Do you consider travel as part of your adventure?

[Ayirasi]

Yes, exploring is fun, and flying makes dealing with obnoxious terrain less of a headache. "Oh, you can totally ride up this super steep grade, but not this slightly less steep grade, because fuck you."

[Jibjub]

I would if it were interesting. Right now, in WoW, it is not interesting... so I wouldn't mind some teleports.

Everything in WoW right now is about grinding the destination ... painful travel just makes everything feel worse. There is no joy in movement. There is no "side-tracked" adventure. From top to bottom, WoW is designed to tell you where to go and what to do -- and rewards you for being able to do that quickly -- so travel is NOT considered. That's why flying should be enabled and portals should be everywhere.

If WoW had completely different design philosophies, then you could make an argument for no flying and no portals. But as is, Blizzard seems really confused as to what type of game they have created. They have completely lost any and all vision and guiding principles. It's like they have a "Bible," but each chapter is pulled from a different religion...

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With the inclusion of chests, increased rares, toys and pets etc in later expansions has certainly given me more incentive to wander from the beaten path and explore.

Except these chests and rares are completely useless...

[Mellrod]

I did something similar, walking/running to Wetlands from IF.

Travel also can add to atmosphere. Hell, old Desolace was big and empty and you get a feel for it as a bleak zone (though the quest layout was annoying). Same for Tanaris, etc. Almost any zone, really.

Now.. INTERzone travel is often not fun in that sense but it provides a sense of scale and I know that when I first played that sense of a large world was one of the things that impressed me about WoW. After a while, of course, you tab out if you're on a FP bird because it's to entertaining to fly from old Darnassus to, say, Ratchet for 10 minutes.

Yea. Azeroth's scale was one of it's strongest selling points. I believe for a long time it held a record for one of the largest game worlds in guiness as well as making headlines for it on various points of gaming-related media. My favorite moment of "oh wow, this world is massive" was when me and my brother, 20-30 levels later, were just exploring for a new questing zone that was close to our level (we didn't really use leveling guides or anything, and there weren't questboards in every town to tell you where to go back then, you just had to find the adventure for the most part).

We ended up crossing the barrens, and traveled through the original Thousand Needles, where we noticed how intimidating the massive boulders looked as they precariously teetered on these skinny spires of rock that reached toward the sky far above us. Not to mention the long squeaky lift ride down into the canyon, giving you a sense of your elevation in the zone. It was then that we found the original, unflooded Shimmering Flats. The imposing rocky canyon before made you feel small, but seeing this barren, salt-bleached expanse of dry land stretch out for miles beyond our view distance? That only added on to the "we're-just-a-drop-in-an-ocean" effect we were feeling this whole time. We discovered the raceway there, enjoying it's various quirky questlines along with the carrot-on-a-stick reward and the neat little pet vendor.

It's that pain-staking attention to detail that made the world beautiful. While the art team has always put 110% into their environments, I still feel like something is missing nowadays. Perhaps it's simply the age, and coming to expect everything now. Although I still enjoy walking to places on foot or land mount time to time and just enjoying the majesty of the new zones every xpac.

[Pakheth]

Absolutely. The giant open world is one of the best parts of WoW. I can't stand MMOs where you have to go through a loading screen (no matter how short) constantly. Which is actually one of the few complaints I have about BfA, I wish you could swim/fly/take a boat from Zandalar to Kul Tiras if you wanted, instead of having to go through a load screen.

Agree on this, it seems very odd they went with this solution, especially after pruning all those portals. It also makes it seem like more of a chore going from Zandalar til Kul Tiras and vic versa.

[bufferunderrun]

If flying works - no; If flying doesn't work - yes

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...unless you already know about those towers full of bandits or dungeons, which is often the case with wow.

well yea that is why i called it static, the world never change you clear a village and after five minutes it's still back and hold no value anymore adding up to a world that is extremely small and mostly a scenography with no actual value.

Even without flying if we consider only the land that is actually occupied and useful i'm sure that most zones don't go over 10-20%, for example i see many talking about silithus, it's actually only a small part of the entire zone used, all the mountains around, the huge AQ temple etc everything is actually empty no use at all, while game like skyrim mostly use above 80% of the map even if that is just a random generated wolf who attack you.

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Tell that to Kaliri owls and Blade's Edge cannons. Flying doesn't have to ruin everything it just takes a lot more effort to design for.

that is the problem, blizzard don't want to put effort in designing zones for flying.

[SirCowdog]

that is the problem, blizzard don't want to put effort in designing zones for flying.

There's hints that Nazjatar and maybe mechagon are designed with flying in mind, although it remains to be seen how much of that is true. What I suspect is that the zones are actually designed for the ground, and just doesn't break when we get flight back.

I think what bothers me is that this is the formula that Blizzard is sticking to. This is why the final unlock of flight is locked behind what appears to be a 2-3 week rep grind, to ensure that the players are forced to run back and forth across the ground until we're sick of it, and every last ounce of value is squeezed out of it before we get to fly over it; with ZERO new aspects or interest in the air once that happens.

[arkanon]

Gaming for me is about risk / reward. Travel no longer offers any risk, and i consider it an inconvenience. I am happy being out in the world and playing and questing etc, thats fine. But at max level, i want to minimize my travel as much as possible. If doing emissary quest, i quickly check the map, find the most concentrated area of WQ, and go get them done asap.

Sadly, in the current iteration of wow (and the most recent versions as well), it is a chore, and an inconvenience.

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There's hints that Nazjatar and maybe mechagon are designed with flying in mind, although it remains to be seen how much of that is true. .

Didnt Blizzard openly say they have designed the zones with flying in mind? did i misinterpret something someone said? i could be wrong obviously, i just thought they had spoken openly about it.

[SirCowdog]

Didnt Blizzard openly say they have designed the zones with flying in mind? did i misinterpret something someone said? i could be wrong obviously, i just thought they had spoken openly about it.

The problem with that statement is that there are two ways that it could be true:

1) The zone is 100% full of ground-only content, but is built in such a way that flying doesn't break anything once it's available. While technically true that the zone is "built for flying" it's effectively still just a grounded design.

2) The zone starts out as a grounded experience, but has new content or areas which are only accessible via flight. Bombing runs, airships, floating islands, air-races, etc. Perhaps even using phasing to separate flying from non-flying players. This design uses flight to enhance and progress the zone instead of trying to pretend it doesn't exist.

Which one of these, and how much, is meant by "the zones are built for flying" remains to be seen, as I said.

[Leodok]

Sometimes. It felt like part of the adventure in Drustvar and Spires of Arak, which are pretty immersive and have a lot of cool details, and in Zuldazar, which is beautiful. Even then, it's mostly when I'm leveling and there's scripted events (like arriving at Arak and seeing all the refugees fleeing) and quests I didn't know of (like the village with the creepy singing girl in Drustvar). I guess you could say those aren't even "travelling."

[Powerogue]

I think they've got it about perfect: Have the players need to navigate the terrain for the first part of the expansion as an obstacle. By the time the players have pretty much memorized the terrain and it stops being interesting, flying is available.

The FM whistle was one of the better additions, and I'm looking forward to the permanent anti-daze mount item.

[oplawlz]

Traveling is fun for the first time I level a character on each faction in an expac. Then it's a tedious chore that makes me resent blizzards developers for taking away flying.

[Voidwielder]

In vanilla, yes.