Can we get one thing straight about the introduction of pathfinder?

[Dhrizzle]

And what does Pathfinder ultimately do? It allows Blizzard to have a no-flying world for all practical purposes, while maintaining the illusion of keeping flight. And the result of sticking to a strictly formulaic, no-flying design has resulted in progressively weaker outdoor content.

It will be interesting to see if Mechagon and Nazjatar change that trend, but even if it does it's still coming a year into the expansion. And I would challenge everyone on either side of the argument to ask themselves why having a delay of that length before getting decent outdoor content is acceptable.

Well WoD had content that was very different to your typical daily/world quests but it was rejected, possibly tainted by the other design issues with WoD and not given a fair chance or maybe people didn't like the non-formulaic approach. Regardless I don't think it's accurate to say the world-quest style of content has got "progressively weaker" when it's been essentially the same for 2 expansions just with a little tweak for the faction invasions. The key thing for me is the world-quests, whilst not as good as the "Apexis zone" content, is more fun and engaging than the WotLK-to-MoP formulaic daily quests using flying.

[SirCowdog]

I won't look through hundreds of pages of pointless discussion.

It's not hundreds of pages. It's around two...in THIS thread. :/

People that want no-flying environment can't have other people flying around. People that want flying environment wan't flying ASAP. You can't have both at the same time, so making 50% (less, but last few months don't matter anyway) of expac crafted for one crowd and rest (+ forever in future expacs, many people revisit these zones to level alts and for collections) for second crowd is only compromise I can think of.

Sigh....see, this is why you need to take the time to actually try and understand what's really going on, and what people are actually saying. You're wrong on just about everything you just said.

Some people feel like their grounded experience is potentially threatened by having flying players interfering with their experience. However, if the content was designed to account for both, we would have some areas with flight, and some without. If these areas also had challenging or complex content with actual depth, and if the mechanics of flying were brought more in line with ground mounts, then both types of players could potentially get an enjoyable experience.

You're also wrong when you say that players who want flying want it ASAP. I think if you took the time to really read what many pro-flight players are saying, it's that they actually ENJOY having to spend time working towards and unlocking flight. The major complaint is not that they can't get it right away. It's that they do the work and STILL don't get it due to the time-gating.

And lastly, WoW is a progression-based game. And while it's true that people play alts, going backwards and playing old content is not the same quality of experience as progressing through the current content of the current expansion. Even if players can go back to old content and fly, it does not carry the same value as would using flight on current content. Comparing the two is not a fair comparison, nor is it something that most pro-flight players consider valuable.

Of course it could be done with or without Pathfinder, but devs want players get a taste of ground experience before they let you fly. Because it's all this is, calling Pathfinder - exploring zones, finishing questlines and reaching revered reps - "work" and thing that "exhaust value of content" is false. Also, without Pathfinder, many completionist would say "screw it", I'll finish these zones in few months, when it'll be 2x faster and easier.

That's my 2 cents. Enjoy you thread, I may visit you in next expac.

Yes, I call the tasks of pathfinder work. "Do the work, get the reward". That's the entire basis of Pathfinder! And doing that work, whether you enjoy it or not, requires you to criss-cross back and forth across the same content so often, and with such repetition, that by the time you get to fly in those same areas there's nothing left to do there.

And to repeat: Even after you put in the time and effort to complete the objectives of pathfinder, a player still doesn't get the payout of that work. They have to sit around and wait for Blizzard to give the OK, making the situation even worse.

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Well WoD had content that was very different to your typical daily/world quests but it was rejected,

Which content? Apexis grind? Tanaan?

Regardless I don't think it's accurate to say the world-quest style of content has got "progressively weaker" when it's been essentially the same for 2 expansions just with a little tweak for the faction invasions. The key thing for me is the world-quests, whilst not as good as the "Apexis zone" content, is more fun and engaging than the WotLK-to-MoP formulaic daily quests using flying.

I say progressively weaker because even though WQs are still the lion's share of the open world content at level cap, things like secrets, treasures, and invasions are either missing or lesser versions.

And don't get me wrong here. I think WQs are definitely an improvement over the old daily quest system. I just think that Legion and now BfA have gotten slightly lazier in their implementation when they should be innovating and expanding on the concept. I think the new 8.2 zones will do that, to one degree or another. But I also think it's the level of quality and innovation we should have had at launch....not almost a year in.

But that's been my stance for a long time now: Fix the underlying issues THEN expand upon them, allowing issues like flying to be more easily tackled. And that No-Flying is just a symptom of a larger problem: The unwillingness or inability of Blizzard to innovate or progress their design philosophy.

[Lei]

I just re-read the Ion interview back from WoD. That's one thing what he said. The other thing is that it doesn't hold water, not even 2 expansion later.
so let's see:

ION: "Having looked at how flying has played out in the old world in the last couple of expansions, we realized that while we were doing it out of this ingrained habit after we introduced flying in The Burning Crusade, it actually detracted from gameplay in a whole lot of ways," Hazzikostas explains. "While there was certainly convenience in being able to completely explore the world in three dimensions, that also came at the expense of gameplay like targeted exploration, like trying to figure out what's in that cave on top of a hill and how do I get up there."

THERE WAS NO "MYSTERIOUS" HILLTOP IN VANILLA! Or bc. It was wotlk when we got our first true hills and mountains, and why and when and where? Stormpeaks, be-ca-use of flying! MoP has had some interesting hills (Kun Lai). But what is exploration he is talking about? is it when you're leveling for the first time? Because exploration happens ONE time. The first time you get somewhere. Except in Legion where Highmountain for example was (intentionally?) designed the most obnoxious and inconvenient ever. Blergh.

ION: "Before flying was introduced to World of Warcraft, if you got a quest to rescue a prisoner from an enemy encampment, it would play out a certain way. Players would need to fight their way through the camp. After flying, players could just fly into the center of camp, land on top of the hut where the prisoner is, free him and fly out."

So, I don't know, maybe add a side quest to kill 10 caster mob and 10 melee mob, like you did before? Yes, you can fly up to the prisoner but then you still have to "fight through" mobs, jsut not from the bottom to the top, but around the top only.

ION: "There's more room for exploration, for secrets, for discovery and overall immersion in the world. At this point, we feel that outdoor gameplay in World of Warcraft is ultimately better without flying. We're not going to be reintroducing the ability to fly in Draenor, and that's kind of where we're at going forward."

Remember, he did this interview in WoD. IN WOD. While we were living in the selfie cam patch. Where your were living in your garrison because there was nothing to do outside, or it didn't worth it (apexis!). No functional reps. Nothing to explore, up until tanaan there was no secret in the expansion. Was Voidtalon an explorative, secret-y thing? I don't think so. And the one (Predator title) was not about exploration.

Let's see this 2 expansions later.
Immersion: we have soulless jump in jump out world quests as the endgame. Factions basically non existent, no reason to be _somewhere_ for a period of time, you swoop into a wq then swoop up. Exactly what he said about flying as a problem. You don't fight yourself through anything (max level end game content).
Exploration, secrets: these are non existent pretty much. Secrets are being datamined, and brute forced by the few dedicated (CRAZY! ) people on a discord server. Nothing is immersive about these. It's not like randomjoe would go out to see where the riddlers mindworm comes from and suddenly stumble upon it.

I kinda recall Ion saying something about non flying allowing them to create better world with more immersive content. So did that happen? Are the quests better than they were before? Has anything evolved in the outdoor world? Can anyone see any effort from the devs to make the outdoor end game content better? i don't. Honestly.

[kyoloco]

this was always obvious to me

and as much as i hate having to wait almost a year just to start playing the current expac, i dont mind the gold i save on alts by not buying flying for so many characters

[Spiral Mage]

I can't remember exactly how the dev' phrased it but ..

He basically said when you work on a game for too long, you start to lose sight of what's healthy for the game and start making changes based on personal preference rather than what's good for the health of the game and it's players. BLIZ has both attempted to, and has, made many such changes in recent memory.

While there are still good ideas coming from the team, there are clearly internal issues and we're paying the price for that as players, unfortunately.

[Cathfaern]

No one complained about flight in TBC.
No one complained about flight in WotLK.
No one complained about flight in Cataclysm.
No one complained about flight in MoP.
In WoD, suddenly, flight was a problem..

Sorry to disappoint, but I'm complaining about flight since Cataclysm

[Azerate]

Basically the amount of work and time required to unlock flying isn't anywhere near the value of the "reward". This is why so many people are pushing for a zone-by-zone unlock, or earlier unlock, so that the value of flight is increased. Granted, that's purely subjective, and I think there are better ways to address the value of flight than by simply adjusting the timing of it(such as including flight in the fundamental design of the world), but having a more fair unlock is a good start.

Doing quests/world quests on a ground mount + a whistle isn't that painful really

[This goes back to what I've been trying to articulate over the course of my last few posts: The value of flying through content that you've already cleared, and that has been repeated for nearly a year, is NOT the same as it would be if flying was obtainable earlier in the expansion. It is NOT the preferred way in which people would prefer to use flying in the open world. And it is NOT equivalent to the enjoyable experience that players who preferred the grounded content are getting.

Due to emissary/world quest system, there is hardly a state of having already cleared the content. Sure, the original quest progression on your main is done, but otherwise you still keep coming back, and then there are alts of course, that you can level with a mount on. So to a large extent the content that matters is still the same,

I question how waiting for an arbitrary amount of time, that has nothing to do with your own work or effort, can feel more rewarding. The player doesn't have any involvement in that process. And I think this is why you, and many others, are correct when you say it would be better if Pathfinder could be completed from day 1. This is because it ties the process 100% to player effort and work. Personally I would prefer a more comprehensive solution, but I also believe that your suggestions(along with many others) would increase the value of unlocking flight significantly.

Well, if you get something you've been waiting for a long time it does kind of feel better. Just like waiting for Christmas or Santa the whole year makes it feel more special than if you just had Santa day on a weekly cycle. Or to use a more basic example - when you feel hungry and you eat you feel kind of good, but when you're hungry for 10 hours and get to it something - you feel ecstatic. Sure it could be argued that this is a low effort design, but people do feel that way, and I among them. If I could choose I would still probably choose instant gratification, but if it's not designed like that, it's not something that kills the game for me and I can appreciate that "waiting satisfaction" once we are finally there.

The problem you just described is not with flight. You could do the exact same thing with a ground mount, or with a glider, or the whistle.

The problem is with open world content that's so stupidly over-simplified that all you have to do is run in and click or kill a couple things then run out. That's an issue of depth. If the open world objectives had more complexity or thinking involved, even current flight mechanics wouldn't have as much of an impact.

Let me rephrase that for emphasis: The problem isn't with flight. It's with quest and objectives that are so simple and shallow that a trained cat could complete it.

That's personal preference, I have nothing against simplistic WQs/repeatable quests back in the day. I'm not really looking for depth in my wow experience. I enjoy collecting stuff, getting various "points", and ticking boxes as it is commonly referred to.

[Jastall]

I think the popularity of Classic servers might prove otherwise, but I see the point you're making. I have no doubts that providing an interesting and engaging world is possible, even if it does present some challenges to development. But Blizzard has a hisotry of doing things with WoW that even they claimed weren't possible: Cross server tech, matchmaking, LFR, phasing, etc. It's just a matter of whether or not Blizzard is willing to work at it, and I think as long as long as they have inflexible, formulaic, design-by-spreadsheet leadership like Ion, it's not going to happen.






Then stop trying to force players into doing everything! That, more than anything else, is holding WoW back from being better than it is. The reason games like Witcher 3 and Skyrim have fast travel is because they recognize that not everyone wants to do everything. Not everyone enjoys taking a magnifying glass to every pixel of road between points.

Blizzard is so god damned afraid that players won't appreciate their glorious fields full of pointless trash mobs that they literally don't allow you to bypass any piece of it, even if most of it wasn't interesting in the first place.




I want you to consider also that Vashj'ir was built using technology and design from 2010. And that since then Blizzard hasn't really tried it again. The technology has come a long way since then. Design theory, UI, server tech, latency, animations. Hell, even their development team probably has mostly different people. Virtually every part of WoW has improved since then. And yet rather than challenging themselves to make another attempt or to improve their open world design, they've regressed back to mostly flat zones with almost no verticality.

Is that REALLY what we want from Blizzard and WoW?





Then don't timegate it. Base it on actual progression. Let the PLAYER determine when they unlock it by how fast they clear the content. Keeping in mind, this would need to go hand in hand with content with actual depth and challenge, and not just faceroll AFK Kill-X quests.

I would agree that Blizzard is spreading themselves too thin, albeit I have no solution that doesn't involve fucking over a large part of the playerbase in the process. For example I'd be all about axing PvP (which I loathe) and freeing up these resources for a better designed, better balanced PvE game, but I know it's not going to happen and the health of the game dictates that it really shouldn't happen. In the same vein, if putting significantly more resources in the open world means fewer devs work on dungeons and raids that would end up being lower in quality, my answer is simple: fuck that. There's tons of open world games out there. Group PvE is the one thing this game does that nothing else manages even half as well, and if they screw that over they can kiss my sub good-bye.

I don't think the larger problem is that they couldn't do something better, and more that they don't want to and/or don't have the resources to do so (inb4 small indie company meme, even Rockstar runs out of time and money at some point). There are only so many devs and man-hours they can throw around and they don't want to antagonize a significant portion of this game's highly diverse playerbase. That's a large part of the inertia regarding world design, and Pathfinder exists because they see it as a way to give the pro-flying playerbase their cake while also eating theirs. I don't mind the concept myself, and the account-wide nature is IMO better game design than throwing gold at a vendor to ignore the levels all xpack long as soon as you hit max level, but as I said they just need to hold it off for a shorter time.

Then again Mechagon does seem like they're trying something new. Not in regards to flying -even if we'll be able to fly there mere weeks after it is released, if that- but it has a bunch of seemingly interesting open world mechanics centered around crafting and tinkering. Time will tell if that has longevity, but seeing the previews makes it more hyped for that place than for Nazjatar.

[Dhrizzle]

Which content? Apexis grind? Tanaan?

The individual Apexis zones which could easily have accommodated several old-style kill/collect/use x/y/z dailies but instead gave progress for each activity with every zone having priorities and most a unique mechanic or twist. The original dozen or so were horribly underused in the original crappy grind but Tanaan used them to great effect.

say progressively weaker because even though WQs are still the lion's share of the open world content at level cap, things like secrets, treasures, and invasions are either missing or lesser versions.

And don't get me wrong here. I think WQs are definitely an improvement over the old daily quest system. I just think that Legion and now BfA have gotten slightly lazier in their implementation when they should be innovating and expanding on the concept. I think the new 8.2 zones will do that, to one degree or another. But I also think it's the level of quality and innovation we should have had at launch....not almost a year in.

I agree that the Legion/BoA world content is inferior to WoD but it also seems to have a greater appeal so *shrug* I don't think it's fair to call it weak or lazy of Blizz to keep a system relatively the same for 2 expansions running, especially if it was largely well received. Plus it hardly seems to be an issue in the flying/no-flying debate as they kept the daily system relatively identical from WotLK to MoP.

But that's been my stance for a long time now: Fix the underlying issues THEN expand upon them, allowing issues like flying to be more easily tackled. And that No-Flying is just a symptom of a larger problem: The unwillingness or inability of Blizzard to innovate or progress their design philosophy.

WoD gave us the Apexis zones, Legion gave us world quests, BfA kept the world quests and will apparently be doing something different with Mechagon. Just because you don't like the direction it's gone it doesn't mean the design hasn't progressed.

[Shakana]

Flight wasn't a problem in TBC because you had to be max level and it was a WAY different time. Flying eventually devolved into an excuse for players to mongo their way through content and it did in fact limit game design. I mean look at Legion with those Kirin Tor WQ that got 100% invalidated once flying came out. Add in the people now who are like "waahhhhh I can't just swoop right in on a quest mob and avoid the things guarding him that would be more realistic". Flying has been a problem since around Cataclysm.

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Couldn't fly there either so it still fits the bill. TI set the stage for some of the treasures in WoD and Legion and getting to some of the things was actually fun and would have been killed by flying.

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And this is an example of the lazy type of players this game has produced. "I want it this way because I want it this way" should not ever be a guiding force in game design.

Lazy players? Better not even comment that. I'm sick and tired of judgmental assumptions, i don't know who you calling "lazy" buddy, something i'm not is lazy, change your speech.

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Btw what you call "lazy", it's called convenience, i'm a hardcore player and i work, so i don't want to lose time walking on ground mounts and having to get exalted with reps. If you don't know the difference between convenience and lazy, time to learn.

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Oh and accessibility

[Dhrizzle]

I just re-read the Ion interview back from WoD. That's one thing what he said. The other thing is that it doesn't hold water, not even 2 expansion later.
so let's see:

ION: "Having looked at how flying has played out in the old world in the last couple of expansions, we realized that while we were doing it out of this ingrained habit after we introduced flying in The Burning Crusade, it actually detracted from gameplay in a whole lot of ways," Hazzikostas explains. "While there was certainly convenience in being able to completely explore the world in three dimensions, that also came at the expense of gameplay like targeted exploration, like trying to figure out what's in that cave on top of a hill and how do I get up there."

THERE WAS NO "MYSTERIOUS" HILLTOP IN VANILLA! Or bc. It was wotlk when we got our first true hills and mountains, and why and when and where? Stormpeaks, be-ca-use of flying! MoP has had some interesting hills (Kun Lai). But what is exploration he is talking about? is it when you're leveling for the first time? Because exploration happens ONE time. The first time you get somewhere. Except in Legion where Highmountain for example was (intentionally?) designed the most obnoxious and inconvenient ever. Blergh.

What you've done is taken a general example and tried to turn it into an exact, specific thing that has to be present everywhere. You could substitute in "across a chasm in a jungle" or "atop a cliff in a forest" or "in a glowing dome across a plane" to get a similar gist to what he's saying. Also WotLK had loads of places to go explore before you got to Storm Peaks including a large hill with a thing on top.

ION: "Before flying was introduced to World of Warcraft, if you got a quest to rescue a prisoner from an enemy encampment, it would play out a certain way. Players would need to fight their way through the camp. After flying, players could just fly into the center of camp, land on top of the hut where the prisoner is, free him and fly out."

So, I don't know, maybe add a side quest to kill 10 caster mob and 10 melee mob, like you did before? Yes, you can fly up to the prisoner but then you still have to "fight through" mobs, jsut not from the bottom to the top, but around the top only.

Because it's more interesting to give a player an objective with additional obstacles that can be tackled as the player sees fit rather than an objective and a shopping list of additional objectives.

ION: "There's more room for exploration, for secrets, for discovery and overall immersion in the world. At this point, we feel that outdoor gameplay in World of Warcraft is ultimately better without flying. We're not going to be reintroducing the ability to fly in Draenor, and that's kind of where we're at going forward."

Remember, he did this interview in WoD. IN WOD. While we were living in the selfie cam patch. Where your were living in your garrison because there was nothing to do outside, or it didn't worth it (apexis!). No functional reps. Nothing to explore, up until tanaan there was no secret in the expansion. Was Voidtalon an explorative, secret-y thing? I don't think so. And the one (Predator title) was not about exploration.

Did you collect all the treasures in WoD or play all the dozen or so Apexis zones? The rewards were lacklustre sure but if you enjoy exploring the open world, finding hidden paths and certain caves or (in the case of the Apexis zones) experimenting with different tactics there was a lot going on.

Let's see this 2 expansions later.
Immersion: we have soulless jump in jump out world quests as the endgame. Factions basically non existent, no reason to be _somewhere_ for a period of time, you swoop into a wq then swoop up. Exactly what he said about flying as a problem. You don't fight yourself through anything (max level end game content).
Exploration, secrets: these are non existent pretty much. Secrets are being datamined, and brute forced by the few dedicated (CRAZY! ) people on a discord server. Nothing is immersive about these. It's not like randomjoe would go out to see where the riddlers mindworm comes from and suddenly stumble upon it.

I agree the past 2 expansions open-world content has been a step back from WoD (though it does offer better rewards) but it seems the bulk of people are happier with it this way. Personally I think if WoD had less issues overall people would have preferred to see the Apexis zone style quests and more exploration-based treasure hunting.

I kinda recall Ion saying something about non flying allowing them to create better world with more immersive content. So did that happen? Are the quests better than they were before? Has anything evolved in the outdoor world? Can anyone see any effort from the devs to make the outdoor end game content better? i don't. Honestly.

Oh yes definitely, the dailies we had from WotLK - MoP were complete snooze-fests, world-quests may not be the best iteration of open-world repeatable end-game content they've introduced (in my opinion) but it's definitely better than what we were getting while flying was given away as soon as you reached max level.

[Frosteye]

Which is exactly what you can do now once you have your pathfinder unlocked. Which you COULD NOT DO before the introduction of pathfinder. /facedesk

After the expansion is half over sure.

[cparle87]

They intended to scrap flying entirely with WoD moving forward by completely breaking their own words that it would be added later.
However a huge backlash occurring when this was obvious made them do a 180 and introduce it along with pathfinder after all.

It's amazing how so many people on these forums post their "feedback" and demand for Blizzard to do what they want. And somehow make Blizzard doing just that sound like a bad thing in the same breath.

[SirCowdog]

No you've explained that you don't like it, which is fine. You not liking something is not the same as something being objectively not good.

I said that by not innovating with their open world design, Blizzard is following a path of stagnation. That's a cause and effect observation, not an objective good or bad statement.

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Doing quests/world quests on a ground mount + a whistle isn't that painful really

Who said anything about pain? I'm talking about a value proposition here. Getting all the objectives for Pathfinder completed is like being paid less than minimum wage to do a job. The reward of flying is not worth the amount of work or time that is required.

Due to emissary/world quest system, there is hardly a state of having already cleared the content. Sure, the original quest progression on your main is done, but otherwise you still keep coming back, and then there are alts of course, that you can level with a mount on. So to a large extent the content that matters is still the same,

Do you honestly believe that content as shallow as WQ content holds its value across repetition? That doing it the 10th time will be just as enjoyable as the first time? And thrown on top of that is the admission that the quest content is also already done? What value does that leave for a flying player? Almost nothing. Even when repeating leveling content on an alt with flying, you will have already done that content at least once before. And then on the 3rd or later alt? And when the content is mostly "Kill X" or "Click X" quest that didn't have a lot of value to begin with?

You are not making a fair argument when you say "to a large extent the content is still the same".

Well, if you get something you've been waiting for a long time it does kind of feel better. Just like waiting for Christmas or Santa the whole year makes it feel more special than if you just had Santa day on a weekly cycle. Or to use a more basic example - when you feel hungry and you eat you feel kind of good, but when you're hungry for 10 hours and get to it something - you feel ecstatic.

The concept you're describing is called "Delayed Gratification". They key part that you seem to be missing with that analogy is the part about "Generally, delayed gratification is associated with resisting a smaller but more immediate reward in order to receive a larger or more enduring reward later."

The point I've been trying to make is that flying is not a greater reward. It's not enhanced by being delayed. In fact the requirements of Pathfinder ensure that it's LESS than it could be! We''re not resisting a smaller reward earlier. Pro-ground players are actually getting their larger reward up front, followed by a smaller reward later with flight. And pro-flight players aren't getting ANYTHING up front, with a smaller, less valuable reward later.

This is why Pathfinder needs to be reworked.

That's personal preference, I have nothing against simplistic WQs/repeatable quests back in the day. I'm not really looking for depth in my wow experience. I enjoy collecting stuff, getting various "points", and ticking boxes as it is commonly referred to.

The point being made there was in response to the complaint that flight allowed you to skip past the "challenge" of mobs to just click and fly away. The idea being put forward was that flight was causing the content to be skipped, when in fact it's the simplicity of the content which is allowing it to be skipped. This is an incredibly disingenuous argument that a LOT of anti-flight people keep trying to make.

[Lei]

What you've done is taken a general example and tried to turn it into an exact, specific thing that has to be present everywhere. You could substitute in "across a chasm in a jungle" or "atop a cliff in a forest" or "in a glowing dome across a plane" to get a similar gist to what he's saying. Also WotLK had loads of places to go explore before you got to Storm Peaks including a large hill with a thing on top.

What I was trying to say is that the landscaping in vanilla and BC was totally different than in WotLK. The lows and heights were on a toooootally different scale than in WoTLK. And then the meaning of hill means something different in MoP for example (East Jade Forest). Hills in vanilla and bc were basically paved with one way up, and they weren't particularly high. Exploration - what I think exploration means in vanilla - meant a different thing. Wall jumping etc.
I'm thinking about hills with interesting ("hidden") things in WotLK before Storm Peaks. Borean Tundra nope, Howling... nothing comes to mind.

A very typical hill in vanilla in size and height. We all know this. High mountains were used in vanilla to surround and split maps from each other and to create a backdrop. They weren't really utilized. BC too.



Now what is this then:

it's more interesting to give a player an objective with additional obstacles that can be tackled as the player sees fit rather than an objective and a shopping list of additional objectives.

"While you're at it" type of quests are nothing new, they were utilizing it in the past, and in the present too. It was more like a shitty "explanation" as to why flying is a bad thing.

Did you collect all the treasures in WoD or play all the dozen or so Apexis zones? The rewards were lacklustre sure but if you enjoy exploring the open world, finding hidden paths and certain caves or (in the case of the Apexis zones) experimenting with different tactics there was a lot going on.

Yeah, I did, because it was an achieve and it gave good XP while I was leveling. But you can't fly while you're leveling and they kinda drag you all over the place with quests, most of the missing areas are usually part of the zone explorer achieve. The secrety things we have now are totally different than before. We have a discord channel full of "crazies" (I mean it as a compliment) who will do the impossible to find stuff. So the secrets had to step up to this and now we have these "mythic" secrets that has nothing to do with "sight-seeing" or the places itself.

Oh yes definitely, the dailies we had from WotLK - MoP were complete snooze-fests, world-quests may not be the best iteration of open-world repeatable end-game content they've introduced (in my opinion) but it's definitely better than what we were getting while flying was given away as soon as you reached max level.

I don't know. When I was still playing all I saw was people arriving on flight masters in masses, zerging into the wq area, zerging down the objective, and then everyone basically at once using the whistle, then blackscreen, then everyone flying away on FPs. How is this different from actually mounting up and flying away? How is it immersive? It's the most anti-immersive as it can be.

We CAN'T have immersive world until we have WQs - at least in it's current form. They are mutually exclusive. You don't spend more than a minute in a place, then you're rushing/whistling to the next one. WQs are the prime example why what Ion said was full of BS. If they cared about immersion we didn't have WQs for 2 expansions now.

I don't remember many wqs, but I remember one that fits the example of skipping mobs to do one arbitary objective on the top.
Watch this. This is how I was doing wqs, this is how I see people doing wqs. Nobody fights through dozens of mobs to the top if it's not specifically part of the quest. If they did that in vanilla it was because they were poor and didn't have MOUNTS. Not to mention how we didn't have max level end game dailies and organized outdoor (questing) activities. If you wanted mats, you farmed stuff, that means KILLING things. If you farmed rep, you had to KILL stuff, no skipping.
This is why comparing vanilla to anything else is usually demagogue. And the devs use it (intentionally) on a very misleading way - at least when it comes to flying.

[MidnyteTV]

The fact of the matter is pathfinder was one of the worst decisions Blizzard ever made.

Flying should be a CHARACTER specific achievement.

My solution is to go right back to where it was pre-WoD:

Toon should be max level.

Pay Gold.

That's it.

My only compromise would be to do the questing achievements in every zone. However, if Blizzard really wanted people to quest, why the fuck would they allow you to level in other ways.

[SirCowdog]

I don't know. When I was still playing all I saw was people arriving on flight masters in masses, zerging into the wq area, zerging down the objective, and then everyone basically at once using the whistle, then blackscreen, then everyone flying away on FPs. How is this different from actually mounting up and flying away? How is it immersive? It's the most anti-immersive as it can be.

It's funny how even when someone like you provides perfect evidence and arguments showing how it's not flight causing a problem, but people STILL won't admit it. That video you linked is someone doing EXACTLY what all the anti-flight people accuse fliers of doing.

"but muh immersionz!" What a crock of shit!

[Steelangel]

Early flight in Cataclysm demonstrably ruined questing flow. It was hop from one hub to the next and ignore everything inbetween.

If you actually ground-level walk through Hyjal, Uldum and Twilight Highlands, they are gorgeous. Only Deepholm really -required- flight.

[SirCowdog]

Early flight in Cataclysm demonstrably ruined questing flow. It was hop from one hub to the next and ignore everything inbetween.
.

Watch Lei's video above and then come back to us about how flight ruins things.

[Eggroll]

It's amazing how so many people on these forums post their "feedback" and demand for Blizzard to do what they want. And somehow make Blizzard doing just that sound like a bad thing in the same breath.

You are missing the point, kind of your thing, eh?