No Flying in 8.0 Confirmed

[Deleted]

Both WoD and Legion kept me logging in longer than MoP as I find riding out to do the world content more interesting than flying out.

And I find riding boring as soon as I have completed discovery and loremaster achievements. I can live with unlocking pathfinder, but delaying the reward after completing the achievement is beyond annoying.

WoW already has many chores, there is no need to make these extra obnoxious. Especially if we once again get the horrible terrain. Classic was easy, you could just ride anywhere, but WoD and Legion zones are stupid 3D mazes with horrible maps which are not suited as navigation help.

Honestly, the situation with flying currently would be like you having to do your driver's licence every 2 years anew, but now, it's not only getting the licence back, but also having to wait for the authorities to process your admission for half a year. In that time, have fun walking and commuting with public transporation. Does this sound fun to you?

[Missed]

And I find riding boring as soon as I have completed discovery and loremaster achievements. I can live with unlocking pathfinder, but delaying the reward after completing the achievement is beyond annoying.

WoW already has many chores, there is no need to make these extra obnoxious. Especially if we once again get the horrible terrain. Classic was easy, you could just ride anywhere, but WoD and Legion zones are stupid 3D mazes with horrible maps which are not suited as navigation help.

Honestly, the situation with flying currently would be like you having to do your driver's licence every 2 years anew, but now, it's not only getting the licence back, but also having to wait for the authorities to process your admission for half a year. In that time, have fun walking and commuting with public transporation. Does this sound fun to you?

No that doesnt. Riding through mountains on my raptor in a videogame however sounds very fun!

[Byleth]

Please, try to be a little open minded.

You are never, ever going to change my mind. Let it go man.

Come up with a good idea and we can debate it.

[Deleted]

u do not want to fly ? do not click that button, it is easy

do not destroy the game for rest of us

It is another pointless decision by blizz

[irdsyd]

I like not being able to fly for a period. I also like not getting it immediately after I max level my main toon (the early part of an expansion is often about resource gathering and flyers get a huge advantage). But I do not like a very long wait (until well into the 2nd patch) and I also do not like the rep grind style of the achievement unlock. I often delay levelling alts till I can fly now - and at this late stage in legion am still levelling a couple. I'd prefer an unlock a bit earlier - maybe it could be a partial unlock.

[Deleted]

The shenanigans with flying let me stay away from Legion and looking back I’m happier for it, getting more time to play other games.

And we are just happy that u aint a part of it :-) I guess its a win win?

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u do not want to fly ? do not click that button, it is easy

do not destroy the game for rest of us

It is another pointless decision by blizz

Why do we have to raid? Wouldnt it be awesome if we got every mythic item in our mail box? We could then get BiS right away, and for those that wanted to raid they could just not use the gear I mean wouldnt that be better? Everyone having access to it?

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u do not want to fly ? do not click that button, it is easy

do not destroy the game for rest of us

It is another pointless decision by blizz

Why do we have to raid? Wouldnt it be awesome if we got every mythic item in our mail box? We could then get BiS right away, and for those that wanted to raid they could just not use the gear I mean wouldnt that be better? Everyone having access to it?

[Alcsaar]

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Sounds like someone didn't play Vanilla, TBC and Wrath which counts for basically... 7 years worth of WoW with higher expectations of players than now. Legacy servers come soon, you should try it and see how much it's been lifted and changed to suit the masses with little time and thus lower demands to play a character and progress it.


Also, people been saying it's a sinking ship for a decade. Change the record. A population the size of Norway still sub to it to this day. It was making money on less than 500k subs with Vanilla. But ya know. Going on for nearly 15 years is totally a sinking ship. There's been at least 3 MMO's that rose and sunk very fucking fast because it failed miserably, it couldn't even sustain a sub base.
If you want to make the argument of "losing it's sub base by half", you might wanna check out the global recession that forced thousands of 18-24 years olds out of work, as they were the most unemployed age bracket going over several years it lasted. Use your brain. That age bracket that basically suited perfectly in 2008 with Wrath of the Lich at the height of subs. As recession was slowly gone people had more money to go out then stay in and get lots of enjoyment out of fuck-all expense.
In fact the recession correlates perfectly with the gaming industry as a whole booming to fuck as people chose to stay in as costs were easier.

It comes as no surprise that flying was returned to it's gated way. It's how it started off in the first place. Vanilla didn't have it for 3 years. It came with Burning Crusade. Even then it came at a cost of player input as did Wrath. As did Pandaria, WoD, Legion. Only 1 expansion literally gave you as a meal ticket which was Cataclysm because it had to with mainlands being changed. Now suddenly people expect it all the time.

Literally all expansions bar 1, expected you to earn flying. Clearly, you've not noticed it.

I played Vanilla from release through all of TBC and Wrath before I ever took a major break from the game. Its not a good comparison; gaming was a lot different then, MMORPGs were just becoming mainstream and even just base vanilla WoW was an amazing game for its time.

These days, that sort of game play is typical if not expected at the very least. As a true vanilla player, I'm on the side that classic servers will fail. They'll enjoy a few months of popularity before people get bored either by the grind or by lack of new content being added. Its a mistake by Blizzard but ultimately its them doing fan service and hoping they'll make a slim profit by getting people interested in wow again - people who might stay for live servers once they have been sucked back in.

As for flying not existing - the world wasn't nearly as large as it is now.

[Exodice]

If they removed the reputation requirement I'd be happy enough to never comment on flying again. I haven't played through much of the alpha yet, but I have used the flight path on water AKA the ferry points that were added. I can't imagine them including this without them wanting people to use them, although I only did for the novelty factor as using actual flight paths got me to where I was going faster.

[Deleted]

No that doesnt. Riding through mountains on my raptor in a videogame however sounds very fun!

Even if you have to do the same way for x time a day? Repetition is the great problem. And the totally broken ratio of travel time and action time (questing / farming / whatever else). You only see a small part of the bigger picture.

Just out of curiosity, did you vote for Trump?

[Unholyground]

I feel like the people against no flying are the same people who lose their minds when something doesn't go their way in life.

[tyrlaan]

Lol I was just wondering where the whine thread about flying was, and viola here it is!

[Mafic]

Blizz has had to back pedal the last two expansions because the pro flying crowd hit them where it hurts the most ($$$).

First they wanted to remove flying completely but they caved due to overwhelming support of flying. The Anti flying crowd was very quiet during this period of time, because it was shown they were the minority of players that wanted flying removed.

Next, came Legion where they had to introduce flying a lot earlier in legion than what they did in WoD. And they were forced to make a proper achievement attached to it with no puzzles required. Then the Pro flying crowd forced their hand but forcing them to reveal when it would be released (Broken Shore), because they were trying to string it out.

Of course then comes Argus which was a complete flop. Despite the teleport system of Argus that uses flying tech ironically and with the whistle you had to regrind it was obvious their no flying map experiment failed. So much failure that they had to attach a rep grind for Alliance players (RIP) to go back and do Argus to unlock Void Elves.

In Legion Azeroth will be available for flying as they are going back to a model of having most of the world available for flight but only restricting the main areas of flight for BFA.

I like this thread for it keeps the issue at the front and center for Blizzard developers and community managers and even current and future MVPs to see.

What is also reveals is players desire to have WoW be complete again. Player that like no flying are also players that like pruning of classes and specs aka MOBA players.

Ironically I have seen more MOBA maps better designed than Argus, so it is not fair of me to insult MOBA players or MOBA maps in general. However, what I will say is that no matter how hard they use gimmicks to replace flying or making maps tiny like Argus it still fails.

That is why the new islands in BFA are better designed terrain wise and much larger. All thanks to feedback provided by the pro flying crowd. The vertical scale isnt as out of control as it was in WoD for example for BFA.

So, make no mistake about it they are taking feedback from the pro flying crowd to heart in incremental pieces at the time.

However, our work to restoring flight to how it was MoP is not done, and the fight for flying in WoW is far from over.

I would like to thank those that provide the free advertising of keeping this issue current, and once I am done with my other endeavors I look forward to participating in this thread more frequently. I would not be surprised if this thread reaches 1000 pages as well as the last two threads did.

Without flying WoW ceases to be a modern and fun MMORPG IMVHO.

[Gavll]

Why don't they just make flying and no flying servers. Problem solved

[cparle87]

Blizz has had to back pedal the last two expansions because the pro flying crowd hit them where it hurts the most ($$$).

First they wanted to remove flying completely but they caved due to overwhelming support of flying. The Anti flying crowd was very quiet during this period of time, because it was shown they were the minority of players that wanted flying removed.

Next, came Legion where they had to introduce flying a lot earlier in legion than what they did in WoD. And they were forced to make a proper achievement attached to it with no puzzles required. Then the Pro flying crowd forced their hand but forcing them to reveal when it would be released (Broken Shore), because they were trying to string it out.

Of course then comes Argus which was a complete flop. Despite the teleport system of Argus that uses flying tech ironically and with the whistle you had to regrind it was obvious their no flying map experiment failed. So much failure that they had to attach a rep grind for Alliance players (RIP) to go back and do Argus to unlock Void Elves.

In Legion Azeroth will be available for flying as they are going back to a model of having most of the world available for flight but only restricting the main areas of flight for BFA.

I like this thread for it keeps the issue at the front and center for Blizzard developers and community managers and even current and future MVPs to see.

What is also reveals is players desire to have WoW be complete again. Player that like no flying are also players that like pruning of classes and specs aka MOBA players.

Ironically I have seen more MOBA maps better designed than Argus, so it is not fair of me to insult MOBA players or MOBA maps in general. However, what I will say is that no matter how hard they use gimmicks to replace flying or making maps tiny like Argus it still fails.

That is why the new islands in BFA are better designed terrain wise and much larger. All thanks to feedback provided by the pro flying crowd. The vertical scale isnt as out of control as it was in WoD for example for BFA.

So, make no mistake about it they are taking feedback from the pro flying crowd to heart in incremental pieces at the time.

However, our work to restoring flight to how it was MoP is not done, and the fight for flying in WoW is far from over.

I would like to thank those that provide the free advertising of keeping this issue current, and once I am done with my other endeavors I look forward to participating in this thread more frequently. I would not be surprised if this thread reaches 1000 pages as well as the last two threads did.

Without flying WoW ceases to be a modern and fun MMORPG IMVHO.

By better designed you mean "requires absolutely no thinking so you can auto run and go watch Netflix while you get where you're going." The only people who have trouble navigating Argus are people who have no skill whatsoever controlling their character.

[Deleted]

Blizz has had to back pedal the last two expansions because the pro flying crowd hit them where it hurts the most ($$$).

First they wanted to remove flying completely but they caved due to overwhelming support of flying. The Anti flying crowd was very quiet during this period of time, because it was shown they were the minority of players that wanted flying removed.

Next, came Legion where they had to introduce flying a lot earlier in legion than what they did in WoD. And they were forced to make a proper achievement attached to it with no puzzles required. Then the Pro flying crowd forced their hand but forcing them to reveal when it would be released (Broken Shore), because they were trying to string it out.

Of course then comes Argus which was a complete flop. Despite the teleport system of Argus that uses flying tech ironically and with the whistle you had to regrind it was obvious their no flying map experiment failed. So much failure that they had to attach a rep grind for Alliance players (RIP) to go back and do Argus to unlock Void Elves.

In Legion Azeroth will be available for flying as they are going back to a model of having most of the world available for flight but only restricting the main areas of flight for BFA.

I like this thread for it keeps the issue at the front and center for Blizzard developers and community managers and even current and future MVPs to see.

What is also reveals is players desire to have WoW be complete again. Player that like no flying are also players that like pruning of classes and specs aka MOBA players.

Ironically I have seen more MOBA maps better designed than Argus, so it is not fair of me to insult MOBA players or MOBA maps in general. However, what I will say is that no matter how hard they use gimmicks to replace flying or making maps tiny like Argus it still fails.

That is why the new islands in BFA are better designed terrain wise and much larger. All thanks to feedback provided by the pro flying crowd. The vertical scale isnt as out of control as it was in WoD for example for BFA.

So, make no mistake about it they are taking feedback from the pro flying crowd to heart in incremental pieces at the time.

However, our work to restoring flight to how it was MoP is not done, and the fight for flying in WoW is far from over.

I would like to thank those that provide the free advertising of keeping this issue current, and once I am done with my other endeavors I look forward to participating in this thread more frequently. I would not be surprised if this thread reaches 1000 pages as well as the last two threads did.

Without flying WoW ceases to be a modern and fun MMORPG IMVHO.

This was like reading a bloated propaganda poster. Holy shit.

[Mafic]

Why don't they just make flying and no flying servers. Problem solved

Because this is what would happen. More people would go for the flying servers than the anti flying servers. This is the same reason why PVP servers are going away in BFA. I say this coming from a Role playing World PVP servrer as the amount of PVE players on my PVP server vastly outnumber dedicated role play PVPers or PVPers in general. Plus, that is what the classic vanilla servers will be (no flying). So all those people that enjoy no flying can play the vanilla experience.

Many years have passed but lets do a quick run down of what the pro flying crowd was correct about:

1. Cutting costs

This is obvious because you look at the Argus maps and they are really poorly designed maps with no connection or relation to one another. If you were to tell a non WoW player these same maps take place on the same planet they wouldn't believe it. The heart of MMORPG design since 2000 has been to connect the zones and create transitions to create a large world that a player can immerse themselves in. Argus experiment is an attempt to undo that progress that MMORPGs in general have made since then by shrinking the world and making it disjointed.

As an analogy even though the Cata zones were adjacent to other zones they were not adjacent to zones of relevance to leveling players in Cata for the most part. That is why Cata felt disjointed and not like WotLK or BC, or MOP, or even WoD and Legion.

Since Blizzard's focus towards activity metrics over subs they have had to increase play time by grounding players or forcing them to regrind what they had already. This is not limited to just flying mounts. They did it with flying whistles too and many more features that were once core staples of the game.

2. Lack of creativity

Looking at BFA alpha instead of innovating or improving previous systems they choose to remove. They almost removed flying in WoD but they have managed to prune classes and specs for two straight expansions. BFA is looking like a third expansion of a possible prune and first aid has also been pruned in BFA.

Flying is very easy to integrate to the playing experience as previous MMORPG devs have done it (eg WotLK) and also other competitors in the MMORPG space have done and currently do it.

Flying is an integral part of WoW's continuous and connected world design, but their push to have more Argus maps shows the poorly advised direction they intend to drag the game towards.

3. Time gating for unknown reasons

With the launch of Broken Shore there wasn't a reason to drag out a quest chain that could be finished within a play session over weeks and weeks. It is obvious at this point that they build their raid content first then add in dungeons and the rest is filler to fill the gaps between raids. In the past the WoW dev team paid extra attention to non raid content which is why flying and flying design was also embraced.

With the raid focused design of WoD and Legion no wonder this current dev team doesn't know what to do with flight.

I can discuss more later with greater depth but now I am running off to have brunch. See you later.

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By better designed you mean "requires absolutely no thinking so you can auto run and go watch Netflix while you get where you're going." The only people who have trouble navigating Argus are people who have no skill whatsoever controlling their character.

You say that as an insult but that is what people liked for a lot of maps from vanilla and BC. Actually there was vanilla maps with vertical scale but it was done responsibly. Argus is simply a sloppy job given the location of many world quests.

It may appeal to MOBA players but players of MMORPGs look down upon maps that are claustrophobic and lack the ability for players to navigate beyond the predetermined cookie pattern paths. In other words freedom of player exploration within limits of game rules should be allowed and not hindered IMVHO.

[cparle87]

You say that as an insult but that is what people liked for a lot of maps from vanilla and BC. Actually there was vanilla maps with vertical scale but it was done responsibly. Argus is simply a sloppy job given the location of many world quests.

It may appeal to MOBA players but players of MMORPGs look down upon maps that are claustrophobic and lack the ability for players to navigate beyond the predetermined cookie pattern paths. In other words freedom of player exploration within limits of game rules should be allowed and not hindered IMVHO.

In other words you want flat, open areas with no obstacles and if there are any you want the path up/down clearly marked. If you think getting around on Argus is difficult, you must've never tried forging a "shortcut" in Ashenvale, getting trapped by roots and ending up in inescapable holes and crevasses.

PS: I find it very pedantic that people try to use calling someone a "MOBA player" an insult. People are allowed to play and enjoy more than one genre of video game.

[Shihao]

"I don't like cars so no one should be allowed to ride one. Not using a car myself and letting the rest of the world alone is not an option."

That's what I understood from the posts posts defending this idea. Am I too far from the truth?

I find having to slowly walk around a bunch of stuff to get to a place that were right in front of me extremely boring and frustrating. Not challenging, not engaging, not immersive. Just plain boring.

[Mafic]

In other words you want flat, open areas with no obstacles and if there are any you want the path up/down clearly marked. If you think getting around on Argus is difficult, you must've never tried forging a "shortcut" in Ashenvale, getting trapped by roots and ending up in inescapable holes and crevasses.

PS: I find it very pedantic that people try to use calling someone a "MOBA player" an insult. People are allowed to play and enjoy more than one genre of video game.

That isn't my position.

That is what no flying pro vanilla players want..the vanilla maps and experiences. I liked the zone design of BC, WotLK, and MoP with the right mix of vertical scale but also horizontal extended layout and terrace designs.

Argus was difficult to navigate because it was designed this way on purpose which I think is poor design.

MoBA is a proper description for players trying to turn WoW aka MMORPG into MOBA lite.

If players like MOBA they should go play a MOBA.

WoW players like a MMORPG.

That is why Argus map was a failure because it had even some of the anti flying crowd perplexed with the map design.

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"I don't like cars so no one should be allowed to ride one. Not using a car myself and letting the rest of the world alone is not an option."

That's what I understood from the posts posts defending this idea. Am I too far from the truth?

I find having to slowly walk around a bunch of stuff to get to a place that were right in front of me extremely boring and frustrating. Not challenging, not engaging, not immersive. Just plain boring.

It is no longer about challenge but about increase activity metrics.

[SpellCleave]

How about, per zone, we fight to gain resources (A vs. H) to unlock flight for the winning faction in the zone for a week. During the fight to gain resources, flight is not allowed.

I'm excited to hear what people think.

*brews popcorn*