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

[dr2022]

*Decent 70-80 leveling zones.
*Very easy normal dungeons
*HC dungeons that were a joke compared to TBC HC's that quickly got outgeared
*First raids were so undertuned they were a joke and cleared within the first few days
*Flying and LFG pretty much killed what was left of realm communities
*Uld released + hard modes. One of the best raids ever made
*TOTC release, worst raid ever made
*Catch up gear invalidated previous raids and created the "only one tier of current content" that lasted up until today
*ICC released. Great raid tainted by forcing the entire playerbase to run the same raid for 2 years, as they invalidated all previous content by giving such quick catch up mechanics
*Multiple raid difficulties instead of the much preferred hard modes in Uld

That's all I can really remember off the top of my head, but you see my point? WOTLK in my opinion did so much more harm than good and I think the subs reflected that.

Word of Warcraft, by the end of TBC and Wotlk, one can argue that it reached World Wide recognition. It was the ripest time for it to gain as much subscribers as it can, because it has reached all the potential customers it can gain. Like me, I didn't hear about WoW in Vanilla but hear about it in TBC, and joined up. If someone wasn't interested in WoW, it would be damn near impossible to change their mind and lure them into the game. It is the natural cycle of life for a game. A game will hit a peak, and decline til nothing but the core community is left.

As for the actual cause of decline, well no one can be sure. Maybe it was all these subjective factors that are viewed as terrible features for the game that killed the game. Maybe people got burn out of the game, or got older and their life got to hectic for the game. I personally replay wow whenever my life slows down.

As for the sense of community being killed. I think that one is just a complete misrepresentation of what actually happened with the introduction of these. The community was killed, it was shown for what it really is.

LFD was honestly a good addition to the game. Truly remember Pre-Wotlk, with all that trade chat LFG search quest. It often took too long, and outside of your actual friends in the group, not much socialization happened. It was hi at the start, and bye at the end. If things went haywire, they'd abuse other people and leave.

Actual Social people during that time, would not let LFD stop them. seriously, try it. /p Hey. I still meet people today, and this time I meet people from different realms. If you are not meeting or conversing with people through LFD, then you are not a social person to begin with, and if a removal of a feature will force you to be social, then it won't be sincere.

[Sansnom]

Flying was a huge factor in the death of realm communities and real social interaction, but not the sole factor obviously. By the time of WOTLK there were NO realm communities left, let alone WOD and Legion.

Can you really quantify that? No being able to fly made people interact more? As I said, every expansion did not permit flying at the start, people had to level using ground mounts. I, personally, have not notice any change in the social interaction during those time.

The reason people were much more helpful and willing to go out of their way to assist people in vanilla was because the world was tough and unforgiving and you died a hell of a lot more. Not so in the later expansions, you could breeze through without much of an issue.

Right. So people being more familiar with the game was not a factor. It was flying.

And let's not forgot about the class homogenization and the removal of buffs so you can't even buff random people, not that they needed them.

Let's list a small number of what not having flying would encourage you to do when the world wasn't so easy.
-Buffing people
-Ressing people
-Grouping up for quests / difficult areas
-Mutual protection
-Giving advice
-World PVP
etc.

And how are some of those items related directly to flying?

Due to how much the game has changed, the only thing delaying flying mounts does is encourage world PVP. So yeah, while flying played a huge role in the destruction of communities it was not the sole reason.

World PVP. World PVP. Why not start a war if you want WPVP, bring your guild, bring your friends, bring your WPVPers and just go to places where the enemies are.

What complete garbage.

People were MUCH more helpful before flying. When pulling 2 mobs meant death, and death was a 5 min run from the single graveyard in the zone (if you're lucky enough to have one in your zone), when buffs were incredibly helpful and powerful and you helped someone you saw struggling because you knew death was a real punishment.

Again, I have not noticed any changes to players habit with regard to flying or not.

I genuinely can't comprehend people who whinge about not being able to fly. I'm guessing these are the same people who are happy that WoW has slowly been changing into more of a singleplayer game with MMO elements year after year.

And I cannot understand why people pins so much damage to flying. The game has always been solo leveling and groups for raiding and dungeons. What has been removed is group quests. And that is really not that much of a lost because people hardly found anyone to group with once the bulk of the players have moved on.

[Daffan]

I assume you are done with editing now.

Vanilla and TBC are used as example because they both show extreme flaws in the system. Attunements, gearing and raid size.
Majority of the people who didn't saw naxxramas never set a foot in any kind of raid. Not just Naxx.
There were alot of problems in classic that were the reasons people didn't get to raid. 40man raids are not something you can just pug together and go in, shoot the boss and loot. Even in mc there was alot debuff mechanics that needed certain classes, you needed to have raid leader who would announce shit happening because the boss mods back then were extremely bad.

Those extreme flaws existed because of logistics, catchup was introduced to fix those problems as an easy fix, it's a shame they developed Flex so late in WoW's life cycle - it is a much better solution then just making everything feel like a waste of time.

Inb4 Antorus lasts 12 months until BFA and 90% of population never did EN realistically.

[Corroc]

Those extreme flaws existed because of logistics, catchup was introduced to fix those problems as an easy fix, it's a shame they developed Flex so late in WoW's life cycle - it is a much better solution then just making everything feel like a waste of time.

That's how development works, you move forward step by step. I'm pretty sure they couldn't have brought in Flex in 2007 or even 2009 because the technology to do so didn't exist. If it existed long before that they wouldn't have brought it in at the end of expansion. If you just stop and think about it for second there is clear evolution in everything in wow. Things dont happen suddenly.

[Deleted]

Can you really quantify that? No being able to fly made people interact more? As I said, every expansion did not permit flying at the start, people had to level using ground mounts. I, personally, have not notice any change in the social interaction during those time.

Are you asking me how flying directly from point A to point B without ever seeing anyone is less socially engaging than travelling the roads and meeting people on the way? Honestly?

Good and bad experiences, you had them infinity more on the ground than in the sky.

The later expansions where you had to wait to unlock flying has less relevancy due to how tame and single player the outdoor world had become by that point. The many interactions ground mounts fostered were not really applicable to the later expansions, little to no group quests, easy world mobs, soloable elites, no more castable buffs, no need to group for dangerous areas, etc.

So for later expansions, yeah, one of the few benefits left of not flying is the increased world PVP.

Right. So people being more familiar with the game was not a factor. It was flying.

Honestly, yes. Doesn't matter how familiar with the game you are, if you would struggle to solo a single elite and you had to fight trough a fortress of them, for a quest item.

Pre-flying, that might have been a 30 min party of random people that could perhaps make it on your friends list, or you may see them in the world again, helping to create a rich living world where you actually knew the people that lived in it. Maybe your party ran into an enemy party and you fought an epic battle through the halls of this enemy keep, etc. Anything was possible.

Post-flying, fly directly over quest objective, pick up, fly away. So much potential lost. For what? A bit of convenience? Aren't we playing MMO's for adventures with other people?

And how are some of those items related directly to flying?

All are directly diminished when you fly over people and never have the chance to do these spontaneous activities.

How you going to buff someone you'll never see?
How you going to ress someone you'll never see?
Why group up for difficult quests / areas when you can just fly directly there?
Why group up for protection when you're invincible 100ft in the air?
How you going to give advice to someone you never see?
How you going to world PVP directly flying from point A to point B?

World PVP. World PVP. Why not start a war if you want WPVP, bring your guild, bring your friends, bring your WPVPers and just go to places where the enemies are.

I suppose because there's a difference between forced and natural world PVP. Natural world PVP is so much more satisfying from a personal perspective.
You can go out looking for PVP, but then there's the battles that evolve so naturally and organically that sometimes boil over in zone wide warfare that you really can't emulate.
My realm in TBC had such chronic HFP battles pretty much daily, some group would be trying to enter the dungeon, get ganked, ress when another friendly group tried to enter too, etc. Snowballed naturally and before you knew it the zone was on fire and lowbies were running for their lives.

Honestly never seen world PVP to that scale post TBC, flying did a good job of really diminish it IMO.

Edit: Also, before flying and having an easy way to escape ganks / corpse camping, you had to call for help to escape. The strong friendships that formed as your guild mates literally travelling across the world to come save you can't be imitated. I really miss the genuine resentment and loathing you felt for members of the opposite faction when they wiped and camped your party.

Again, I have not noticed any changes to players habit with regard to flying or not.

I have, I really have. I'm kind of vilified that when I played on Nost / Elys, everything that I loved about not flying was almost completely how I remember it. The small convenience that flying gave completely gutted what made the world so rich in my opinion. Even if you don't agree with that, I hope you could agree that it removed far more than it gave?

And I cannot understand why people pins so much damage to flying. The game has always been solo leveling and groups for raiding and dungeons. What has been removed is group quests. And that is really not that much of a lost because people hardly found anyone to group with once the bulk of the players have moved on.

I think I've made my case why I think flying was so damaging.

And the game really wasn't always about solo leveling. I'd say I did roughly about 30% of my questing grouped, not only was it quicker, safer, but more fun. Of course, if we're talking about current retail WOW, you're correct, everything outside dungeons and raids are solo-able now.

I also disagree with the philosophy of removing group quests so people "behind" wouldn't lose out, that seems like very poor reasoning. Let's be honest, group quests were removed because they've been pushing the game outside of dungeons and raids to be as single player as possible. And for an MMO which's biggest feature was it's social aspect and kept people coming back and subbing, that's pretty sad.

[Achilles55]

I'd say LFR is the worst thing Blizzard has ever added but I agree that WoW would be better without flight.

[Senshenzu]

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.

Flying didnt ruin anything. Content is made towards flying thats all. During the events before SoO the little guys you would huntdown and kill was amazing. Everyone mounted up, same with legion invasions. Flying didnt ruin the game, the only reason I stayed. The only thing that I believe ruined the game was LFD. No one quests anymore, and dungeons are quicker and better. With the changes to zone scaling coming is a waste of time. Very few people will do quests when you can spam dungeons that are quicker, give more exp, and you dont have to even read something.

[Selah]

It's going to be really interesting watching the debate around flying change after Classic launches. Players didn't get their mounts until 40, and that was assuming you had enough gold to buy it. Realistically speaking, players weren't getting it until 50+. Which means players are going to have to hoof it...

[Chickat]

Flying can be good, but I understand why they want to have certain zones played on the ground for gameplay reasons. So make flying zones and ground zones. This is a flying zone. This is a ground zone. Let you fly in ground zones after launch like they do now, but I do miss zones designed with flying in mind. Zones like Storm Peaks or Icecrown.

[Maarius]

well it's not an easy answer, there are two kinds of people:
-) people who enjoy exploring and smelling the roses
-) people who don't care about the environment, don't care for questtext and want to be level cap as fast as possible
and sometimes there are people who are in both camps

I love going slow during questing, reading everything, playing without the user interface to feel immersion. Yes, I stay away from flying as much as possible when I'm in slow-mode BUT I also enjoy flying when I'm collecting new stuff, doing world quests and farming things.

[Daffan]

That's how development works, you move forward step by step. I'm pretty sure they couldn't have brought in Flex in 2007 or even 2009 because the technology to do so didn't exist. If it existed long before that they wouldn't have brought it in at the end of expansion. If you just stop and think about it for second there is clear evolution in everything in wow. Things dont happen suddenly.

It's more like convoluted evolution. Unless they planned for there to be 14 month content droughts 3-4 expansions in a row.

[Dormie]

NERF FLIGHT. It's the only solution, debating flight enabled or flight disabled is arguing in absolutes for no real reason.

Wotlk was the most popular expansion to this date. No attunements, no clearing old raids because they introduced 5man instances that acted as a catch up.

Popularity & accessibility doesn't mean quality.

[Donair]

That feel when you have been playing since first days of vanilla and you LOVE flying, LOVE restricted flying in new content, ABSOLUTELY LOVE cross server, LOVE LFD and LFG system and sharding.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I envy you. I wish those features enhanced my experience but they completely ruined everything I loved about the game. I wish they could have had the opposite effect. Consider yourself lucky to have thrived because of the myriad of changes they made to the game over the years. There are many of us who were simply left in the dust, forever trying to recapture the magic we once felt, yet gradually slipping into the inevitable realization that it will never happen.

Only one hope looms on the horizon: Classic servers. Let's hope they get them right.

[Emode]

Flying is just an extension of stealth.

[Aileana]

No it wasn't..

Restricting flight after it was implemented, was the worst thing Blizzard ever did.

adding another This^

[Donair]

That's the thing.

Player behaviour and wishes shaped this game. The Classic zealots like to pretend that everything past Classic is a mistake and bad for the game, but it's literally what's enabled us to approach the 13th anniversary of this game. They can have their server perpetually stuck in 2005 or some such... But, going by the /trade chats on certain servers, I suspect that won't shut them up one bit about Live...

Still looking for that "ignore this forum"-feature...

It already exists. It's called don't come to these fucking forums and play your retail WoW: The one and only REAL WOW!

If you're having such a blast playing the one true WoW, play it! GTFO here.

When I played what I felt was the one true WoW back in 2005 and 2006 guess where I spent most of my time? Not on any forums. I was busy playing the shit out of the game because it immersed me so much. The thought off another game or dicking around on a forum was the furthest thing on my mind.

So I dunno. Not saying I was more engaged by my one and only REAL WOW back in the day, but it definitely seemed to do a better job of keeping me occupied at the time than your one and only REAL WOW is currently doing.

/shrug

[Lumicide]

Your "while" in comparison to many others (including me) that stay subbed x13 years doesn't mean much if anything at all. You found a game fully overhauled and with amenities beyond imagination for a classic player (portals to everywhere, fast HS, personal portal devices, HS to portal options, vastly smaller world) and suddenly you think "oh yes flying is shit it ruins my experience".

Well the next time you feel like that get off your high horse get on a normal horse and ride to your destination. If your problem is that others will fly where you wanna go riding well its just another case of people trying to impose themselves on others.

So to cut a long story short: My flying doesnt hinder your riding horses. Having more options is never bad.

Your having flying effects the community to some extent, no matter what. Even if others choose to not fly, it still effects their in-game experience.

And having more options isn't necessarily good. Often enough a less convenient option may as well not exist.

e.g., If your goal is to gear up an alt, and the choices are: [1] search for a guild progressing through an old raid to gear up. or [2] Do some M+, LFR, normal, and get better gear than [1] and do so much more quickly. People are not like to pick the former, even if they would have enjoyed that experience more.

Sure, you can force yourself to do it the old way... However, due to the current game design making old content essentially obsolete, you're not all that likely to find a guild that's regularly doing some older raid for worse gear.

Better yet, imagine if Blizzard gave you the "option" to purchase (with $) BIS legendaries, or gear in general. It would certainly take all of the fun out of the game, and yet many people would take that "option" and, certainly, those who refused that option would be massively disadvantaged. Not a good option at all, it seems to me.

[Nurvus]

Flying didn't cause problems. It made them worse.

Mount mechanics should be improved so that flying doesn't need to be removed at the start of each expansion.

[ReD-EyeD]

Only one hope looms on the horizon: Classic servers. Let's hope they get them right.

They won't and here is why. If they make pristine vanilla then people would whine about how it's bad, how it's inconvenient, how it's grindy and stupid. If they alter it, people would whine about how it's not what they wanted. There is no good solution here.

[SirCowdog]

@Frylord I was going to write up a rebuttal to your posts, but it seems pretty clear you only want to roll around this topic and be angry and insulting to anyone who disagrees with you. There's no call for that, and is a poor basis for a conversation.

Your having flying effects the community to some extent, no matter what. Even if others choose to not fly, it still effects their in-game experience.

While this is nominally true, the same thing can be said for any situation involving player interactions. We should not be restricted from playing the game in the manner we enjoy simply because it MIGHT impact the enjoyment of someone else. It's also marginally hypocritical to say that players shouldn't be allowed to fly because it's effecting the experience of others, while restricting flying is ABSOLUTELY doing exactly that.

One side is respecting the option to choose how to play. The other side is saying that everyone must comply with their chosen playstyle to avoid the chance that their experience might be effected.

And having more options isn't necessarily good. Often enough a less convenient option may as well not exist.

e.g., If your goal is to gear up an alt, and the choices are: [1] search for a guild progressing through an old raid to gear up. or [2] Do some M+, LFR, normal, and get better gear than [1] and do so much more quickly. People are not like to pick the former, even if they would have enjoyed that experience more.

Sure, you can force yourself to do it the old way... However, due to the current game design making old content essentially obsolete, you're not all that likely to find a guild that's regularly doing some older raid for worse gear.

Better yet, imagine if Blizzard gave you the "option" to purchase (with $) BIS legendaries, or gear in general. It would certainly take all of the fun out of the game, and yet many people would take that "option" and, certainly, those who refused that option would be massively disadvantaged. Not a good option at all, it seems to me.

I don't know if I agree with this particular line of thought. It makes the assumption that the primary force in playing the game is acquiring gear, and that by having easier methods of obtaining that gear would remove "all the fun" from the game. This implies that without gear, the actual gameplay is worth VERY little. What does that say about the quality of the game, and the motivations of the people playing it? Is there no consideration for exploration, experiencing the story, challenging boss mechanics and raid progression, or PVP?

It seems like you're trying to compare flying to easy acquisition of gear, and that by using it you invalidate most or all of the value of the ground content. My response would be: Make better content that people WANT to play instead of forcing them to do it regardless of whether or not they're interested.

If gear was instantly available without grinding months to obtain it, then it seems to me that the focus of the content design would need to shift to challenging, skill-based content with more depth and replay value on its own merit rather than only being replayed because we have to deal with RNG bullshit.

Similarly, if flying makes the open world too easy or convenient, then it would seem to make sense to make content which was more challenging or engaging to a flying player instead of taking away that ability and forcing people to slog through a weaker, less complex design which is built to waste their time rather than be enjoyable.

Furthermore, if the ground-based content design is meant to be so enjoyable that flying over it would ruin the experience completely, then why is Blizzard constantly giving players other methods of skipping past it, such as hearthstones, teleports, gliders, summons, flight paths, and the whistle?

No. I would submit that flying itself is not intrinsically harmful to the design of good content, but rather that it's viewed as harmful because it exposes just how weak WoW's current open world design is. And it's easier to lash out at a scapegoat than it is to consider the idea that Blizzard might not be providing the better design that they claimed removing flight would supposedly allow.