How do people feel about flying in previous expansions?

[Army Dreamer]

How do people feel about flying in previous expansions?

In Cata you could fly straight from the start. That was perfect.

[Traveler Voltin]

flying is a must and pathfinder was fine.

[FossilFree]

I think all old content no flying zones need to be unlocked for flying. No more grounded Timeless Isle, Argus, etc. It's old content, there is no reason to keep it grounded.

[Raugnaut]

I partially disagree but accept that it’s probably never going to change for new material. And that’s fine. I will just never take part in any new material... since my last new expansion purchase was MoP, no huge loss.

I would probably return if they created some sort of consistent policy on older material though. And if I could trust that they would unblock expansions on a regular basis (maybe 1 or 2 expansions behind the current one) then I might return for good... just never bothering with the flight gated expansions.

While I can't say too much for the Draenei starting areas, Blizzard would have to put in significant work for the Blood Elf areas (Not just Eversong/Silvermoon, but the Isle as well) as they went quite cheaply on them and you have a large amount of 2d textures throughout those areas (Which was one of the reasons that they never delivered on their promise to allow flying in those BC starting zones.

And I believe that each Argus zone is it's own seperate instance, including the Vindicaar.

Timeless Isle does need flying enabled though.

[cozzri]

Pathfinder is demotivational; I haven't stayed subbed for entire expansions because it just becomes such a drag waiting and waiting. Learning flying from a trainer worked fine.

[Wingspan]

Bit confused here...how much do you live in the past (zones)? And how long have you been unsubbed? Must be a loooong time and when you played, you didn't play in earnest. I mean..how hard was it really to earn flying in WoD, Legion and BfA...and why do you NEED flying now it now to come back to the game.

Thing is: They introduced Pathfinder and "working" towards unlocking flying ever since WoD in 2014. And it has been a thing ever since. We are 6+ years on...I don't see them change anything...so ...realistically....you might as well stay away.

What I’m saying (more or less) is that I realize there will probably never be a time in the future when some sort of Pathfinder requirement won’t be needed for access to flight in current content. As such, I will never play in current content again. But I would probably return to play the game (possibly even permanently) if they removed all such Pathfinder requirements from older expansions... basically restricting my play to old material.

Since I haven’t played ANY new expansions in a long time, it’s not a problem for me to avoid new content. I left during mid-late MoP, shortly after the flight change announcement for WoD.

Pathfinder isn’t realistically changing for new stuff but there have been small improvements to the older stuff (like no longer needing it for WoD). I’d like to see that improve a bit and some sort of “we intend to do this” announcement from Blizzard.

Yeah, it’s probably a stretch but I have waited this long... I can wait more.

[dope_danny]

Fly stopped being a thing with appeal once we stopped needing it to access stuff. Like in burning crusade when there are places like the netherwing egg area thats straight up literally impossible to get to without it? sure its great. Its the rpg idea of reaching some new threshold of player ability/power that grants them access to something new.

But Blizzard doesn't do that anymore. Flying is a convenience to skip the world you barely need to visit outside of instances. Its anti fun. Its the ingame analogue to a level boost now. Exchange a currency to just not take part in the world part of the world of warcraft. May as well play a clicker on your phone. But blame blizzard not the players who acclimated to it. They designed it this way.

Which in an afterlife of floating islands thats a lot more outland than afterlife is kind of fucked up design wise really isn't it?

[Wingspan]

Bit confused here...how much do you live in the past (zones)? And how long have you been unsubbed? Must be a loooong time and when you played, you didn't play in earnest. I mean..how hard was it really to earn flying in WoD, Legion and BfA...and why do you NEED flying now it now to come back to the game.

Thing is: They introduced Pathfinder and "working" towards unlocking flying ever since WoD in 2014. And it has been a thing ever since. We are 6+ years on...I don't see them change anything...so ...realistically....you might as well stay away.

What I’m saying (more or less) is that I realize there will probably never be a time in the future when some sort of Pathfinder requirement won’t be needed for access to flight in current content. As such, I will never play in current content again. But I would probably return to play the game (possibly even permanently) if they removed all such Pathfinder requirements from older expansions... basically restricting my play to old material.

Since I haven’t played ANY new expansions in a long time, it’s not a problem for me to avoid new content. I left during mid-late MoP, shortly after the flight change announcement for WoD.

Pathfinder isn’t realistically changing for new stuff but there have been small improvements to the older stuff (like no longer needing it for WoD). I’d like to see that improve a bit and some sort of “we intend to do this” announcement from Blizzard.

Yeah, it’s probably a stretch but I have waited this long... I can wait more.

[Kumorii]

Flying needs to be reworked so it had drawbacks for it to be a fun mechanic. Its not fun, it's convenient.

Though I do think pathfinder is perfectly fine way to handle it.

[Razion]

The problem you highlight here though is that exploration is fun. Personally I love exploration, I have recently had massive fun in Maldraxxus trying ot get on top of various things, finding the weird giant spider tagged as a humanoid and stuff. But what makes me love it is the challenge. I can't just noclip over and see random easter eggs. If I want to explore the various areas of Bastion that isnt noramlly accessible I need to put in the effort, and because of that the reward feels all the sweeter.

Tkae for instance Hyjal in Classic. For me a perfect example of why exploring hte world is more exciting without flying. Without it I have to plan the route and exploit everything at my disposal to find even just that tiny nugget of awe you get from seeing something that isnt normally accessible. With flying however you could just mount up and go straight to Hyjal, the wonder of getting there would be lost as the only prerequisite needed is a flying mount something which is completely trivial in today's version of the game.

No good reward was ever gotten without challenge. And in my view flying removes that challenge. It removes nuance from exploration, it removes the need for creative use of mechanics, it removes the small sense of wonder left in the game zones as the curtain is lifted and you see the green man behind the curtain, the many telltale signs teh world is constructed and fake.

Hyjal I don't think is an excuse nor a good example. I enjoyed Hyjal just as much if not many times more with flying. The zone having those mountains made it clear where flying was useful and the verticality of it made treking up the west side a pain in the ass without flying. Mobs chew your feet and daze you when you don't stick to the one safe path you get on the ground and if anything I think Hyjal as a vertical zone teaches us how unfun a zone can be without flying. Deepholm was similar in this respect and so was Uldum. A lot of these max level Cata zones were vertical and are worse without flying due to things like all the frustrating terrain and mob placement limiting land exploration a certain way.

It's not like land exploration can't be valid - it was done great on Timeless Isle where there were actually jumping puzzles with the ropes and treasures. But Hyjal by comparison is a vertical zone and not at all reflective of a good grounded-only experience and is only good and cones into its own when you have flying (hell it's a theme of Aviana and the druids you ally with which feels good to share with them).

[FuxieDK]

My two favorites are Flight and Transmog.

Transmog is nice to have (as it doesn't actually do anything), but flying is need to have, as it makes every aspect of movement easier.

[Amariw]

I liked it most in expansions you leveled with them, end of Wotlk and Cata notably. The zones felt designed for flight in mind, or "swimming" in vashjir. They felt expansive and there was often something to see above or below. It felt like actual bonus gameplay, not just convience. TBC wasn't far off.

From mop onwards (excellent in other ways), flight was more about convience. I liked having it, but didn't care much either way. I disliked the big pathfinder grinds to achieve it because mechagon sucked in bfa, the rest were tolerable at least.

If they keep on being lazy with zone design to not meaningfully accomodate flight, it's best its given for free at early portions of expac, without much hassle. If they'd make it more interesting again, i wouldnt mind restrictions like path finder or gold costs (say 40k in today's terms).

[Myradin]

If your decision to sub/unsub relies that much on flying then you should really consider other games.

Its one of the factors why I did. WoW used to be a special game because once you could fly around in this vast, open world to explore at your leisure. Now its just a mediocre ground experience. If i want to have fun ground-bound adventures, there's better games I do play for that. Flight was one of wow's best features, and to shackle it so is really sad.

I came back for shadowlands because of a friend. I think its a fine expansion. But the silly flight restrictions still hold it back.

[Lucetia]

I’d probably re-sub to the game for 6 months or so if they took all flight requirements out of the old expansions.

If they actually added flight to the permanent no-fly zones of the past at the same time, I would probably stay subbed permanently (but one expansion behind). I realize that would never happen though, because Bliz would not want to pay for it and they seem to despise flight... but I’m throwing it out there.

At the very least, I hope they remove the restriction on BfA when the next expansion comes out... if so, I might come back for a short stretch and do that expansion.

Anyway, how do you feel about it?

I mean it is removed from all past expansions with the exception of BFA. I don't think it is too much to perform a set amount of activities each expansion in order to fly. About 90% of them you'll get done passively without even trying. The model they have going forward now works too were the past expansion is still "locked" behind the requirements.

I mean so far Shadowlands flying will be super easy since it's just "finish the next part of the story". So if people can't play that much of the game then they likely won't care about flying. If they do care about flying and want to complain because they don't have it unlocked just need to stop being lazy. Right now you can finish the entire covenant campaign in a week without really trying if you play a little bit each week, two weeks at most if you want to mess with it even less.

[SL1200]

Taking flying away. That was one of the last straws for me. I'd rather watch the videos now and read about wow. Travel in the game makes it un fun to play.

[Glorious Leader]

Its really bizarre that the current group of developers can remain so out of touch with their player base, make so many unpopular decisions and drive the game into its current state and still retain their jobs. I can't imagine working in any other private sector job and just holding this much disdain for your customers and fucking up so much and still somehow retain my job. I mean God bless them their fortune i guess.

[Ringthane]

Taking flying away. That was one of the last straws for me. I'd rather watch the videos now and read about wow. Travel in the game makes it un fun to play.

You must be so much fun to go on trips with.

[Haylo]

In my opinion it's perfectly OK to have no flying in x.0. By the time x.1 rolls around, most people have a max level toon and sometimes they work on alts not wanting to drudge through the story or dailies. Pathfinder is fine as long as it doesn't take most of or the entire x.1 to complete. In most expansions we had to wait until x.2 if I recall, and that just seems excessive to me.

[sam86]

Old expansions? Remove them
In fact didn't they remove them already? Or BFA still no fly? I know WoD did

Flight is a luxury and should be treated as such. Zones should be designed for ground travel, actually fleshed out zones, and not just flat land like some people want because they can't navigate. Flight should be rewarded for playing the game, I've always been a fan of Pathfinder because you actually earn your flight instead of purchasing it.

Flight should be unlocked by now for Eversong/Silvermoon, Azuremyst Isles/Exodar, Timeless Isles and Argus.

It will never be flyable in non-flying zones, it is far faster/cheaper to design zones with no fly in mind, pre-wod era i used to datamine in wow a lot, silvermoon is full of 2d looking buildings
WoD itself isn't fully flyable, i can name infamous Shattrath city as f8ck u fly zone, it bugs a lot and u can get stuck beneath it while flying because u touched top of done (wtf?), but at least WoD isn't 2d, just a lot of zones where u fly hit a graphic wall and get stuck below ground (enjoy rezz sickness), makes me feel that WoD they scrapped flying in it mid-way, and only 'fixed' major zones for fly later after heavy request

[Simple Rick]

Depends on the player... world pvpers didn't like it since once side almost always dominated and wiped out the less populated faction via the air in numbers,

I don't think most players cared since wow was always about instanced content not world content.