And are not these scenarios a more reasonable compromise than No-flying everywhere(even when it makes no sense)? A more granular approach which disallows or discourages flight in specifical places where it makes sense, and allows flying where it does?
I think you're confusing a timegate(which is a hard limit which can not be bypassed by any form of player effort) and a soft barrier like gold acquisition. Pathfinder literally can not be completed in any way until Blizzard says so. Whereas Cold-weather flight training is 100% up to the player how fast they earn it.
As for the ICC-flying achievement, you'll need to be more specific. Are you referring to Glory of the Icecrown Raider?
I think you're stretching to try and find negatives where there weren't actually any. Which "players" were extremely frustrated? And you contradicted yourself. How can players "never participate in pvp" also kill AFK players, since killing players is a PVP activity. As @
Dugna rightly pointed out below your post, the only real problem was in how OP and rule-breaking Nelf druids were due to the combination of Shadowmeld and instant flight.
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I would also point out that there was more open world content than what was required to reach level cap. Every character I leveled in TBC, WotLK, and MoP hit level cap long before finishing all the open world content. This meant that there were sometimes several zones available to flying in while completing content after reaching level cap.
This probably colors my perception somewhat, as I viewed flight as something which was the natural progression of both the character and the content. You level up, you get flying, you use flying on the remaining content as a reward for putting in the work of leveling.
Which is an interesting contrast with Pathfinder. Because it's basically the same concept, only with a hard time-lock slapped on it. Do the work, get the reward. Imagine if Blizzard put hard time-locks on leveling the same way they did with pathfinder. Shadowlands! New level cap 60! But you can only level to 58 in Shadowlands part 1! All the rewards of level 60 coming Soon(tm) in Shadowlands part 2!
It's not a perfect comparison, but I'm exaggerating for effect to make the point obvious to the haters.
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It's because Blizzard has a history of ignoring feedback that extends to MANY issues, not just flying, and not just WoW.
The only language a player has to effect real change is money. It's a logical(and the most likely) conclusion that the only reason WoD changed such a fundamental design direction was because of money.
As I've pointed out several times, it very likely wasn't JUST because of flying, however. That might have been the poster child, but it was the entire design philosophy of WoD that pissed people off. And yes, I do believe that was changed due to an unprecedented number of unsubs. Which is why Blizzard stopped reporting subs at the very same window of time that all these events were happening in WoD.