Adding flying mounts was the worst thing Blizzard ever did with WoW

[FreaknRhinos]

Point me to the Live player proclaiming that, I'd like to see their reasoning for myself. Whenever I see someone go on about "superior Community" and "everyone made friends!", it's about Classic.

I'm not being "intellectually dishonest", you saying that "I know it" won't change that fact.

I'm a player saying that.

There was always assholes, it's a fact of life. Ignoring them, you have the reasonable logic crowd. That takes the game as at face value.

Vanilla had a superior grouping experience. You ran with randoms and it took awhile, but it was exciting because people react differently to the same things. Sometimes you had people that wasted your time. But well adjusted people move on, they don't dwell on the assholes.

After the game became popular, so did it's dissent. Aspects taken, on the chin, as a part of life, were molded and changed by Blizzard.

Blizzard decided at it's height of popularity that they were going to "by pass" a certain fact of life(grouping and waiting for them), by opening up Randomized Grouping. While this saved time, without a doubt, it removed a sense of community. That sense of knowing someones capabilities and using them for such.

Examples are - Knowing a Hunter/Mage that could kite well and CC. Rogues that knew when to actually DPS or hold off. Or a Warrior that never seemed to drop threat. Or Priest that down ranked. As content revolved around roles that your class was designed for and knowing how to execute them.

Now, all roles are designed around 3 aspects of the game (Healing, DPS, and Tanking) due to Randomization of Groups. This leads to forgotten mechanics and understanding that was once common knowledge. It lead to ROLES in classes being forgotten.

Do you remember Cata launch Heroics after ONE expansion of not doing roles? I do, it was a shit show. Not that I had a hard time, but there were many wipes and the community was at a loss.

If that isn't evidence enough, then I don't know what is honestly. The QoL designs has removed game complexity, in favor of convenience.

So, unless you weren't there.. (when why are you even discussing this then?) then you are being dishonest with the history of this game.

[Metallourlante]

False. shipyard was the worst thing!

[Wewlad]

Not true, flying is far superior and content was designed around it. Flying gives a 3D environment with capacity, while ground mounts are a 2D environment. Flying was considered frontier content, and was up for flying combat at one point. Even the box art on WOTLK box mentions air combat.

Flying was slated to be a crowning achievement in gaming but shelved due to being resource and time intense, as you have to think in 3D(meaning designing in 3D) rather than 2D.

Are you going to honestly tell me a 2D environment is superior to a 3D one?

Woah. Nice buzzwords there. Good meme. Reminds me of the old Nintendo vs Sega war.

Flying has always been too safe even when there were anti-flying mechanics (flying guards). An adventure is supposed to be dangerous.

[FreaknRhinos]

Woah. Nice buzzwords there. Good meme. Reminds me of the old Nintendo vs Sega war.

Flying has always been too safe even when there were anti-flying mechanics (flying guards). An adventure is supposed to be dangerous.

No one used buzzwords. There is nothing dangerous about mobs, there never was. It's the same reason why LFG is in the game. It's a convenience factor. Even if I get knocked off my mount while running on retail. It's just annoying and nothing is a threat even as a fresh 110. But nice try, at least I have a solid reason why flying is superior. You just attacked nothing and it even lacked backbone. Pathetic.

[Wewlad]

Yeah no, adults and young people gave heart-felt examples on why flying has been good to them and this game in droves on Social media.
If they'd listened to the "Give me flying or I quit!"-crowd, they'd have implemented flying as it was. The Pathfinder compromise, drove many of those people away all the same.

They've also said numerous times that developers have different opinions on flying too, there's not some "hive mind" where everyone believes that WoW made it to 13 years of age despite that horrid feature called flying...

Legion introduced actual designs meant to promote people being in the world and grouping up, with more demanding content in areas ensuring that people will group rather than go it solo, designs that remained just fine even once flying was allowed. I for one am glad that this is the model going forward.

I'm sure the forum pro-flyers were oh so civil and they were just sharing heartfelt memories of twiddling their thumbs while flying from point A to B. Lol you can't be serious.

Oh wait, you are in the Classic WoW forum, complaining about pro-Classic "zealots". Really looking to get cross aren't we?

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No one used buzzwords. There is nothing dangerous about mobs, there never was. It's the same reason why LFG is in the game. It's a convenience factor. Even if I get knocked off my mount while running on retail. It's just annoying and nothing is a threat even as a fresh 110. But nice try, at least I have a solid reason why flying is superior. You just attacked nothing and it even lacked backbone. Pathetic.

"Woah man, it's THREE DEE, dude!" A+ solid reason my dude.

That was your argument. You also discounted plenty of really good adventure 2D indie games.

[Azadina]

Account wide achievements, mounts, titles, pets and etc were far worse. It killed the characters.

I'm also salty because I worked hard to get insane title and raven lord on my main, and then onto my level 70 warrior.

[Tiwack]

I can't name a single person that I used to see on my servers before automated grouping tools and cross-realms and all that jazz. I can however name the people I shared guilds with, had in my friendlist and still know to this day as a result.

I do also remember the sensation of "Raiding guilds" having their own little clique and refusing to mingle with non-raiding plebs. The raiders were big fish in small ponds, and it got to their heads...

True, there's a natural reason why most wouldn't mingle though, but in general it happens to any group or individual that suddenly becomes hot shit in a chaotic crowd looking up to them. People willingly give up that power as they hope to gain whatever, though in wow most just want some direction and advice to become better people and players as they overly appreciate any time spent answering their questions and any additional details offered.
While most are oblivious to it as they do it, the person(s) being flocked will certainly find it empowering while few don't know how to handle the sudden attention and some don't want any to do with it all. It is jarring going from one extreme to the other, especially because people are unaware of the power and influence they surrender willingly by themselves.
It's human nature to conquer our fears and challenge ourselves to advance, which is why people unknowingly do it as we hope and expect to gain something from it. We automatically end up training ourselves to recognize the things we associate with power that can help us achieve the very same, even if it's just a guild-tag and a shiny set of armor or a flashy mount. It turns into subverted ass-kissing as we generally don't like to highlight our own flaws before we know it's someone that can be trusted. So from the very start the powerbalance is out of whack and thus most raiders and celebs dislike mingling with plebs as they fear they'll be fawned over when all they did was practice and stick to it to get there. Some can't or simply refuse to get used to it. Getting recognized everywhere you go is a dream to some and a nightmare to others.

There's some to be said that It's just masked tribalism rooting for one of the home-teams to beat the opposing faction on the local server raid-scene to the majority though. Not that it can't all get to to our heads still as you combine a fleeting sense of righteousness with empowered passion so invested that backing out and apologizing for a silly wrong becomes all of a sudden seemingly impossible to people. If you have enough people voluntarily ass-kissing on a person it eventually is expressed in some form sooner or later and it rarely is very pretty...

[Queen of Hamsters]

I'm a player saying that.

There was always assholes, it's a fact of life. Ignoring them, you have the reasonable logic crowd. That takes the game as at face value.

Vanilla had a superior grouping experience. You ran with randoms and it took awhile, but it was exciting because people react differently to the same things. Sometimes you had people that wasted your time. But well adjusted people move on, they don't dwell on the assholes.

After the game became popular, so did it's dissent. Aspects taken, on the chin, as a part of life, were molded and changed by Blizzard.

Blizzard decided at it's height of popularity that they were going to "by pass" a certain fact of life(grouping and waiting for them), by opening up Randomized Grouping. While this saved time, without a doubt, it removed a sense of community. That sense of knowing someones capabilities and using them for such.

Examples are - Knowing a Hunter/Mage that could kite well and CC. Rogues that knew when to actually DPS or hold off. Or a Warrior that never seemed to drop threat. Or Priest that down ranked. As content revolved around roles that your class was designed for and knowing how to execute them.

Now, all roles are designed around 3 aspects of the game (Healing, DPS, and Tanking) due to Randomization of Groups. This leads to forgotten mechanics and understanding that was once common knowledge. It lead to ROLES in classes being forgotten.

Do you remember Cata launch Heroics after ONE expansion of not doing roles? I do, it was a shit show. Not that I had a hard time, but there were many wipes and the community was at a loss.

If that isn't evidence enough, then I don't know what is honestly. The QoL designs has removed game complexity, in favor of convenience.

So, unless you weren't there.. (when why are you even discussing this then?) then you are being dishonest with the history of this game.

... Ok, your opinions have been noted.

That's not what I was asking for though, I asked you to prove your claim that Live players hail the game as some epitome of friendly gaming communities where everyone makes friends on rails, in order to disprove my experiences of that narrative being thrown around in regards to Classic...

All I can say about your opinions on game "complexity", is that you must be trying real hard not to keep track of people you play with in content of higher difficulty than random Heroics... I know great DPS, PVPers, tanks and Healers. I've met, played with and added them to my friendlist, moreso during Legion with M+.

[Varitok]

I think Blizzard agrees with the OP though. I'm a BC fanboy myself, but that's only because the masses couldn't afford an epic mount and the basic flyer was slower than ground travel so people only really used them when they had to fly.

Blizzard also wants to slow down players and flying was rarely if ever complained about until Ion came along with his slow down players attitude and the fanboys just parroted him from there. He has been probably the most destructive force in WoW. Totally killed my desire to play. Its not a coincidence that they measure "time online" rather than subs in investor calls now.

[Tiwack]

"Woah man, it's THREE DEE, dude!" A+ solid reason my dude.

That was your argument. You also discounted plenty of really good adventure 2D indie games.

You're being disingenuous convincing nobody. Wow isn't a 2D indie game last time i checked. FreaknRhinos argument was perfectly valid. Skettis flying guards and forge camps AAA in TBC certainly added danger to the experience right when you'd gotten used to often being "safe" in the air on top of it.

[Deleted]

Old tweet: https://twitter.com/OccupyGStreet/st...39411524182016

all he says is that he doesnt like them personally so he doesnt have the SAME opinion as silly op.

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Account wide achievements, mounts, titles, pets and etc were far worse. It killed the characters.
I'm also salty because I worked hard to get insane title and raven lord on my main, and then onto my level 70 warrior.

found the snowflake!

[Thelxi]

I can't wait for people to waddle from one corner of the map to the other.

[Azadina]

found the snowflake!

Characters are supposed to be snowflakes. Their achievements shouldn't be shared to random noob alts that have yet to earn anything. Way to kill the RPG element.

[TheRainman]

I do think that flying mounts detract from the immersive world experience, but I would hardly say that they are a mistake, let alone the 'worst thing' that Blizzard has ever done.

I like flying. I also like not flying. They are two very different feelings. Each with pros and cons. There are plenty of other wide sweeping changes that have unbalanced much more of the game than flying mounts.

And to the guy who said that pet battles were worse...wut? You can literally ignore them entirely and *poof* they're gone. They don't change the spirit of the game at all. I don't like pet battles, I don't do pet battles, and someone who does them literally gains nothing over me at all. Apples to oranges.

[Stormbornsham]

I've thought this for a while but having leveled up through Pandaria it really hit home with me. There were a few times where I was frustrated and wished I could just fly to an area, but it got me thinking that I would never get that feeling if flying was never in the game in the first place. The game is just so much more engaging if you're looking at it from the ground. When leveling to 90 I had to look where I was going, think about my route to a questing area, figure out the best order to do the quests, etc. Once I hit 90, I just picked up a quest, mounted up, point myself in the right direction, and hit num lock. When you're on a regular mount you notice and appreciate the surroundings. When you're flying, you just notice the yellow arrow telling you where to go.

I always played on a pvp server in vanilla. I never even though twice about it. Why would you want to go kill dragons and get a big axe if not to smash some other players with it? But when TBC was released I didn't start right away mostly because my raiding guild had broken up when they added paladin gear to the raids(funny how something so seemingly small could break up a guild). So I was a few months late, enough time for most players to hit 70 and get their mounts. When I started questing is was horrid. I was getting ganked left and right. No one really corpse camped me but it didn't matter because I had no way of escaping - I was helpless. The best part of pvp was random encounters out in the world but that was completely taken away with that one change. Leveling became extremely frustrating and I ended up transferring to a pve server to play with a coworker. Now I'm not some cry baby that whined every time I was killed in pvp. Far from it. I went through the gauntlet of STV and BRM in vanilla and loved it. But the addition of flying mounts just made it.....different....not fun at all.

I think flying mounts are cool and some zones are designed great for them but I just have this overwhelming feeling that adding them was the worst single thing that ever happened to the game. There are plenty of other gripes I have about the game - arenas, the hard separation of pve and pvp(it blows my mind that pvpers complain about being 'forced' to do pve content), cross realm stuff, etc but I thought this was the biggest. I think a huge chunk of the nostalgia people have for vanilla could have been sustained for much longer if flying mounts were never added. When was the last time you were blown away by something in the game that wasn't forced upon you(with some sort of cinematic)? I'm thinking of stuff like entering blackrock mountain for the first time, going to ungoro crater and seeing your first devilsaur, etc. I had countless experiences like that while on a ground mount and maybe one or two on a flying mount.

So, im in suramar but want to do onyxia lair. So i would have to go flying to dalaran by Azeroth Airlines. Then teleport to orgrimmar or caverns of time if im alliance, and THEN if its an alt and i dont have azeroth airline flight enabled bc i havent been to that zone, i would have to walk till i get there losing A LOT of time bc someone thought its funny? NO THANKS

[TheWorkingTitle]

Yep. Flying was one of THE worst decisions ever instituted in WoW. It ruined World PvP, shrank the world irreparably, instilled a serious sense of entitlement in a portion of the playerbase, gave GM-like power to players, and on and on. The game will never quite recover until flying is removed.

[Wewlad]

You're being disingenuous convincing nobody. Wow isn't a 2D indie game last time i checked. FreaknRhinos argument was perfectly valid. Skettis flying guards and forge camps AAA in TBC certainly added danger to the experience right when you'd gotten used to often being "safe" in the air on top of it.

I didn't say WoW is a 2D indie game so stop twisting my words. And those measures weren't enough, you could still avoid them rather easily.

And what the hell does flying add to exploration? A lot of empty air to navigate through in a straight line? Or like Storm Peaks where it's just an attunement-esque feature? All you fucking said is that 3D > 2D exploration but didn't expand on it, and that doesn't make sense since like you said, WoW is a 3D game. There are mountains to climb, valley to descend, etc..

So who's being disingenuous? And speak for yourself on whether I convince anyone or not.

[Adamas102]

No. Removing items like mounts and old sets from the game was the worst thing Blizzard ever did.

[ohgasauraus]

the worst thing blizzard ever did to wow is not to further enhance flying like having flying combat which improves the combat experience of the game.
If flying is anything but just a mode of transportation, the game would be more fun.

However, they only know how to restrict flying (the easy way to go) so that you get to experience land only combat system which probably already outdated in this era.

[kamikaze148]

It was bad decision but not the worst. LFR/pet and a few more things battles are much worse.

I personally have never understood the hate with the Pet Battle system, it really is totally optional content for people who want to do it. And it has never really been shoved down our throats as "optional but totally key to you playing this game content" like the abysmal Garrisons were. Pet battles to me is something I never intend to touch, and don't find interesting at all...But at least its there for people who do.