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

[SirCowdog]

No, they weren't. The devs thought that no flying was the way to go. Then they decided maybe it wasn't. That's it. Nothing else happened. For fuck's sake dude, developers have the right to make decisions and change their minds when they realize it doesn't pan out the way they wanted. Not everything has to fit some dumb fucking narrative that essentially boils down to their reasoning always being "because fuck you."

I'm not even sure what you're trying to say anymore. What, that they just flipped a coin and made a decision in a vacuum without any consideration?

You even said yourself that they made the decision because "they realize it doesn't pan out the way they wanted". Why do you think it didn't pan out? Certainly the player feedback and backlash against the idea had SOME influence on that decision, wouldn't you agree? And judging by the way Blizzard devs talked about no-flying, I think it's fair to say that some of them didn't like that they had to go back to having flight in the world.

Hazzicostas himself(you know, the guy who's the LEAD GAME DESIGNER) is on record as saying he believes flight "actually detracted from gameplay in a whole lot of ways" and has NEVER actually changed his stance on that. The closest he's ever come to that is the repeated line of "Master the ground first, get to fly over it later" followed almost immediately by releasing Argus where you don't get to fly and CAN'T fly despite "mastering the ground". What message do you think that sends other than "Fuck you" to players who want flying?

And even if we throw away all emotion, you still have to recognize that Pathfinder is knocking out three birds with one stone: They still get to develop and design a world without flying, AND they get to provide a carrot for players that encourages more of that design to be consider. All while still nominally giving players access to flight and quashing complaints about no-flying.

Even if it has nothing to do with throwing a "because fuck you" at players, you have to at least see how it is still practically and effectively a no-flying World of Warcraft. Do you really think that's coincidence? That it's like that just because the devs decided randomly to set it up that way? Or is it more plausible that someone(Ion) is married to the idea of No-flying to such a degree that they're still imposing the idea on the game?

I'm sorry if you don't want to look at the actions, and are instead stuck on the words. The pattern of behavior that Blizzard has shown towards flight is very much a "fuck you" directed at players.

[oplawlz]

No, people complained about flight in those too. Especially world pvp people.

The number of people who complained were minuscule, though, and generally scoffed at until blizzard used them as scapegoats to do less work.

[Ielenia]

I was talking about zones that required flying in Cataclysm. You posted BC and WotLK zones. I was talking about how flying really made a lot of places in Hyjal and TH (which it was obvious a lot of work went into) "flyover country".

Don't get butthurt because you didn't read my initial argument and decided to punch your favored strawman.

I'm not. Just pointing out the flaws in what you said. Even if you were speaking solely about Cataclysm, you still forgot about Uldum and Twilight Highlands.

[Relapses]

I'm not even sure what you're trying to say anymore. What, that they just flipped a coin and made a decision in a vacuum without any consideration?

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. They tried it. Didn't like it. Changed their fucking minds. There's no greater justification.

Normally for the sake of brevity I'd leave it here but you asked a bunch of dumb pointless questions and I'm bored so I'll walk you through my reasoning.

You even said yourself that they made the decision because "they realize it doesn't pan out the way they wanted". Why do you think it didn't pan out? Certainly the player feedback and backlash against the idea had SOME influence on that decision, wouldn't you agree?

Nope. They changed their fucking minds because they wanted to. "Player backlash" is an invented concern that you use to support your imaginary argument. Developers can do whatever the fuck they want and players don't have a single choice about it.

And judging by the way Blizzard devs talked about no-flying, I think it's fair to say that some of them didn't like that they had to go back to having flight in the world.

You can't know this. Again, presumptuous bullshit.

And even if we throw away all emotion, you still have to recognize that Pathfinder is knocking out three birds with one stone: They still get to develop and design a world without flying, AND they get to provide a carrot for players that encourages more of that design to be consider. All while still nominally giving players access to flight and quashing complaints about no-flying.

Pathfinder is fine the way it is, I've never argued it wasn't. But creating an imaginary justification for Blizzard bringing around Pathfinder because it's easier than just designing the game with flying in mind from the beginning is fucking stupid. And stupid arguments bother me, sorry (not sorry).

Even if it has nothing to do with throwing a "because fuck you" at players, you have to at least see how it is still practically and effectively a no-flying World of Warcraft. Do you really think that's coincidence?

Yep.

That it's like that just because the devs decided to set it up that way? Or is it more plausible that someone or multiple someones with authority is married to the idea of No-flying to such a degree that they're still imposing the idea?

I don't know. You don't know. I don't understand why you're asking questions neither of us can answer. And more importantly, I'd like to shoot back at an earlier reply I had in this thread: Who fucking cares?

[SirCowdog]

Developers can do whatever the fuck they want and players don't have a single choice about it.

Yes, in absolute terms, devs can do whatever they want. But not without facing the consequences of their actions. WoD was designed around the entire philosophy of a WoW without flight. Players didn't like it. The devs realized this, and in order to protect their game and their business, they made a decision to alter the delivery of no-flying just enough to slip it past.

That's Pathfinder.


Sorry, we're done here. I'm tired of arguing with people who only want to be angry that someone is disagreeing with them. Your entire point of view is based on the idea that a multi-million dollar leading software development company does things at random, by coincidence. And you have the balls to call people that disagree with that stupid.

And rather than have a reasonable discussion, you just want people to shut up because "who fucking cares". Why are you even here? Uhg...welcome to ignore. You clearly aren't contributing anything of value to the discussion, and are just seeking to irritate and anger people. There's a word for that(which is mind-bogglingly not allowed) that starts with the letter T. I encourage everyone who interacts with you in this thread to report and ignore.

[Relapses]

Way to take the classy route and encourage people to report me for disagreeing with you. Have a nice life, dude-who-blocked me.

For the record, I don't want anybody to "shut up." I just want them to stop tossing around baseless, completely unnecessary conspiracy theories about the reasoning Blizzard has for doing the things it does. There's absolutely zero tangible evidence to support a theory that Blizzard introduced Pathfinder solely because of negative player feedback. Yeah, some people were upset that flying got removed in WoD but pro-flying advocates like to attribute the entire 5 million sub loss drop after WoD's launch to no-flying and that's just crazy talk. I wager a vast majority of players could have cared one way or the other. (Hence, who cares?) It's only in these topics that you find people acting like Blizzard was playing some kind of fucked up game of 4D chess to deceive its playerbase into thinking they had planned everything from the beginning and that they just can't bare the thought of looking like they're incompetent.

It's not that complicated.

[RobertoCarlos]

This is very strange to me.

Some of the posters here claim that blizzard grounded players to increase play time, at the same time, they claim that wow classic pacing is how the game is suppose to be.

Inconsistency at a retard level.

Not really.

Once you let the genie out of the bottle you cant just put it back in.

They had no problem selling flying as a feature of TBC and taking our money with flying store mounts.

But now its a problem because ImMeRsIoN making my hundreds of flying mounts no more useless than pretty icons

[Fabinas]

Th is is flat out false. During MOP, you had thread after thread in the official forums wanting flying removed form the game. This is a factor in Blizzard's initial decision to delay flying until a future patch. People absolutely were complaining about flying and many who complained wanted it gone.

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Sorry, not proved at all. You making baseless declarations does not = proof.

but... but... but... we actually see their decisions in game. for the last 5+ years. How's that a "baseless declaration"? (i know you're a well known Blizz apologist, who never discusses anything, just vaguely refutes, so, please, go on. You'll win the internetz with me)

- - - Updated - - -

Your assertion does not make it a fact. The fact that an expansion exists is not proof of anything, lmfao. You're just bolstering your own shitty opinion with the oh-so-fucking-original cynicism that the only reason Blizzard ever does or doesn't do anything is because fuck you.

Get over it, dude.

What assertion? We have 5 years of decisions made and how things ended up. I think it's enough info and enough PR talk all these years to be able to see their BS.

[Relapses]

What assertion? We have 5 years of decisions made and how things ended up. I think it's enough info and enough PR talk all these years to be able to see their BS.

I was gonna give you the benefit of the doubt and say that you actually thought a bit about this but I guess you are literally saying that because the expansions exist, it's self-evident that Blizzard is bullshitting us? Is that really what you're going with? o_o

[FelPlague]

You were talking about zones that required flying, and I've shown you zones that required flying. If it's "end-game content" or not doesn't matter. And there's no flight path to Skywall. You might be confusing with the "rescue Thrall" questline where an air elemental flies you there for the quest.

Dude there is a flight to the skybreaker, in icecrown
also no quests send you up to the skywall, other then the dungeon, so nah, you dont need flying there.

[Fabinas]

Way to take the classy route and encourage people to report me for disagreeing with you. Have a nice life, dude-who-blocked me.

For the record, I don't want anybody to "shut up." I just want them to stop tossing around baseless, completely unnecessary conspiracy theories about the reasoning Blizzard has for doing the things it does. There's absolutely zero tangible evidence to support a theory that Blizzard introduced Pathfinder solely because of negative player feedback. Yeah, some people were upset that flying got removed in WoD but pro-flying advocates like to attribute the entire 5 million sub loss drop after WoD's launch to no-flying and that's just crazy talk. I wager a vast majority of players could have cared one way or the other. (Hence, who cares?) It's only in these topics that you find people acting like Blizzard was playing some kind of fucked up game of 4D chess to deceive its playerbase into thinking they had planned everything from the beginning and that they just can't bare the thought of looking like they're incompetent.

It's not that complicated.

You must be very gullible to imagine that Ion goes and announces no-flying for WoD and the rest of expansions in that Polygon interview and no later than a month (cba to find the dates) he and the rest of the devs "just changed their minds".
Your narrative is : A multimillion successful gaming company (back then, now it's small indie /s) has devs that decide on a matter on a whim and like days later they change their mind. And this has happened without any player feedback or uproar because of the first announcement. Right. But it's all baseless assumptions, assertions and conspiracy theory. Right, again.

Dunno about you, but i tend to believe that in companies of such scale, nothing happens on a vacuum and based on whim or personal preference. Hell, even a blue post has acknowledged there were pro and anti flyers in the dev team, and the pathfinder was a child born because of passionate discussion.

https://blizzardwatch.com/2015/06/10...oming-draenor/

(Yeah, those weeks of backlash never shaped the pathfinder decision. Just Ion's whim. LOL)

https://www.polygon.com/2015/6/10/87...c-mac-blizzard

(Yeap, whithin a month)

Funnily enough, both those articles have a link to the official announcement of the introduction of Pathfinder in WoD which is now... an Error 404 page. Feel free to find it elsewhere and post it. If you dare.

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I was gonna give you the benefit of the doubt and say that you actually thought a bit about this but I guess you are literally saying that because the expansions exist, it's self-evident that Blizzard is bullshitting us? Is that really what you're going with? o_o

No, i'm literally saying is the decisions Blizz made those 5 years prove the point. And your sophism won't win with me, sorry. Stop dodging.

[MoanaLisa]

Dunno about you, but i tend to believe that in companies of such scale, nothing happens on a vacuum and based on whim or personal preference. Hell, even a blue post has acknowledged there were pro and anti flyers in the dev team, and the pathfinder was a child born because of passionate discussion.

Funnily enough, both those articles have a link to the official announcement of the introduction of Pathfinder in WoD which is now... an Error 404 page. Feel free to find it elsewhere and post it. If you dare.

First the link on site news to the announcement of Draenor Pathfinder: https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...ing-in-Draenor

Second, I've always thought from what I remember of the tweets and blue posts of that period that the developers were desperate for someone to come up with something...anything...that might resemble a compromise and resolve the impasse. Companies of scale can move pretty quickly if someone has a bright idea although it was a mystery to me that they took so long to figure this one out as many had suggested something similar. Whether it was Chilton's decision to go ahead with it (he was game director at that point) or something else doesn't matter. It is the nature of Gordian Knots to be resolved suddenly.

It's also worth commenting that this was still the time after which GC had left and Blizzard's communications on just about everything were hilariously and incompetently confused. There were clear examples at the time of the various developer's tweeting out one thing or another that directly contradicted something another developer had just tweeted out. Blizzard may be a company of scale, no argument there, but at that time they were clearly out of their depths on not only how to communicate to players but to one another. So there may never be a clear history of what really happened with this.

I'm still somewhat baffled that after almost five years on this there are still some that believe that forum posts are going to change anyone's mind about this. I suppose that given Blizzard's rather mercurial decision-making there is still hope that there can be an influence but at this point I don't think the devs are really paying any attention to this argument. Even now most of the passion about flying on this site is wrapped up in a dozen or so posters. It's passionate enough but there's no sign that any sort of populist movement is afoot. If the Pathfinder thing is truly that objectionable I would guess that people have long left and whatever price was to be paid for that has been paid in full years ago.

EDIT: My on-topic comments about the thread are earlier (#35). TL-DR is that Blizzard has all sorts of reasons for why they do things and usually only communicate some of them. The only further comment I have about the op is that there seems to be a belief stated that simplifying the QA for zones and making them less susceptible to bugs is some bad thing. That's arguable but irrelevant at this point as zones are stood up now for flying, bugs included. So making a case about something that happened years ago is sort of a waste of time. Put it down to the nature of forums I guess.

[RobertMugabe]

If you can recall, flying was disabled in WoD because it would break phasing as well as some quest and cinematic triggers. Remember the PTR servers where flight was enabled and how painfully obvious it was that WoD wasn't designed with flight in mind at all?

Player feedback - regarding how great MoP's Timeless Isle content was - simply gave Blizzard a convenient excuse to keep everyone grounded in order to cut corners and push the already-delayed expansion out sooner.

To add to this, Tanaan Jungle was so vastly incomplete at launch, that they placed an impenetrable dome over it and people still found ways of getting inside.

Given how time-poor the development team were at getting content out the door - as Legion's development was already underway - Blizzard had initially decided to disable flight for the entire expansion rather than test and fix everything that flying broke.

I'm tired of reading that pathfinder was introduced to reinvigorate world PvP and exploration, because it wasn't. That's the corporate spiel trying to cover up the fact that disabling flight substantially reduces the amount of testing that needs to be done prior to launch.

Any praise of the pathfinder achievement only emboldens Blizzard's decision to cut corners, which could partially explain why the game is where it's at today.

EDIT: This isn't a thread about pro / anti flight. Too many people repeat the rhetoric that Blizzard did this for the player's benefit, which isn't true, and I'm setting the record straight.

I absolutely agree with you.

Also @ lol at all these people, it seems like 90% of the posters here haven't read your thread at all

[TheRevenantHero]

I notice that a lot of the idiots that praise Classic for being about the journey and not the destination are the same people who bitch about not getting to fly in newer expansions. I truly don't understand you. Either you want exploration or you want to throw exploration out for the convenience of flight. Flying in WoW 100% removes the sense of exploration.

[Darknessvamp]

I totally agree OP. I'm still waiting on that epic quest line that they claimed they were looking to do to make flying "a more interesting reward to unlock" instead of just spending gold. I guess they forgot about that after they had no intention of having flight in WoD and had to last minute panic fix Draenor and slap it on an achievement due to the backlash.

[SirCowdog]

I'm still somewhat baffled that after almost five years on this there are still some that believe that forum posts are going to change anyone's mind about this.

I don't know about anyone else, but for me at least, it's more about discussing the entire design philosophy and way that Blizzard views and treats its customers than being specifically about flight. And to a lesser degree how players view and treat Blizzard.

Pathfinder is certainly a popular point to argue over, and it does illustrate pretty well some of the deep flaws with the way Blizzard approaches the open world content. I don't think anyone could really dispute that WoW has some of the best instanced content available in the genre, but the open world has been exceptionally shallow for a long time now.

Personally I think including flight in a more integrated manner would help, but that's not necessarily the only way to do it. Talking about Pathfinder and flying just highlights a lot of the issues. Unfortunately we get people who seem more intent on stirring up anger than on having a real discussion. The difference in discussion between myself and Jastall, and myself and otaXephon, for example.

Overall, I think we're going to see potentially see some changes after 8.2. Blizzard seems to have been receptive to criticism of major expansion features such as Azerite armor and the HoA. And they also seem to be open to the flight issue, allowing it in both Mechagon and Nazjatar. The type of open world content seems to be hitting both the exploration points with secrets and treasures, as well as both targeted progression in Nazjatar, and open field timeless-isle style content with Mechagon.

I'm REALLY hoping Blizzard doesn't backslide, and carries the more complex and engaging open world design for zones into 8.3. But man...if they release ANOTHER no-fly island...bah. Formula formula formula. It will just prove what I've been saying all along about stagnation in their design.

[Raelbo]

EDIT: This isn't a thread about pro / anti flight. Too many people repeat the rhetoric that Blizzard did this for the player's benefit, which isn't true, and I'm setting the record straight.

Blizzard wanted to get rid of flying because they blamed it (unjustifiably IMO) for several problems with the game. Your consipiracy theory about their true intentions lacks any merit whatsoever, but given the nature of conspiracy theorising, I doubt there's much I can say to sway your opinion on this.

[Dhrizzle]

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.

We just had a conversation about how Blizz have experimented with Apexis zones, world quests and now they're going for something different with Mechagon. Your problem isn't with stagnation, it's just that the content isn't going the way you want it.

[Lei]

There's absolutely zero tangible evidence to support a theory that Blizzard introduced Pathfinder solely because of negative player feedback.

Shure. Were you around that time? Because I was, and I remember.

https://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/...ng-in-draenor/

We appreciate the spirited discussion on the topic of flying. The subject has brought out passionate viewpoints and sparked insightful conversations on our official forums and blogs, on community sites, and in chat channels. Your feedback has been a valuable part of the ongoing conversations within Blizzard as well, and today, we’d like to share some updated plans for how we’ll handle flight going forward.

Btw I like how you can't even deny the other facts like how what he literally says in these inteviews are lies. Like non-flying giving them chance to make better outdoor content. NEVER HAPPENED. And all the other non-truths he was saying.

[Dhrizzle]

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.

<snip>

Now what is this then:

<snip>

You're completely missing the point of Ion's statement, the discussion wasn't about how topography had changed through the course of the expansions. All expansions feature situations where you can see something in the distance and have to figure out a way to get to it. It could be areas across a chasm where you need to find a bridge in STV, it could be a Biodome somewhere in the shattered landmass of Netherstorm, it could be Valkyr Crpyts on a moutainside in Howling Fjord or a shattered world tree in Grizzly Hills.

"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.

The game is also littered with quests where you only need certain mobs in an area, or where certain mobs or activities will help you complete the quest quicker, and areas like that encourage you to examine your surroundings and decide whether you want to dodge certain enemies, snipe occasional problem ones, charge through and just annihilate everything or use class abilities to avoid confrontations. That's an aspect of gameplay that is lost with flying because the game encourages you to bunny-hop between them.

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.

I agree that the content has taken a step back since Ion did the interview (whilst being much better incentivised in terms of character progression) but at the time he made that statement it was certainly accurate, and even in its diluted form the open world still offers better chances for exploration and pathfinding.

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 do think that world quests worked for Legion where the sense of urgency created by the invasion gave a feeling that you were rushing around helping your new allies resist. Not so much with BfA but they probably stuck around because they were popular in Legion and getting rid of them so soon for an idea that could still be half-baked would probably have caused more upset than world quests becoming tedious.

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.

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.

<snip>

I'd say that quest probably isn't typical, try Googling "BfA mob density" and see how many people are struggling getting around because they find there are too many mobs to fight or avoid.