Insane Flying Condictions in Classic Worlds.

[Daginni]

Hello,

I been exploring the old world with the chain Eagle Eye Macro, and physically exploring closed off zones for months now. Needless to say, I have realized that when flying in Classic is allowed, you will do a lot of interesting flights.

For example, from Ashenvale Forest flying to Hyjal. There is a mile tall cliff that you will have to fly straight up to get to Hyjal.

Another Example is IF Mountain. This mountain flying from Wetlands to Dun Morogh, while not near as tall as Hyjals flight up, is still a extremely tall mountain.

Teldrassil, while apparently getting a overhaul to make it look like a actually tree, is also another feat of ZOMG, that is big.

While Cataclysm is still far away and everything is subject to change, those mountains make Stormpeaks look like a mild slope.

There is also A LOT of flat areas of the map that could be turned into mini zones or god forbid... miles of Mountain Ranges. The biggest of which I've seen was southern Kalimdor, which Blizzard has said they have plans for.

But what about other areas, like the mountains east of Strangle Thorn Vale (Which has a pretty Waterfall that has no river at the bottom and a cave). Or west of Tirisfal Glades (which actually shows on the map). Would those simply be turned into.... mountain ranges.

[Bloodlusted]

Most likely there will be invisible walls. Tirisfal Grove, for example, has too much potential to be left undeveloped, but it's not time for that yet.

[Paladuin]

honestly you got to remember that cataclysm is gonna change some zones and others are gonna be drastically altered

[Daginni]

Most likely there will be invisible walls. Tirisfal Grove, for example, has too much potential to be left undeveloped, but it's not time for that yet.

There will be NO invisible walls. Blizzard said there will be flying in Azeroth, and it would be the biggest Gimmick ever if they added invisible walls too. If they decided to turn a mountain range into content, I believe they can easily patch it in later.

[Ghul]

there wont be mountain ranges, simply huge areas full of lava! hooray!

maybe there will be some kind of "wind elemental"-zones with huge storms going on, where flying will be impossible until you progressed your zone-phasing to the end.

[MrKnubbles]

Did you notice how a lot of areas aren't even finished? Bad textures, spiky landscapes, missing tiles. Yea, all that stuff is getting fixed in Cataclysm.

[FamilyGoat]

Why would they need to add invisible walls? They allready have a mech. in place to prevent us from exploring unwanted areas.

[conscript]

I imagine there is going to be a complete rework of the shape and proportions of a lot of zones to remove the dead areas in between. A lot of the fluff between zones is probably going to disappear leading to a more compact continent with more fluid zone transitions. There will probably be a lot of height scaling as well to eliminate the gigantic height differences like you mentioned to make the continent's height flow more like Northrend and Outland.

[Beachchairs]

Currently those huge walls mountains and empty zones are there via legacy. Flying was not even thought of when Azeroth was designed. As such, they only filled in areas that you could physically get to. Being a client server game, it is hard for them to track exactly where you are which allows things such as cliff humping to exist. The giant mountain slopes exist to make cliff humping that high practically impossible. They just didn't want you to see that there isn't actually anything in the regions where you aren't supposed to see. I would bet allot of these will get toned down and or made more interesting now that Blizzard knows there is a reason for players to go there.

As for the void areas you mentioned, they could really put anything there. They could put something like the elemental plateau in one spot, have another that is rich with herbs and mining nodes (or make them all have rather high node rates), one could house lvl 85 daily quests, and some could simply become accessible via the terrain changes brought by the cataclysmic event.

tl;dr Just because those things are there now, doesn't mean they will be forever.

[snodge]

Yeah i know what your talking about me and my best mate irl started using the priest bugg to go around azeroth its pretty cool except cant get into Hyjal just teleports us to Winterspring...

[Nozomorak]

there wont be mountain ranges, simply huge areas full of lava! hooray!

maybe there will be some kind of "wind elemental"-zones with huge storms going on, where flying will be impossible until you progressed your zone-phasing to the end.

Blizz said specifically that theres not gona be any phasing in cat

[Kaedalmael]

Blizz said specifically that theres not gona be any phasing in cat

Umm, no, they have specifically said there WILL be phasing in Cat. Just look at what's gonna happen with Gilneas, and the Goblin starting zones.

[Vevilair]

They're redoing the maps almost entirely. None of that matters. Oh, and, just go on a private server where you have access to gm codes and you can just fly around and do whatever you want.

[thoukaia]

there will be tunnels... in the mountains.

[RollTide]

Blizz said specifically that theres not gona be any phasing in cat

They said they won't phase the cataclysm itself. The effects and the revamped map will be available to everyone, regardless of level.

[Daginni]

They're redoing the maps almost entirely. None of that matters. Oh, and, just go on a private server where you have access to gm codes and you can just fly around and do whatever you want.

Not as fun as doing it in game.

Also, I REALLY hope they don't get rid of Karazhan Crypts! I love that place!

[gonterf]

There are a few invisible walls already in game - notably in Outland. For some reason I never understood, they decided to use invisible walls instead of fatigue when flying off the edges of Outland. Also, you can't fly over the Black Temple because of invisible walls. Another kind of wall is that formerly used in Wintergrasp, and in Dalaran, where it will dismount you after a few seconds flying over the zone. A third kind is that used in Oculus, where if you fly too close to the ground, you die (also when flying too far down off the edge of Outland).

That's another topic though. As for unused terrain currently in Azeroth, I think Blizzard said a long time ago that that is the primary reason why Flying in Azeroth was never enabled in the first place. When the game was first built, there were no plan for flying, and they designed the areas accordingly. The major part of Cataclysm, then, is redesigning the existing game world to accommodate flying, and in doing so they will most likely find a way to eliminate all currently unused areas (even if all they do is populate them with terrain and no quests, such as what they did with the flying-only zones in Outland before the introduction of Ogri'la, the Skyguard, and later the Shattered Sun dailies).

It should also be noted that the current Orgrimmar and Stormwind are completely incompatible with flying. Blizzard will have to completely redo both cities even to have players able to approach them on flying mounts. Currently there are even some flight paths into Stormwind that enable you to see 'through' the city and into the unused terrain beneath.

Personally, I'm not a fan of the way Blizzard designed the zones in Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms. The zones are designed with a specific flow in mind, and they used mountains to force players to enter the zones in the spots that they intended (thinking of Hillsbrad, WPL, EPL, Ghostlands mostly, as well as Ashenvale and the Barrens). If you compare the design of Northrend zones to those in the earlier three continents, you'll probably notice that in Northrend, the placement of mountains/hills is mostly fairly logical, whereas in the previous continents you often had zones like the Burning Steppes that just don't make sense to be surrounded on all four sides by mountains of relatively equal height. Nagrand and HFP are other examples... I just never understood why, geographically, there was a mountain range between Nagrand and Zangarmarsh, or between HFP and Terrokar. I will be very interested to see if Blizzard decides to redesign old-world zones with new flow techniques in mind, or if they will simply take the existing unused areas and fill them in with decoration and a few mobs/daily quests.

P.S. To Nozomorak, that's not actually true. According to the Blizzard posts that I've read, there will be very extensive use of phasing in nearly every zone, even old-world zones, in Cataclysm. They have developed a technology that will allow for the phasing of terrain, which will be used to increase the level of water, and to add lava-filled fissures to zones. You can see this in action in several of the screenshots from last year's Blizzcon, as well as in the official trailer for the expansion.

[RakuRaku]

They said they won't phase the cataclysm itself. The effects and the revamped map will be available to everyone, regardless of level.

Cata is a global event, happening for everyone at the same time. Regardless of level.

[Gooblar]

I wonder if they'll get rid of the interesting things such as the night elf port off the coast of Arathi...the dwarf farm south of IF mountain in the mountains of the Wetlands...among other things.

[Unholyground]

All zone connections where visible will be altered in some way, becasue most areas remain unfinished from a birds eye view. most of wows terrain was randomly generated (mainly mountain areas and such) to cut down on development time. and in the old world since flying wasnt even thought it was a non issue, but if you look at some of the connecting areas they look sp un natural and bizzare.