoW devs are just doing more of the same, taking only the "care" to change names. Thats it. In fact, particularly with regards to flight, they seem to be beatifically ignorant about whats going on outside their bubble. Seriously: everytime I see anything by Ion or Bashiok I get the impression that those 2 are happy for losing players.

It defies reason.

[Mafic]

WoD was simply a test bed on the live servers for what they really wanted to do.

Pruning? They have done more in Legion.

Garrisons/shipyard? Order halls gate progression far more in Legion.

Versatility gear in RNG boxes from Ashran? No worries all the PVP gear is now in RNG boxes.

I think if there is another big push back like there was in WoD with Legion (simply a paint job of WoD ideas) only then will they reverse course.

Flying and patch finder is going to be the one that kicks it off along with PVP gearing system that is 100% RNG with currencies removed.

[Connll]

WoD was simply a test bed on the live servers for what they really wanted to do.

I know, but the fact is: The experiment failed.

If they are doing it again, I see only 2 possibilities: 1- severe delusion/arrogance: "we know what you want better than you! You will eat this crap AND LIKE IT!", or 2- The company has given up on the game and is preparing to put it in life-support.

If 1- is true, then there is a silver line: get rid of the current developers, and put a few new ones willingt o make WoW great again!!! (sorry, couldn´t resist).

But if 2- is true, then it is end of line for WoW as a quality MMO.

For most of the time during the flight-no-flight debacle, I thought that the more likely to be true was 1-. Now, however... I ain´t sure.

[Fkiolaris]

I know, but the fact is: The experiment failed.

If they are doing it again, I see only 2 possibilities: 1- severe delusion/arrogance: "we know what you want better than you! You will eat this crap AND LIKE IT!", or 2- The company has given up on the game and is preparing to put it in life-support.

If 1- is true, then there is a silver line: get rid of the current developers, and put a few new ones willingt o make WoW great again!!! (sorry, couldn´t resist).

But if 2- is true, then it is end of line for WoW as a quality MMO.

For most of the time during the flight-no-flight debacle, I thought that the more likely to be true was 1-. Now, however... I ain´t sure.

I vote for number 1, easy. Say what you want, but Blizzard is not letting WoW die intentionally, not by any stretch of imagination. The simple reality is this: shitloads of profit is shitloads of profit, no-matter of the initial investment in time and money. The other games you mention simply ADD extra profit on top, and even if that extra profit is bigger than the profit from WoW (just speculating here), it sure doesn't make the profit from WoW obsolete under any circumstances.

So no, they are not killing their own cash-cow on purpose, just forget about that. That they are delusional idiots is a much more probable scenario.

[rda]

I know, but the fact is: The experiment failed.

If they are doing it again, I see only 2 possibilities: 1- severe delusion/arrogance: "we know what you want better than you! You will eat this crap AND LIKE IT!", or 2- The company has given up on the game and is preparing to put it in life-support.

If 1- is true, then there is a silver line: get rid of the current developers, and put a few new ones willingt o make WoW great again!!! (sorry, couldn´t resist).

But if 2- is true, then it is end of line for WoW as a quality MMO.

For most of the time during the flight-no-flight debacle, I thought that the more likely to be true was 1-. Now, however... I ain´t sure.

It's 1 - "we know better". When they see the forums, someone adds "and the forums do not represent all players".

The reason this happens is that it is in their interest for people to like not flying, because not flying makes people slower. So it's easy for them to convince themselves that perhaps not flying is good or at least not too bad and let's try again even if the previous try failed (extreme nuts will also start debating at this point that not flying failed and will vouch to change the wording from "failed" to something along the lines of "inconclusive").

If it was in their interest for people to like flying instead of not flying, we wouldn't be discussing anything, we'd have our flying and anyone who'd say that he doesn't like flying being in the game would have been ridiculed to the moon and back.

[Mafic]

Blizz thinks it has solved the problems of WoD by repackaging it. But a turd is still a turd.

No flying not being accepted was probably brushed off because of garrisons. The truth is garrisons hid how bad it is to have an MMORPG like WoW with no flying or other travel mechanisms that are reasonable.

Pruning in WoD was brushed off as players being upset but they have done way more pruning in Legion. New animations can't hide the fact that most specs are now 2 or 3 buttons specs with far less utility.

Order halls are simply garrisons/shipyards with a paint job.

[SirCowdog]

Guess you should have read the forums during MoP when people were pulling their hair out due to "pre-raid items locked behind dailies" and other "mandatory chores" they didn't want. WoD sure delivered in that regard.



Because those 'mistakes' are the reasons you have things to strive for over longer periods of time instead of unsubbing after 1 week after a major patch because development can never keep up with uncapped, unleashed players.



You'll never understand until you figure out what effects these "inbetween the fun" elements does to overall enjoyment, pacing and how it effects perceived longevity of content. Take away EVERYTHING that isn't immediately relevant to your gameplay, and what is actually left? Why have a large city if I just need the profession trainer, bank and AH? Why aren't they all at the same spot? Why have large beautiful zones to travel through if the only thing I'll ever "need" after leveling is the raid instance portal? Why have anything but boss rooms when raids is all about killing bosses for loot? (See the success of ToC hurrdurr)

What you call "useless filler" is the core part of the game. Core part of MMORPG design to make people feel like they are in a world to conquer, instead of a sandbox to play around with.




Summing up threads like these that is pretty much the hyperbolic impression one gets.

We want to get immediately to our goal, where we want. Everything we deem trivial should no longer influence our gameplay. Never slow us down with currency caps, RNG, profession farming or faction reps or anything such. What I want to do this moment shall be. Ah, and Blizzard should still be able to develop content fast enough to satisfy this uncapped, instant gratification gameplay.

Luckily people who design games knows that giving players everything they think they want won't work for long.



Hey, isn't that the whole point of this topic? When writing long posts about my reasoning why I believe flying is bad for overall enjoyment and longevity of WoW, the replies are generally "So you want people to progress slower?"

There's something that irks me when ideas that seriously clashes with working game design gets so full of itself it starts to think it's good for the game if "a majority supports it". There's a shitload of things a majority of players would gladly support even if in the end it'd decrease their enjoyment and make them run out of things to do faster. Hey do you want item recipes to require less materials? Do you want raid lockouts removed? Do you want factions to require less effort/time to hit Exalted? Do you think teleports immediately into the raid of choice should be available? Do you want an "option" to make leveling even faster?
How many do you think would say no if Blizzard asked if we wanted bosses to drop more loot?

Ah those poor souls that'd stand there asking "But... how quickly will we then overgear the raid? What then? How fun is it if you get showered in gear and get fully decked in 3 weeks?"
The dreaded NO-LOOTERS

God...what must it be like to not be able to think outside the box?

If raid lockouts were removed the raid content would need to stand on its own merit. Maybe the system of drops would need to change to accommodate that. Maybe gear could scale to the raid, and encounters would be all about coordination and execution instead of gear. Dark souls games and even GW2 show is the value and possibility of that.


And if you think that kind of stuff would ruin what wow is, then what about the whole "cyclical players" concept. Remove the filler and the timelocks, let people pay for an expansion and a month or so then quit. Let them pay again when there's new content available.

You're so stuck on Blizzard's formulaic design that you think anything that varies from it is unworkable and automatically bad. To such a degree that you're not even able to see or admit the flaws that have been there for a loooong time.

If removing all the filler and delays from the game would break it and leave nothing worth playing, then maybe that's something important that you guys should consider carefully.

[nekobaka]

Thought this was confirmed in their blog when they introduced flying back they they would carry it forward like this into next expansion
Or maybe I misunderstood

Not only was it, the decision was popular among on the Official forum users. Funny enough anyone who voiced against it wanting flight open from the start got called entitled by the very posters who was getting called entitled for wanting flight.

[MoanaLisa]

I know, but the fact is: The experiment failed.

That's a matter of opinion. This is something of a different experiment in any case since you can begin to work through the requirements starting at launch. That changes a lot instead of having to go back through leveling zones that you had already seen too much of in Warlords.

Not enough change for some people of course but flying is now very definitely a game reward instead a perk and I don't expect that to change. Especially at the behest of a continuing protest by the dozen or so people here. The reaction to all of this is nothing like it was for Warlords. It's not even close and efforts to somehow gin it up or to believe that it is just like before because you're listening to a dozen people who agree with you here doesn't really change anything.

Y'all will come back with the same arguments as always, but really, don't bother. I was here for the first one. This isn't even close.

[Mafic]

That's a matter of opinion. This is something of a different experiment in any case since you can begin to work through the requirements starting at launch. That changes a lot instead of having to go back through leveling zones that you had already seen too much of in Warlords.

Not enough change for some people of course but flying is now very definitely a game reward instead a perk and I don't expect that to change. Especially at the behest of a continuing protest by the dozen or so people here. The reaction to all of this is nothing like it was for Warlords. It's not even close and efforts to somehow gin it up or to believe that it is just like before because you're listening to a dozen people who agree with you here doesn't really change anything.

Y'all will come back with the same arguments as always, but really, don't bother. I was here for the first one. This isn't even close.

That is a narrow view point given what they are doing in Legion is a worse version of WoD version IMVHO. In terms of length Legion patch finder part 1 is longer in length to complete compared to the entire WoD meta acheivement in terms of time investment. Furthermore,there is an unknown amount of parts remaining to be completed for Legion patch finder, because apparently the devs "don't know". If they can split up the achievement into a "Part 1" it implies that they do know, but refuse to let us the players know.

Let me add that the same arguments were levied against me and the few of us that were still discussing this on the heels of the WoD launch in the previous thread where the argument that nothing can be done or the topic wasn't worth discussing further; because it dwindled to a few posters. Not surprisingly, the topic shot back up a few months later because the design clearly failed, and it really shot up as a topic of contention when they announced no flying ever right before Memorial weekend hoping to hide it all in the most macheivellian way possible.

The reaction in Legion to patch finder will be more swift and sudden from the players. Even anti flyers like Preach and many twitch streamers are jumping off the anti flying ground and pound utopia that is Legion and Legion is currently in beta.

So, time is on the side of the players as more players come to the pro flying side. Legion patch finder part 1 will cause immediate resentment with players based on how it is presented IMVHO.

[wing5wong]

God...what must it be like to not be able to think outside the box?

If raid lockouts were removed the raid content would need to stand on its own merit. Maybe the system of drops would need to change to accommodate that. Maybe gear could scale to the raid, and encounters would be all about coordination and execution instead of gear. Dark souls games and even GW2 show is the value and possibility of that.


And if you think that kind of stuff would ruin what wow is, then what about the whole "cyclical players" concept. Remove the filler and the timelocks, let people pay for an expansion and a month or so then quit. Let them pay again when there's new content available.

You're so stuck on Blizzard's formulaic design that you think anything that varies from it is unworkable and automatically bad. To such a degree that you're not even able to see or admit the flaws that have been there for a loooong time.

If removing all the filler and delays from the game would break it and leave nothing worth playing, then maybe that's something important that you guys should consider carefully.

If raid/instance lockouts were removed again, people would be raiding every day, clearing every boss, over and over and over, to the detriment of their health.
It did happen, and it would start happening again. Raid lockouts have nothing to do with content standing on its own merit.

If you dont raid that often, you dont have a full heroic set of gear going into mythic, and you dont have everyone with every piece of mythic gear they need before approaching the next boss, and you do not remain competitive.

It is draining, and unhealthy. Its not about enjoying content at that point, it is about how fast, and how many times you can clear the content every hour, of every day, until you clear the final boss.

Content gating, done well, is a good thing. It sets a pace, and allows more casual players to actually play and enjoy the game.

To say coordination and execution are not the main factors in boss kills is beyond a joke. Top tier raiders, and even mid to high end raiders probably give 0 shits about gear, and wouldnt care about a gear scale effect. The enjoyment of raiding does not come from gear

Once you've "farmed" your garrison for you caches and overgear the content, sure - but providing gear and ring upgrades brings nerfs to content in the same way the previous HP% nerfs did.

That is a narrow view point given what they are doing in Legion is a worse version of WoD version IMVHO.

kek

[Mafic]

It's 1 - "we know better". When they see the forums, someone adds "and the forums do not represent all players".

The reason this happens is that it is in their interest for people to like not flying, because not flying makes people slower. So it's easy for them to convince themselves that perhaps not flying is good or at least not too bad and let's try again even if the previous try failed (extreme nuts will also start debating at this point that not flying failed and will vouch to change the wording from "failed" to something along the lines of "inconclusive").

If it was in their interest for people to like flying instead of not flying, we wouldn't be discussing anything, we'd have our flying and anyone who'd say that he doesn't like flying being in the game would have been ridiculed to the moon and back.

Yeah you see this with Celestatlon's response to Sub Rogues asking for talents to help offer some AoE. His response was simply a take it or leave it. Meanwhile, the rest of the DPS specs have options for choosing AoE/cleave talents.

Another example, is Blizzard being stubborn about removing the Shadow Dance bar, and also removing stance function so macros can be made. The only way that decision is overturned is if enough player voice feedback to overturn it.

So, it isn't just flying where they are stuck in a bubble of their own creation but it clearly shows in other game systems for Legion. Feedback overall is still poor in the beta even if it is a relative improvement from WoD beta.

[MoanaLisa]

- In terms of length Legion patch finder part 1 is longer in length to complete compared to the entire WoD meta acheivement in terms of time investment.
- Furthermore,there is an unknown amount of parts remaining to be completed for Legion patch finder
- The reaction in Legion to patch finder
- Legion patch finder part 1 will cause immediate resentment with players based on how it is presented IMVHO.

It's Pathfinder. When you start calling it by its proper name we can talk more about it.

I will say this though. It's not like what they're doing is some secret. Anyone that is at ALL interested or invested in the topic of flying knows by now. The achievement and its requirements for launch content are known. It's been presented.

[MasterHamster]

God...what must it be like to not be able to think outside the box?

Someone with a clue in game design knows when to think outside the box, and not just throw everything old but tried-and-true in a dumpster.

If raid lockouts were removed the raid content would need to stand on its own merit. Maybe the system of drops would need to change to accommodate that. Maybe gear could scale to the raid, and encounters would be all about coordination and execution instead of gear. Dark souls games and even GW2 show is the value and possibility of that.
And if you think that kind of stuff would ruin what wow is, then what about the whole "cyclical players" concept. Remove the filler and the timelocks, let people pay for an expansion and a month or so then quit. Let them pay again when there's new content available.

Do you not understand the idea of rhetorical questions...
Didn't 6.0 show us plenty what happens when the fillers and timelocks were removed? Well disregarding garrisons. Did dungeons two afternoons, bought 3 crafted items from the AH, ran Normal Highmaul then asked what the fuck there is to strive for elsewhere, now when we had this glorious design of "no mandatory chores" that the community so passionately asked for in MoP. So thus I have 5 level 100s but have never bothered with a single faction, hasn't gotten a single garrison invasion because the world lacked things thatd earn me anything. Got my treasures while leveling. The dull, filler tasks like farming for professions, doing dailies or turn-ins for factions, looking for rare chests, farming to sell on AH, leveling my professions outside, getting things like BoP mats... that was all gone.

Instead I was kinda told "hey if you want to kill 400,000 mobs for a full set of complete shit apexis gear, go ahead, you didn't want mandatory chores or cap weekly currencies!"

You're so stuck on Blizzard's formulaic design that you think anything that varies from it is unworkable and automatically bad. To such a degree that you're not even able to see or admit the flaws that have been there for a loooong time.

If removing all the filler and delays from the game would break it and leave nothing worth playing, then maybe that's something important that you guys should consider carefully.

Simple, I don't view those lengthy and sort of tedious tasks in MMOs to be flaws. They're the reason I'm not done with my character immediately, and the effort gives value to the reward once you get it. A great pre-raid trinket is only worth so much excitement if it took 15 minutes to get. And please don't pretend like you're some saint in that regard, you're not even able, or perhaps just stubbornly refusing, to understand why MMOs needs timesinks to keep players subbed. That is a cold boring truth about MMOs, they rely a lot on reusing, prolonging content in some way to keep players occupied. They rely on RNG, farming, high costs, weekly caps and such to make sure players don't skip immediately to their preferred endgame and run out of things to strive for several months before the next patch.

I'm perfectly fine with WoW "wasting my time" if it rewards me for it in a reasonable timeframe. Finding that balance between time invested and reward. Because I understand that without those elements, WoW could NEVER have kept me subbed throughout the years. WoD is the most dull, most pointless period I have ever experienced ingame. Because those "mandatory tasks", those "artificial prolonging of content" elements, those "dull and tedious" tasks, were gone and replaced with raid-or-die. Progress on raid-night and play other games on the side. Truly WoD is free to do whatever you wish right away, but you're sure not getting any gear from it. And without that carrot-on-a-stick no one gave a shit.

It's almost painful how much more longevity and in the end, fun I had in MoP compared to this apathetic mess. Ah well, I'm thankful for mythic dungeons at least. Too bad 6.2 and everything we got to fix 6.0/6.1 came too late and in a panicked state. They stuck to their guns, confident in their feedback from MoP about how much players hate gated items from factions, farming, etc etc. Confident that players were fine with one-time content and want world content to mostly award cosmetic items and toys.

And when the mass exodus started they were already in the middle of 6.2 development...

At least I'm fairly hopeful that Legion does backtrack, much to your dismay no doubt. Back to a better mix of world-content freedom and "mandatory chores" or timesinks that ultimately gives us satisfying rewards for our efforts in a more reasonable timeframe.Maybe even return to a time when you're not geared for starting heroic in the latest tier in 36 hours played at maxlevel like my latest alt.

[rda]

This is something of a different experiment in any case since you can begin to work through the requirements starting at launch. That changes a lot instead of having to go back through leveling zones that you had already seen too much of in Warlords.

I don't see this changing much of anything.

Related, I think the reason you see way less people here than in the similar thread prior to WoD, is that (a) nearly everyone doesn't go into what it is exactly they are planning to do for Legion - because it's normal not to be interested in the game so much to begin with (ie, "I'll figure it out when the addon is here"), because things can change, etc, and (b) nearly everyone who cares about flying knows that they tried to remove it and were forced to bring it back, and just assumes that they learned their lesson and won't go into any shenanigans again.

The blues *do* try to be smart-asses again, but right now nearly nobody knows. Come Legion, all of it - world quests that make you spend the majority of time traveling between them, the vague promises about flying coming some time in the future instead of it coming in 7.1, etc - will become apparent, and if Legion isn't much better than WoD (and I think it isn't), well, here we will go again with flying threads. Although I assume it would be possible to say again that it isn't no flying per se, it's just Legion being bad - and it's true, but no flying plays its part.

[MasterHamster]

I don't see this changing much of anything.

Related, I think the reason you see way less people here than in the similar thread prior to WoD, is that (a) nearly everyone doesn't go into what it is exactly they are planning to do for Legion - because it's normal not to be interested in the game so much to begin with (ie, "I'll figure it out when the addon is here"), because things can change, etc, and (b) nearly everyone who cares about flying knows that they tried to remove it and were forced to bring it back, and just assumes that they learned their lesson and won't go into any shenanigans again.

The blues *do* try to be smart-asses again, but right now nearly nobody knows. Come Legion, all of it - world quests that make you spend the majority of time traveling between them, the vague promises about flying coming some time in the future instead of it coming in 7.1, etc - will become apparent, and if Legion isn't much better than WoD (and I think it isn't), well, here we will go again with flying threads. Although I assume it would be possible to say again that it isn't no flying per se, it's just Legion being bad - and it's true, but no flying plays its part.

It's the Bernie Math of Delayed Flying Outrage

So the outrage of no-flight in WoD

*Because it was a bold move compared to earlier expansions when flight was either just unlocked or purchased
*The 'promises' on how flying would be reintroduced.
*Information being vague and changing on a whim at times.
*Blizzards reluctance to take a clear stand because they were seeing how no-flying would play out for the players.
*However WoD failed spectacularly thanks to MoP feedback leaving players with little-to-nothing to strive for and pro-flyers exploited that relentlessly

Otherwise I'm sure we'll see a repeat of early WoD where the same 10 people kept a flight rage thread on the first page 24/7.

[Deleted]

It's the Bernie Math of Delayed Flying Outrage

So the outrage of no-flight in WoD

*Because it was a bold move compared to earlier expansions when flight was either just unlocked or purchased
*The 'promises' on how flying would be reintroduced.
*Information being vague and changing on a whim at times.
*Blizzards reluctance to take a clear stand because they were seeing how no-flying would play out for the players.
*However WoD failed spectacularly thanks to MoP feedback leaving players with little-to-nothing to strive for and pro-flyers exploited that relentlessly

Otherwise I'm sure we'll see a repeat of early WoD where the same 10 people kept a flight rage thread on the first page 24/7.

Well, they have told us that we would enjoy no-flying content. They did not deliver in this department (leveling content does not count, it's usually without flying, anyway). It was totally justified to point this out in the no-flying debate. I was willing to give them the benefit of a doubt, and they have disappointed me heavily. And my buddy who was strongly supporting no-flying has changed his mind pretty fast.

They have made 2 big mistaked and it seems that they have learned nothing from it. They have the goal to waste our time with no-flying at max level again, so they can stretch content as much as possible in regards of time per content completion ratio.

This is plenty obvious if you keep in mind that grind and repetition still is the most defining feature of an mmo, and slow transportation enhances time losses from grindy content if parts of these content are spread over a wide area and the players are forced to take detours en masse to travel from one objective to another. Flying is the only method of transportation which allows direct travel from objective to objective beside point-to-point teleportation or riding on a straight line without any obstacles (yeah, did we ever had this in WoW on long travel routs?). They don't want us to use it, because then it would ruin their time estimates of players' completion of content.

Why do I assume this? Because it would be exactly my strategy if I would have only a small amount of content and having to create another time diversion in comparison to apexis dailies.

[wing5wong]

They have the goal to waste our time with no-flying at max level again, so they can stretch content as much as possible in regards of time per content completion ratio.

Guys Guys....
*holds meeting*
How can we waste everyones time??
*thought process*
No Flying! Windy maps with hills!


Ridiculous, isnt it.

[rda]

Guys Guys....
*holds meeting*
How can we waste everyones time??
*thought process*
No Flying! Windy maps with hills!


Ridiculous, isnt it.

That's because you are distorting it.

How it really is:

A: Hey, guys, what do you say if we remove or at least postpone flying? That would help rentention and I think players would like the slowing of pace, no?
B/C/D/E/etc: Perhaps.
A: Let's try it then.

Welcome to real world.

[MasterHamster]

"Guys, how do we stop players from progressing ridiculously fast and running out of relevant content?

-Make them take 4 minutes to get across the zone instead of 3.

-Woah calm down, Satan."