Flying doesnt matter at this point? Why do i feel so stupid then?

[arkanon]

I don't have flying either and don't need it either. My 2 best essences are upgraded with neck progression and raid progression. The raid is right next to that flight path and you can glide half way to the instance.

Islands basically provide everything I need and a heroic island takes like 15 minutes depending on group.

The only thing I would really utilize flying for are world quests, so basically flying would be for manapearls. I don't care about Mechagon.

Just use jetpacks in Mecha - dont need flying there at all.

[SirBeef]

Look the intended audience for Blizzard are casual casuals (casuals so casuals that even standard casuals are hardcore to them). Hardcore players are done with collectibles, achievements, herb farming and whatnot by the point in the xpack cycle. You can literally just raidlog outside of doing a couple of azerite WQs every now and then to stay relevant (or better, just spam IEs with the rabbit's foot charm).

My question to the anti-flying crowd that Blizzard is pandering to: if flying is okay now, what was so radically different about the game 6 months ago that it wasn't okay back then?

I'll bite. It isn't that the game is any different now. What Blizzard has been adamant about and upfront about is they do not like that players just swoop in pick off objectives and swoop back out with no regard to the worlds, landscapes, paths they created for the story/leveling process. So they want you to engage with the world and they way it was designed before you get flying.

Whether they should be making things more interesting, adding flying enemies to knock you off or surface to air type defenses at camps to knock you off, or even design flying content is a completely different argument. This is and has been about experiencing the content as Blizzard intended first. Nothing more.

[Qnubi]

It's like getting your driver's license at 40. Of course it's not "useless" but imagine all the fun you could have been having if you got it sooner.

33 here, no driving license. Soon!

Sry for off-topic.

On topic though: Ever since I unlocked flying I have started to play MORE WoW, I do more WQ, I do Archaeology, I collect treasures. I actually play the game and enjoy it more. I don't understand why Blizzard continues to remove flying and basically angers half of it's playerbase and likes less money (quite a few people unsub until flying... or worse.. never come back). If the open-world combat was at least hard enough that it would provide a challenge so you had a reason to let the players experience it and not skip by flying. But Open World combat is easy and meaningless from the start. So there is little reason. Explore a zone by ground, then give us FLYING. Easy.

[Kumorii]

Yep, I completed a ton of achievements and collections in both continents once I got flying, and it's amazing in Nazjatar and Mechagon.

ProTip(tm): The 500k exalted Mechagon mount doesn't get targeted by the aerial enforcers, making it well worth the money!

Wut? 500.000 gold just so you don't have to touch ground for a split second?

Let's ignore the fact that even if you fly long enough so it actually aggroes i just keep flying and nothing happens... The no fly mechanic is a non issue in my experience.

[Elias01]

So YOU need to decide what's more important to YOU... that immersion or time. But that's a decision that you should make *for yourself* and for those of us who care less about your immersion, we should have the option to simply fly.

In case it's not clear to you, the point I'm making is that if flight is in the game people like yourself have both options. When it's not, people who woold prefer to fly do NOT have that option. You're not hurt by it existing. Pro-flight folks are in fact limited ('hurt') by it not existing.

PS: It should not need to be said, but... it's also not like you can't decide different things at different times. YOu're not locked into flying all the time once you fly nor are you prevented from doing it. Enjoy the ground in Nazjatar and have the time to deal with it? Ride on the ground. Want to knock out some WQ stuff really fast before dinner? Fly.

Yep so Blizzard can put in mythic 450 itemlvl vendor for 20 gold. So now we have choice you can go progress raid or if you want save time you can buy it for little gold. Flying is not choice it never was and never will be. You use it or you are stupid.

[quite an expert in wow]

i dont know anyone i play with that says flying is useless

are you perhaps getting all these comments from mmo-champion.com?

[Kumorii]

People who tends to say that usually give the expression that everything in the game is a chore and nothing is enjoyable and you should just blaze through it all. Which begs the question as to why they even play the game to begin with.

[M1r4g3]

Flying is pretty useless yea, what are you gonna do with it? WQs but slightly faster? woah how useful!

[Vargulf the Happy Husky]

i dunno, flying is the only reason im doing emissary quests (other than the azerite armor and ap rewards) still.

i'll say this much, when we got flying in Legion it felt like a HUGE relief. i didn't feel that way this time through. i think its because traversing BfA on ground mount wasn't really that bad. still, very glad to have flying now and it matters to me.

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WQs but slightly faster? woah how useful!

potentially cutting 20-30 minutes of travel time down a day? pretty useful to me

and the alts! won't anyone think of how good flying is for the alts?!

[ls-]

Whether they should be making things more interesting, adding flying enemies to knock you off or surface to air type defenses at camps to knock you off, or even design flying content is a completely different argument. This is and has been about experiencing the content as Blizzard intended first. Nothing more.

Just imagined being dazed and dismounted while on a flying mount, oof. Imagine minding your business and then some random anit-air mob throwing a harpoon to pull you :V

[M1r4g3]

i dunno, flying is the only reason im doing emissary quests (other than the azerite armor and ap rewards) still.

i'll say this much, when we got flying in Legion it felt like a HUGE relief. i didn't feel that way this time through. i think its because traversing BfA on ground mount wasn't really that bad. still, very glad to have flying now and it matters to me.

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potentially cutting 20-30 minutes of travel time down a day? pretty useful to me

and the alts! won't anyone think of how good flying is for the alts?!

More like 5-10min cause fps are quite fast, and now compare that time you saved to the amount of time you spent actually getting both the reps to revered, days of play time?

[Vargulf the Happy Husky]

More like 5-10min cause fps are quite fast, and now compare that time you saved to the amount of time you spent actually getting both the reps to revered, days of play time?

you were going to get those reps to revered anyways. i skipped pet battles entirely so it took me a couple extra days in comparison to some of my more grindy guildies. what about rares in nazjatar and mecha? think you'd make it to those commanders without flying?

i do wish flying was obtainable by the release of the first major content patch every expansion, though. waiting for almost a year sucks.

[M1r4g3]

you were going to get those reps to revered anyways. i skipped pet battles entirely so it took me a couple extra days in comparison to some of my more grindy guildies. what about rares in nazjatar and mecha? think you'd make it to those commanders without flying?

i do wish flying was obtainable by the release of the first major content patch every expansion, though. waiting for almost a year sucks.

Not really unless you really need purification protocol, lucid dreams is tied to follower xp and not the rep, rares are as pointless as wqs and commanders give 2 pearls...
But yes, if flying was added somewhere between launch and the first major patch it would have been useful and worth doing even if it had a similar grind to unlock it.

[Ange]

My question to the anti-flying crowd that Blizzard is pandering to: if flying is okay now, what was so radically different about the game 6 months ago that it wasn't okay back then?

This really boils down to the issues we had in TBC with instant flying.

The game world gets sterile pretty fast. Questing/instances/farming don't force you to travel long distances in todays game. If you add flying for everyone with the start of the expansion you get the true "TBC experience" - killing of all immersive aspects of the MMO and turning it to a simple single-player game. Going from vanilla into TBC was a huge step down for the game and I really question people's experience with the game before who favour TBC so much. We are 10 years later still getting new game "features" to get back what we lost with TBC.

This might be a non issue if you are used to private-servers or dead-servers and never ever experienced MMO's with players everywhere. As a casual player with close to 1400 days played in this game from vanilla till bfa, the worst thing I ever watched to happen to this game was the introduction of flying. No other change ever in this long time did so much harm to the game and to the community.

TBC opened Pandora's box and blizzards pathfinder compromise is as good as it gets to contain the consequences.

[Qnubi]

Wut? 500.000 gold just so you don't have to touch ground for a split second?

Let's ignore the fact that even if you fly long enough so it actually aggroes i just keep flying and nothing happens... The no fly mechanic is a non issue in my experience.

I was thinking the same, 500k is not well worth the money, even if the mount sold a 430 ilvl to you every week.

[WowIsDead64]

I see this argument a lot.

"When we unlock flying its already too late into the expansion. Its at a point where it doesnt even matter"

Dont know about you guys, but i must do all World PvP quests to reach Conquest cap (because i dont do rated arenas)
Today i had to kill 35 players, some in Voldun, some in Nazjatar.
And i felt like total crap for being the only one on group without flying.

The ultimate humiliation was when in Nazjatar one guy had to use the "Taxi" flying mount on me, every single time, for 20 min.

I was lucky we had a nice soul on the group to "taxi" me around...but...from now on, all World PvP quests will be a nightmare for me every week

Disclaimer:
Im not complaining i dont have flying. Im just saying its not "useless" at this point, which is the argument i see a lot.

What is usually meant - is that flying is the best thing for leveling alts and some other casual activities. Players start to do it, when they run out of other activities to do. For majority of playerbase of happens within 1-2 months after release of xpack, when newness/exploration effect fades. And if they do all of this content without flying, instead of unsubbing and waiting for flying, then they no longer need flying, when it becomes available.

[Final Verdict]

The game world gets sterile pretty fast. Questing/instances/farming don't force you to travel long distances in todays game. If you add flying for everyone with the start of the expansion you get the true "TBC experience" - killing of all immersive aspects of the MMO and turning it to a simple single-player game.

1. Open World content is not the singular "immersive" aspect of (the) MMO, as Raids, BGs etc. r immersive per se (as event), per lore (as story-vehicles), per loot (yes, loot is amazing)

2. so the Open World gets sterile quick, y? ground-travel just prolongues this process of Open-World-Fatigue, hm?
this seems to be not a player perception/expectation, but a design issue...
not to me btw, i like to enjoy Open World in its verticality, as i already fly (via https://de.wowhead.com/item=40727/gn...tationsbrunnen +gliders) long before pathfinder patches.

3.pl still gather at Elite WQs, rares (r announced), WQ addons etc., as they did before pathfinder.

4. its a (demanded) change in player-mentality, as content is massive and Vanilla groundslog grindfests routdated boring. flying was the revolution Vanilla needed. cuz it was immersive to ground-slog 10 mins from Ironforge to BRD, right.

5. but the best thing on flying is: flying is optional. Anti-Flyers most abused contra-argument is, that they r forced to fly, cuz everyone else does. i wonder, if the Anti-fly community is that major (as some vocally pretend) y dont just the half (of u few) do opt out of flying and regain ur Vanilla-Groundslog experience, hm?

[Yriel]

I see this argument a lot.

"When we unlock flying its already too late into the expansion. Its at a point where it doesnt even matter"

Dont know about you guys, but i must do all World PvP quests to reach Conquest cap (because i dont do rated arenas)
Today i had to kill 35 players, some in Voldun, some in Nazjatar.
And i felt like total crap for being the only one on group without flying.

The ultimate humiliation was when in Nazjatar one guy had to use the "Taxi" flying mount on me, every single time, for 20 min.

I was lucky we had a nice soul on the group to "taxi" me around...but...from now on, all World PvP quests will be a nightmare for me every week

Disclaimer:
Im not complaining i dont have flying. Im just saying its not "useless" at this point, which is the argument i see a lot.

I guess people say that because, at this point in the game, there is not much to do in the world. WQ are mostly pointless except for alts, invasions are even more pointless since they only award up to 375 gear so it really doesn't matter for me that much that i can fly now.
You are probably the exception since you do pvp quests but aside from that there isn't much out there.

[MrExcelion]

@OP : Yeah people like to shame for any reason they see fit (ilvl, spec talents, gear choices, choice of player name, etc). Just ignore it, just like the random banter in random battlegrounds. Obviously if you're doing a rare farm group or anything that involves flying, you'll need to find someone to taxi you. They're not going to wait around really, and you shouldn't waste your energy telling them to wait.

[SirBeef]

Just imagined being dazed and dismounted while on a flying mount, oof. Imagine minding your business and then some random anit-air mob throwing a harpoon to pull you :V

Hey now, the pro flying movement have suggested this many times.